19 April 2012, 16:35

Actually, now I have another question ;)

Is usersuniquebyusername a 1.5 thing? I am running 1.4.0 and have asked my host to make the config change ... but if the config option doesn't exist in 1.4 I'll have to first see about an upgrade.

21 April 2012, 21:10

Hello Stephen,

the config value usersuniquebyusername already existed in Mahara 1.4. It's not mentioned in a default config.php and you need to add it manually. As all the posts about it say: Please handle it carefully.

Cheers

Kristina

25 April 2012, 4:19

Thank you :)

I now have another question. I have found that when I hook my 1 Mahara up to 2 Moodles, and try to push content from Moodle to Mahara, I encounter an error.

Could not find user <username> for <moodle wwwroot>.

I am fairly sure this is an error from xmlrpc/lib.php when it tries to find_remote_user($username, $REMOTEWWWROOT) because if I change the authentication of a use rin mahara to be from a specific Moodle, I can export from that Moodle but not the other, and vice versa.

My gut reaction is that the find_remote_user function in xmlrpc/lib.php (line 125?) should be checking for the CFG value of usersuniquebyusername and if set then specifically NOT discriminate by authentication method.

I can't seem to find this as a reported bug, so am about to report it.

25 April 2012, 5:40

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/988254

26 April 2012, 3:35

Hello Stephen,

I better let a developer answer on the tracker for the code suggestions. But just a summary to understand your setup better. Please correct me if I am wrong:

You have a Mahara instance with one institution in which multiple MNet connections are set up. The users are the same across all Moodle sites and you have activated the $usersuniquebyusername variable to ensure that they only have one Mahara username though they may come through from different Moodles.

You now want to allow your users to transfer content from Moodle into their Mahara portfolio. But that doesn't happen and you encounter an error.

My wild guess would be that the portfolio export passes some more information that wasn't necessary / could be ignored in Moodle 1.9 when MNet was only used for authentication purposes but not for portfolio export.

I hope a developer can shed some light on that.

Cheers

Kristina

26 April 2012, 3:46

Hi Kristina,

I have 2 (soon to be 12) Moodles all pointed at a single Mahara. Within Mahara each has its own institution with corresponding xmlrpc authentication plugin.

I believe that when someone logs in to Mahara the route they came in is stored against their database entry (user-A from Moodle-A).

When trying to send content from Moodle to Mahara (e.g. a discussion post) I think part of the xmlrpc transaction checks if the user has the right permissions. This check cross references where they are coming from against their Mahara database entry of where they originally came from.

So someone who logs into Moodle-A and then connects to Mahara, will be able to send content from Moodle-A into Mahara (user-A from Moodle-A is in the DB, and so accepted).

If that person subsequently logs into Moodle-B and tries to send content to Mahara, it fails, as Mahara will only trust the user if they come from Moodle-A (user-A from Moolde-B doesn't exist).

If usersuniquebyusername is not set, there is no error, as this scenario would cause there to be 2 Mahara users (user-A from Moodle-A AND user-A1 from Moodle-B). Obviouslly this wouldn't be what the end user wants.

With usersuniquebyusername the two users are exactly the same - and thus Mahara should not be applying quite the same authentication checks.

I *think* it would be a simple fix, as I attempted to describe in the bug report. Like you I hope a developer can shed some light on it :)

14 August 2013, 1:32

Dear Experts,

is it possible to use 'institutions' in a hierarchical way,
so that an administrator can handle a secondary institution (e.g. Faculty) like subset of a primordial assignment (e.g. University)?

If so, is there a chance that users could sign up in institutions by answering a subsequent request (like a multi level selection menue)?

By now there is just a flat hierarchy supportet so that the user can sign up for the "recent group" (e.g. Univerity A, Faculty B, Year C)  - which does not support a joint update on all users on A (or B, or C)...

Thanks you for your replies!
Michael

15 August 2013, 17:10

Hi Michael,

Currently Institutions are flat. Users can belong to multiple institutions, though ( http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.7/administration/config_site.html#index-6 ). So if you wrote some sort of bespoke institution registration system, you could put them into the "parent" institution and its "children". But there's not currently any in-built support for that in Mahara, and the permissions wouldn't inherit from one institution to another.

Cheers,

Aaron

22 August 2013, 0:05

Thank you, Aaron, for your answer.

As 'institutions' is therefore not the right method to look up a certain sub-group of users (in our case).

Please let me ask for suggestions how to handle user sub-groups in a better way than manually one by one.

Each year there are dozens of students who sign out of our University.In mahara 1.7 there is a filter by 'last log-in' supported.

Are there any other methods, how to delete a group or a list of users,e.g. a graduaded class?

Thank you for your support.
Michael

22 August 2013, 7:48

Hello Michael,

There is no convenient single-click way for deleting a certain group of people. Some ways of making that easier might be:

• Give each entering class a username that contains a year-specific value, e.g. at the beginning of the username in order to be able to sort them in the user search. But that is often not really feasible I think from what I have seen in usernames.
• If you do not connect to Moodle, you could set up an institution for each incoming group of users. That way you could filter for them by institution and place users who do not graduate into the next year's institution. That may be a bit tricky with LDAP, but not knowing your setup I don't know.
• If you go according to the last login or any other parameter in the user search, you can delete users in bulk with up to 500 on a page: tick the check boxes at the end of each user's line and then click the "Edit" button. You'll be taken to a screen where you can delete all selected users at once. Be careful though: Their portfolios cannot be recovered! If you wish to export their portfolios first to archive them, you can use the bulk export feature http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.7/administration/experimental.html

It would definitely be handier if certain users could be deleted based on defined parameters. Currently, we do not collect much information about users in terms of individual faculty that they belong to which does make it difficult. But that doesn't mean that this couldn't be done in the future. You are welcome to file a wishlist item at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug so it is on the tracker or develop the functionality or have it commissioned.

Cheers

Kristina