Installing and upgrading help

Yeah, I actually do know to test on the production server, I upgraded the code by moving the moodle.tar.gzip file via ftp from my debugging system (MacOS) to the LINUX genoo test site, which is a copy of my production site.  I ran the upgrade and tested access and flunctionality as a user — but the test did not include expanding every submenu, or modifying anything with the administration tools, and some of the submenu links do work, so I didn't realize there was a problem until after I had upgraded the production site, when I went to add classes for the fall, realized that I could not expand any of the Administration menus.

Changing themes does not fix the problem: in the "clean" theme, submenus still do not expand. (The reason I pointed out that I tested on a MacOS as well was to indicate that the theme does work there — so it would seem the problem is more likely to be in the environment than in the moodle code itself although some moodle settings may fix the problem if we can figure out what they should be).

I upgraded the code by moving the moodle.tar.gzip file downloaded from Moodle via ftp from my debugging system (MacOS) to the LINUX genoo test site, which is a copy of my production site.  I did the gunzip and tar -xpf on the genoo site.   I did not change any permissions, and everything (except this resource file load) appears to be working.

The directory path for moodle/amd/src is all executable and readable by the webserver.

first.js exists and is readable.

It contains the following content (I did not edit this file and it is timestamped for the release) after distribution comments:

**

 * This is an empty module, that is required before all other modules.

 * Because every module is returned from a request for any other module, this

 * forces the loading of all modules with a single request.

 *

 * This function also sets up the listeners for ajax requests so we can tell

 * if any requests are still in progress.

 *

 * @module     core/first

 * @package    core

 * @copyright  2015 Damyon Wiese <damyon@moodle.com>

 * @license    http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU GPL v3 or later

 * @since      2.9

 */

define(['jquery'], function($) {

    $(document).bind("ajaxStart", function(){

        M.util.js_pending('jq');

    }).bind("ajaxStop", function(){

        M.util.js_complete('jq');

    });

});

One possibility I can think of is that there may be URL length limit on the prod server that does not exist on my Mac's Apache2. Modifying the YUI slash argument setting (either through the admin php executable or by setting it in the config file) did not resolve the problem.  The moodle config file suggests that a RewriteRule may be necessary to work around path limitations, but does not say where this line belongs (just uncommenting it breaks the test Moodle).  If it needs to go into the Apache configuration, I will need help explaining to my Sys Admin what change is required, since I don't have root access to the system files for Apache.

I agree that the error is not being generated by Apache.  The error reported in the browser, by the way, has changed slightly if you look at the screen capture. It no longer mentions anything about an "Error 500", it just says it can't load the resource.js file.

OK, I'm all fixed.  My own stupid mistake....but reading through your emails really helped me figure out what I had messed up, especially when I started looking at the caches.

The Chrome report indicated that something was wrong with first.js:

javascript.php:34 GET http://www.scholarsonline.org/~sodeveloper/ScholarsOnline/moodle/lib/ requirejs.php?file=%2F-1%2F/core/first.js 

So I tried getting to the first.js file directly in the URL bar of chrome.

On MacOS (working), lib/src/ajax.js prints

On gentoo (not working), I get the error: JS file: /lib/amd/src/._mustache.js does not contain a javascript module in AMD format. "define()" not found.

There is NO lib/amd/src/._mustache.js file on the mac system.  

Then I read through Ken's lengthy suggestion again and went looking at the moodledata cache directories paying attention to the dates of files.

I realized that in moving the moodle release from my Mac to the genoo system, I had tarred my already installed moodle directory, not the original directory as downloaded from Moodle...and there was cached data from the Mac in that file system.

So I downloaded a fresh copy of Moodle 3.1.1 from Moodle to my test genoo system, moved the "bad" moodle directory out of the way, copied in my config.php file, and voila! all works.

Thank you all for your help; I would not have figured this out without your suggestions about where to poke.