18 March 2010, 5:33

Hi, I have Moodle and Mahara on the same server (Win 2K8 Std) running under IIS. I setup Networking with Keys on both sites after fixing the system environment problem (setting OPENSSL_CONF to the path of openssl.cnf) to allow both to setup a public key (which they have). The paths are
Moodle   FQDN/vle
Mahara  FQDN/mahara
And resolve happily in a client browser.

I have a problem when I try to add the XMLRPC authentication to the default site in Mahara.

Maraha says Authorities Administration: Please ensure that the Application and WWW Root fields are correct, and that networking is enabled on the remote host.

In Moodle I placed Mahara in the Networking > Peers as a site and after trying to connect from Mahara under the 'Add an Authority' section moodle says Mahara last connected  11:56:57 17/03/2010 which gives the idea it connected. 

Mahara WWW root is exactly the same as the Moodle config file.  Moodle has a block with a link to access 'Network Servers' with Mahara listed and clicking on it gives the following Mahara error:-

Mahara: Invalid Parameter

A required parameter is missing or malformed

We don't seem to have any authentication plugin instances configured for the host at  XXX {listed site correct} 

Any ideas as  I cannot get Mahara to go past the

Authorities Administration: Please ensure that the Application and WWW Root fields are correct, and that networking is enabled on the remote host

and so set up the link.   Mahoodle.pdf gives no answers.

Moodle logs have no entry for any problem and I cannot see any problem in the IIS logs.

We also have a shared hosted remote site (which we are trying to bring to our local host) which has Moodle on it.  We added Maraha and ran through the connection process and it linked like a dream.

It appears that Mahara cannot connect to Moodle’s Public Key for some reason (probably permission) but I cannot see how to fix this problem.

26 March 2010, 10:09

I seem to have uncovered that cos we do have a proxy server, I checked the mdl_mnet_hosts wwwroot field in the database and it had our external IP Addresses in there! grrr so changed this

also the hosts field in the mahara database seemed to have a connection in there and that was correct, i seemed to have done something here and it appeared in mahara as a different institution.  ?       followed the rest of the mahoodle PDF.   

reference material

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=90325

26 March 2010, 10:20

just ran through the remainder of the mahoodle PDF and after all this time it was that!! 

:)   fixed for me     

Will write this up    ---- that is the mdl_mnet_hosts   in the moodle database you need to change. 

04 June 2013, 21:11

Pete, did you get to the bottom of this?  Our moodle developer is having a similar Mahara error on the development server I setup for him.  Running W2K8 and IIS with moodle and mahara on this same box.

'An error occurred while retrieving the public key from the remote server.<br>Please ensure that the Application and WWW root fields are correct and that networking is enabled on the remote host.<br>Error retrieving public key, failed with error code 401: Client error code:'

I've got them as two seperate sites with different IPs.  Moodle can communicate with Mahara but not the other way around.

Any assistance would be appreciated.  It was three years ago you had this issue, I hope you can recall it!

Jeff

09 June 2013, 16:16

Hello Jeff,

Did you follow the Mahoodle setup guide https://wiki.mahara.org/images/7/75/Mahoodle-updated-en.pdf ? Did you check that Moodle has the public key from Mahara correctly displayed in the peer settings and that the Moodle public key is correctly displayed in the authentication method for your institution on Mahara?

You say "Moodle can communicate with Mahara but not the other way around": What do you want to achieve? Go back to Moodle from Mahara? Which site is the primary site: Moodle or Mahara?

Thanks for giving us more information.

Cheers

Kristina

11 June 2013, 9:05

Hi Kristina,

[Richard - Learning environment developer/administrator at the same university where Jeff is server technician]

Yes that is the guide we followed - upto p18 (setting up the authority in Mahara) which is where it fails.

It is at that point that Mahara is not able to access the public key from Moodle (although it can access the public key from a separate Moodle on another Linux based test system). Moodle does display the public key from Mahara - hence my original post being in the Moodle forums (https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=229163).

The full situation is:

I have a Linux based testing system where Moodle and Mahara work together correctly.

When this is transferred to our server development system (on Windows/IIS) the following happens:

Moodle will access Mahara's public key, Mahara will not access Moodle's public key giving the error Jeff reported above.

This Windows install of Mahara is able to access the public key and complete set up with my separate testing Linux Moodle site.

Moodle is our primary site and I am trying to set up the Single Sign On and the integration features between Moodle and Mahara - exporting of moodle content to the Mahara portfolio etc.

Many thanks

Richard

13 June 2013, 21:08

Hello Richard,

Thank you for the further explanations. I hope that someone using a similar server setup to yours may have an answer.

Cheers

Kristina