Moodle Issues

Moodle directions : 2010

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:28:39 GMT

Talk with Denise & Aaron about:

installing Assignment ZIP into current production (quick process)
Automated course backups — where to store.
File storage space on Moodle production server. Any issues here — do we need to expand local storage?
Transitioning to 1.9.6 — security issues with 1.9.5

Use CLAMP LAE version? They are going to update v 1.9.5 to 1.9.6
Apply EC addins — Attendance, Sharing Cart, (Quickmail), MyMoodle, YUIMenu, Course Menu

Fileresponse quiz question type for Annie Bandy

Another security alert

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:27:23 GMT

I got this email from Martin D on 19th-Nov-09:

Hi Moodle admins,

You're getting this email because you chose to receive important news by email when you registered your Moodle site with moodle.org.

I'm writing to tell you about an exploit that was recently published on the internet (intentionally bypassing our official security policy of responsible disclosure published at http://moodle.org/security and so increasing the vulnerability of many Moodle sites). The exploit demonstrates how a Moodle teacher could potentially gain administrator access to their own site.

In Moodle 1.9.6 and earlier, backups saved with the option of "user data" would contain accounts of all the users enrolled in that course, to promote data consistency if the backup was restored on another
Moodle system.

This included the md5 one-way hash calculated from the user's password (eg 4d909c290d0fb1ca068ffaddf22cbd0). These can't be directly decrypted to reveal the password, so they used to be seen as reasonably safe to distribute. However, with the advent in recent times of large databases of md5 reverse lookups on the internet, many simpler passwords can now be determined quite quickly by searching for their md5 hash (reverse mapping).

The demonstrated exploit basically involved a trusted teacher account enrolling an administrator into their own course, then making a backup of the course including user data, extracting the md5 hash of the password from the backup file and then reverse mapping the hash to discover the password.

Note that the exploit requires that (a) the user is a trusted teacher on the site, and (b) that the admin is using a fairly weak password.

Moodle development policy has always generally been "we trust teachers". However, we know that YOU may not trust them all and will want to lock down your sites as much as possible.

NEW RELEASES ARE COMING SOON

The core dev team is working hard on Moodle 1.9.7 and Moodle 1.8.11 right now. Among other things, there are fixes to 11 known issues that are related to backups and user data. We will let you know when
these releases are ready, via this mailing list. It should be within a week.

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Your site may be vulnerable if you have any users with full backup rights on your site that might have a reason to try and crack your admin account, if they saw the published exploit. Here are some things you can do to improve security on your site right now:

Disable backup functionality for teacher roles. You can re-enable backups later with the new Moodle releases, because the permissions for saving user data will be separate from the permission to create backups.

HOW: Admin > Users > Permissions > Define roles: Edit the teacher roles and change the capability for moodle/site:backup to "PROHIBIT".

Turn on site-wide password salting (in all versions of Moodle since 1.6), this adds information to the md5 strings to make them practically impossible to reverse (next time they log in or change their password). Note that this will affect your ability to restore backups containing user data on foreign Moodle sites - the admin of the destination site needs to include your salt in their config.php for user creation to work.

HOW: Add a line like this to your config.php (for the best security, there is intentionally no way to set this in the Moodle interface) $CFG->passwordsaltmain = 'some long random string here with lots of characters';

Turn on Password Policy for your site, this forces people to use stronger passwords.

HOW: Admin > Security > Site policies > passwordpolicy

Change passwords for all admins. Now that you turned Password Policy on you'll be forced to choose a stronger one. It also makes any old backups useless for the purposes of the exploit.

HOW: Edit your user profile directly, for other admins you can edit their profile and check this box: "Force password change". They'll be forced to change it when they next log in.

Good luck, thanks for using Moodle and I'll talk to you again soon.

Cheers,
Martin (Moodle Lead Developer)

—
You are receiving this email because you registered a Moodle site with Moodle.org and chose to be added to this low-volume list of security notifications and other important Moodle-related announcements for Moodle administrators.

