Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

by William Stewart -
Number of replies: 4

3.2.2+ on my MAMP installation where I've been trying out the following below. php 7.

I have a couple of "additional" plugins that show up on the plugins overview page, but do not present an uninstall option. Fair enough, some of those have uninstall options in their respective management category.

I've run into two that have no uninstall option despite being listed as "additional", namely AMF Webservices, Oauth2. I can't seem to find anything these are dependent on that might need to be uninstalled first. Both of these are disabled at any rate.

If I remove Oauth2 from the directory, the plugins overview page will display that it is missing from disk as expected. Nonetheless, I can't figure out how to remove it for good. Any dependencies I'm missing?

If I remove AMF from Webservices in the directory, I will get a "to be removed" status and an option to update the database accordingly. However, this notice/warning always shows up when upgrading the database after removing/installing another plugin.

I have debugging turned on for all notices and nothing comes up. It's not a critical issue or anything but I'm simply removing unused plugins and these are on that list but I can't figure out why they are so persistent!


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In reply to William Stewart

Re: Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Hmmm ...

maybe:

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-52210

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

by William Stewart -

Ken,

I've made some progress - hopefully you can tell me if it sounds 'reasonable' in your experience. I was searching an old forum post that was similar in nature (additional plugin showing up with no clear way to remove it). 

I used phpmyadmin to find a sole reference to AMF in mdl_config_plugins, deleted that, removed the folder in the directory, and was prompted to upgrade the database, and viola, it's gone. Debugging output is on and shows no issues (well, until the database was upgraded anyway tongueout). Is this a viable option, at least in this type of case?

There's about 40 references to auth_googleoauth2 in the mdl_config_plugins table which relate to it's various fields, as well as the plugin version number.

I applied the same method (remove all references, remove the directory, return to admin notifications page, upgrade database) and was able to remove the plugin, and there is no error output from debugging. 

Since this is a first for me (lots of those over the last year!), I would love to hear your thoughts wink.


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In reply to William Stewart

Re: Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Sometimes ... although rarely .. one has to resort to editing the database tables, never the recommend method of 'fixin' something, but .... one does what one must do.

Can re-call somewhere back around 2.5->2.6 and then it remained until one got nasty (ie, edited mdl_config_plugins) a situation with themes ... old in-compatible themes (at least at the time of the upgrade) were still listed in mdl_conf_plugins - no such directories in themes.   Did exactly what you did ... removed references and when involved in updating plugins they no longer showed.

Situation also occurs when restoring a site formerly housed with a Moodle Partner - references in DB config but also other tables related to the MP's addon's the directories/files no longer present.   Can't upgrade them for those were plugins offered by the MP.   Tables serve no purpose ... cept one has to be careful as some tables might be related to things like special roles.

The only reason I hadn't mentioned the direct DB manipulation was, of course, can't see the total picture of a site to which one has no access and guessing incorrectly could make matters worse.  Moodle by itself sometimes gives enough grief without someone like myself making a suggestion that could possibly make things worse.

So all in all, you did what you needed to do to eradicate the continuous loop in updating plugins.

Bottom line ... ya did good!   Learned an alternative way to take care of a problem to add to the tool belt of a Moodle backend Admin.   Just don't resort to that tool as the first one attempted to fix an issue. ;)

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Trying to remove two "additional" plugins

by William Stewart -

Ken,

It definitely wasn't the first option that came to mind. This is also why I really love MAMP these days since I can play around, practice, make mistakes, etc., and not affect anyone wink. I'm not sure why these two are sort of stuck (well AMF I at least see there was an issue with that tracker) but this I can take care of it.

 I'm hitting the end of cleaning up our Moodle site with LOTS of old stuff. In about 4 weeks I'll do everything for "real". I've gotten the site down from 60 additional plugins to 20-21, and from a peak size of 50Gb in Jan 2016 when I took it over to about 4.5Gb. What a difference a year makes, plus a whole lot of learning in between.

As far as Oauth2 goes, I did install it last year at some point to test it out but I'm not sure why it doesn't have the uninstall option. In any event, on their plugin page they mentioned that as of 3.3 it is moving into core Moodle so I'd like to take care of it sooner rather than later.  There was a similar situation with User Tours moving to core Moodle as well and needed to remove the old first to make way for the new.

Hopefully I won't be having to do anything with plugins for sometime (other than routine updates). As you can see from the numbers above, it's been some major cleaning and I'm not keen to add stuff after inheriting years of bloat. As always, thanks for you help and thoughts!

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