Installation tips on Moodle 2.6.1 on Dreamhost Shared Hosting:
When you setup your domain on the Dreamhost cPanel:
- Use PHP 5.4.x with CGI (not Fastcgi) (use the highest version available)
- Disable Extra Web Security
- Disable Page Speed Optimization
- Disable Cloudflare
- Basically, disable any caching or extra security on the panel. You want as vanilla an environment as you can. While it may make the install run longer, caching and extra security can introduce errors on the install. They should be enabled after the install to improve performance.
Other thoughts:
- Please, please, set a PHP_ERROR_LOG log and review it as you're doing the install. 95% of all install errors can be found by googling the error message
- Same for the access and error apache logs. Some good stuff there
- If you are really stuck, chat with the dreamhost operators. They know their stuff.
- If you have a failed install, delete your entire Moodle directory, Moodledata directory, and database. It's much easier to start-over clean, as the installation typically doesn't restart cleanly.
Further thoughts:
- If you're running more than a few users, Dreamhost Shared Hosting is probably not the right environment. For production use, a dedicated VPS (Dreamhost or otherwise) is a much better choice. Shared-hosting can be slow, and you are limited in your memory use and caching environment.
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Install Tips (Moodle 2.6.1), PHP 5.4
Here is a working phprc file, which goes in: /home/user/.php/5.4/phprc
log_errors = 1
error_log = /home/user/php_error.log
upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M
max_file_uploads = 100
max_execution_time = 7200
max_input_time = 7200
memory_limit = 256M;
extension = /home/xxxxx/.php/5.4/apc.so
extension = /usr/local/php54/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525/intl.so
display_errors = off
display_startup_errors = off
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.memory_consumption = 256
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 4000
opcache.revalidate_freq = 60
opcache.use_cwd = 1
opcache.validate_timestamps = 1
opcache.save_comments = 1
opcache.enable_file_override = 0
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Install the latest APC caching program from the PHP website. In my case, it was APC-3.1.13.tgz. Put it in a convenient place and reference it in your phprc file (above)
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In your web directory, install moodle via git. I used a script, but these commands work well:
git clone git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git
cd moodle
git branch -a
git branch --track MOODLE_26_STABLE remotes/origin/MOODLE_26_STABLE
git checkout MOODLE_26_STABLE
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In your /home/user/website/moodle directory, update the config-dist.php file
Set the Data Files Permissions line to:
$CFG->directorypermissions = 00750;
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I ran into an error that said:
timeout error: (70007)The timeout specified has expired: Reading bucket failed (rcode=70007)
I chatted with support, and they said it was a connection issue with apache. They fixed something, bounced apache, and things were fine.
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Follow the rest of the install as per the documentation. I didn't run into any other issues.