Install Moodle (Learning Management Platform) in Debian 9

<Directory /var/www/html>
Options +FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>

Finally, restart Apache daemon to apply all rules configured so far and visit your domain via HTTP protocol. Because you’re using the automatically Self-Signed certificate pairs issued by Apache at installation time, the certificate is untrusted by the browser, an error warning should be displayed in the browser.

systemctl restart apache2

https://yourdomain.tld

Accept the warning in order to accept the untrusted certificate and continue to be redirected to Apache default web page.

In case the UFW firewall application blocks incoming network connections to HTTPS port, you should add a new rule to allow HTTPS traffic to pass through the firewall by issuing the following command.

ufw allow ‘WWW Full’

or

ufw allow 443/tcp

If iptables is the default firewall application installed to protect your Debian system at the network level, add the following rule to allow port 443 inbound traffic in the firewall so that visitors can browse your domain name.

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –destination-port 443 -j ACCEPT

netfilter-persistent save

systemctl restart netfilter-persistent

systemctl status netfilter-persistent

Finally, to display all server PHP variables, create a PHP info file by executing the following command and check if the PHP time zone has been correctly configured by visiting the PHP info script file from a browser at the following URL, as illustrated in the below image. Scroll down to the date setting to check PHP time zone configuration.

echo ‘<?php phpinfo(); ?>’| tee /var/www/html/info.php

https://domain.tld/info.php

Next, before creating the database required by Moodle to store information, first we need to make some changes to MariaDB server and set up the proper character set. Open MariaDB client configuration file and add the following line after [client] directive, as illustrated in the below sample:

nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-client.cnf

[client]
# Default is Latin1, if you need UTF-8 set this (also in server section)
default-character-set = utf8mb4

Next, open mysql.cnf file and add the same line as above after [mysql] statement:

nano /etc/mysql/conf.d/mysql.cnf

mysql.cnf file excerpt:

default-character-set = utf8mb4

Open for editing MariaDB server configuration file and add the below lines after [mysqld] statement to ensure that MySQL engine innodb uses Barracuda file format and utf8mb4 character set.

nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

50-server.cnf file excerpt:

[mysqld]
innodb_file_format = Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_large_prefix
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

In order to apply all changes made so far to the database, restart the MySQL daemon and verify if the service is running by issuing the following commands.

systemctl restart mysql

systemctl status mysql

Finally, log in to the MariaDB database console and create a database for application with a user and a password that will be used to manage the application database, by issuing the following commands. Make sure you replace the database name, user and password accordingly.

mysql –u root -p

Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 2
Server version: 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 Debian 9.1
Copyright (c) 2000, 2017, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE moodle_db;

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on moodle_db.* to ‘moodle_user’@’localhost’ identified by ‘password1234’;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> exit

Bye

Install Moodle

After all system requirements are met to install the Moodle CMS application, visit Moodle official download page at https://download.moodle.org/releases/latest/ and grab the latest zip compressed archive in your system by issuing the below command.

wget https://download.moodle.org/download.php/direct/stable34/moodle-latest-34.zip

After the zip archive download finishes, extract Moodle zip archive file to your current working directory and list the extracted files by issuing the below commands. Also, remove the default index.html file installed by Apache web server to webroot path and also delete the info.php file created earlier.

unzip moodle-latest-34.zip

ls

rm /var/www/html/index.html

rm /var/www/html/info.php

Then, copy all the content of Moodle extracted directory to your web server document root path by issuing the following command. Also, make sure you copy the following hidden dot files to webroot path.

cp -rf moodle/* /var/www/html/

cp -rf moodle/.eslint* /var/www/html/

cp -rf moodle/.gherkin-lintrc /var/www/html/

cp -rf moodle/.jshintrc /var/www/html/

cp -rf moodle/.s* /var/www/html/

cp -rf moodle/.travis.yml /var/www/html/

Next, create the data directory for Moodle one level up to your server document root and execute the below commands in order to grant Apache runtime user with full write permissions to the web root path and moodle data directory. Use ls command to list permissions for application’s installed files, located in /var/www/html/ directory.

mkdir /var/www/moodledata

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/moodledata/

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

ls -al /var/www/html/

Now let’s start installing Moodle CMS via the web interface installer. Open a browser and navigate to your server IP address or domain name via HTTPS protocol. On the first installation screen, choose the installation language and press on Next button to continue.

On the next screen, the installer will ask you to confirm the web server address, the moodle directory path and moodle data directory path. Leave the first two paths variables as default and add /var/www/moodledata for Moodle Data directory path, as illustrated in the below image. Hit on Next button to continue.

On the next screen, select MariaDB (native/madiadb) as database driver and hit on Next button to continue the installation process.

Next, add you Database settings, such as database host, name, user, and password. Use the database name and credentials configured earlier for the Moodle database.

Database host should be set to localhost. Add your own database table prefix, use 3306 as database port and hit on Next button to complete this step and continue the installation process.

On the next screen, read Moodle license terms and conditions and hit on Continue button to confirm the license terms.

Next, the Moodle installation script will perform a series of server checks in order to determine if all requirements are meet for continuing the installation process. Check if all database and PHP extensions are set to OK, scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit on Continue button to move forward with the installation process.

Next, wait while the installer finishes installing a series of modules and hit on Continue button again to move to the next step.

In the next step, add a Moodle administrator account, choose a strong password for this account and fill all account information, such as First name, Surname, email, City, Country, Timezone, and description. When you finish hit on Update profile button to save admin account information.

Next, set up the full site name, add a short site name and a front page summary, scroll down and hit in Save changes button to complete the installation process.

After completing the installation process, you will be redirected to the Moodle administration dashboard. Here you can use the registration form to register the application with Moodle.net portal.

In order to access Moodle frontend page, open a browser and navigate to your server IP address or domain name via HTTPS protocol.

Finally, return to Debian server console and create a .htaccess file that will be located in your website document root path, by issuing the below command.

nano /var/www/html/.htaccess

In .htaccess file, add the below lines so that you can manipulate the native PHP server settings to match your own server resources and configurations.

.htaccess file excerpt:

# Modify PHP settings

php_value register_globals 1
php_value upload_max_filesize 100M
php_value post_max_size 100M
Options -Indexes

Install cron

In order to periodically run the Moodle maintenance script that sends out emails, cleans up the database, updates feeds or other tasks, add the below cron job to run every 10 minutes, by issuing the below command.

crontab -u www-data -e

Add the following line and save the cronjob.

*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/php7.0 /var/www/html/admin/cli/cron.php >/dev/null

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Moodle CMS in Debian 9 server. Moodle documentation page can be found at the following address: https://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Main_page