Hi Moodle Friends,
Been struggling a bit today with my former and current Moodle Windows installations copied onto my Windows 11 Pro machine, as well as with a new Moodle 4.2 beta install there.
Things appear to have been working OK for me until the latest Windows 11 upgrade, which I performed on April 10th.
My current system is: Windows 11 Pro 22H2 22621.1555 Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22640.1000.0 (11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz 1.38 GHz ; 16 GB RAM ; DELL Latitude 3520)
What I found today was that the "Start Moodle", as well as the "xampp_start" commands had ceased to complete, closing down suddenly at the first cmd console/terminal window, and registering dozens of errors in the Windows event log, such as the following (I'm quoting below only some, and sparing any messages recorded in Polish; these examples are copied from my Moodle 3.11, but the same problems affected my localhost Moodle 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 beta) :
- MariaDB: The parameter innodb_large_prefix is deprecated and has no effect. It may be removed in future releases. See https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/xtradbinnodb-file-format/
- MariaDB: InnoDB: Operating system error number 3 in a file operation.
- MariaDB: InnoDB: The error means the system cannot find the path specified.
- Maria DB: InnoDB: If you are installing InnoDB, remember that you must create directories yourself, InnoDB does not create them.
- Maria DB: InnoDB: Cannot open datafile for read-only: '.\phpmyadmin\pma__bookmark.ibd' OS error: 203
- Maria DB: InnoDB: Operating system error number 203 in a file operation.
- Maria DB: InnoDB: Could not find a valid tablespace file for ``phpmyadmin`.`pma__bookmark``. Please refer to https://mariadb.com/kb/en/innodb-data-dictionary-troubleshooting/ for how to resolve the issue.
- Maria DB: InnoDB: Ignoring tablespace for `phpmyadmin`.`pma__bookmark` because it could not be opened.
- Maria DB: InnoDB: Operating system error number 3 in a file operation.
- php[1084] PHP Warning: Module 'openssl' already loaded (apache\bin\httpd.exe -f conf\httpd.conf)
- php[11664] PHP Warning: Module 'openssl' already loaded (C:\Moodle311\server\apache\bin\httpd.exe -d C:/Moodle311/server/apache -f conf\httpd.conf)
- php[11596] PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'sodium' (tried: C:\Moodle41\server\php\ext\sodium (Nie można odnaleźć określonego modułu.), C:\Moodle41\server\php\ext\php_sodium.dll (Nie można odnaleźć określonego modułu.)) (apache\bin\httpd.exe -f conf\httpd.conf)
- php[17188] PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'sodium' (tried: C:\Moodle41\server\php\ext\sodium (Nie można odnaleźć określonego modułu.), C:\Moodle41\server\php\ext\php_sodium.dll (Nie można odnaleźć określonego modułu.)) (C:\Moodle41\server\apache\bin\httpd.exe -d C:/Moodle41/server/apache -f conf\httpd.conf)
In the end, I managed to get my Windows Moodles to "behave" in this way:
- for new installs - I used the "Start Moodle" option; after it shut itself down, I ran the "Stop Moodle" executable to make sure any of the server processes were properly stopped. This entire step also ensured the XAMPP package would config itself as needed before installing Moodle 4.2 beta;
- then for the Moodle install itself, and for later in-browser use, I'd go to the "server" folder, and run, in this order:
- apache_start.bat
- mysql_start.bat
- and I'd make sure those two command terminal windows remained open while I could visit the browser and do my work.
- When done, and ready to leave Moodle, I logout, then - to gracefully leave everything clean behind - I return to the "server" sub-folder and run the xampp_stop.exe, or I else hit the usual "Stop Moodle.exe", which proceeds to close the two server windows.