To unsubscribe you can re-register your site (as above) and make sure you turn the email option OFF in the registration form. You can also send a blank email to sympa@lists.moodle.org with "unsubscribe securityalerts" as the subject (from the email address that is subscribed).

See http://lists.moodle.org/info/securityalerts for more.

Fileresponse quiz question type

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:15:00 GMT

I need this for an Annie Bandy French quiz so that students can upload their audio files in response to a quiz question.
Problems is that according to the README the default location of uploaded files is

$CFG->dirroot/questionattempt/attempt#/question#

and since the dirrot is in the web area this is clearly not acceptable.

Need to change this. But where?

[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-plugins/fileresponse]$ grep dirroot *.php
locallib.php:    require_once($CFG->dirroot.'/lib/uploadlib.php');
questiontype.php: * $CFG->dirroot/questionattempt/attempt#/question#
questiontype.php:        include("$CFG->dirroot/question/type/fileresponse/display.html");

So, change dirroot to dataroot. This should be set to owner www and permissions 775 so directories and subdirectories should be created OK.
Copy into place with:

~/public_html/moo-195/question/type]$ cp -R ~/moo-plugins/fileresponse .

Open the moodle/admin page in the browser to create the database tables (the readme file does not say to do this)
Problems

When I used the File Response in a Quiz I got the following errors:

Warning: include(/usr/home/moodle/data/moodledata192+/question/type/fileresponse/display.html)
[function.include]: failed to open stream: 
No such file or directory in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/question/type/fileresponse/questiontype.php on line 242

Warning: include() [function.include]: 
Failed opening '/usr/home/moodle/data/moodledata192+/question/type/fileresponse/display.html' for inclusion (include_path='/usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/lib/pear:.:/usr/local/share/pear')
 in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/question/type/fileresponse/questiontype.php on line 242

From this I can see that on line 242 I should have dirroot}} rather than {{{dataroot
So:

 242         include("$CFG->dirroot/question/type/fileresponse/display.html");

This I fixed and copied the modified file into place

18 November 2009 more moo-195 problems

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:48:00 GMT

Following from moo-195 problems I get this error opening any course:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/blocks/yui_menu/plugin/mods.php on line 31

Having updated the database for Fileresponse quiz question type I get the following error message:

Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/blocks/yui_menu/block_yui_menu.php on line 63

Although this is just a Warning, it's till spooky.

Quiz Question type

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:09:00 GMT

At Modules and Plugins : Drag-and-drop matching question type

Question Type: Drag-and-drop matching question type
Type: Question Type
Requires: Moodle 1.9 or later
Status:
Maintainer(s): Adriane Boyd

A drag-and-drop version of the core match question type with a non-javascript fallback identical to the match question type.

Download

Hack to fix:

Correction: this Drag-and-Drop Matching question type *does* show correct/incorrect answers in certain browsers,In Safari and IE. In Firefox for Mac 3.0.8 it does not, thus my previous report of a problem. , it works. To correct this bug, our programmer changed the following code:

there was:
[363] if ($options->readonly and $options->correct_responses) {

But i needs to be like this:
if ($options->readonly) { / and $options->correct_responses

Security Alerts

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Got this message from Moodle Central yesterday:

I'm writing to give you some advance notice of two minor new releases - Moodle 1.9.6 and Moodle 1.8.10 - which will be announced publically at the end of this week. Since there are some security fixes we recommend that you upgrade your Moodle site as soon as you can to keep your sites safe.

Release notes

Security fixes

moo-195 problems

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Issues with the Moodle 1.9.5 codebase

On rublev.lly.earlham.edu/~markp/moo-195
I have Server : Debugging : ALL:Show all reasonable PHP debug messages

Just installed LAE Assignment Zip into http://rublev.lly.earlham.edu/~markp/moo-195 and got this error:

Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/blocks/yui_menu/block_yui_menu.php on line 63

Logged in as administrator
Also, uploading to Front page/Site files/backupdata:

Warning: chmod() [function.chmod]: Operation not permitted in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/lib/uploadlib.php on line 234

Did :

markp/public_html]$ ls -lh
drwxr-xr-x  36 markp  www   1.0K Oct 20 19:44 moo-195
markp/public_html]$ chmod -R 775 moo-195/

