Installing Moodle for the first time *newbie*

[Darylrese]

Morning Everyone,

 

My school is looking at installing Moodle. We currently have uniservity and we can no longer afford it and no-one uses it.

 

I only have basic knowledge of web design / hosting and would like to know where to start with setting up moodle.

 

Do i need an internal server for moodle? We have some old servers that have been decommissioned that im looking to install Ubuntu Server edition on and have a play about with. We do have an external web host who host our school website and forums, could we ask them to run it from their end? What is the best choice?

 

Is it easy to install if i do it myself? Once it is installed how hard is it to design / create content?

 

Any help is appriciated...sorry i am a newbie when it comes to stuff like this!!

 

Many thanks

[daedalus]

You have asked three questions there;

 

Should I have an internal or external server? - To my mind if I can get someone else to host, maintain, backup and provide power to a server rather than me doing it that seems the best choice. However, cost is usually a factor in this decision, so if it's free to do it yourself or £1000 a year for someone else to do it the school may have some input.

 

Is it Is it easy to install? - I have just setup a small server for two teachers to experiment on. 500Mhz Celeron, 2G of RAM. It took 30-40 minutes to install CentOS (my personal choice, but you choose yours), about 5 minutes to download and dump the Moodle tar archive into /var/www/html. Set permissions, run web front end to configure Moodle setup a dns entry so the teachers can use a nice name for the server, another 10 minutes or so.

 

Is it easy to design and create content? - To get good quality content is very difficult, I am technical and let the educationalist do this. I just help when they don't know the tecnicalities of how to do it. This area is where nearly every install falls on the floor and dies. It take time and effort to (make that a lot of time and effort) to get any VLE to 'do its job'. Months and years are not un-common from what I have read on this forum!

 

Hope that helps

[mdrabble]

I have attached some instructions on installing Ubuntu from scratch and them installing moodle which I received from another school.

 

Hope they help.

Mark

moodle_install.txt

server_install.txt

[Darylrese]

thanks for this. I'm just installing Ubantu Server 10 now on an old server we had to see what i can do following the instructions you have given us.

[Darylrese]

i have installed it typed username and password in and all i get is a comman line, which if you type anything into just displays a long line of blue squiggles and doesnt let you do anything else! I have never installed this before...can moodle be installed on a windows based server?

[daedalus]

Not too sure why your server would do that. I normally install one of the window managers to make life a little easier.

 

As for installing on Windows, no problem there, it works just fine. I normally install xampp or wamp to get the apache/mysql/php envirnoment. xampp is a little 'open' when it comes to security, and not recommended for a production system unless you secure it a bit.

[Brpilot99]

For a beginner like I am I think you may be better off installing the desktop version for a starter. This is how I did it on an old server .... Go to Ubuntu site ... Downloaded the Ubuntu workststion ISO ... burnt it to a disc .. booted off of the disc and followed the prompts ... Its that easy !!! The only problem I came accross is the first time it bombed so I upped the ram and after it ran through straight away. The desktop version comes with a nice GUI that you can play with to start and after you can learn how to add the various server apps needed for Moodle .... Theres heaps of info out there ....

[Darylrese]

Thanks.

 

I have just installed the desktop version. All up and running. What do i need to do now to get moodle up and running so i can have a play around with it?

[ShorehamGeek]

Have a look here:

Step-by-step Installation Guide for Ubuntu - MoodleDocs

 

As long as your new linux box can connect to the internet (which it needs to if it will be used as your VLE) work your way down from the section "Prepare your server" typing the commands into a terminal window.

[powdarrmonkey]

I have attached some instructions on installing Ubuntu from scratch and them installing moodle which I received from another school.

 

Hope they help.

Mark

 

Why the install from source? Installing the official Ubuntu package:

 

a) installs and configures the database and web server for you

b) ensures you benefit from testing by the maintainer and other Ubuntu users

c) automatically pulls in the correct required dependencies

d) gets you automatic, easy security updates

[Darylrese]

I have still had no luck installing this. The get moodle command says E: 'Package not found'

[Brpilot99]

Hiyah I'm at the wrong place at the moment but later when I'm at another school I'll do a "this is how I did it simple guide to the next steps" in your quest !!

[Darylrese]

cheers mate.

 

Im just having a go at uploading the uncompressed moodle folder to our FTP (hosted externally) to see if i can get it running that way aswell. The only stage i'm not sure on with that method of installation is creating a database as i dont think our web host has a CPanel, only FTP access.

Edited February 10, 2011 by Darylrese

[Brpilot99]

Be aware that different versions of Moodle require different versions of PHP .... Moodle 2 I think needs PHP 5 to run and is not compatable to PHP4. Check your web host to see what version they are running ... (yes its a bit of a minefield!!!)

[creatinghavocagain]

Personally I'd get a cheap hosting account with someone like Heart Internet and then install MOODLE on that as a test. It's dead easy to to if you follow the simple instruction in the uncompressed Moodle folder. I uncompress the moodle zip file after downloading it from the moodle site and then use filezilla to upload the uncompressed files to the host. You can then navigate to the hosted MOODLE folders and install from a web browser. This way it means you always have access to "play" with your new MOODLE site.

[bart21]

HI

 

if you need any help installing ubuntu or moodle drop me a PM i have done it numerous times

 

nick

[Darylrese]

Hi,

 

I have installed Moodle on a windows computer just to have a quick play around. Only problem now is when trying to access moodle from another pc on the network it says

 

http://i394.photobucket.com/albums/pp24/Miltoncross/error.jpg

 

Works ok using localhost on the computer but not by typing in the ip of the host from another computer. Has anyone else had this problem??

[daedalus]

I am not that familiar with version 2, but have you checked the CFG->wwwroot variable in the config.php file, it should be in the root moodle directory. I know if it points to localhost it used to cause problems with 1.9

 

I usually make sure I have an A record on a DNS server for my moodle server and then just set the variable to point to the DNS name. You can just put the IP address of the server in there if you haven't got a DNS record setup.

 

If you are still having problems there are some entries in the Moodle forums about this very error message.

 

Good luck.

[Darylrese]

Thats excellent, thank-you works a charm.

 

Still, it doesn't achieve much as its only installed on a desktop pc on our network with an internal ip. We still need it setup so that it can be accessed externally aswel. I just can't get my head around installing it on a server!

[Cools]

if you want to run Linux but don't want to install moodle have a look at http://www.turnkeylinux.org/moodle it has ubuntu and moodle all built in and takes 5 Min to install on a hyper-v PC. most of my server run like this small foot print and fast installs.

i have Squid server , VPN server , Mail Server All with NTLM setup for AD

[Darylrese]

so all i need to do is install ubuntu onto a server box and moodle will come preinstalled with the version above?

[Cools]

Yep.. just ubunti and moodle all in one .. just do a apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

and your dun.. the SSO and the LDAP Server works sweet... so its easy to bind in to your Win AD for authenication.

[Darylrese]

Bart21 kindly helped me install Moodle 2.0 on ubantu and we are now up and running!!

 

However, it only works internally. We want to give external access to our teachers & Pupils. I have contacted our local council to create us a domain pointing to the ubantu server but they are reporting it may be difficault to create a .sch.uk address as they are restricted via Nominet? We wanted something like most other schools in the format http://www.moodle.schoolname.sch.uk

 

I'm guessing this is all we need to do to use moodle externally?

Edited February 20, 2011 by Darylrese