Message-ID: <6215071.1182488854804.JavaMail.joeescobar@joe-escobars-computer.local> Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 04:53:02 -0800 (PST) From: moodleadmin Reply-To: Reid.HART@EWEB.Eugene.OR.US Subject: Re: help copying 2006 to 2007 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_1028_4157988.1182488854804" GWItemID: 45943CBF.LCC-Mail.MC_PO3.100.1346735.1.2B23.1 ------=_Part_1028_4157988.1182488854804 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reid, A couple of thoughts. I'm sorry that the restore did not go as smoothly as you'd hoped. It might be possible to re-upload your course backup and see if that works better, if you would like to do that. > - The moodle folks need to make new versions 100% backward compatable > for AT LEAST 18 months. Although the Moodle developers strive for backward compatibility, it is sometimes impossible to achieve. Had I thought more about what you were trying to do, I should have recommended that you talk to the faculty webmasters for advice on restoring your course, and we could have run some tests on a non-production instance of Moodle before we uploaded it for real. If I had known of the problems you encountered, I would also have suggested that we try some additional tests before you went through the labor of fixing the problems--if you are interested in doing that, I'll be happy to help run some tests, or try to coordinate with the faculty webmasters to help do so; just let me know. In terms of the developers meeting compatibility standards, I know of no Learning Management System in existence that does not have compatibility issues between major versions, and the 1.5 to 1.6 upgrade was a major version change. I know that the faculty webmasters worked very hard with all the faculty who asked for assistance with converting courses from WebCT to Moodle, and from Moodle 1.5 to 1.6, and experienced almost no problems; I'm sorry that your course seems to have been an exception. But in genearl, there are some cases where backward compatibility is simply not possible (just ask anyone trying to convert from WebCT 4.1 to WebCT 6.0). As I mentioned, we had almost no issues with the content of courses restored from 1.5.3 to 1.6. As far as the 64 MB upload limit goes, a 46.8 MB course is actually quite large for what most faculty are doing with Moodle, and that is all we had available as an estimate for demand when we went about purchasing and installing hardware last Summer. We are in the process of setting up a server to store media files, and will be encouraging faculty to put larger documents (media files, PowerPoint presentations, and so forth) on that server and link from their Moodle courses that way. The problem is not one of disk space alone, although that is a consideration (even with these limits in place, a nightly backup for just the 3000 ACIVE courses can take over 15 GB of disk space, and we have multiple terms to retain); offloading the large data files to another server means that we don't have redundant backups of potentially huge files. The real issue, though, is that setting the PHP resource limits high enough to allow 64 MB uploads can quickly bring a server to its knees (the script execution time, memory limit, and POST data size are actually the most problematic resources here). Unfortunately, we are still resolving technical issues with automatically creating accounts and correctly mapping URLs on the media server, so we don't have it available as an alternative. Since I have to coordinate this effort with my management of both the College's LMS services and its web server, progress has been slow. Please let me know if I can help with any of the problems you're having. David Walton =============================================== David Walton Moodle System Administrator Lane Community College For enrollment, course creation, logging in, or general server issues, email moodleadmin@lanecc.edu For faculty assistance using Moodle, email online@lanecc.edu Voice: 463-3367 =============================================== >>> "Reid HART" 12/28/06 8:41 PM >>> David, The upload worked . . . almost You might pass onto the moodle programmers: My course was topic oriented vs. week by week and that setting and the topic titles did not carry into the restore. (Perhaps it would have worked if I had set the empty class for "topics" vs. weeks before I restored) I noted the disclaimer about non-compatible fonts; hopefully that won't apply-looks like things uploaded OK. Two things to consider: - The moodle folks need to make new versions 100% backward compatable for AT LEAST 18 months. Even full time faculty will be restoring the class offered a year (or two years) ago. Even re-entering topic headings is a time consuming process on a web based application. I expect other computer applications to be backward compatable for 5-10 years. - My 47MB restore file is actually pretty small. I hand out a CD to students with 638 MB of data for the class. I don't know if that is in the range of what storage capacity you are thinking, but consider that there is really no multi-media (video) included in that number. And there are files I would add if a CD held more. Ideally I would have that all on moodle. Compressed it might be less; but certainly much more than 32 to 64 MB. Perhaps a solution with multiple upgrade instances is to have an FTP site faculty can upload to that is accessable to moodle for restores. Anyway, thanks, I am up and running. -Reid >>> "moodleadmin moodleadmin" 12/28/06 12:41 AM >>> Reid, Looks like we uncovered a bug in Moodle. It should be fixed now; go ahead and try the upload again. David =============================================== David Walton Moodle System Administrator Lane Community College For enrollment, course creation, logging in, or general server issues, email moodleadmin@lanecc.edu For faculty assistance using Moodle, email online@lanecc.edu Voice: 463-3367 =============================================== >>> "Reid HART" 12/26/06 7:22 PM >>> Attempting the upload; I get: Uploaded file exceeded the maximum size limit set by the form Don't seem to be able to import from outside 2007 winter Any ideas? >>> "moodleadmin moodleadmin" 12/26/06 2:37 PM >>> Reid, I am able to log in with your hartr username and your present ExpressLane PIN (the same one that gets you into Moodle for Winter 2007). Can you try it again, just to make sure? (You're not using hartp, by any chance?) > I used both logins last year so I could see the site "as a student" - > it would be good if Moodle allowed a temporary switch like that to make > sure everything was hidden or not hidden properly; perhaps until next > login. You can click the "Use student view" button to view the contents of your course as a student would, although unfortunately that causes problems if the course is hidden. Since students can't log in yet, unhiding the course as a whole should not be an issue; that way, you can use the student view to see if specific parts of the course are hidden as you want them. If you need a test student account, I can set one up for you. > It looks like the new (2007) site uses the L# for instructor login - > correct? That's correct. > If an instructor could invite another user to have instructor > privileges that would lift the burden from the general admin. > The folks I need to have access are Roger Ebbage and Elaine Vidal in > Science. You can assign any other user in Moodle to be an instructor in the course without consulting the administrator, provided the user has a Moodle account (and in some cases provided the user has logged in once so that the account data has been properly set up). Since Roger Ebbage is an instructor, his account in Winter 2007 already exists, so you can go ahead and assign him as an instructor. Elaine will be able to log in after the eighth, at which point you will be able to add her as well. Sorry about the delay; at present, we have a very imperfect system for setting up user accounts, which have to be rolled from term to term. David =============================================== David Walton Moodle System Administrator Lane Community College For enrollment, course creation, logging in, or general server issues, email moodleadmin@lanecc.edu For faculty assistance using Moodle, email online@lanecc.edu Voice: 463-3367 =============================================== ------=_Part_1028_4157988.1182488854804--