Moodle in English: Upgrade

Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 10:31 PM

Hi all,

I am a newbie and I need help.

I am upgrading a moodle website (which runs on $release = '3.0.10 (Build: 20170508)'; version) to the latest version available. Here are the steps I've followed:

put moodle under mainteinance
change the name of the old moodle folder to "old_moodle"
download the latest available version of moodle from the official website
unpack the latest available version on my laptop
upload the unpacked folder from my laptop to my host via FTP
copied "config.php" from "old_moodle" to the newly uploaded unpacked folder
via browser, went to the following link "https://mywebsite/moodle/admin"

The error I'm getting is the following: the browser tries to load "https://mywebsite/moodle/admin" and, after some time, I get a 504 Gateway Timeout.

I've noticed that if I don't copy "config.php" to the new moodle folder, I don't get the 504 Gateway Timeout, but moodle starts a new installation.

What can I do?

Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Howard Miller - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 10:47 PM

First thing - what is the actual version you are upgrading from?

I'm assuming you are upgrading to 3.10. Have you read https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_3.10_release_notes (you should)? Does your server meet all the requirements near the start of the document?

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 10:52 PM

Actual version (from version.php):
$release = '3.0.10 (Build: 20170508)';
$version = 2015111610.00;

Yes, I did review the release notes and the server does meet the requirements

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Howard Miller - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 10:58 PM

It doesn't. Minimum Moodle version is 3.5. You have 3.0.

You can't upgrade from 3.0 to 3.10. 3.10 requires 3.5, 3.5 requires 3.1. So you can upgrade 3.0 -> 3.1 -> 3.5 -> 3.10.

Worse, they have incompatible PHP versions. For example, 3.10 requires PHP 7.2 but 3.1 will not run with that version. So you also need to plan PHP upgrades to go along. See the relevant release notes.

I'm hoping Visvanath comes along - I think he has a handy table to make this easier.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 11:07 PM

Thanks - While we wait for @ Visvanath , I'm going to roll back PHP version and try to install 3.1

By 3.1, do you mean 3.1.18?

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 11:15 PM

LOL

http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases. Due to public demand I added the link to my profile.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Friday, January 8, 2021, 1:10 AM

So - first of all, thanks so much for the support.

Current status of the server:
- MySQL at 5.5.62-38.14-log
- PHP at 5.5

I did the following:
- Current moodle version 3.0.10
- Renamed current moodle folder to "old_moodle"
- Downloaded moodle version 3.1.18
- Unpacked it on my laptop
- Uploaded via FTP
- copied "config.php" from "old_moodle" to the new moodle folder
- went to "https://mysite.com/moodle/admin"

Result: the webpage is stuck loading indefinitely

Can you please help me?

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Emma Richardson - Friday, January 8, 2021, 1:44 AM

Check permissions on the new folder and make sure it is readable. So you have not got to the Do you really want to continue the upgrade screen? Try removing the admin from the url...

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Friday, January 8, 2021, 2:24 AM

No "do you really want to continue" screen - it is stuck loading and then I get a 504 Gateway Timeout error

Also, now if I try to revert to the original version, I also get a 504 Gateway Timeout error

This is a nightmare.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Leon Stringer - Friday, January 8, 2021, 3:55 AM

Because upgrades can take a long time the connection between the PHP-FPM service and the web server, or between the web server and the browser can time out. You can upgrade using the command line to avoid that problem. On my system PHP scripts are executed as user apache and Moodle is in /var/www/example.com/moodle so I would run:

# cd /var/www/example.com/moodle
# sudo -u apache php admin/cli/upgrade.php

You'll need to determine the location of your Moodle 3.1.8 folder (you probably already know this) and the user for sudo -u. You may be able to find this out by looking at how the site cron is being run as this should use the same user, it's probably one of apache, www-data or php-fpm.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Emma Richardson - Friday, January 8, 2021, 4:49 AM

First - do you really have to have moodle in the url? Did no-one ever redirect the website name directly to the moodle folder? What happens if you go to the mysite.com url?
Also what happens if you remove the config.php from the new version - will that now load? In which case, you should be able to enter the details from the old config file in the window (database connection details, etc) and continue on...

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by FamilyOffice Mehta - Friday, January 8, 2021, 8:34 AM

As to the URL, at mysite.com there's a wordpress website - the folder moodle is used to wrap the moodle system that can be accessed via the website

As regards removing config.php, if I do that and then go to mysite.com/moodle/admin, it starts a new installation of moodle. However, at the "confirm path" throwing a "Data directory (/web/htdocs/www.mysite.com/moodledata) cannot be created by the installer" exception

Is there any way to extract data files (i.e., courses ) and install them back into a fresh moodle installation?

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Howard Miller - Friday, January 8, 2021, 3:56 PM

There's a couple of alarm bells here...

1. You can't install Moodle "inside" a Wordpress site. Wordpress's .htaccess rules break Moodle.

2. You can't put moodledata inside the web delivered directory. Moodle will refuse to install. Put it anywhere else.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Rick Jerz - Friday, January 8, 2021, 10:02 PM

I'll add a few more ideas to what Howard has already said.

Yes, you can move your Moodle around as long as you obey some simple rules, and you have to know what you are doing.

A new installation of moodle can occurs when config.php is missing. Typically, if config.php isn't configured correctly for the database, some kind of database error occurs. I am not sure what happens if config.php exists, its database is correct, but there is no moodledata folder.

Other posts have already pointed you to "moodle migration" docs.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Howard Miller - Saturday, January 9, 2021, 7:04 AM

I think it tries to create moodledata. If permissions don't allow then you get an error.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Friday, January 8, 2021, 1:52 AM

It is always the same:
- To take a copy to another machine https://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_migration
- To upgrade https://docs.moodle.org/en/Upgrading
- To debug https://docs.moodle.org/en/Debugging

Note: Those links will be redirected to the Moodle latest, which ich 3.10. For other versions, replace the /310/ with the release you are interested in.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Howard Miller - Friday, January 8, 2021, 1:01 AM

Probably... install the latest point release of each version. Always install the latest version you possibly can.

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Rick Jerz - Thursday, January 7, 2021, 11:27 PM

Others are doing fine helping you.

I want to mention that I don't see an important step in your procedure. At the beginning you should have "backup the moodle application, database, and moodledata."

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Re: Upgrade - 504 Error

by Emma Richardson - Friday, January 8, 2021, 12:18 AM

Just to add in, you also need to copy over any plugins that you have...also check php version...

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Installing and upgrading help

Upgrade - 504 Error