Moodle Setup - which is best?

[firefox_2006]

Hello

I am trying to get my head around the best setup for a Moodle installation on a Windows 2003 Server. I have read the documentation on the moodle.docs website and it seems that the XAMMP/WAMP packages are not suitable for a full production environment, is this correct?

If so does this mean I have to setup each component (PHP, MySQL, IIS etc) Manually/individually? If so does anyone have any instructions on how to do this (my knowledge of PHP/SQL etc is a little hazy at best!) or can offer some assistance I would be most grateful.

Regards,

Firefox_2006

[Jona]

Hi mate,
That is pretty much correct, We're just in the process of moving moodle to a production environment ourselves.

Here is my advice:
1) Download and Install mysql from here: http://tinyurl.com/377dh8 for security set a port other than the default and a password.
2) Get apache for here: http://tinyurl.com/32fx7s (the msi and install)
3) Get the php windows zip (not the msi) from here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php
4) extract the .zip to C:\php (or your dir of choice).
5) Link php & apache by adding the following to httpd.conf:

Loadfile "C:\php\php5ts.dll"
LoadModule php5_module "C:\php\php5apache2_2.dll"
PHPIniDir "C:\php"
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php-source .inc
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php-source .class

Also change

DirectoryIndex index.html
to
DirectoryIndex index.php index.htm index.html

6) You may need to rename php.ini.dist to php.ini in C:\php

That should give you a good start, I'd recommend the following for security:
set-up an apache user and group and make apache run under it
same for mysql
Implement suggestions here: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1706
Install mod_security2

Hope that gives you a start at least....

Cheers
Jona

[plexer]

Why would one of those packages not be suitable for a production environment they are running the same individual components that you could install yourself are they not?

Ben

[Jona]

As mentioned before, XAMPP is not meant for production use but only for developers in a development environment. The way XAMPP is configured is to be open as possible and allowing the developer anything he/she wants. For development environments this is great but in a production environment it could be fatal.

Ref: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/xampp.htm

The default configuration is not good from a securtiy point of view and it's not secure enough for a production environment - please don't use XAMPP in such environment.

Ref: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

They tend to have lots of security holes so aren't recommended for a production environment. You can use them if you have to but It's just not really a great plan, you also gain a lot of useful knowledge installing and configuring the individual components.

Cheers
Jona

[alan-d]

We installed all the components ourselves on a Win2003 server. It seems to run better that way than with WAMP. We also run a php based Intranet on the same server.

More work initially but you get a better understanding of how it all fits together making diagnosing problems easier.

Funnily enough I'm in the middle of setting up a virtual server to test moodle 9 out

Jona is correct

[plexer]

Fair enough.

[zag]

We used WAMP and have not had any problems so far