backup has problems with quiz questions

backup has problems with quiz questions

by Mike Jackson -
Number of replies: 4

I have been doing quite a bit of experimenting with backup and restore in the past few days as I am working on migrating one moodle setup to another server.

I was having trouble backing up a couple of large courses - they would always hangup when "writing categories and questions". I tried a backup without quizzes and the back up worked well. I have not been able to test the restore yet as the files exceed the upload limit for my new server.

If I try to backup just the quizzes, the backup fails. I would like to figure out what aspect of the questions is causing the problem.

Are there any detailed backup logs? I have not been able to find them.

 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mike Jackson

Re: backup has problems with quiz questions

by Timothy Takemoto -

I have had problems in the past with an old version (1.5? 1.4) version of moodle and lots of quiz questions and categories.

You may find that upgrading moodle (after taking all precautions) helps. On the other hand others have mentioned that backups started stalling after the upgrade to 1.6.

This will probably depend on the reason for stall. It soulds like the usual lack of memory/php execution time.

As I just advised eslewhere changing to internal zip/unzip routines, if you are not using them already, can change your backup and restore life enourmously for the better. If you have not set the path to the internal zip/unzip routines then that is the first choice.
After you have looked into increasing execution times and memory limits (perhaps these may even be .htaccess settable) you can

backup your course in bits. E.g. backup works without the tests. Then backup half of the tests and then the other half.

By the way, you should be able to upload your course backups to the new server by ftp:
1) upload an empty text file to the site or course files. This will get moodle to create a folder in moodledata called "1", "2", "3" or whatever corresponding to the id of the course - "1" if it is the site files.
2) Upload the backup into the folder ("1","2", or "3" etc) in your moodle data folder using a ftp client in the same way that you uploaded moodle itself.
3) Return to the moodle GUI and restore the uploaded file.

Tim

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: backup has problems with quiz questions

by Mike Jackson -

Thanks Tim,

I am trying to move from a windows 1.6.1 to a linux 1.6.3 system.

I will look into the execution time thing. Are there internal zip/unzip functions for a windows server? If this is possible, how does one set it up?

As to ftp, I am waiting to get the right rights to the moodle data folder.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mike Jackson

Re: backup has problems with quiz questions

by Timothy Takemoto -

Before I go on, I should say that, to my embarassment, my course backups are almost timing out on my 1.6.1 installation due to the number of questions and categories, and I am only on the second week of term. So this is going to be a problem for me, and I have the zip and unzip specified. Ouch. Perhaps we should report a bug.

If you find an effective .htaccess file to extend execution time then please let me know.

The zip unzip paths are for my linux servers and it says in the instructions that it only works for UNIX, and I confirm that.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: backup has problems

by Timothy Takemoto -
My system administrator said use a htaccess to change the php settings so I am trying that at last. It does not seem likely since the php is trying to change things but I have tried this as in the attached.
LimitRequestBody 0
php_value max_execution_time 9000
php_value upload_max_filesize  100M
php_value memory_limit  101M
php_value post_max_size  101M
Average of ratings: -