Installing Moodle is easy on Ubuntu 12.04

1. Your system
administrator is lying too
you
Installing Moodle (On Ubuntu Linux) is easy

2. Go here
http://www.slideshare.net/simonsCatalyst

3. SSH Key
• Windows users:
– Install http://tinyurl.com/moodle-putty
• SSH Client
– Unzip http://tinyurl.com/moodle-ppk
• Contains .ppk file
• Linux / MacOSX users
– Download http://tinyurl.com/moodle-rsa
• RSA SSH key

4. Who the hell am I?
• A Linux sysadmin, can you tell by the facial hair,
surly holier-than-thou attitude
• Politics, not IT educated
• Worked for Catalyst for 3 years
• Worked for a Port Company 3 years
• Travelled
• Sold soul to despicable currency traders
• Back at Catalyst to atone for sins

5. Who the hell are you?
• Tell me about yourselves

6. Why this workshop?
• Maybe you are curious
• I see people struggling on the Moodle forums
• People think Linux is hard, it's not, it's just
different.
• Don't install on Windows
– It costs money
• Don't install on MacOSX
– Dependency hell

7. About this workshop
• I don't expect you to learn a hell of a lot, a lot of
monkey-see, monkey-do.
• I want to demonstrate that a basic Moodle
installation is not difficult
• We will use Amazon EC2 virtual machines

8. Outline
• SSH setup
• Login
• Install dependencies
• Create the dataroot
• Create our database
• Unpack moodle
• Install Moodle
• EXTRAS: APC, Cronjob

9. SSH login – Ask me for hostname
• Windows: Open Putty
– Expand SSH
• Click on Auth
– Browse for that .ppk
file you unzipped
– Scroll up to session
• Click Open, username is
'ubuntu'
• Linux / MacOS X command
prompt
– ssh ­i installing­
moodle­is­easy­private
ubuntu@<hostname>

10. Logged in – Run the following
• sudo apt­get update http://tinyurl.com/moodle-get-
– Updates the VM's list of software availible from Ubuntu
it
• sudo apt­get install postgresql apache2­mpm­
prefork libapache2­mod­php5 php5­gd php5­curl
php5­xmlrpc php5­pgsql php5­intl php5­suhosin
– Installs the requisite software for Moodle to function
• sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
– Restart the webserver to pick up it's new configuration

11. Make filesystem changes for
moodle
• sudo mkdir /var/www/moodle
– There is where the code goes
• sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu /var/www/
– Lets you unpack the code
• sudo mkdir /var/moodledata
– This is where Moodle will store files
• sudo chown www­data:www­data /var/moodledata
– Let the webserver process write to this place

12. Create the database
• sudo su – postgres
– Switch user to the postgres Unix user
• createuser ­P moodle
– Create a user in the database user called moodle
• -P means prompt for a password
– Make the password moodle
– Answer 'n' to all questions
• createdb ­Omoodle ­Ttemplate0 ­Eutf8 moodle
– Creates a database called moodle
• -O owned by the moodle database user you just created
• -T that is completely blank
• -E has the utf8 encoding
• All done? No errors? Run 'exit' (Just once)

13. Get and install the code
• cd
– Just that, puts you back in your home directory
• wget "http://tinyurl.com/moodle­get­it"
– Downloads the code
• cd /var/www
• sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu /var/www/moodle
• tar xvzf /home/ubuntu/moodle-get-it
– Unpacks the code
• sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/moodle/
– Temporary permissions change to allow the writing of the
configuration file

14. Run the moodle installer
• Back on your laptop, point your web browser at
your Amazon EC2 machine
– Something like
– http://ec2-79-125-48-199.eu-west-
1.compute.amazonaws.com/moodle

15. Set moodle install options
• Choose your language
• Defaults on 'confirm paths' are fine
• Database driver should have already selected
'postgresql'
• Database settings
– host: localhost
– name: moodle
– user: moodle
– password: moodle

16. Copyright notice?!
• Congratulations!
– Everything has gone just great
– sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu
/var/www/moodle
• Fixes insecure permissions
– Read the copyright notice
• Say 'Thanks Martin!' and click continue
• You must say thanks
– Very important
– Click on the next continue button, just once!
• Be patient!

17. The cronjob
• Moodle cron needs the Unix cron to work
• Unix cron speaks an odd language
– Minute, Hour, Day of month, Month, Day
• 0,15,30,45 * * * * means?
• In /etc/cron.d/ you also specify a username
• Normally you don't redirect to /dev/null !
• 0,15,30,45 * * * * www­data /usr/bin/php /var/www/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php
&> /dev/null

18. APC – What?
• APC keeps a cached compiled copy of the
Moodle code in memory
– Improvement in performance
• Very easy to install on Ubuntu
• In Moodle enable the performance info

19. APC - Install
• sudo apt­get install php­apc
• sudo nano /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini
conf.d/apc.ini
• Add the following
– apc.shm_size=128m
– apc.num_files_hint=15000
• ctrl­x , y, <enter>
• sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

20. Okay, your questions?