Moodle in English: Google Drive as "Server Files"

Google Drive as "Server Files"

by Asko Pesola - Sunday, April 5, 2020, 12:13 AM

I just installed Moodle on my new server. This is going to be relatively big learning environment for up to 1000 students and 70 teachers. That means that there will be lot of material available for the students. I think I will need a big storage for that and the server I bought is not going to be big enough.

That's why I want to use my Google Drive as default data directory meaning that all the course material goes as default to Google Drive. How can I do that? Obviously Moodle has to have full access to this Drive, but I have no idea where to start with this.

So normally when someone uploads material into Moodle, it goes to place which in File Picker is called "Server files", as you can see from attached picture. I want this "Server file" to be located in Google Drive and not on my own Moodle server. How can I do this?

Re: Google Drive as "Server Files"

by Webmaster EDUCAN - Monday, May 11, 2020, 2:53 AM

Hi,

I would be interested in this way of storage. If you get any update or workaround, could you share, please?

Regards

Average of ratings: -

Vs: Re: Google Drive as "Server Files"

by Asko Pesola - Monday, May 11, 2020, 3:42 AM

Nothing so far. I haven't have time to dig deep into this because getting this 1000 students school running smoothly on Moodle is still fully occupying my days. So far we don't have problems with the storage. One way how we are trying to reduce storage usage from the beginning is that we have advised all our teachers to use YouTube if they want to share their own videos. We have given them permission to add videos into our school YouTube account and we will keep those videos as unlisted so that no one can watch them without exact link. After that our teacher embed those videos into their course page. This solution is good enough for us. So we are not in hurry to find an answer to this question. I will keep you up to date in this threat if something comes up.

Average of ratings: -

Re: Google Drive as "Server Files"

by Ken Task - Monday, May 11, 2020, 4:43 AM

Please see:

https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Google_Drive_repository

I see you have a 'Google Drive' in your screen shot.

It's a repository which is different than entire moodledata - which is for all users on the moodle server. Its the apache service that has access to moodledata via moodle php scripts.

Please see https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/json_api/v1/buckets

While you can mount a google bucket and name a folder there, using it for moodle's caching or moodle's filedir (where the files uploaded to moodle are stored) there is no 'web service' user (such as the one your moodle runs under - example: apache or www-data) with the bucket. A GB is tied to a google service account and not sure one could ever get user ownerships/permissions to work.

A GD repo does require all users to have a Google Account (or gmail.com) and if a Google 4 Edu set up would involve the Google Admin for domain to attempt set up a Google OU - no interface in Moodle admin to do that.

Not discouraging you from trying, however.

'SoS', Ken

Average of ratings: -

Repositories

Google Drive as "Server Files"