SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

by Piotr Krok -
Number of replies: 4
We have recently migrated from using Flash to HTML5 scorm courses. All of the courses have not had issues except for one.


This particular course is about 90 questions long, each question having an associated question pool. When a user tries to take the test, it initially load fine, but it eventually chokes up when loading the next question. 

The browser displays a 503 http error (service unavailable) when this happens and it can not finish loading the page. At this point, the user is forced to close the window that the course is in and they have to re-login into Moodle.


My hunch is that the cause for this is that HTML5 breaks up the data transfer between Moodle and the Scorm course into individual HTTP requests. Due to the amount of data Scorm is trying to exchange, it hits some kind of limit in either PHP or IIS that restarts the current session / application pool (which is why the user gets logged off)


Interested if anyone has had a similar experience or if anyone has suggestions on how to limit scorm requests.


Other info:   Moodle version 3.1+ on IIS hosted on a dedicated Windows server with plenty of resources. 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Piotr Krok

Re: SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

by Mathew Gancarz -
Picture of Core developers

I'd suggest testing the SCORM file on SCORM Cloud or another instance of Moodle (maybe Moodle Cloud) to see if it's something limited to just your system.

Also, anything in the error logs of PHP?

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Mathew Gancarz

Re: SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

by Piotr Krok -

I was told that the course was tested in Scorm Cloud and had the same results.

PHP didn't have anything in the logs.

I noticed on the response for the 503 error, it says its unable to write to database. That could either be the issue, or a symptom of the service being interrupted.  Database is MS SQL 2014 and resides on the same instance as the webserver.

In reply to Piotr Krok

Re: SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

by Mathew Gancarz -
Picture of Core developers

If the course does not work in SCORM Cloud, then I'd approach the vendor of the software that was used to create the SCORM module (Ie: Articulate or Trivantis or whoever). They may have simply not done enough testing with their software package for that large a pool of questions and you are running into some limits there?

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Piotr Krok

Re: SCORM HTML5 Course Crashing/Timeout

by Maddy N -

Hey Piotr Krok,

I am currently facing similar issues with our scorm content on moodle 3.3.2+ with IIS and php7.1.11. How did you solve the issue?