Unicode migration question

Unicode migration question

by John Isner -
Number of replies: 9
I just ran the Unicode migration script on a 1.6.3 site. The migration completed successfully, but on the screen with the "progress indicator" I got many messages exactly like this:

unknown language detected en_us_utf8

At the bottom of the page, just before the message "db unicode migration has been completed" it says

The following language packs are needed for your users and courses
en_us_utf8

Following instructions, I used the language import utility to find a language pack by this name, but of course no such language pack exists.

Do I have a problem here? If so, what do I need to do?

FYI everything on the site is in English and my default language is en_us.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Unicode migration question

by Richard Enison -

JI,

I just paid a visit to the language pack download page http://download.moodle.org/lang16/ and found one called en_us_utf8.zip. Honest! I wouldn't lie about a thing like that. big grin

RLE

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In reply to Richard Enison

Re: Unicode migration question

by John Isner -
Hi RLE,
Thanks for your help (I had a feeling you'd reply Mamatheka). The language import utility doesn't show en_us_utf8 in the "available" column (see screenshot), so clearly I can't use it to install the language pack. So how do I install it?
Attachment screenshot-4.png
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Unicode migration question

by Richard Enison -

JI,

Amazing! You read my mind. surprise

I know very little about the language import utility. All I know is

  1. It looks like the available languages shown in your screenshot are from the Pre-Moodle 1.6 language packs page (http://download.moodle.org/lang15/). I don't know how to re-load the utility with more up-to-date language packs. I wonder what the Update button does....
  2. The current page, which I linked to in my previous post, consists of nothing but language packs whose names end "_utf8.zip". A sample list screenshot is attached.
  3. If you go to that page (http://download.moodle.org/lang16/) you will find instructions at the top on how to download and install a language pack manually.

RLE

Attachment langpax.JPG
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Unicode migration question

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi John,

Please note that UTF-8 language packs are available for download using the language import utility in Moodle 1.6 onwards, even though the language pack names displayed don't have "_utf8".

From your description it sounds as though you simply need to update your en_us_utf8 language pack by clicking the "Update all local language packs" button.
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In reply to Helen Foster

Re: Unicode migration question

by Richard Enison -

JI (& HF),

Aha! I had a hunch that's what that Update button was for.

RLE

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In reply to Richard Enison

Re: Unicode migration question

by John Isner -
Thank you, Helen and Richard, for your help.

Before I clicked the "click here" link in the Unicode migration notice, I reviewed all the material on Unicode migration in order to understand what was about to happen (thanks to Richard for the bibliography):


I now had, at best, a vague idea about what was about to happen. I read with trepidation the warnings about (1) the script taking a LONG TIME (what if it times out?) (2) not being able to rerun it (again, what if it times out?) and (3) certain third-party modules possibly causing the script to fail (I had two). But I pressed the button anyway. Then I got hundreds of messages that I didn't (and still don't really) understand. I had been hoping for an unambiguous Success!, but no such message, just an ambiguous "Completed" and a link to install an unknown language pack which (when I clicked it) promptly logged me out.

After this experience, I have a bit more sympathy for Viva Moodle 1.6. But for me, onward and upward.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Unicode migration question

by Richard Enison -

JI,

I hope you followed the advice given in the first document of that bibliography (to which, I noticed, you referred your namesake Mr. Ten Cate) to back up everything before upgrading. That would have at least limited your trepidation, I trust. smile

RLE

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In reply to Richard Enison

Re: Unicode migration question

by John Isner -
Oh yes, I had a full site backup.

Interestingly, if a mysql import times out, you restart it and it picks up where it left off. In math, we call that property idempotency: the property that doing an operation N times has the same effect as doing it once. I wonder why the utfdbmigrate.php script doesn't have this property, i.e., why you can't just keep running it until it completes.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Unicode migration question

by Manish Verma -
I believe utfdbmigrate.php is idempotent as long as user allows it to die its natural death and not kills it.

Regarding MySQL, if the database is too large, one can go for bigdump script rather than counting on MySQL's idempotency.
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