This shows that the apache process group:www has read:execute access. I did the chmod recursively which changed the permissions to read:write:execute. But Apache shouldn't be writing to this dir anyway.
Same error when doing course restore:

Creating temporary structures
Deleting old data
Copying zip file
Warning: chmod() [function.chmod]: Operation not permitted in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/backup/lib.php on line 289

Not sure why chmod is being used never mind why it doesn't work. It does not seem to affect the operation though.
This is an error to check for in the LAE version which I may use next.
I checked the data dir at /usr/home/moodle/data/moodledata192+ :

[markp@rublev /usr/home/moodle/data]$ ls -lh
drwxrwxr-x  342 www  admins   4.5K Oct 22 14:39 moodledata192+

So this has write access for www and admins groups. Ditto for the moodle/data dir itself.
Course Restore gives the same error in the same place:

Copying user files
Warning: chmod() [function.chmod]: Operation not permitted in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-195/backup/lib.php on line 289 (6 times)
3 user zones — 6 errors
Copying course files
18 files/folders — 18 errors
Assignments and resources had similar errors.

BUT Restore completed successfully.

LAE Assignment Zip

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:18:00 GMT

Download from LAE on Clamp-IT
No installation destructions. I got the tar and will copy that over.

Installation

Download and unpack the Assignment zip tar file somewhere safe (I'm assuming ssh access to the server). $ tar -xvf AssignmentZip.tar
Copy into relevant places (after renaming the original mod/assignment/lib.php to be on the safe side:

AssignmentZip]$ ls
LAE     lib     mod
AssignmentZip]$ cp -R LAE ~/public_html/moo-195
AssignmentZip]$ cp -r lib/* ~/public_html/moo-195/lib
AssignmentZip]$ mv ~/public_html/moo-195/mod/assignment/lib.php ~/public_html/moo-195/mod/assignment/lib.php.org
AssignmentZip]$ cp -r mod/* ~/public_html/moo-195/mod

Moodle versions

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:36:00 GMT

I have no fewer than four instances of Moodle running. Let's figure out what's what.

moo-195

Started on 8-July Way forward. Uses same database as moo-clamp.
Has the current production code running
with new MyMoodle
production data dir from 0809
But last year's theme

moo-clamp

Superseded by moo-195 on July-8.
can probably delete this one
deleted 20-Oct-09

moo-t95

Testing for MyMoodle. Can remove this one too.
test for parchment theme
assignment zip patch screw up (version was for 2.0)

moo-late

$release = '1.9.5+ (Build: 20090805)'
no config.php
I think I installed this one to get an up to date copy.
deleted 20-Oct-09

Next Steps for Moodle

implement assignment zip before the end of the semester.

test out in moo-195
try out on Moodle testing server
Roll out over Thanksgiving

download and install Moodle Liberal Arts Edition and add my goodies to it.

over Christmas break

Moodlerooms modules

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:43:00 GMT

Moodlerooms custom stuff

Assessment_Module_for_1.9	93.7KB	20 October 2008, 07:07 PM
Course_Management_Block_for_1.9	46.5KB	10 October 2008, 01:00 PM
Flex_Page_for_1.9	101.4KB	20 October 2008, 05:04 PM
Google_1.0_for_Moodle_1.9	1MB	19 February 2009, 07:39 PM
Themed_Resource_for_1.9	19.2KB	3 October 2008, 04:46 PM
Trouble_Ticket_Block_for_1.9	49.6KB	2 December 2008, 05:01 PM

Git on Martin's machine

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:40:00 GMT

I don't know how useful this might be, but here it is: index : users/martin/moodle.git

Errors in new theme

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:20:00 GMT

Got new Parchment theme. Generates error:

Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$parent in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/lib/weblib.php on line 2496

When I go to the Notifications page I get an unrelated error:

"Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/blocks/yui_menu/block_yui_menu.php on line 63"

I removed all the list code from menu.php but adding back a list item does not make a difference.
The Anomaly theme does not generate this error.

