moodle-local_sandbox

Moodle plugin which programatically restores courses to predefined course states. It can be used to provide playground moodle courses which will be cleaned periodically.

Requirements

This plugin requires Moodle 2.9+

Changes

• 2015-08-21 - Add missing event description to language pack
• 2015-08-21 - Add "Method of operation" section to README file
• 2015-08-18 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.9, no functionality change
• 2015-01-29 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.8, no functionality change
• 2014-11-24 - Support new backup format ($CFG->enabletgzbackups), Credits to Dimitri Vorona
• 2014-10-13 - Support new events API
• 2014-10-13 - Bugfix: Sandbox sometimes couldn't finish the scheduled task due to a coding error
• 2014-09-16 - Bugfix: Sandbox didn't restore courses when option to set the course start date to today was set to on
• 2014-09-16 - Fix typo in english language pack
• 2014-09-16 - Update README file
• 2014-08-29 - Update README file
• 2014-08-25 - Support new task API, remove legacy cron functions - Existing execution time settings have not been migrated to the scheduled tasks system. The plugin's scheduled task is disabled after the upgrade and the execution time is set to the plugin's default value, please check Moodle's scheduled task settings to configure and reenable the plugin according to your needs
• 2014-06-30 - Add plugin's name as prefix to function names
• 2014-06-30 - Support new logging API, remove legacy logging
• 2014-06-30 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.7, no functionality change
• 2014-01-31 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.6, no functionality change
• 2013-07-30 - Transfer Github repository from github.com/abias/... to github.com/moodleuulm/...; Please update your Git paths if necessary
• 2013-07-30 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.5, fixed a timezone flaw which caused sandbox to run at the wrong hour when system timezone was not GMT
• 2013-04-23 - Check if we need to specify log events
• 2013-03-18 - Small code optimization, Code cleanup according to moodle codechecker
• 2013-02-19 - German language has been integrated into AMOS and was removed from this plugin. Please update your language packs with http://YOURMOODLEURL/admin/tool/langimport/index.php after installing this plugin version
• 2013-02-18 - Check compatibility for Moodle 2.4, fix language string names to comply with language string name convention
• 2013-01-21 - Bugfix: Fix flaw in german language pack
• 2013-01-08 - Initial version

Installation

Install the plugin like any other plugin to folder /local/sandbox

See http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_plugins for details on installing Moodle plugins

Usage & Settings

After installing local_sandbox, the plugin doesn't do anything until it is configured. To configure the plugin, please visit Plugins -> Local plugins -> Sandbox.

There, you find three sections:

1. Execution time

From Moodle 2.7 on, Moodle core supports a system called "Scheduled tasks". The execution time settings of the sandbox plugin, which have been configured in this section until Moodle 2.6, can be now configured in the "Scheduled tasks" system.

By default, sandbox's scheduled task is disabled in the "Scheduled tasks" system. You have to enable it there to make use of this plugin.

By default, sandbox's scheduled task is set to run every sunday on 1:00 GMT in the "Scheduled tasks" system. Please change this time according to your needs.

2. Course backups

In this section, you define the directory where the course backup files to use for course restoring are. local_sandbox takes every file in this directory with a .mbz filename extension, takes the file's name, searches for a existing course with a shortname equal to the file's name and finally, uses the course backup file to restore / reset this course.

Example: The sandbox directory /var/www/files/moodledata/sandbox contains the files foo.bar and mylittlecourse.mbz. local_sandbox looks at the directory and finds two files. File foo.bar is ignored by local_sandbox because it doesn't have the right filename extension. File mylittlecourse.mbz will be considered for restoring a sandbox course. local_sandbox now looks for a existing course with shortname "mylittlecourse". If this course exists, it resets / restores it to the state saved in the mylittlecourse.mbz backup file. If this course doesn't exist, local_sandbox doesn't change anything.

Additionally, in this section, there is an option to set the course start date to today instead of setting it to the date saved in the course backup file. Use this option if you need to provide playground courses in Moodle which pretend to be up-to-date.

3. Notifications

As local_sandbox acts automatically, it can inform you when failures or problems occur. In this section, you can define who should be notified and which failures or problems should be reported.

Themes

The local_sandbox plugin acts behind the scenes, therefore it works with all Moodle Themes.

Secure path configuration in Moodle 2.5+

Since Moodle 2.5, it is possible to disable setting executable paths in config.php with $CFG->preventexecpath = true (please have a look at your config-dist.php for documentation about this feature).

If (and only if) you use this option, it is not possible to configure the paths to the course backup directory on the Moodle settings pages. For configuring the paths to the course backup directory, please set $CFG->preventexecpath = false in your config.php temporarily.

(Related Moodle Tracker tickets: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-41593 and https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-40949)

Emails sent by cronjob

If you have debugging enabled in your Moodle installation, as soon as local_sandbox is configured and working, there is an email sent to the webserver administrator (the person who gets stdout output from unix cronjobs) telling something like this:

instantiating restore controller 0b3123770cffd351d7c7b890a7a0035c

setting controller status to 100

loading backup info

loading controller plan

setting controller status to 300

checking plan security

setting controller status to 600

saving controller to db

calculating controller checksum 2d4e16b80c8c8098fab8dd1f397ae0da

loading controller from db

setting controller status to 700

saving controller to db

calculating controller checksum 061df7eb8a9370826e16b39f86747fc3

loading controller from db

setting controller status to 800

processing file aliases queue

setting controller status to 1000

saving controller to db

This output is generated by the restore controller used by local_sandbox and can't be suppressed according to our knowledge. You can simply delete these mails.

Method of operation

The plugin's description states that it restores courses to predefined course states. In reality, this is not exactly true. In fact, the plugin operates by completely deleting a course and creating a new one from the configured backup file.

Normally, this tiny detail is unimportant. However, you should know that each resetted course gets a new course ID. This can produce problems if you have a hardcoded link (from outside or inside of Moodle) pointing to a sandbox course. This link will break with each run of the sandbox plugin. If you want to have a hardcoded link to a sandbox course, please construct the link's URL like https:///course/view.php?name= instead of https:///course/view.php?id=.

Further information

local_sandbox is found in the Moodle Plugins repository: http://moodle.org/plugins/view/local_sandbox

Report a bug or suggest an improvement: https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_sandbox/issues

Moodle release support

Due to limited ressources, local_sandbox is only maintained for the most recent major release of Moodle. However, previous versions of this plugin which work in legacy major releases of Moodle are still available as-is without any further updates in the Moodle Plugins repository.

There may be several weeks after a new major release of Moodle has been published until we can do a compatibility check and fix problems if necessary. If you encounter problems with a new major release of Moodle - or can confirm that local_sandbox still works with a new major relase - please let us know on https://github.com/moodleuulm/moodle-local_sandbox/issues

Right-to-left support

This plugin has not been tested with Moodle's support for right-to-left (RTL) languages.

If you want to use this plugin with a RTL language and it doesn't work as-is, you are free to send me a pull request on github with modifications.

Copyright

University of Ulm kiz - Media Department Team Web & Teaching Support Alexander Bias