tyrose1214/os_moodle

Do not use this repository – it's outdated. Use the link below to get to the newer version.

#Final Notice Don't use this repo use the newer one over at https://github.com/burningTyger/openshift_moodle which defaults to the latest stable Moodle version and is a lot easier to keep up to date.

##Notice This Moodle repo served well for Moodle 2.1 which has now reached its end of life. I had a hard time upgrading my own Moodle install on Openshift because Moodle is such a pita when it comes to updates. As it is right now I'd have to tag the last release of this repo's 2.1 and then let you upgrade commit by commit until you have reached 2.3. I don't feel that this is a good way for either me or you. There will most certainly be errors. I find it hard to test and you'll be very unhappy with me. I recommend using a fresh install with a Moodle submodule and individual config files. That should work. If you have a working solution I'll be more than happy to link to your repo. So, no more updates. Thank you for using my Moodle repo.

##OLD README

A personal introduction for Moodle on Red Had Openshift Express

###Quick install In order to get started you will need a system that has git and Ruby and a gem called rhc:

gem install rhc

Register with Openshift over at https://openshift.redhat.com/ and create a new express php application (follow their guides).

Once you have created an application you can clone this repository:

git clone [email protected]:burningTyger/os_moodle.git

Enter its directory

cd os_moodle

And set up some important stuff:

rhc-ctl-app -a moodle -e add-mysql-5.1 -l yourlogin
git remote add openshift your_openshift_git_url

yourlogin is obviously the login email address that you used to sign up for Openshift and your_openshift_git_url is the url that Openshift gave your new app. You can find the url in your express dashboard. In this example I called the app moodle. If you want to use a different name make sure that you range the name of the -a option as well.

Since everything is ready to go you can now push Moodle to Openshift with a simple:

git push -f openshift master

Now you can visit Moodle at your app url and finish up the remote install process.

Because the Moodle team usually updates Moodle weekly be sure to update your app on a regular basis. To do so you can pull from this repository:

git pull origin master

and update your Openshift app:

git push openshift master

Because Moodle depends on cron jobs to finish up certain tasks it is recommended to add a cron job to your Openshift repository:

rhc-ctl-app -a moodle -e add-cron-1.4 -l yourlogin

This will add the cron cartridge on the server side. In your repo you will have to add the following things:

mkdir -p .openshift/cron/hourly
echo 'wget -q -O /dev/null https://moodle-xxx.rhcloud.com/admin/cron.php' > .openshift/cron/hourly/cron.sh

Replace xxxin the address with your Openshift domain and then commit and push the changes to the server:

git commit -am 'add cron jobs'
git push

Have fun

###Roll your own To get started we clone Moodle into a directory and set up a remote tracking branch for stable releases (which is at 2.1 right now).

I also use a working directory called ~/openshift where I store my Openshift apps for easy maintenance:

cd ~/openshift
mkdir moodlestage
cd moodlestage
git clone git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git
cd moodle
git checkout --track origin/MOODLE_21_STABLE

Back in ~/openshift I create a new app called moodle with my rhc client:

rhc-create-app -a moodle -t php-5.3 -l yourlogin

The reason we stored Moodle in moodlestage was to let the rhc client create a moodle directory for our app.

If everything was set up properly rhc will tell you the new address of your app and its remote git repository.

Now we need to set up MySQL so we can use it with Moodle:

rhc-ctl-app -a moodle -e add-mysql-5.1 -l yourlogin

If successful it will return some information that you should save somewhere: username, password, db name and connection URL.

Now it's time to put Moodle into its proper directory which we need to clean up first:

rm –rf  ~/openshift/moodle/php/*

then we copy:

cp –av ~/openshift/moodlestage/moodle/* ~/openshift/moodle/php

The next step will set up Moodle's config file so it can connect to the databse and do other great things. The following lines are somewhat compressed as for brevity I left out all the comments. Normally you would edit the config-dist.php file and then rename it to config.php. If you are lazy create that file and copy these lines into it (but make sure you use your domain name for wwwroot):

<?PHP
unset($CFG);
global $CFG;
$CFG = new stdClass();

$CFG->dbtype    = 'mysqli';
$CFG->dblibrary = 'native';
$CFG->dbhost    = $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_DB_HOST'];
$CFG->dbname    = $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME'];
$CFG->dbuser    = $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_DB_USERNAME'];
$CFG->dbpass    = $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_DB_PASSWORD'];
$CFG->prefix    = 'mdl_';
$CFG->dboptions = array(
    'dbpersist' => false,
    'dbsocket'  => false,
    'dbport'    => $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_DB_PORT'],
);
$CFG->wwwroot   = "https://$_ENV[OPENSHIFT_APP_DNS]";
$CFG->sslproxy  =true;	
$CFG->dataroot  = $_ENV['OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR'];
$CFG->directorypermissions = 02777;
$CFG->admin     = 'admin';
require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/lib/setup.php');

Note that we used an https URL for secure connections. We therefore had to add $CFG->sslproxy = true; to the config file.

However, this is under the assumption that you want to use SSL connections to your Moodle instance and that you want to use the default URL.

Since you can also have a custom domain alias this might not be the best option. If you want to use your own domain and SSL make sure you have a valid certificate otherwise most browsers will complain about invalid certificates and not let the user see your site. If you don't have a valid certificate but still want to use a custom domain and you don't want to bother users with browser messages change the config to $CFG->sslproxy = false.

Once this is finished we need to add all the new files and commit it to the new repository:

cd ~/openshift/moodle
git add .
git commit –am "Initial commit for Moodle"

Now we can push to Openshift and be ready for installing Moodle:

git push -f

You should now be able to visit your new app and start the install script.

If you want to keep your site up to date you will have to update the /moodle/php dir frequently. There are weekly Moodle updates which I recommend you pull in:

cd ~/openshift/moodle/php
git pull

This will update Moodle but you still need to update your app as well:

cd ..
git add .
git commit -m 'weekly update'

And then push everything to Openshift:

git push

Because Moodle depends on cron jobs to finish up certain tasks it is recommended to add a cron job to your Openshift repository:

rhc-ctl-app -a moodle -e add-cron-1.4 -l yourlogin

This will add the cron cartridge on the server side. In your repo you will have to add the following things:

mkdir -p .openshift/cron/hourly
echo 'wget -q -O /dev/null https://moodle-xxx.rhcloud.com/admin/cron.php' > .openshift/cron/hourly/cron.sh

Replace xxxin the address with your Openshift domain and then commit and push the changes to the server:

git commit -am 'add cron jobs'
git push

Have fun.