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my students are unzipping to root and other issues


anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 12

17 November 2009, 13:53

This is a Moodle/Mahara Integration computer but i don't think that is the problem.

 Moodle is hosted on ubuntu being the on the address moodle.school.lea.sch.uk

Whilst Mahara is running on moodle.school.lea.sch.uk/mahara

Occasionally i get url errors where the browser is trying to look at moodle.school.lea.sch.uk/mahara//mahara/  note /mahara//mahara/.

Have i confgured something wrong.

Secondly when a student unzips a file regardless of where it says it will unzip it seems to unzip in the students root/home folder.

I was hoping to use this(mahara) to host students e-porffolio's/websites that they had already created on the DIDA and OCR courses and keep filestructures instact.

I thought that this environment would do that and the student only then needed to link the index.html file of the dida portfolio or website that they had created.

I don't have the time or a techinian who has the time to work out how to create 700 odd userspaces on a bogstandard linux/apache webserver.

 I am assuming that maybe my 2 issues might be linked with the files unzipping in the wrong folders and the "home" button taking me to mahara//mahara/

Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 228

17 November 2009, 16:01

Hi Martin,

It sounds like your wwwroot has been set incorrectly. Make sure you set it to the right value in your config.php  and in the database. You can read how to do this here:

http://wiki.mahara.org/Developer_Area/Changing_Hostnames

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 12

18 November 2009, 5:53

I looked at my config.php and that looks ok, if i change anything the site become broken.

I looked inside my database and i saw no mention of the www root field inside it.

It only seems to be occasional button depressions on home or refresh that gives me this additional mahara//mahara/ glitch could it be a session issue or something?

The unzipping a pre-prepared website into the correct folder would also be weight off my mind too, is this wwwroot issue effecting the unzip too?

What am i missing?

I am running 1.2 if that helps.

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 808

18 November 2009, 18:49

The $cfg->wwwroot setting in config.php should override the one in the database config table anyway.  I guess it's possible that some configuration setting on your webserver is rewriting or redirecting some pages.  Have you been able to find any case that reliably redirects to that bad url?

I'm not sure whether the file unzipping problem is related or not.  But I'm not sure it will be easy to do what you want to do with Mahara -- for security reasons we deliberately don't allow users to upload html files and then serve that html up 'raw' to other users.

You can make uploaded html available by selecting an individual html file in a block inside a view with public access, or you can put an entire folder into a view with public access and then provide download links to files within it. But Mahara won't rewrite links from one file to another during the unzipping process, so unzipping a pre-prepared website will result in broken links.

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 12

19 November 2009, 14:02

I cannot see any entry in config or in mahara db that seems to refer to these odd url's, but if you give a hint of where to look i will gladly peruse. It only seems to be me that gets them, other staff and students seem ok, i have had no reports of errors. I am the only member of staff that has admin rights if thats an interesting point.

The broken links you refer to in unzipping a prepared website, would that on the images too? I can encourage my students to put all the files in one folder when then make the sites, but if they have to re-edit all the links after they have uploaded i can imagine the complaints i will get considering the amount of rollovers and media rich content they have made.

If Mahara is not the solution to my easily managed "web hosting" solution what is? does anyone know of something that integrates with moodle i can use (we probably are encroaching more into the mahara/moodle integration thread now) .

 I will continue with mahara regardless, the kids love it, but i do need a webhosting/site uploading solution i can locally manage without loosing any more hair. :)

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 1643

19 November 2009, 18:17

Mahara's not likely to be the solution for "web hosting" if your students are making HTML files. You would be better off with something else, though I can't think of anything more advanced than an apache webserver and them having home directories on it off the top of my head.

Actually - maybe google sites would be appropriate? I'm not sure how much custom stuff they let you do though. 

Ali Hastie's profile picture
Posts: 145

09 February 2010, 12:49

Hi

Im having the same problem as Martin, students unzipping files to root.

Here are my error logs:

[WAR] 5f (artefact/file/lib.php:1875) Undefined index: Vet Nurses, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

Call stack (most recent first):, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

* log_message("Undefined index: Vet Nurses", 8, true, true, "/data/httpdata/vhosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/a...", 1875) at /data/httpdata/v-hosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/lib/errors.php:446, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

* error(8, "Undefined index: Vet Nurses", "/data/httpdata/v-hosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/a...", 1875, array(size 12)) at /data/httpdata/v-hosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/artefact/file/lib.php:1875, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

* ArtefactTypeArchive->extract() at /data/httpdata/vhosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/artefact/file/extract.php:147, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

* unzip_artefact_submit(object(Pieform), array(size 3)) at Unknown:0, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

* call_user_func_array("unzip_artefact_submit", array(size 2)) at /data/httpdata/vhosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/lib/pieforms/pieform.php:430, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

 * Pieform->__construct(array(size 2)) at /data/httpdata/vhosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/lib/pieforms/pieform.php:170, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

 * Pieform::process(array(size 2)) at /data/httpdata/vhosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/lib/pieforms/pieform.php:71, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

 * pieform(array(size 2)) at /data/httpdata/v-hosts/sport.barony.ac.uk/htdocs/artefact/file/extract.php:98, referer: http://sport.barony.ac.uk/artefact/file/extract.php?file=1974

----------------

Any help appreciated,

 Ali.

anonymous profile picture
Account deleted
Posts: 808

09 February 2010, 16:29

Hi Ali,

Does it happen for all zip files or just some of them?  If it's only some of them, is there any chance you could send me one to take a look at?

R.

Ali Hastie's profile picture
Posts: 145

10 February 2010, 9:25

Hi Richard

 Yeah I have just double checked, its happening to all of the zip files on both our 1.2.3 Mahara installs.

We have both Mahara installs on the same server (along with our Moodle installs) running Ubuntu 8.10 PHP V5.2.6, mysql 5.0.67

Thanks

 Ali

anonymous profile picture
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Posts: 808

10 February 2010, 16:26

Hi Ali,

I still can't reproduce this on my 1.2.3 install with mysql, with quite a few different zip files.  If you could send me any zip file which reliably produces those errors you found in the logs, it might be helpful.

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