Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Number of replies: 27
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

normally I wait until a .1 or a .2 makes the scene, but decided when 3.3 was released to 'tinker' in sandboxes some more.    Anyway ... just updated a 3.3 to a 3.3+ and am sharing experiences (and how to) ...

First, the site was installed and maintained by git repo ... Moodle's own.

After command line upgrade.php was run this showed:

== Environment ==
!! mysql_full_unicode_support#File_format !!
this test must passYour database has tables using Antelope as the file format. Full UTF-8
support in MySQL and MariaDB requires the Barracuda file format. Please
convert the tables to the Barracuda file format. See the documentation
Administration via command line [1] for details of a tool for converting
InnoDB tables to Barracuda.


Links:
------
[1] https://docs.moodle.org/en/cli


!! mysql_full_unicode_support#Large_prefix !!
this test must passFor full support of UTF-8 both MySQL and MariaDB require you to change your
MySQL setting 'innodb_large_prefix' to 'ON'. See the documentation for
further details.


== Maintenance mode (https://sos.tcea.org/moodle33) ==
Maintenance mode has been disabled and the site is running normally again
$release  = '3.3+ (Build: 20170707)'; // Human-friendly version name

It did upgrade, but ...


Docs (link below) say:

"However, converting tables to Barracuda is only recommended, and not required, since not all MySQL users are affected."

But, even the command line throws the above.
Hitting site via browser and logging onto the site thrown into environment check.

You must solve all the environmental problems (errors) found above before proceeding to install this Moodle version!

https://docs.moodle.org/33/en/Administration_via_command_line#Converting_InnoDB_tables_to_Barracuda

BTW, docs don't mention these mysql client or phpAdmin commands one could use to move on down the road ...

SET GLOBAL innodb_file_per_table=1;
SET GLOBAL innodb_file_format=Barracuda;

Again ... one could do those via command line and get on down the road knowing that
one would have to set those variables in config of DB server at a later time or as soon as one has time.   Might be wrong, but thought 'global' commands were good for the DB server's running session ... when DB server restarted those global settings are not retained and would have to be re-issued.

After setting above, could get by the environment check
But then still had tables to update via the Moodle UI as admin.  First time for this behavior.   Appears to be the tables that were strictly checked (?).

mod_assign
block_myovernew
logsore_database

Finally,  there were new settings (which is typical behavoir) for:

Course overview - timeline

and External database log ... not using.

Surprise!  Surprise!  Connection dropped!!!????  First time for that ... ever ... but, no panic ... waited about 60 seconds and hit refresh.  It re-connected and finally see the Notifications screen where one normally 'checks for updates'.

Once those were completed, Moodle happy now.

So as long as one doesn't panic ... has other tools to use (like phpMyAdmin/other/) or command line ... (since, like me,, you might not have set up things in advance) one can get by this 'minor' update to 3.2.

Anyone have similar experiences?

'spirit of sharing', Ken

PS ... now to see if Joomla or WP affected on that server.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I've been unable to update some of my sites through the web interface for quite a few versions. I've not bothered to put any effort into figuring why as command line has always worked fine. 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Same here, but this was different - atypical.

The CLI upgrade did, for the first time, show a notice about environment, but did finish the upgrade and reported it was successful.

Logging into the GUI, thrown into environment check with a 'critical' notice - must fix.   Those links to help, by the way, probably should open in a new window, rather than replacing the Moodle screen.

The docs say the settings are optional and not required, but not the environment GUI screen ... it's a must fix.

It upgraded all but three tables and once by the environment  check those had to be updated before the GUI would send admin to new settings and eventually to notifications.  

That's a different behavior/path than any previous upgrade ever done before ... 2.0 -> 3.2 - at least in my experience.

Maybe the stars weren't aligned just right! :\

Thanks for response.

'spirit of sharing', Ken


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Ken,

I've been having problems upgrading to Moodle 3.3 for some time now.

I use a WAMP Server (64bit) on a Windows 7 PC. Up to now WAMP has been working OK with all themes up until Moodle 3.3, where it breaks when I select either the More theme or a child theme base on the More theme.. such as Morecandy which is a theme I made.

That said can you just try selecting the More theme and tell me if t works? or does, what I am experiencing, looses all the CSS styles.  It's something to do with the CSS Compiler, at least that is what I suspect is the problem.

Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations installing Moodle 3.3.

Cheers

Mary

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

On sandbox site, set the theme to more via config.php file ... no issues ... that I can tell.

Suggest turning on debugging and see what, if anything, Moodle might be complaining about.

Run the enviroment check (after updating the component) and see what Moodle might be warning about ... if anything, suspect it might be related to DB.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Ken,

When you say you got the theme to work on sandbox site, by setting the theme to the 'more' theme via the config.php file, how did you do that?

Admins cannot do that usually unless they have direct access to the server. Many don't so they would use the Theme selector.

If the code you added to the config.php worked, then I would say there is something odd going on.

Cheers

Mary

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

While the site is a sandbox, am using it for purposes other than theme testing.   The shortest path to changing the default theme, therefore, was via config.php file.   While it's true that most folks use the GUI Interface to Moodle, they must also have access to a file system of some sort whereever and however they are hosted (dedicated, VPS, or shared) and thus could download the config.php file, make the addition in a text editor, then re-upload.

For one that has command line access to the files as well as an online text editor, even better/easier.

The line added, like other $CFG-> variables:

$CFG=>theme='more';

Anything in config.php overrides what's in the DB and dosn't require restart of any services ... next access by any client theme is more.

That doesn't change any code ... so whatever coding there is to the more theme has stayed the same ... including calling the rules in bootstraphase.

As in past updates and upgrades, when issues related to CSS appeared, could be a caching issue.   And in the past, if purging the cache from the GUI didn't take care of it, then manually removing contents of cache directory in moodledata and/or contents of localcache directory usually took care of that - think css is kept in localcache ... if I re-call correctly.

I realize that many don't have command line access to their Moodle, but as I see it, it's becoming more and more almost a necessity ... just like I think the days of remotely hosted Moodle 3-> on shared host might be numbered (unless shared hosting providers do something to help Moodle customers).

I've had debug turned on in the sandbox site ... before the change to more theme and after ... no errors reported.   I've checked web server error logs as well as looked for other logs ... like php error log.   Nothing there.

Now all that was on a 3.3 update to 3.3.1 ... which might not be the same beast as 3.1.6 to 3.1.7 which I did today on another site.   That site not using more and since it's production for client isn't a tinker box.

The annoying little box in center appeared again ... so turned off tours, logged out, logged back in again ... no little undefined box appears.   Must be some flag gets reset upon update.

All sites I install or maintain have been git installed, git updated, and git upgraded.  Granted, others can't use git have to use the 'old method' ... think we've seen before the 'old method' has issues from time to time ... files missing, files not transferred in binary and were transferred corrupted ... little bout  with a troublesome site recently led to the discovery of non-asciii characters at the beginning of $CFG-> lines in the config.php file.

Come to think of it, that would be a nice admin add-on ... the ability to not only view the config.php flie but the ability to edit it via GUI not using Atto nor TinyMCE but plain old raw text editor.

So in conclusion .... dunno what the problem is. :|

'spirit of sharing', Ken

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Looks like this BUG was known about as it had been reported on the 8th June 2017 and closed a week later.

MDL-59188 - A request was made to alert Admins to the problem which turned out to be a PHP Nesting limit setting.

Quote by Thomas Jeisson

1/ maybe WAMP users would appreciate to be warned about that nesting depth requirement as it's not very easy to figure out. Css loads in the background and thus echoes no error even in debug mode (you get a 404 actually). Nesting limit appears to be on by default in WAMP.

2/ maybe somoene who knows about moodle's less compilation engine (which probably uses some recursive process) could ckeck if that increased nesting depth requirement in M3.3 is normal.

So looks like there is a way out of this myre.

http://php.net/manual/en/info.configuration.php#ini.max-input-nesting-level

Cheers

Mary

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Well, that would explain it, but .... how many typical Moodle users have xdebug extension installed in their PHP ... and turned on?   Developers would.    Come to think of it, when having another issue I had determined that problem had issues with some additional extensions to php and I had un-loaded it and two others not being used.   Problem whet away.

So is php-xdebug or Zend's debug extension needed for Moodle to function now?

