The time has come for the second annual iMoot!

Here are a few items that may help you prepare:

• Simple schedule in PDF format
  • Important Note: The times on the PDF are dynamically set by the timezone in your iMoot profile. Please make sure you set your timezone first to make sure you get the correct times listed on your schedule

• With iMoot due to start in less than 24 hours we have deployed the “Session Navigation” block to help you know what’s on, who is presenting it and to provide you the link to get there. It essentially is an interactive, live updating and dynamic online session schedule that works as every attendees “All Access Pass“. – read more
• You will find this new interactive schedule through both the “iMoot Programme” link on the iMoot homepage as well as via the “Session Navigation” block on the top right of nearly every iMoot page. – read more
• Have any questions, need help? USE THE FORUMS!

I must say the biggest difference so far from last year is the awesome navigation between sessions and the schedule. It’s SO much easier to navigate and to quickly search the sessions and easily go to that session’s course. Way to go iMoot team!

If you haven’t registered for the iMoot yet, REGISTER HERE! Remember to use the Twitter hashtag #iMoot2011 when tweeting about your iMoot experience.

Coming Soon: A Google Doc for collaborative note taking and sharing throughout the iMoot. Will post when it’s created.

..continuing on with my 1.9 to 2.0 journey

As I mentioned in my previous post I was stuck on the “migrating courses” page when I tried upgrading from Moodle 1.9.11 to 2.0.2. The two errors coming up were “Incorrect pool file content” and a number of stack trace errors:

I did some Googling and found 2 tracker items regarding these issues but it didn’t seem like it was during the upgrading process. I did find one discussion thread from a few months back about this issue that helped me troubleshoot.

First, I turned on as much debugging, error reporting or messages I could in the config.php file (not sure if there are other debugging settings to turn on?):

The debugging information didn’t help too much and I couldn’t find any error logs regarding this issue, so I continued to Google and research online. I checked out the /lib/filestorage/filestorage.php file because that was the file where the apparent first two errors were happening. I’m no expert at PHP so I wasn’t quite sure how to change or echo any further information when upgrading to see if it gave me anything more to work with.

I continued to read through the discussion thread I mentioned over and over and thought maybe it was corrupt file, too big of a course or file, etc. I looked in my moodledata folder [see path below] and found a file named with a random string of characters – which was the same string that was displayed in the “incorrect pool file content” error.

There were two other files with a long string of characters that were the same as two long strings of characters which were being displayed in the debugging information (these strings were successful operations). The two files weren’t big, the problem hash named file however was 500 MB. Was this the problem? I didn’t dare change anything via the moodledata folder.

I figured it was a file issue in one or more courses..I went into phpMyAdmin and started deleting courses, hoping a corrupt file would be removed and fix the issue. I had 3 imported courses from our production server that I restored on the 1.9 testing server to test “real life” courses in the upgrade process.

I deleted two of the four courses, same error.  Went back and deleted another course. Tried again, boom – worked. Since I had all of the debugging and information set to display it displayed all of the database stuff. Clicked Continue. It displayed tons of new settings, clicked Continue – MOODLE 2.0!

Success! Sort of..well..half way…I was able to upgrade from a 1.9.11 to 2.0.2 but I had to delete a few courses first. I believe I had to delete the courses that I imported from our production server (v 1.9.9). Only one course made it through, which I initially created on that install.

So it looks like the course migration is the issue – something with the files (doesn’t surprise me). I’m going to roll back to 1.9 and import different courses, create a few more courses and try again. I’ll post my results after I try it out again.

Related Posts

• Video – Converting Moodle Database from MyISAM to INNODB @mguhlin
• Second attempt at upgrading 1.9 to 2.0
• Starting the Journey to transition to Moodle 2.0 #moodle2

In my post yesterday I talked about converting my Moodle database from MyISAM to INNODB before upgrading to Moodle 2.0. I used Miguel Guhlin’s directions, double checked with him via twitter and it was pretty easy. He’s made it even easier by doing the process in a few videos.

Check out his blog post for the videos : )

Another update – Part 2 of my “Second attempt at upgrading from 1.9 to 2.0” is coming soon. I actually had some success and was able to upgrade (with some tweaks).I’ve got the post written up about my experience. I just have to finalize and add some images. It will most likely be up tomorrow.