MyMoodle new version

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:19:00 GMT

On 17th Aug Minh-Tam Nguyen uploaded an update to the MyMoodle for 1.9.5 package:

I uploaded a new package of files: MDL-19430 (20090818).zip
I have made a number of changes to improve security, maintainability and performance, as suggested by Ashley Holman.
I have also made changes to the install.txt to hopefully avoid the confusion Mark went through.
This package is straight from of my installation of 1.9.5, and Penny's patch also works fine on 1.9.5, once you create the 'local' folder.

I unpacked this and found that there were three files different:

MDL-19430-0818]$ diff -qr local/ ~/public_html/moo-195/local/
Only in local/: install.txt
Files local/lib.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-195/local/lib.php differ
Files local/move.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-195/local/move.php differ
Only in local/: num.php

Suggest copying over these files and then remaking the tar/zip archive.

MDL-19430-0818/local]$ cp *.php ~/public_html/moo-195/local
moo-plugins/mymoodle/MDL-19430-0818/local]$ cp *.php ~/public_html/moo-t95/local

In moo-t95 the php debugging is switched on. Get the following errors:

Notice: Undefined variable: site in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/lib.php on line 169
Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/lib.php on line 169

When I switch back to the previous versions of local/lib.php and local/move.php the errors go away.

Posted the problem to the Tracker: problem
And got this reply
I downloaded his new version. Overwrote the local folder in moo-195. It worked with no errors. Copied over the stuff and that works too.
code

Check that code versions are in fact different:

moo-plugins/mymoodle/MDL-19430-new]$ diff -qr local/ ~/public_html/moo-t95/local/
Only in local/: install.txt
Files local/lang/de/local.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/lang/de/local.php differ
Files local/lang/en_utf8/local.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/lang/en_utf8/local.php differ
Files local/lib.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/lib.php differ
Files local/move.php and /home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/local/move.php differ
Only in local/: num.php

Copy files:

moo-plugins/mymoodle/MDL-19430-new]$ cp -R local/* ~/public_html/moo-t95/local/

That does it:

/moo-plugins/mymoodle/MDL-19430-new]$ diff -qr local/ ~/public_html/moo-t95/local/

ToDo

Pack this version into TGZ and copy to paz for Aaron.

moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ tar -cvzf ../mymoodle_gui_new.tgz *

MyMoodle for 1.9.5

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:27:00 GMT

Having sussed out the local_mymoodle_patch I went ahead with installation of MDL-19430+(20090721).zip:

INSTALLATION STEPS:

Log in to your Moodle admin and go to '/moodle/user/profile/index.php'. Create two new user profile fields of type 'Text input':

shortname: 'myorder'

max length: 2048
all other settings are up to you

shortname: 'mynumber'

max length: 3
all other settings are up to you

Copy the 'local' folder to '/moodle/local'
Append below CSS to '/moodle/theme/standard/styles_layout.css'

Results

Great success

Create tar archive

code

[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ mkdir my
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ cd my
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive/my]$ cp ~/public_html/moo-t95/my/* .
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive/my]$ ls
hook-for-a-local-my-moodle-195.patch    index.php.bak
index.php                               pagelib.php
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive/my]$ rm pagelib.php
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive/my]$ cd ..
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ cp -r ~/public_html/moo-t95/local .
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ sudo chown -R www:www local
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ sudo chown -R www:www my
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ mkdir theme
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ mkdir theme/standard
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ cp ~/public_html/moo-t95/theme/standard/styles_layout.css theme/standard/styles_layout.css
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ sudo chown -R www:www theme/
[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/moo-patch/mymoodle_archive]$ tar -cvzf ../mymoodle_gui.tgz *
a local
a local/images
a local/lang
a local/lib.php
a local/move.php
a local/lang/de
a local/lang/en_utf8
a local/lang/en_utf8/local.php
a local/lang/de/local.php
a local/images/Bottom.gif
a local/images/Down.gif
a local/images/MyMinus.jpg
a local/images/MyPlus.jpg
a local/images/Top.gif
a local/images/Up.gif
a my
a my/index.php.bak
a my/index.php
a my/hook-for-a-local-my-moodle-195.patch
a theme
a theme/standard
a theme/standard/styles_layout.css

