Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -
Number of replies: 23

Anyone else having problems like this or able to shed some light? I have two copies of Moodle 1.6 Beta 5 (2006050502) one running with 1and1 with the following reported by the environment.

NameInformationReportStatus
databasemysqlversion 4.1.16 is required and you are running 5.0.19OK
phpversion 4.3.0 is required and you are running 4.4.2OK
php_extensioniconvis recommended to be installed/enabledOK
php_extensionmbstringis recommended to be installed/enabledOK

The other is an exact copy of the moodle and moodledata directories and a version 4 compatible database dump and import from the above which reports its environment as:

NameInformationReportStatus
databasemysqlversion 4.1.16 is required and you are running 4.1.18OK
phpversion 4.3.0 is required and you are running 5.0.5OK
php_extensioniconvis recommended to be installed/enabledOK
php_extensionmbstringis recommended to be installed/enabledCheck

However, I am getting errors on the 1&1 (version 5 mysql database with the 4.4.2 version of php) although environment reports everything as ok and there were no warnings or errors on install. The admin page (/moodle/admin/index.php) gives a 500 server error (although the file is present and intact) and there are other things that are not working, most worryingly backup and restore. It is not a database issue, as I also have a version 4 database on 1&1 and moving the data over to that produces the same errors, so that leads me to conclude it is something with the php settings on 1&1? I am running version 1.5.3+ ok on the same server with no real problems. Any ideas guys?

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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I was going to suggest looking in the error log, but it seems that on shared servers at least, 1and1 don't give you access to the error logs sad

http://faq.1and1.com/miscellaneous/19.html

The above page does have instructions for writing your own error handler, which is something you could try.
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -
Thanks Gordon, you are right about the lack of logs. Will have a try with this script but my technical ability is not helped by the limitations of 1and1! If this doesnt sort out we will stick with 1.5! Thanks for the tip.
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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I suggest you cut and paste the 1and1 code into the top of your config.php.

Please let us know how you get on smile
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -

No output in the csv file so far despite doing a couple of things that cause errors, it is writable and should be accessible to the script. I have it in the moodle root. Will have a fiddle and let you know how I get on.

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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -

Hi, regarding that error log, I now have a list of 845 errors that look a bit like this:

########/moodlebeta/backup/backuplib.php:
1004		(Notice) Undefined property: deleted
########/moodlebeta/backup/backuplib.php:
1051		(Notice) Undefined property: guid
########/moodlebeta/backup/backuplib.php:
1051		(Notice) Undefined property: guid
########/moodlebeta/lib/typo3/class.t3lib_cs.php:
1031		(Notice) Undefined index: utf-8
########/moodlebeta/lib/typo3/class.t3lib_cs.php:
1866		(Notice) Uninitialized string offset: 34
########/moodlebeta/backup/backup_check.html:
110		(Notice) Undefined property: backup_assignment

Not quite sure what to do with them though. the ###### are excels' way of helping out in the office but should be the date strings. Site was closed so these are presumably generated during the cron run.

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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Generally the "undefined property" messages are harmless. If your Moodle site's "Debug" is switched on, Admin -> Configuration -> Variables, "Miscellaneous" section, then you may see warnings or notices on the screen, but I don't think they are the cause of the blank screen on your "admin/index.php"

If you want to get to the bottom of this, I suggest you find a programmer who can add "print" statements in the "admin/index.php" script, and so figure out exactly where, and then why, the script fails.

Gordon


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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi David and others,
On my local install machine (Windowx XP, Apache, etc.) I have installed Moodle 1.6 using CVS checkout. This enables me to use CVS update regularly (when CVS at SourceForge is not downwink).
I have an account on the 1&1 provider and I was wondering if I could install Moodle 1.6 there also using CVS. I don't see how this is possible. I am accessing my 1&1 account with Filezilla, I but right-clicking a folder there does not give me access to the familiar CVS menus. Any idea?
Joseph
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Gordon Bateson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Joseph,
if you have SSH (Secure SHell) access to your server, and if you have permissions to run the CVS command, it should be possible to do what you want. The 1and1 support desk will be able to tell you whether your hosting package has the necessary features.

This link might be useful:
http://faq.1and1.com/web_space__access/secure_shell_access_ssh/index.html

Gordon
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -
Re SSH, we have business level hosting and ssh is only part of the professional level hosting here at 1and1.co.uk. I had trouble finding out the level of permissions that would give from the outsourced 1and1 support desk (at the time I was interested in aspell).
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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi Gordon,
Thanks for the info. I have checked with 111 France, but SSH is only available to pro (more expensive) hosting packages. Never mind.
Have a nice day,
Joseph
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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Daniel Schimrik -

Hello David!

I had the same trouble with 1&1 (Germany) and Moodle 1.6.
Moodle 1.5.3+ with MySQL5 works fine, but as I tried to upgrade to 1.6, I've got many errors, some of them you mentioned (admin page error).

The exact copy of 1.6 from 1&1 put on another host (I used a small german one, www.artfiles.de), and everything worked fine! It also wasn't possible to place an .htaccess-file into my moodle home directory to make special settings on Apache or PHP, which may solve the problems.

My last step was to move to Artfiles yesterday with my whole site. The support is much better, and they officially accept Moodle on their web hosting systems.

