Introduction
Moodle is a learning platform designed to provide a single, integrated system for educational institutes.
It powers tens of thousands of environments all over the world, especially in Europe and North America, for a total of 235 countries and countless education centres including the London School of Economics. The project is developed and lead by Moodle HQ, and is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
It is fully customizable, allowing users to create or install available plugins.
This tutorial explains how to install Moodle 3.2 on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 server with NGINX as web server.
Getting started
Install NGINX
Add the NGINX yum repository, creating a new file in
:
# $EDITOR /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
In that file, paste the following configuration:
[nginx] name=NGINX repo baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/rhel/7/x86_64/ gpgcheck=0 enabled=1
Install NGINX with yum:
# yum install nginx
Start NGINX using
:
# systemctl start nginx
Just for testing, execute the following command:
$ curl -Ss http://localhost
And it should output the following message:
<h1>Welcome to nginx!</h1> <p>If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and working. Further configuration is required.</p> <p>For online documentation and support please refer to <a href="http://nginx.org/">nginx.org</a>.<br/> Commercial support is available at <a href="http://nginx.com/">nginx.com</a>.</p> <p><em>Thank you for using nginx.</em></p>
Enable NGINX to start at boot time:
# systemctl enable nginx
Install PHP-FPM
The PHP version required by is 5.6.5+. It is possible to use version 7, although it can have some engine limitations.
Let’s look at how to install PHP 5.6.5. First, add the Webtatic repository:
# rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm
Next, install PHP-FPM (and other modules) with
:
# yum install php56w-fpm php56w-cli php56w-pspell php56w-curl php56w-gd php56w-intl php56w-mysql php56w-xml php56w-xmlrpc php56w-ldap php56w-zip php56w-json php56w-opcache php56w-readline php56w-mbstring php56w-soap
At the end of the installation process, open PHP configuration file with a text editor:
# $EDITOR /etc/php.ini
Search for the
line, uncomment it and edit as follows:
cgi.fix_pathinfos=0
Save and exit.
Start PHP-FPM:
systemctl start php-fpm.service
Install and configure MariaDB
Moodle supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database. In this tutorial, Moodle will be configured for using MariaDB. Install this database with
:
# yum install mariadb-server
Start MariaDB:
# systemctl start mariadb
Next, set the MariaDB root account by executing the following command:
# mysql_secure_installation
Set root password? [Y/n] New password: Re-enter new password: Password updated successfully! Reloading privilege tables.. ... Success! Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] ... Success! Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] ... Success! Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] - Dropping test database... ... Success! - Removing privileges on test database... ... Success! Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] ... Success! Cleaning up... All done! If you've completed all of the above steps, your MariaDB installation should now be secure. Thanks for using MariaDB!
Next, edit the
file:
# $EDITOR /etc/my.cnf.d/server.cnf
Put the following content under the
block:
default_storage_engine = innodb innodb_file_per_table = 1 innodb_file_format = Barracuda
Save, exit and restart MariaDB service:
# systemctl restart mariadb
Execute the command
and check the output:
[root@rhel ~]# netstat -plntu | grep mysql tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 8006/mysqld
This output means that MariaDB has been correctly installed and started. The next step is to create a new database for Moodle. Execute the following command:
# mysql -u root -p
Run the following queries:
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE moodle_db DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER moodle_usr@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'usr_strong_password'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON moodle_db.* TO moodle_usr@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'usr_strong_password'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) MariaDB [(none)]> EXIT; Bye
Installing Moodle
Obtaining Moodle
There are two different ways to obtain Moodle:
- Download and unpack an archive;
- Use
git
.
In this tutorial we’ll be used the second one option, which is perfect for developers and makes it easier to upgrade Moodle. In order to use this method, install
:
# yum install git
Next, clone the repository in the web server root directory:
# cd /var/www # git clone --single-branch -b MOODLE_32_STABLE git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git
When git is finished downloading the code, secure it executing the following commands:
# chown -R root /var/www/moodle
# chmod -R 0755 /var/www/moodle
# find /var/www/moodle -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;
Create a data directory
Moodle requires a directory to store all of its files. This directory,
, will be placed outside the web root directory or Moodle program files directory for security reasons.
Create this directory in
, remembering that the web server needs to be able to write the following into it:
# mkdir /var/moodledata # chmod 0777 /var/moodledata
Note:
should not be accessible directly via the web. However, if there is no way to avoid this, you can secure it using a
file as explained below. If already hidden from the web, ignore this step.
For securing
, create a
file inside it:
# $EDITOR /var/moodledata/.htaccess
In that file, paste the following lines:
order deny,allow deny from all
Save and exit.
Generate a SSL certificate
Using HTTPS connections requires a SSL certificate. Create a self-signed one:
# mkdir -p /etc/nginx/certs # openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /etc/nginx/certs/moodle.crt -keyout /etc/nginx/certs/moodle.key
Then, make sure you change the private key permissions:
# chmod 600 /etc/nginx/certs/moodle.key
Create a Virtual Host file
Next, create a new virtual host configuration file for Moodle:
# $EDITOR /etc/nginx/conf.d/unixmen-moodle.conf
In that file, paste the following content:
# PHP Upstream Handler
upstream php-handler {
server unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}
# Nginx redirect HTTP to HTTPS
server {
listen 80;
server_name moodle.mydomain.com;
# enforce https
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
# HTTPS Configuration
server {
server_name moodle.mydomain.com;
listen *:443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
# SSL Configuration
ssl on;
ssl_ciphers "EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA128:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA128:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA128:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA128:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA128:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA384:AES128-GCM-SHA128:AES128-SHA128:AES128-SHA128:AES128-SHA:AES128-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4";
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload";
add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
ssl_session_tickets off;
#ssl_stapling on;
#ssl_stapling_verify on;
resolver_timeout 5s;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/certs/moodle.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/certs/moodle.key;
# Root Moodle Data DIrectory
root /var/www/moodle;
rewrite ^/(.*\.php)(/)(.*)$ /$1?file=/$3 last;
location ^~ / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$request_uri;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass php-handler;
}
}
}
Save and exit.
Next, backup the
file:
# mv /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf.old # cp /etc/nginx/conf.d/unixmen-moodle.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
Then restart NGINX:
# systemctl restart nginx
Moodle installation
The last step is to open a web browser and go to this URL:
. The browser will show the Moodle installation page. Simply fill out the required forms and you’ll be ready to roll!
Conclusions
Moodle is a de facto standard in educational institutes all over the world, with thousands of users. In this tutorial, we have seen how to install and configure it on a RHEL 7 based server, with MariaDB, NGINX and PHP-FPM.