Try out on moo-195 installation:

Copy over mymoodle_gui.tgz to moodle root
unpack with tar -xvf mymoodle_gui.tgz
don't forget to set up new Profile fields with Administration : Users : Accounts : User profile fields

works great

Check out MyMoodle new version

More on MyMoodle

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:01:00 GMT

I want to test out the user-determined order and number of courses on myMoodle (and discussion : user-determined order of courses on myMoodle) to see whether this hides courses in hidden categories.
I'm using the public_html/moo-t95 test version so that if it screws up I'm not sunk.

Revert the files that we patched here : Hide courses in MyMoodle , ie course/lib.php and lib/datalib.php
Apply 0001-hook-for-a-local-my-moodle.patch (in moo-plugins/mymoodle
Install the code installation steps
INSTALLATION STEPS:
1. Log in to your Moodle admin and go to '/moodle/user/profile/index.php'. Create two new user profile
fields of type 'Text input':
* shortname: 'myorder'
max length: 2048
all other settings are up to you
* shortname: 'mynumber'
max length: 3
all other settings are up to you

2. Copy the 'local' folder to '/moodle/local'

3. Append below CSS to '/moodle/theme/standard/styles_layout.css'

Users may need to log out for changes to take effect.

I had some funnies with the small set of courses there so I rejigged the config.php so that it used the 'moomy' database and data dir.

$CFG->wwwroot   = 'http://rublev.lly.earlham.edu/~markp/moo-t95';
$CFG->dirroot   = '/usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95';

Now I'm ready to apply the patch. But when I examine the patch file it refers to a directory that does not exist:

local/lib.php	7
my/index.php	58

The dir local does not exist in any of my installs. Should I check to see whether it exists in the latest Moodle download?

First attempt at patch public_html/moo-t95]$ patch <0001-hook-for-a-local-my-moodle.patch output

[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95]$ patch <0001-hook-for-a-local-my-moodle.patch                Hmm...  Looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|From ec94245e7ebf9ef64b41af2fe109941fb5d1fe14 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
|From: David Drummond <david@catalyst.net.nz>
|Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:18:10 +0100
|Subject: [PATCH] hook for a local my moodle
|
|---
| local/lib.php |    7 +++++-
| my/index.php  |   58 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
| 2 files changed, 43 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
|
|diff --git a/my/index.php b/my/index.php
|index 449a954..0a0f7e9 100644
|--- a/my/index.php
|+++ b/my/index.php
--------------------------
Patching file index.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 failed at 63.
1 out of 1 hunks failed--saving rejects to index.php.rej
Hmm...  Ignoring the trailing garbage.
done

Here's what I now think is going on.

Use the Penny Leach file to patch the moodle/my/index.php and then
Install the Minh-Tam Nguyen stuff.

Move file to the my directory,and then but still failed:

Hmm...  Looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|From ec94245e7ebf9ef64b41af2fe109941fb5d1fe14 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
|From: David Drummond <david@catalyst.net.nz>
|Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:18:10 +0100
|Subject: [PATCH] hook for a local my moodle
|
|---
| local/lib.php |    7 +++++-
| my/index.php  |   58 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
| 2 files changed, 43 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
|
|diff --git a/my/index.php b/my/index.php
|index 449a954..0a0f7e9 100644
|--- a/my/index.php
|+++ b/my/index.php
--------------------------
Patching file index.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 failed at 63.
1 out of 1 hunks failed--saving rejects to index.php.rej
Hmm...  Ignoring the trailing garbage.
done

So let's apply the code that's new by hand:
At line 63:

--- 63,111 ----
      print_container_start(TRUE);

  /// The main overview in the middle of the page

+     // look for a custom handler
+
+     $locallib = $CFG->dirroot . '/local/lib.php';
+
+     if (file_exists($locallib)) {
+          require_once($locallib);
      }

+     if (function_exists('local_my_moodle') ) {
+
+         local_my_moodle();
+
+     } else {
+
+         // limits the number of courses showing up