Regards, Daniel!

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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

I have just been trying to make a clean install of Moodle 1.6 beta 5 on my 1&1 server account but I'm stuck towards the end of the install process (tried 3 times, always stuck in the same place).

The Moodle install starts OK, tables are created, etc. until I reach the page "Setting up block tables". It starts OK, until it reaches the line activity_modules : Activities tables have been set up correctly. Then the install process "freezes" (just before setting Quiz Results tables, if that can mean something).

If I try to reload the page, I get an error 500 message.

When I go to the mysql database I can see that 149 tables have been created so far ( I think full Moodle 1.6 beta 5 install requires 153).

Any idea, anyone?

Joseph


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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Hi, I've executed a quick search and I've seen tons of errors 500 under 1&1 hosts.

- Some of them point to some memory/time limits imposed by the hosting, killing scripts exceeding them. You could try to move some modules/blocks out form their place to "alleviate" a bit Moodle installation requeriments and, if it success, move them back later...

- Others point to some miss-configured .htaccess files + php running in cgi mode. Examine if you have some sort of .htaccess file and, if possible, rename it (to disable it) and try again.

- And some of them point to the possibility of switching from PHP4 to PHP5, by creating one simple .htaccess file in the root moodle folder:


To switch from php4 to php 5 you can

i) change all .php files to suffix .php5 which is worse than placing a php.ini in every folder

or ii) add the line, AddType x-mapp-php5 .php, to a .htaccess in your root directory. The good news is it applies to all sub-directories

This seems to avoid server 500 errors, unlike a .htaccess with the line, php_flag register_globals off
Such a shame that 1and1 tech support couldn't have told me of this!


I don't know if (ii) will help but you can try it easily. wink

Ciao smile
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In reply to Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Ray Lawrence -
Ah yes, 1&1.

When I discovered Moodle in 2002 I was completely new to anything server-side. I signed up for a 1&1 account on the recommendation of someone else. I estimate that this experience set me back at least 2 months before I went elsewhere. They may have changed since then but to be on the safe side I'd be tempted to bail out now.
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -

For those of you following this I did raise it as a possible bug http://moodle.org/bugs/bug.php?op=show&bugid=5821 as the install problem is a showstopper for 1.6 for us.

Thanks for those tips, will try that .htaccess tip. Bailing out of 1&1, yes, yesterday I had a word with our webmanager and now that we have proved ourselves under our own steam they will try to get us onto the dedicated Windows host they have (they pay 4 times as much a month as we pay for a year on 1&1!) So I suspect that Windows is going to raise a whole new set of problems! Part of the acceptance of Moodle came about when I slipped OU into the conversation.... "...oh and of course when the OU develop the portfolio functionality...".

 

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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by David Brighton -
stronk7 here is a big smoochy one from me! kiss That third .htaccess tip worked a treat, install went fine and now php is reported as version 5.1.4. Will report back if any of the other errors I got before present themselves, but hopefully that is the answer. Should Moodle be expecting php version 5 or is that just the way 1&1 configures itself? Looking back I see that our cheap testbed uses version 5 point something and it worked there.
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In reply to David Brighton

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi Eloy,
And another smoochy for your great tip. kiss I've just put that AddType x-mapp-php5 .php line in a .htaccess file, FTPed it to my moodle folder root on 1&1... et voila! Installation of 1.6 beta5 works like a charm.
I confirm what David says: php is now reported as version 5.1.4.

Joseph
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In reply to Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Rod Spears -
Thanks Eloy,

My problem with a blank admin page came when I upgraded from 1.6beta to 1.6 last week.  I posted the problem here:   http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=48849#225146

I added the line you suggested to my .htaccess file in the root directory of my 1and1 server and I can now see my admin page.  I don't know if this solved all problems, but it did solve that one.

Thanks for the help!

Rod Spears
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In reply to Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by john mcgrath -

Hallelujah! This is a MUST KNOW for anyone on One and One trying to upgrade to 1.6. Tell the sky, tell the sea, tell the birds and the bee..zzz!

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

Tip of the year stronk7  - whatever kind of a name that is!

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In reply to john mcgrath

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Doug Cullen -
Looks like you folks did better than I did.  I've tried to upgrade but I'm stuck on MySql 4.0.x,  I've tried to get Mysql upgraded, but no action yet.  Just put a test up on a HostGator server, prices and limits pretty much the same. 
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In reply to john mcgrath

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Daniel Schimrik -
Hello John!

Thank you very much for this great news. I tried your solution on a fresh 1.7dev with our 1&1 hosting package and MySQL5 and it works perfectly.

The only thing against using Moodle on 1&1 is the very low server performance (web hosting package). Even on a fresh Moodle it takes some seconds to display pages.

Kind regards, Daniel
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In reply to Daniel Schimrik

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Simon Marsden -
This worked for me too with 1.7+ very frustrating up until I found this post. Thanks guys.
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In reply to john mcgrath

Re: Incompatability with Moodle 1.6beta and 1and1?

by Đinh Lư Giang -
I tried to do what you tell in the attached .htaccess but nothing happens: nor phpifo shows 5.1.2 nor my problem solved. Am i missing something ?

Thanks
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