Moodle Installation

This document will help you get Moodle up and running.

Basic Requirements - Set up your server

A working web server - Apache A database - MySQL PHP configured Access to SMTP mail server to enable Moodle to send mails.

On a Linux machine, you may need to configure all the three components. Get help of ITIT for this. On a Windows machine, you can get started with installing the WAMP. Download WAMP from http://itit/tools2/Applications/TC%20Exam/WampServer2.2a-x32.exe and follow its installation instructions. This document assumes that the setup is being done on a WAMP server but the instructions are applicable to other setups with necessary modifications.

Download and copy files into place

Download Moodle from: http://itit/tools2/Applications/Moodle/moodle-latest-23.zip Unzip into the web-root of your web server. This will result in a directory called moodle, containing many files and folders. o Secure this folder by making it read-only. On Unix systems, following commands will do this: # chown -R root </path/to/moodle> # chmod -R 0755 </path/to/moodle> (files are owned by the administrator/superuser and are only writeable by them readable by everyone else)

Create an empty database

Create a new, empty database for your installation. On a WAMP server, you can use PhpMyAdmin for this. In other cases, you may have to give SQL queries on MySQL similar to the following: CREATE USER 'moodlesuper'@'%' IDENTIFIEDBY'***'; GRANTALLPRIVILEGESON*.*TO'moodlesuper'@'%' IDENTIFIEDBY'***' WITHGRANTOPTIONMAX_QUERIES_PER_HOUR 0MAX_CONNECTIONS_PER_HOUR 0MAX_UPDATES_PER_HOUR 0MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS 0 ; GRANTALLPRIVILEGESON`moodledb`.*TO'moodlesuper'@'%';

IMPORTANT: Make sure that the database uses Unicode utf8. If not, Moodle will complain. For this, open your MySQL my.ini (or /etc/my.conf as the case may be) file and make the folowing changes:

Look for [client] section and add this line to it: default-character-set=utf8 Look for [mysqld] section and add these lines to it: default-character-set=utf8 default-collation=utf8_unicode_ci character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci If you have already created the empty database, then convert it to utf8 using the following command: ALTER DATABASE moodle charset=utf8;

Make a note of following information for use during the final installation stage: dbhost - the database server hostname. Probably localhost if the database and web server are the same machine, otherwise the name of the database server dbname - the database name. Whatever you called it, e.g. moodle dbuser - the username for the database. Whatever you assigned, e.g. moodleuser - do not use the root/superuser account. Create a proper account with the minimum permissions needed. dbpass - the password for the above user

Create the (moodledata) data directory

Moodle requires a directory to store all of its files (all your site's uploaded files, temporary data, session data etc.). The web server needs to be able to write to this directory. Create a directory moodledata. IMPORTANT: This directory must NOT be accessible directly via the web. This would be a serious security hole. You may need to consult ITIT to achieve this. Do not place it inside your web root or inside your Moodle program files directory. Moodle will not install. It can go anywhere else.

Start Moodle install

To run the web installer script, just go to your Moodle's main URL using a web browser and follow instructions. The database information you remembered in above step will be required. Ensure that the path to the moodledata directory is correct. Just follow the on-screen instructions. IMPORTANT: Read all the pre-filled values thoroughly to make sure they are correct before you proceed with any step. You may be required to install any PHP extensions that are found missing. Ensure that the server check report is all green.

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