Posts made by Visvanath Ratnaweera

Moodle in English -> Installing and upgrading help -> Moodle 4.5 LTS breaking *older* versions of Moodle! -> Re: Upgrade from 4.1 to 4.5 and running into issues. Would it be safer to stay on 4.1 for now?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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Wait, wait!

4.1 was an LTS
now an Unsupported Moodle Version
Highest is a 4.1.19

FUD

4.1 is an LTS.

Security supported untill Dec 2025

See https://moodledev.io/general/releases (screenshot as of now, 14 June 2025 embedded below):

True, the highest release so far is 4.1.19 https://moodledev.io/general/releases/4.1/4.1.19, released 9 June 2025. But more (4.1.20,..) will be released till December.

To the OP, you wrote:

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll need to skip this LTS version altogether.

Moodle upgrade path allows you to skip many versions. See http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases for an overview (the column "Earliest from").

Would it be safer to stay on 4.1 for now, or consider moving to 4.4?

Safer in what sense, more secure? Or, lesser chance of you breaking the upgrade? The 4.x series is well tested. So, AFAIC if you break the 4.1 LTS to 4.5 LTS upgrade, then you might break 4.1 LTS to 4.4 as well. 

P.S. This is a diversion from the original discussion, Moodle 4.5 LTS breaking *older* versions of Moodle! I gave this one a new title. I suggest you add the information related to those "issues" as explained in Read this.. before you post and the helpers will follow up from there. In the mean time the moderators might decide to split this discussion.

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Moodle in English -> Installing and upgrading help -> Planning 4.1 -> 5 but also adding Git -> Planning 4.1 -> 5 but also adding Git

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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The prescribed path is documented under Upgrading. But if you expect "crazy" things in your current Moodle, that path might break, or worse, inherit those things. Starting with a fresh install including the additional plug-ins and Course backup / Course restore might give a cleaner result. Of course, nobody can say for sure, unless those crazy things were documented.
 
FYI: A single-step 4.1 LTS > 5.0 is not possible. See https://moodledev.io/general/releases/5.0. Or for an overview of the versions involved see http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#php-and-dbms-compatibility-of-major-moodle-releases. Unless you are in urgent need of the new features of Moodle 5.0, it is safer to upgrade the 4.1 LTS to 4.5 LTS (one-step upgrade is possible). As 4.5 LTS runs in production, you can start testing 5.x in a test instance.

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Moodle in English -> Security and privacy -> Eliminating World Writable Files -> Eliminating World Writable Files

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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A thorough research!

You can solve the mystery yourself starting from the first principles.

They are:
1. The web server processes belong to a certain user and a group. For example in Apache2 under Debian Linux, they are in the /etc/apache2/envvars. export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data, export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data.

2. Those web server processes need read access to the Moodle code, in your case /var/www/moodle/ (and everything below that).
 
Yes, only _read_ access.

3. Those web server processes need write access to the "moodledata" directory, in your case /var/www/moodledata/.
 
I repeat, _write_ access (and obviously read access too).
 
Usually you give Moodle an empty moodledata directory and from there on Moodle manages moodledata/ on its own.
 
I know, you know this, but to eliminate a common misconception: The "everyone" group in Unix, what you call the World, is not the 8 billion world population nor the 5 billion of them having web access, rather all the other shell user accounts of the server that runs Moodle (more accurately, the web server that powers it).
 
P.S. It just occurred to me that, if you delegated the "research" to those odd characters like ChatGPT, etc., it is not a crime, but a courtesy to mention that.
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