Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

This updated fourth edition of the classic Moodle Administration guide has been written from the ground up and covers all the new Moodle features in great breadth and depth. The topics have also been augmented with professional diagrams, illustrations, and checklists. The book starts by covering basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and perform day-to-day administration activities. You’ll then progress to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage authentication and enrolments, and work with roles and capabilities. Next, you'll learn how to configure pedagogical and technical Moodle plugins and ensure your LMS complies with data protection regulations. Then, you will learn how to tighten Moodle’s security, improve its performance, and configure backup and restore procedures. Finally, you'll gain insights on how to compile custom reports, configure learning analytics, enable mobile learning, integrate Moodle via web services, and support different types of multi-tenancy. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

Installation via the command-line interface

Moodle provides a CLI that lets you perform several administrative tasks from the Unix shell prompt. There is no CLI for Windows-based systems. CLI-based installations are useful if you need to automate setups, for example, in an environment where you host multiple Moodle instances.

The CLI is not for the faint-hearted, so be careful when using it. You must execute the installation script as the web server user, usually www-data or apache. You can run the installation script, install.php, in interactive mode (you will have to enter any parameters by hand) or in non-interactive mode, where the script will run silently.

From your dirroot, you can initiate the interactive script as follows:

sudo –u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/install.php

Something more interesting is the CLI’s non-interactive mode, as this can be used for scripting and automation purposes. A list of all the available parameters can be displayed...