'spirit of sharing', Ken


Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Ken

Quote: "... little bout  with a troublesome site recently led to the discovery of non-asciii characters at the beginning of $CFG-> lines in the config.php file..."

I was checking out the More theme and found that more/lib.php, config.php & version.php all have  1252 (ANSI Latin I)  @copyright  2014 Frédéric Massart

Is this what you found too?

Mary

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Nope.   The server admin was trying to make some changes related to DB to site via config.php and it was the first line of the section for the DB (which is an array) $CFG->dboptions = array( that had the non-asciii character at the beginning of the line.   That meant none of the array could be parsed which would lead to errors not normally seen.

What you found wouldn't cause white screen of death if one used the more theme, would it?   The @copyright line might look wonky, of  course.

'spirit of sharing', Ken


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

No but I was thinking that it may have caused the problem which broke the More theme.

I may try changing the xdebug setting back and re-save the files as UNIX UTF-8 as they should be and see if it makes any difference.

We are finding that Boost is causing problems now, so may be some connection?

Off to investigate!

Thanks

Mary

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Alan Schrock -

I am having the same problem with the More theme. I upgraded from 3.2.3 to 3.3.1. I can change over to Boost  or Clean and it is OK, but more is broken. I do see it works on the Moodle sandbox site. I went ahead an reimported my backup database and tried without doing the conversion to the utf8mb4 format in case that had something to do with it, and that didn't matter. I also had tried to copy over my more theme folder from 3.2.3 server and that didn't matter.  I have run out of things to try and I would rather not move away from More unless I have to.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

When your site was a 3.2.3 had you customized the more theme?   That theme is still part of core code on a fresh install of a 3.3.x.

Think I'd try this ... download or git acquire a side load of the latest 3.3+ code.  That will have a more theme in it.

Rename the more theme directory currently in the moodle code directory to moreorg.   *Copy* the more theme from the side loaded code into the same location as the renamed more theme.

Purge caches (might have to manually remove contents of moodledata/localcache/ as I think that's where one finds the cache for themes - css cache) and make sure designer mode is off.

Does it work then?

''spirit of sharing', Ken



Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi,

No the More theme had not been modified. What I am finding is the same problem someone in 2015 asked for help with when upgrading from 3.1 to 3.2 and you gave some good advice.

I lost the URL for that discussion, but the problem seems to be stemming somewhere between HTTP and HTTPS. The problem there was the More theme not compiling CSS from LESS files using PHP.

I have it working again on Moodle 3.2.4 and its looking good.

If I upgrad to Moodle 3.3+ it breaks and the only environment check that is not OK is the HTTPS security recomendation has not been set up, partly becasue I don't have a clue how to manually do this. I'm too used to just clicking buttons on my website.

It's always hard to learn something new...and my brain hurts these days! duh...

I'm going to try and find what changes have gone on since last upgrade to 3.3.

Thanks for your help so far!

Mary

 

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Well, I did ask for experiences ... was thinking more in terms of issues with environment check and how the upgrade is more strict in checking now that before ... but ... we've seem to jabberwalk into themes and specifically more - so guess I'll go with the flow ....

https does require a valid certificate of authority from a provider of such.   All are commercial ... cept one.  And https does require the configuration of the apache server to run https and get the server to respond to :443 request even if Moodle not yet ocnfigured to use https://.   Get that working, then one has to change the config.php file and do search/replace on all internal urls to get all the http:// links to https://.   Right now, that https check is not a show stopper - more like a 'nag'.   But, that might be an indication that Moodle might require it in the future.    Uhhhh .... yes, it's probably better to run https all the time, but just because one does doesn't mean a site is 'Ft. Knox' ... 'bad guys' are always a little ahead of the 'good guys'.

Anyhoo ... I do re-call very little about that discussion you've referenced ... I seldom get off into themes as I am a minimalist by nature and tend to concentrate on function over form.    Don't re-call it had anything to do with more but the acquisition of files from YUI Library.

Anyway ...

In looking at the files in the more theme directory I see that one file moodle.less is calling the bootstrapephase / less.

 * Import all the rules from the parent.
 */
@import "../../bootstrapbase/less/moodle.less";

In bootstapphase/less/ there is a README file ...  it says:

Compiling LESS
--------------

If you want to make changes to the .css generated from these .less files then you
need to use a less compiler to build your changes. The supported way to achieve this
is using grunt.

