CentOS Server - Moodle

• Moodle Checklist
• Moodle Checklist
• Prerequisite
• PHP Settings
• PHP Extensions
• MySQL Settings
• MySQL Database
• Folder Structure
• Virtual Host File
• SSL Certificate
• Installation
• Installing Moodle
• Adding plugins
• Post Installation
• Cron (automatic tasks) setup

Moodle Checklist

Moodle Checklist

Moodle Checklist

	√	To Do
		Prerequisite
1		PHP settings
2		PHP extensions
3		MySQL settings
4		MySQL database
5		Folder structure
6		Virtual host file
7		SSL Certificate
		Installation
8		Installing Moodle
9		Adding plugins
		Post Installation
10		Cron (automatic tasks) setup

 

Prerequisite

PHP Settings

Settings

1. Check and set these settings in your php.ini

memory_limit
============

memory_limit = 128M

session.save_handler
====================

session.save_handler = files

file_uploads
============

file_uploads = On

session.auto_start
==================

session.auto_start = 0


post_max_size and upload_max_filesize
=====================================

post_max_size = 500M
upload_max_filesize = 500M

Restart Server

1. Restart the web server after setting the above settings
   
   systemctl restart httpd.service

PHP Extensions

PHP Extensions

1. Install the below list of PHP extensions with the command below (a lot of these extensions are installed by default when installing PHP).  See Install PHP on how to install PHP.

• • • The iconv extension
    • The mbstring extension
    • The curl extension
    • The openssl extension
    • The tokenizer extension
    • The xmlrpc extension
    • The soap extension
    • The ctype extension
    • The zip extension
    • The gd extension
    • The simplexml extension
    • The spl extension
    • The pcre extension
    • The dom extension
    • The xml extension
    • The intl extension
    • The json extension

yum install php-mbstring curl php-xmlrpc php-soap php-gd php-xml php-intl php-json

MySQL Settings

MySQL settings

Adding the configuration settings

1. Open my.cnf file
   
   vi /etc/my.cnf
   
   
2. Add the below config settings to the end of the file

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
innodb_file_format = Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_large_prefix

character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

Restart the MySQL daemon

1. Restart the MySQL daemon after adding the configuration changes

systemctl restart mysqld

MySQL Database

Setting up the MySQL Database

1. Log into MySQL as root, providing the password at the prompt
   
   mysql -u root -p
   
   
2. Create the database with the command below
   
   CREATE DATABASE moodle DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
   
   
3. Create a user/password combination with appropriate permissions for the database (replace moodle, moodleuser and yourpassword with an appropriate database name, username and password)
   
   GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.* TO 'moodleuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
   
   
   
4. Flush the privileges
   
   flush privileges;
   
   
5. Exit the database
   
   exit;

Folder Structure

Creating a Moodle Folder Structure

Moodle Data Folder

1. Navigate to /var/www
   
   cd /var/www
   
   
2. Create Moodle datafolder, replacing "foldername" with an appropriate name
   
   mkdir moodledata-foldername
   
   
3. Change the owner of the folder
   
   chown -R apache:apache moodledata-foldername

Moodle Installation Folder

1. Navigate to /var/www
   
   cd /var/www
   
   
2. Create Moodle datafolder, replacing "foldername" with an appropriate name
   
   mkdir foldername

Virtual Host File

Moodle Virtual Host File

1. Create a virtual host configuration file for Moodle, like the example below (replacing subdomain.domain.com with an appropriate name).  For more information on how to do this, see Apache Virtual Hosts

<VirtualHost subdomain.domain.com:80>
        ServerName subdomain.domain.com

        Redirect permanent / https://subdomain.domain.com

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost subdomain.domain.com:443>
        ServerName subdomain.domain.com

        DocumentRoot "/var/www/subdomain.domain.com"
        <Directory "/var/www/subdomain.domain.com">

        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
        AllowOverride All

        # Controls who can get stuff from this server file
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all

        </Directory>

        <IfModule mpm_peruser_module>
                ServerEnvironment apache apache
        </IfModule>

</VirtualHost>

SSL Certificate

Obtaining a Certificate

1. Run the command below (replacing example.com with the actual domain details)
   
   certbot --apache -d example.com
   
   
2. Follow the prompts of the application
3. At the option, "Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access," choose 1.  Https redirection is configured in the domains conf file

Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration.
2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for
new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this
change by editing your web server's configuration.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel):1

For more information, see Let's Encrypt Certificates

Installation

Installing Moodle

Remember to configure DNS in Xneelo console if required

Downloading Moodle

1. Go on this page and select the installation which suits your needs
2. Navigate to /tmp folder and download the Moodle package with wget (replacing https://link-to-moodle-package.com with the appropriate download link for Moodle)
   
   cd /tmp
wget https://link-to-moodle-package.com
   
   
3. Untar the downloaded package (replacing moodle-package.tar.gz with the appropriate name of the downloaded package)
   
   tar -zxfv moodle-package.tar.gz
   
   
4. Move the uncompressed Moodle folder to /var/www (replacing moodle-folder with the name of the uncompressed folder)
   
   mv moodle-folder /var/www
   
   
5. Change the owner of the folder and all the files
   
   chown -R /var/www/moodle-folder

Moodle Web Installation

1. Open your browser, you should get a page similar to this when you open the URL of the website.  Select the language and click Next
   
   
   
   
2. At the next screen change the Moodle data directory to the appropriate directory
   
   
   
   
3. Select the appropriate database driver
   
   
   
   
4. Enter the database details of the database that was created
   
   
   
   
5. Now click and wait, after some seconds you should see the conditions, that you should accept
   
   
   
   
6. Moodle will perform some system checks to test that everything is working fine
   
   
   
   
7. Click Continue and other checks will come up....
   
   
   
   
8. Click continue fill the data of admin user (Name, First, user password..)
   
   
   
   
9. Finally you will land on the Administrator page
   
   

Adding plugins

Installing Plugins

1. Navigate to the Moodle plugins website (https://moodle.org/plugins/)
2. Search for the plugin
3. Download the latest version of the plugin, preferably matching the production version of Moodle
4. Login to your Moodle site as an admin and go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins
5. Upload the ZIP file. You should only be prompted to add extra details (in the Show more section) if your plugin is not automatically detected
   
   
   
   
6. If your target directory is not writeable, you will see a warning message
7. Check the plugin validation report
   
   
   
   
8. Follow the prompts to complete

Post Installation

Cron (automatic tasks) setup

Setting Moodle up for run tasks automatically

1. Login to server as root
2. Open crontab
   
   crontab -e
   
   
3. Add the below line to crontab (replacing moodlefolder with the actual Moodle folder)

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/moodlefolder/admin/cli/cron.php >/dev/null

The above example will run the command every 5 min