And at 111 we terminate the else clause :

+
      }

      print_container_end();

Having fixed the index.php now let's make a diff file so that we can reapply the patch:

$ diff -iwBu index.php.bak index.php >hook-for-a-local-my-moodle-195.patch

And upload this back to MDL-19430

MyMoodle for 1.9.5

Assignment ZIP patch

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:43:00 GMT

Apply the Assignment ZIP patch (from here) called download_all_assignments_HEAD.patch results

[markp@rublev /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95]$ patch <download_all_assignments_HEAD.patch
Hmm...  Looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|### Eclipse Workspace Patch 1.0
|#P CVS
|Index: mod/assignment/submissions.php
|===================================================================
|RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/submissions.php,v
|retrieving revision 1.46
|diff -u -r1.46 submissions.php
|--- mod/assignment/submissions.php     5 Jun 2008 10:31:38 -0000       1.46
|+++ mod/assignment/submissions.php     13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
--------------------------
Patching file mod/assignment/submissions.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 6.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 41.
Hmm...  The next patch looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Index: mod/assignment/lib.php
|===================================================================
|RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/lib.php,v
|retrieving revision 1.373
|diff -u -r1.373 lib.php
|--- mod/assignment/lib.php     3 Jan 2009 13:16:59 -0000       1.373
|+++ mod/assignment/lib.php     13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
--------------------------
Patching file mod/assignment/lib.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1137 (offset -3 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 3045 with fuzz 1 (offset -194 lines).
Hmm...  The next patch looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Index: mod/assignment/type/online/assignment.class.php
|===================================================================
|RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/type/online/assignment.class.php,v
|retrieving revision 1.67
|diff -u -r1.67 assignment.class.php
|--- mod/assignment/type/online/assignment.class.php    11 Oct 2008 17:33:21 -0000      1.67
|+++ mod/assignment/type/online/assignment.class.php    13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
--------------------------
Patching file mod/assignment/type/online/assignment.class.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 283 with fuzz 2 (offset 2 lines).
Hmm...  The next patch looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Index: mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php
|===================================================================
|RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php,v
|retrieving revision 1.66
|diff -u -r1.66 assignment.class.php
|--- mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php    13 Nov 2008 08:41:02 -0000      1.66
|+++ mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php    13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
--------------------------
Patching file mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1053 with fuzz 2 (offset 12 lines).
Hunk #2 failed at 1143.
1 out of 2 hunks failed--saving rejects to mod/assignment/type/upload/assignment.class.php.rej
Hmm...  The next patch looks like a unified diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
|Index: mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php
|===================================================================
|RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php,v
|retrieving revision 1.43
|diff -u -r1.43 assignment.class.php
|--- mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php      16 Aug 2008 18:13:38 -0000      1.43
|+++ mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php      13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
--------------------------
Patching file mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php using Plan A...
Hunk #1 succeeded at 180 with fuzz 1 (offset 2 lines).
done

Although there was one part that apparently failed, all is hunky dory since the rej file shows nothing important

less *.rej
***************
*** 1103,1108 ****
      }
  }

-
-
- ?>
--- 1143,1146 ----
      }
  }

+ ?>

apply patch with :: /markp/public_html/moo-t95]$ patch <download_all_assignments_HEAD.patch

Actually, there was a rather severe problem screenshot
I traced it to this code:

   3083     return $path;
   3084 }
   3085 ?>/**
   3086  * This function is used by the reset_course_userdata function in moodlelib.
   3087  * This function will remove all posts from the specified assignment
   3088  * and clean up any related data.
   3089  * @param $data the data submitted from the reset course.
   3090  * @return array status array
   3091  */

Somehow a php terminator got inserted before the end of the file mod/assignment/lib.php. I can edit this out, but the question is, how can I edit the patch file to remove this?
Taking another look at the patch file we find that the first section gets applied properly code