Today was my second attempt at upgrading Moodle 1.9 to Moodle 2.0. The first time I ran into a few problems and tried to solve them but then scrapped the install and left it for a few months. This time I upgraded from an install of Moodle 1.9.11 with the Book module installed and a few “real life” courses I imported, to see how they upgraded.

One major thing I did this time that I didn’t do last time was migrate my database from MyISAM to INNODB. I followed the directions from Miguel Guhlin (complete with screenshots). So, I really don’t know what this does but it sounds like this is necessary? However, I haven’t seen it documented in Moodle Docs (please provide a link if it’s there!).

I do know that in a fresh 2.0 install it does create the database with the “INNODB” type (you can view it in phpmyadmin, it will be in a column when viewing the database). Needless to say, I want to become more comfortable with what this is doing before I do anything on a production server. The good news is that following Miguel’s directions was easy.

Alright, here is the short run down of what I did:

1.) Exported my database via phpMyAdmin (saved on my desktop)

2.) Migrated my database from MyISAM to INNODB – DIRECTIONS

3.) Made a copy of my moodledata folder (used Fire FTP Firefox add-on for steps 2-7)

4.) Copied the config.php file from my current 1.9 install

5.) Renamed my web files Moodle folder to moodle1910.backup

6.) Uploaded a fresh copy of Moodle 2.0 (named the same as the old Moodle folder in step 5)

7.) Copied the config.php file into the new Moodle folder uploaded in step 6

8.) Visited my Moodle install, Clicked on Notifications

Result after clicking on Notifications

1.) Yippee, I’m doing it! -> screenshot 1

2.) Server checks, CHECK! Yay! -> screenshot 2

3.) Plugin Checks, eh..okay..a few non-standard ones but allows me to continue -> screenshot 3 | screenshot 4

4.) Then I ran into a problem [screenshot of where I'm stuck]. A progress bar (at 0%) is displayed for 3-7 seconds and then a red-highlighted box saying “Incorrect pool file content 17f65e7276dd4895c5fc8970e2aa834622a3696b.” is displayed. I’m also given the following error:

And that’s where I stand now. A weird thing happened as I was writing this  blog post – my computer froze up on me and I restarted. When I came back and restored my tabs in Firefox, the screen I was stuck on that had a progress bar at 0% now has a progress bar at 33.3%. Weird?

I haven’t fully looked into what is causing the “incorrect pool file content” or the other errors but here are a few links I quickly found:

• http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-27137
• http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=163074

I plan to further investigate about the above problem, it seems like there have been some discussion about the errors so I’m confident I’ll figure it out soon.

Minor issue/curious

The other thing I am wondering about is why there are standard (I thought) modules that say they are missing. I know Book is non-standard and I think hotpot, journal, lams and loan calculator are no longer in the core install but what about admin and admin_tree? Is this causing problems?

Like I said, this is my second attempt at upgrading and I haven’t spent too much time preparing or investigating the upgrade progress so I’m not too frustrated yet. I’ve been in the mode of waiting until more and more bugs get fixed and I keep checking the Moodle Tracker.

Originally our district was going to upgrade in the summer after 2.1 is released but we may push that back so we can implement a solid pilot group and create quality training resources.

I was upgrading on a CentOS VPS using cPanel, Fire FTP and phpMyAdmin. I’ll update this post with any updates on the error I received. Any insight into these errors would be greatly appreciated.

Quick notice that the 2011 iMoot sessions have been chosen and announced – here’s the list. If I had been paying attention to @iMootOnline I may have known it was coming : )

There was also a discussion posted giving updates on keynotes, speakers and what’s changing from the 2010 iMoot.

Speakers now locked in

Last week we finally approved our Speaker list and this is now public for all to see. If you did not make the final cut this year, please do not be disheartened. I would urge you to submit a paper again for next year as we would certainly love to hear from all those who want to share their Moodle stories…read more

I’ve posted about iMoots before and as you know I highly recommend attending. One of the perks is that if you want, you are able to watch every single sessions because they are recorded. Something you can’t do at a face-to-face conference. If you haven’t already, register for the 2011 iMoot – it’s less than 1 month away!

Again, check out the  recently announced 2011 iMoot speakers!