Students unable to access Moodle site

Students unable to access Moodle site

by Scott Karren -
Number of replies: 7

I am using Moodle 1.2.1 (haven't had a chance to upgrade yet)  I have installed everything and it appears to be working for me.  I am able to login as an admin, teacher, or student and can manipulate moodle within the contect of each role.  I opened this up for beta testing to a select few and this is the feedback I have gotten so far. 

On Win 9x systems the user enters the site address in the browser (IE 5 and up) and they get a network authentication window, which if they put anything in it tells them they do not have permissions to see the page.

On Win XP systems a user trying to reach the site gets the following.

Warning: main (c:\moodle/lib/setup.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\moodle\config.php on line 160

Warning: main(): Failed opening 'C:\moodle/lib/setup.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;c:\php4\pear') in C:\moodle\config.php on line 160

Fatal error:CAll to undefined function: get_string() in C:\moodle\mod\resource\lib.php on line 12

I have looked in each of these files, but honestly I am not a programmer and they are nothing but greek to me.  Any ideas on what would be causing this?

System specs: WIN XP, IIS 5.1, MS SQL (personal edition) SP3a, PHP 4.3.6

Scott

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
I am guessing that it only works from the machine that Moodle is installed on, yes?

You have probably put localhost, or the machine address, or similar in wwwroot. Ahhh... its you! smile Yes, I was going to ask you about this last time we met! Your wwwroot is something like...

http://mymachine/moodle1

or similar (I don't remember the exact name) - you need to change mymachine for either the DNS address of the machine (if it has one), or the actual IP adress.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Scott Karren -

Not exactly true.  I am able to access it from my normal workstation and from the server machine itself.  If I login to another machine I am able to access the site, other cannot.

Changed the wwwroot to the ip address/moodle1 and now it comes up with a network authentication screen for me and will not accept anything I put in there.

Would this have something to do with IIS permissions to the website itself?  I will need to double check those. 

By the way, MS SQL is working very well for me and is making our IT staff happy as well.

Scott

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Your IT staff just need educated big grin

Anyway.... we need to be quite clear about the "network" authorization box that comes up. Is it an HTTP one, or is it a windows network thing. If you are not 100%, post a screen shot. It will be interesting to see exactly what is on the Address line at the time.

Have you tried a different browser - just to see what happens? Try Mozilla, and see how that reacts - its is less tied in to the O/S than IE and might give a clue.

Yes, it could be IIS permissions, but its not the default, so somebody would have set it up. I am not particularly keen on having the Moodle install under inetpub. I would put it somewhere else and create a new virtual directory - then you know where it has been so to speak.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Scott Karren -

No, I am quite sure that it is a Windows Network login box.

I have not tried a different browser, they are hard to come by in my company.  I will see what I can do. 

The moodle directory is located outside of the inetpub, it is actually a virtual directory under C:\.  Did some looking at the actual directory permissions and am wondering if this might be part of my undoing.  I am able to access the dirs because I created the folders and therfore am listed as a user in both the dataroot and dirroot, but if I did not have say the IIS IUSR account or (for lack of anything else) the Everyone account in the permissions would this cause issues?

Scott

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
There's two things here - if it is *really* (as opposed to http authentication) a network logon then something is badly wrong. This means that Windows is trying to open the connection as a path to to shared folder on another machine, which is bad news. What is shown on the address line at the time?

Secondly, if all you do is create a new folder it is normally readable and writable by 'Everyone' - you do need to confirm that this is the case and/or that the IUSR_*** user will definitely have access to this folder (AND its subfolders - don't forget that!).

When creating a virtual directory in IIS the only things you need to do is to check the box to allow scripts to run and to add index.php to the Documents tab. You shouldn't need to touch the security settings.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Scott Karren -

Ok, so I made a couple of mistakes and decided to nuke the server and start over (extreme I know, but it's only time).  So here is what is happening now.

If I go to the server address http://myserver/moodle as a network user (meaning I have logged onto my business network, open IE and then go to the above address) I get the following; (by the way If I go to http://myserver/test.php I get the PHP info page)

Warning: main(config.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:\moodle\index.php on line 4

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required 'config.php' (include_path='.;c:\php4\pear') in C:\moodle\index.php on line 4

If I enter the IP address of the server I get a login screen asking for username and password, I enter the machines administrator account and I am able to get to the moodle front page.

If I go to the IIS properties for the default website and look at directory security it is set to "Integrated Windows Authentication" I have changed nothing in here and this is how it has been defaultly set. 

If I look at the folder properties for both the dirroot and dataroot I see the normal administrator accounts, the machine users acount, creator owner, and system.  Shouldn't everyone or the IUSR account be in there? Any ideas on what should happen from here?

Scott

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Scott Karren

Re: Students unable to access Moodle site

by Kevin Lawry -

From my experience, I run moodle on IIS on a w2k box, the directories need the system account to have full control because IIS runs as a service and hence runs under the local system account.

Turn off windows integrated authentication, and allow anonymous access because you want moodle to handle authentication & not IIS, (windows integrated is only any use if you are logged on to the domain anyway, and you would still need to log in to moodle)

This works for me - good luck

Kevin

Average of ratings: -