I am researching upgrading from Moodle 3.5.x to Moodle 3.9.1+
I found out I have to upgrade our MariaDB version, also the Kaltura plugins for our videoservers. This works fine on a lab environment where I installed the new version of Moodle (3.9.1+). Which version of PHP is recommended for this Moodle version?
PHP 7.2 is the (lowest) version that is recommended by Moodle, but this version is EOL 30 Nov this year. Is PHP7.4 a good alternative? For Redhat PHP7.3 is the highest version that I can install, but PHP 7.4 is an LTS version (see https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php).
Where can I find some more information here for Moodle admins about the new Moodle 3.9 version and how to tweak and configure this version for optimal performance? I believe a lot has changed this version, so I'm curious about the experiences of other Moodle system admins here.
Is this true RedHat with entitlements and all? or is it CentOS?
RedHat has always been 'conservative' ... so if one wants higher versions of X, might think about installing remi repo's just for PHP.
https://blog.remirepo.net/post/2019/12/03/Install-PHP-7.4-on-CentOS-RHEL-or-Fedora
Following won't be popular, but ... as far as 3.9.x specific ... while 3.9 is the next/highest LTS supported version it appears to have some bugs/regressions or whatever those are called ... am basing that on forum traffic.
Not scientific but I've always waited until a new release gets to a .2 or .3 before truely considering. Why? It's been tested then by the 'omicron' testers - those who cannot resist latest/greatest.
If you are at 3.5 right now, it still gets security fixes until May 2021.
Did you install hvp as a plugin to server you have now? That's perhaps the biggest change ... hvp is now core.
Also, If I re-call ... you've done something to offload cron to another server right?
'SoS', Ken
Yes, it is true Redhat we use and they are conservative indeed, unfortunately we can't use a remi repo, I already found that as an alternative. So we'll have to wait until it is available in the Redhat rhscl repo.
I'm just testing the upgrade to see what's new and if I can find some impediments that might cause problems. MariaDB was one of them I already found out. H5P is integrated indeed in Moodle 3.9, and we're going to use it I believe.
We intend to migrate to Moodle 3.9.x and will also wait for a .2 or .3 release. I assume the most bugs will be solved then.
We did offload the cron to the database server, but that was because we used NFS for our moodledata. We're running on a new stack now without NFS and the cron is running fine now for the automated course backups. And we're using Redhat Satellite and Ansible Tower now, an improvement for our server maintenance tasks. Ansible is really fun with playbooks that are written easily and can ben run with Ansible Tower. Ansible Tower can also run schemas for maintenance tasks, like reboots or backup processes
Ok, now we have to know what the issue was with MariaDB!!! So share back that info, please.
While there might not be much traffic in these forums with setup similar to yours, folks that run such systems generally don't need assistance ... much.
Case in point: "Redhat Satellite and Ansible"
Am finding that upgrades to MariaDB or MySQL higher versions don't need some settings in my.cnf as defaults have changed.
Some folks have had issues with cron and adhoc task ... locking ... etc. None that are across the board ... all hosting, all setups, all etc. but that's 'normal'.
As usual ... theming and other 3rd party plugins.
One of the things I do with a sandbox latest and greatest is to see what's been added (or, sigh, removed) for cli ...
.//auth/cas/cli
.//auth/ldap/cli
.//auth/db/cli
.//admin/cli
.//admin/tool/behat/cli
.//admin/tool/dbtransfer/cli
.//admin/tool/generator/cli
.//admin/tool/phpunit/cli
.//admin/tool/task/cli
.//admin/tool/httpsreplace/cli
.//admin/tool/replace/cli
.//admin/tool/uploadcourse/cli
.//admin/tool/analytics/cli
.//enrol/database/cli
.//enrol/category/cli
.//enrol/flatfile/cli
.//enrol/meta/cli
.//enrol/cohort/cli
.//enrol/manual/cli
.//enrol/self/cli
.//enrol/paypal/cli
.//search/cli
.//theme/boost/cli
.//lib/classes/local/cli
.//lib/editor/tinymce/cli
And if the version of moosh am running has issues or not - usually related to PHP.
Course backups now have a background process teacher/admin could exercise once process has begun ... which could result in 'pending' but never completed in some systems ... but that leads to discovery that cron wasn't really executing correctly anyway - adhoc task.
Been some issues reported with grades and grading ... unoconv, etc.
'Typical adventures'! Some have been or should have been "show stoppers" but OP didn't really have a good look in a sandbox.
'SoS', Ken
Are the automated backup scripts still the same version? I was curious if this part of Moodle would be redesigned, it's an important part of the Moodle administration software. With larger sites or a large number of courses the automated backup script takes a long time to run (our script runs about 10 hours for 5000 courses). Our largest course takes 9 hours for the backup process.
mysql_upgrade ... ok, nothing special ... thought you had discovered something.
As far as change to autobackups ... have only a small sandbox 3.9 site ... autobackups is turned on. No issues, but then again site doesn't have the number/size of courses your's does.
Haven't inspected code but don't think there's anything new ... at least additional admin settings that might be desired by large site admins.
'SoS', Ken
The automated backup script we'll test when we are going to migrate to the new version. We'll see about the performance then.
About H5P that is part of the Moodle core now, I tested the plugin in our 3.5.x version and had to install the .h5p files manually because it isn't possible to download them from the internet. I saw only a few .h5p functions were installed in the core release, is that right?
Two things ... if you installed h5p as a plugin in 3.5, how well does upgrade handle addon plugin -> core?
And think I observed this with 3.9.x ... to keep core small, h5p did acquire the libraries separately ... or maybe not the reason for keeping core small, but getting compat libraries added to Moodle as there are some things h5p can do that haven't reached Moodle yet (present in WordPress, however).
Few plugins work in that fashion me thinks ... addons usually say/warn part of a set and one should get the block etc as well, h5p doesn't ... but that's good? (as long as it works).
'SoS', Ken
How was the performance in your sandbox after upgrading to Moodle 3.9? Did you see an improvement compared to Moodle 3.5? And did you also upgrade your other infra components like Apache (or Nginx), Redis, PHP and php-fpm?
My sandboxes are small ... very small compared to your sites.
The fact I have multiiple versions of Moodle on that sandbox server means tweaks to mysql and apache (standard balancing act) needed.
Towards that end have found a tool like MySQLTuner but for apache ...
https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/using-the-apache-2-buddy-script-for-performance-and-stability/
'SoS', Ken