CarolBooth

Any experiences with ZiLink?

Thanks Synaesthesia, that tallies with the impression we've had from them so far. How long have you been with Overnet Data? Do you use their new 'communicator' feature?

We currently pay WebAnywhere for our Moodle/SIMS integration and additionally have a parent portal (Insight) out of SIMS from TASC software. We're looking at alternative suppliers and I'd like to hear about any companies I should talk to and your experiences with them. So far I've talked to OverNet Data and SalamanderSoft thanks Carol

I've had this issue before with a blank screen on upgrade. Removing one of your contrib blocks usually fixes it. I've had it with the gmail blocks, I just removed the relevant directory and moodle re-appeared. Last time, removing the folder for the block (e.g. /usr/share/blocks/gmail) and replacing with a fresh latest version of the block solved the problem. In the past I've also fully uninstalled blocks and re-installed. I hope that's some help Carol

Segmentation faults solved! It was due to apc memory set too small. Changed from 100M to 300M and now seems happy - no segfaults for 2 days now new content of /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini: extension=apc.so apc.shm_size = 300M apc.max_file_size=10M Interestingly (?) I had previously been setting apc memory size in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini I take it that apc.ini overrides whatever is in php.ini having said that, I'd still love to know why I can't get apache to do a core dump - any advice welcomed

Segmentation faults solved! It was due to apc memory set too small. Changed from 100M to 300M and now seems happy - no segfaults for 2 days now new content of /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini: extension=apc.so apc.shm_size = 300M apc.max_file_size=10M Interestingly (?) I had previously been setting apc memory size in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini I take it that apc.ini overrides whatever is in php.ini having said that, I'd still love to know why I can't get apache to do a core dump - any advice welcomed

I posted this about failing to track down apache segmentation faults on our Moodle server on the Learning Platforms forum but maybe this is really more of an Ubuntu issue. I hope it's not rude to post here too.

I'm running Moodle 2.6 on Ubuntu 12.04, apache 2.2.22, php 5.3.10 using apc 3.1.7-1 I've been noticing occasional segmentation faults in the apache logs for over a year but lately they are getting much more frequent (5 today!) Can't think of any settings changes which coincide with the increase although we went up to Moodle 2.6 from 2.5 in the Summer I've been attempting to get apache to core dump as I've read that I will then be able to use gdb to track down the source of the error but it doesn't write the dumps I have done: set up core dump directory: this line in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: CoreDumpDirectory /etc/apache2/apache2-gdb-dump in /etc/apache2/ drwxrwxrwx 2 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 19 2014 apache2-gdb-dump ensured core dump size isn’t limited with ulimit -c unlimited installed gcore restarted apache apache logs have lots of lines like: [Mon Sep 22 14:37:35 2014] [notice] child pid 22909 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /etc/apache2/apache2-gdb-dump ... but no core dump is getting written I've seen some stuff about debug symbols but I can't work out where to get them. Any help really gratefully received! Carol Here's what I've been doing on my test server to try and test core dumping: carol@ubuntuTEST:~$ ps waux | grep apache root 1607 0.0 1.8 327412 71880 ? Ss 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1610 0.0 0.1 327436 6024 ? S 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1611 0.0 0.1 327436 6024 ? S 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1612 0.0 0.1 327436 6024 ? S 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1613 0.0 0.1 327436 6024 ? S 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1614 0.0 0.1 327436 6024 ? S 14:01 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start carol 2284 0.0 0.0 9396 880 pts/0 S+ 15:16 0:00 grep --color=auto apache carol@ubuntuTEST:~$ sudo gcore 1607 [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled] Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1". warning: no loadable sections found in added symbol-file system-supplied DSO at 0x7fff103fe000 0x00007ff4b3bc9683 in select () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 warning: Memory read failed for corefile section, 1048576 bytes at 0x7ff4a4cd9000. ... many more lines like this Saved corefile core.1607 carol@ubuntuTEST:~$ sudo gdb /usr/sbin/apache2ctl core.1607 GNU gdb (Ubuntu/Linaro 7.4-2012.04-0ubuntu2.1) 7.4-2012.04 Copyright © 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu". For bug reporting instructions, please see: ... "/usr/sbin/apache2ctl": not in executable format: File format not recognised [New LWP 1607] warning: no loadable sections found in added symbol-file system-supplied DSO at 0x7fff103fe000 Core was generated by `apache2'. #0 0x00007ff4b3bc9683 in ?? () (gdb)

We haven't got a support contract but that location should really help. Thanks!

clever solution. thanks for the idea iceman

Any advice on tracking down what permission in the standard staff user type on our CC4 network is blocking ntlm authentication to our Moodle? We're using IE 10 on a CC4 network NTLM authentication for our Moodle has been working nicely for a couple of years, students are fine and Staff accounts that haven't been reset for a few months are fine but any recently created or reset staff users get presented with the login details request pop up instead of getting signed in. We've isolated the problem to the base staff user type but since we can't see what the permissions of staff in previous versions of the staff user type, it's proving really hard to find what needs changing. Anyone else experienced this or any advice on how to list actual current permissions of a user? thanks! Carol

Hi Iceman did you use moodle assignment data or write a free standing system?

I am really struggling to work out what is happening! Our moodle is hosted on site and assignments work perfectly well if our internet connection is down but students who have an internet ban in the RM Managment Console can do everything in moodle other than upload a file. Is there a technology that the internet ban is blocking? how can this be??? thanks Carol

Thanks Jeremy and Nadeem I'm afraid that was too good to be true. I changed both settings to 40 but when logged in as teacher, the Courses block on MyMoodle still defaults to 10. Anyone used forced settings in php.ini? Carol

i'm using moodle 2.4 on ubuntu By default, the MyMoodle page displays just 10 courses (and for my installation at least there isn't even a link to the other courses - just a notice saying 'you have X hidden courses'. I know a lot of users are not going to fix this for themselves, even if I tell them many times, so I'd like to fix it for them. I have tried editing the courses block on the default My Moodle page but this is not reflected for individual users. I can see in the database that when a user overrides the default (in this case to 'always show all'), a record is placed in mdl_user_preferences like: id userid name value 9325 2 course_overview_number_of_courses 0 I'm not so keen on adding a record for every single user into this table so I looked at config-dist.php and found //========================================================================= // 9. FORCED SETTINGS //========================================================================= // It is possible to specify normal admin settings here, the point is that // they can not be changed through the standard admin settings pages any more. // // Core settings are specified directly via assignment to $CFG variable. // Example: // $CFG->somecoresetting = 'value'; // // Plugin settings have to be put into a special array. // Example: // $CFG->forced_plugin_settings = array('pluginname' => array('settingname' => 'value', 'secondsetting' => 'othervalue'), // 'otherplugin' => array('mysetting' => 'myvalue', 'thesetting' => 'thevalue')); // This looks to me like a good place to change a default but I'm not sure what the name of the core setting would be. Any advice? thanks - Carol