Anyone know or have seen this in a quiz?

Anyone know or have seen this in a quiz?

by Ken Task -
Number of replies: 3
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

200 question test.   'Author' of the quiz did say used Word.   Doesn't re-call any details as the test was probably first used when site was a 1.9 (ie, many moons ago).   Quiz is timed.  4 days to take and pass with 70%.  2 attempts allowed.

Had trouble where at the end, student was to submit and finish for a grade but would time out.

Grade book showed no responses - pending.    Couldn't edit the quiz online.

Decided to backup the course via command line and extracted the mbz file to inspect the contents of questions.xml ... about an 8.4 Meg file.

In questions.xml were entries like these:

<stamp>mycbit.syr.edu+091026230827+hf6gFv</stamp>
<version>mycbit.syr.edu+091026230827+hbZQbD</version>

The server referenced no longer exist.   Probably been that way for quite a few years but issues had never appeared to users taking the quiz.

Have recommended to the author the quiz be rebuilt ... uhhhhh, nope ... not happy about that ... 200 questions.  Was asked if I could fix ... editing a raw xml file not my cup of tea and wouldn't have a clue if after doing that the quiz could be saved or not let alone restored to a course.

Anyone see/know what stamp and version means?  Fact they are a URL are those part of the problem in rendering?

Thanks, in advance for any clues!

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Anyone know or have seen this in a quiz?

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

What exactly is the problem here? Is it the time-outs?

If so, what does the server load look like when someone submits a quiz?

Also, which version of Moodle is the quiz currently running in?

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Anyone know or have seen this in a quiz?

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

First, thanks for reply.   Wish I could give a more accurate description.   Moodle version 3.1.highest.  Course and the quiz has been there since version 1.9.x.  Has always been hosted on a dedicated server CentOS 6 now on Rackspace.

Am watching real time logs with muiltail ... apache access log, error log, secure and messages in a terminal session.   I click some link in Moodle via browser (FireFox latest) and I never see the request arrive in logs.   Sometimes white screen of death.   Have a ticket into Rackspace inquiring about IPv6.

A quick look at top .. or even logged on in another teminal session running top ... no big bump in usage cept what I might call 'normal' when cron kicks in to run a task.   Does reach 100% of cpu but only for a flash (less than a second).  8 Gig memory ... using no swap space.  About 1.6 Meg free.   Tuner runs say DB config for InnoDB/Baracuda is good within the memory available for server.

As far as the taker of the quiz ... 2nd attempt, button to submit and finish is clicked ... white screen of death.

Finally got it to report an error - debugging turned all the way up to developer.   The error trapped by Moodle not debugging with link to 'more info' ... that page mentioned if quiz or backups, might be max_allowed_packet ... already set to 500M ... boosted it to 950M (max is 1G).   Ok, we get by one user in submission ... we think.

Since we couldn't edit the quiz, I had managed to back it up via command line out to another directory.  De-compressed it to inspect the xml's ... big quiz ... that's when I saw the references to the syredu server.  Never seen that before so wondered if that could be a factor in this or not ... that's why the question.    Also, for the first time in a couple of days, got up a 4 AM and did the tools/health check.  Normally one sees issues related to quizzes there (among other things).   No issues ... green.

So think it's a combo of things ... one of them involving networking/IPv6 etc.. really dunno.  But will keep exploring. :|

Strange!

'spirit of sharing', Ken



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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Anyone know or have seen this in a quiz? - Resolved

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

This has been one illusive rabbit!

Site changed to https over 2 years ago.   Using a permanent re-direct for all port 80 traffic to https://.   It's been working for those 2 years.   Upgrade to 3.1.highest went without a hitch ... used site at that version for a couple of months ... no issues.

Strange/odd behavior ... sometimes could get to an area ... like upload users ... sometimes couldn't.   First report was related to the quiz ... so that's why the original question.

No errors reported anywhere ... not apache error logs ... not in Moodle debugging.

Dunno of that will help anyone else or not ... but ...

'spirit of sharing', Ken



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