See https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Grunt for details of how to install grunt.

Once grunt is installed run the 'css' task:

 $ grunt css

And the css files will be compiled.

For further info see: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/LESS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So a guess would be to install grunt and run the command shown above.

Even if you are not desiring to make a change.

As I said in previous posting, I set the theme in the config.php file and don't see any errors, etc.. using more:

Sooooo .... ??????

'spirit of sharing', Ken


Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Alan Schrock -

Just a few bits of pieces of information from these questions:

1. It was the standard theme, but I did naturally have my logos and values defined.

2. I had already deleted the theme and reinstalled it. So, it was a "base" theme that was there.  I hadn't tried it from Git, but am not sure that would help as it probably isn't too different than moodle.org since this was just released.

3. I had purged caches already (but didn't try to remove the directory.

I'll see where the theme group goes with it and continue from there.

Thanks again.

Alan

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Alan, please take a look at MDL-59188 which describes the problem we have with the More theme and how to fix it.

Cheers

Mary

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Alan Schrock -

I will, thanks, but can't until tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

Alan

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Alan Schrock -

Hi Mary (& Ken),

This was fixed when I turned off the xdebug extensions (commented out the line in /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-xedebug.ini in case someone else needs it). My debian is from a Turnkey Linux appliance install. This was on by default, I didn't even realize it. If I had it to do over I would have built from scratch, but probably won't at this point. But, this did take care of it.

Thanks for the help!

Alan

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

I can verify Alan's solution/find on another OS ... CentOS 7 with PHP 7.0.x.   I had upgraded to PHP 7.0.x using a global and acquired the php70w-xdebug (zend I think).   At the time, thought that would be ok as I have used XDebug on a Mac for some reason before.  As a 3.0.x, no issues.    Had issues with an upgrade from Moodle 3.0.x to 3.1.highest.   Strange stuff.  Finally decided to check php extensions and found xdebug to be the culprit.   Like Alan, moved ini file out of extensions to load directory.   Restarted apache.   Problems solved.

Don't think I'll miss the addition to PHP. ;)

Good job, Alan!

'spirit of sharing', Ken

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Ken Task

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Thanks Alan & Ken,

Got my Morecandy theme to work again now!

Thanks every one.

Mary

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

@Alan ... what's broke?   Just doesn't display?  Buttons or icons missing?

Have you tried turning on debugging,, then switch the theme to more to see if debug picks up anything?

How about raw web server logs?

'spirit of sharing', Ken


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Alan,

Well glad it's not only me that is having this problem.

The fact you don't see the page correctly and all jumbled up is because the LESS is not being compiled by the CSS Compiler and so no CSS is styling the theme.

This is actually a THEME related problem so this post really needs spliting and moving to the Themes Forum.

I'll request this to the Moderators.

Thanks

Mary Evans
Themes Forum Moderator

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Where would you like it split? It's not entirely obvious to me...

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Evans

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Alan Schrock -

Dear Mary (and Ken),

Thanks for your responses. That is what it looks like, no css is is being applied to it. For Ken, basically, there is no layout - think of all of the menus more in text format stacked along the left side of the page. I had pulled from the latest copy (not from Git) but from moodle.org.

The strange thing is that the sandbox site works with more (on moodle.org).

Thanks for moving the thread over to the theme area. I had it in the upgrade area since my default theme was more and so after the upgrade, the whole graphical interface wasn't really functioning. So, it is kind of both issues. But, yes, whoever works on themes is probably the one that needs to fix it.

To give just a glimpse of the look, attached is what part of my admin menu looks like with more.

My environment:
Debian 8.4 Jessie
PHP 5.6.30
MySQL: 5.5.555

Thanks again.

Alan






Attachment menumore.JPG
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Schrock

Re: Just updated a 3.3 to 3.3+ ... experiences ...

by Mary Evans -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

@Alan,

This has not been moved yet as it's complicated to split it so it might be easier to leave it here, since it is obviously an upgrade problem, but not sure where the problem is to fix it.

It's not a theme issue as there is nothing wrong with the theme. It's the fact that it is missing the CSS that it would normally get access to, which for some reason is not being generated.

Mary

 

Average of ratings: -