RCS file: /cvsroot/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/lib.php,v
retrieving revision 1.373
diff -u -r1.373 lib.php
--- mod/assignment/lib.php      3 Jan 2009 13:16:59 -0000       1.373
+++ mod/assignment/lib.php      13 Jan 2009 03:26:00 -0000
@@ -1140,7 +1140,9 @@
             print_heading(get_string('nosubmitusers','assignment'));
             return true;
         }
-
+        if ($this->assignment->assignmenttype=='upload' || $this->assignment->assignmenttype=='onlin
e' || $this->assignment->assignmenttype=='uploadsingle') {
+            echo '<div style="text-align:right"><a href="submissions.php?id='.$this->cm->id.'&amp;do
wnload=zip">'.get_string('downloadall', 'assignment').'</div>';
+        }
     /// Construct the SQL

         if ($where = $table->get_sql_where()) {

But this part significantly does not:

@@ -3237,4 +3239,44 @@
         default: return null;
     }
 }
-?>
+
+/**
+ * generate zip file from array of given files
+ * @param array $filesforzipping - array of files to pass into archive_to_pathname

The patch fails to find default: return null; which is presumably right at the end of the file, perhaps because it's no longer there. What should happen is that the ?> gets replaced by two extra functions and finished off with ?>

edit the assignment/lib.php and remove the erroneous ?>
redo the diff with markp/public_html/moo-t95]$ diff -iwBu mod/assignment/lib.php.orig mod/assignment/lib.php >assignment_zip-lib.patch

Assignment ZIP patch #2

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:41:00 GMT

All the code looks OK, but when click on [[downloadall]] we get a blank page.
So switch on debuggering (Home page : Administration: Server : Debug -> All : display). Get following message:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_file_storage() in /usr/home/markp/public_html/moo-t95/mod/assignment/type/uploadsingle/assignment.class.php on line 198

Posted to the Tracker:
Patch only applies to 2.0.
So basically I've wasted a day and a half on this. Bugger!

10 August 2009 changes to System role assignments

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:04:00 GMT

System Roles

Librarian Moodle Support: Reference Amy, Neal Reference.; unset Initial Subscriptions so that they do not get email.; check 'hidden assignment' box so that no-one sees them; system wide role
Course Assistant: have removed Cheri Gaddis from system-wide role; allocate to individual Categories

Allow uploading to Commiunity Docs

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:15:00 GMT

From Anne Hathaway:

The question I have is about limiting the folders people can upload to. I went to Electronic Records Management Committee, Update this Resource, and then to locally assigned roles. There I assigned our participants to be teachers for the Electronic Records Management Committee, not for the whole course, just that committee. However, they were not able to upload files to the committee. I made them teachers for the whole course, and then of course they could upload.

My question is what was I doing wrong and can people be limited only to uploading to the committees they are assigned to? If either of you has a few minutes to show me this tomorrow that would be great. I'm hoping to leave a little early tomorrow so in the morning or around 2 would be best.

Follow these instructions :

Enabling teachers to override permissions

By default, only administrators are able to override permissions. Teachers can be enabled to do so as follows:

Access Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.
Edit the teacher role and change the capability moodle/role:override (or moodle/role:safeoverride in Moodle 1.9.3 onwards) to allow.
Click the button "Save changes". done
Click the tab "Allow role overrides" (in Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles).

5. Check the appropriate box(s) in the teacher row to set which role(s) teachers can override. Most likely it will just be the student role (you don't want teachers to be able to override admins), so check the box where the teacher row intersects with the student column. applied to students only
6. Click the button "Save changes".
If preferred, a new role for overriding permissions may be created and selected teachers assigned to it.

Course restore issues

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:19:00 GMT

Uploaded Lyn Miller's REL342 Historical Christianity from 0708 Moodle. Tried to do a Restore into the exisitng course. Old course weekly outline, fresh course topics outline. Result : most of the resources got stuck into Topic 0.
It looks like you need to match the Outlines exactly (# weeks / topics) if you want to restore / import into a current course. Hmmm.

Workaround

Restore into new course. But this does not help with user importing.

Update

I tried restoring a Scott Hess course (American Lit — weekly 16 weeks) adding it to the existing course. I changed the current course to match and then the process was successful and no screw ups.