01 December 2012, 15:40

I am setting up a community site using Mahara 1.6.2 and Moodle 2.3.3, the aim is to make Mahara the public/social face of some community courses. The problem is SSO,, it does not work from either direction. In Mahara I can not see th Mnet auth plugin and it does not show in the selection of protocals in the Institution setup.

What have I missed?

John

01 December 2012, 16:39

Hi John,

Mahara calls MNet "XMLRPC". You should see that in the institution auth method choices.

Good luck,
Melissa.

01 December 2012, 19:17

Thanks, and seems fixed. A small problem with FF 17 on Ubuntu AMD64 has an issue. It allows you to connect once from Mahara to Moodle, then when you log out of Moodle and try to log back in from Mahara, Moodle spits the dummy.

It works faultlessly in Chrome. 

01 December 2012, 21:04

Hi John,

Yeah, that's a change firefox made, which broke mnet a bit. https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=5087 explains it more, with workarounds. It's been a fun week :D

It should be fixed in the next firefox, but nobody knows when that will be.

Thanks,
Melissa.

02 December 2012, 12:48

Thanks Melissa,

I posted the fix on our site, with suggestion that Chrome be the default browser.

While I remember is there any module for Learning Tools Intergration LTI? Even better in core?

Cheers 

John

02 December 2012, 20:02

Hi John,

Firefox 17.0.1 which has the user agent fix is supposed to come out very soon (next week?). In the meantime, you could install the patch that is posted on the Moodle bug tracker http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-36838 to allow an MNet session going from Moodle to Mahara.

There is no LTI integration yet. So far we only have a proposal for an upgrade of the assignment submission plugin to do it via LTI. There is a mention of some LTI work in the corresponding forum https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=4676 but that is not in core and I have not yet tested it.

Cheers

Kristina

09 December 2012, 22:14

Hi,

Thanks for the support with FF17, that is now behind me untill they change something again.

At this point I can get to Moodle from Mahara, getting from Moodle to Mahara is another story.

BTW the Moodle version is 2.4 as of Sunday AM, it won't do it :( Grrrrrr

I have one institution in Mahara Swan@Dorset, there are 3 authentication methods, internal, XMLRPC SSO in (Moodle - Mahara) not working, XMLRPC SSO out work great.

How do I get SSO both ways on the same institution?

Moodle >> Mahara I get this message from Mahara

"Sorry, we could not log you in.

Sorry, we could not log you into Derwent at this time. Please try again shortly. If the problem persists, contact your administrator."

To compound things if I Mnet Mahara >> Moodle and post in a Moodle forum the Reply address gives this error after  I log into Mahara,

"Mahara: Invalid Parameter

A required parameter is missing or malformed

Missing parameter 'wr' and no default supplied"

This is the link address on the Moodle post

http://derwent.dorset.org.au/auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=%2Fmod%2Fforum%2Fpost.php%3Freply%3D11

Cheers

John

10 December 2012, 7:25

Hello John,

Firefox 17.0.1 has been released which was to fix the user agent issue and thus there shouldn't be a problem on the Moodle end anymore. The fix we had publisehd for Mahara works only going from Mahara to Moodle. Moodle to Mahara requires either Moodle to be fixed (see http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-36838 for a patch) or Firefox 17.0.1.

Why do you have both auth ways (Moodle to Mahara AND Mahara to Moodle) set up in the same institution? I suspect that there could be a conflict of interest. Normally, you only have either one or the other but not both together.

Can you please check your error logs on Moodle and Mahara when you try to go Moodle to Mahara and paste the content here if there is anything authentication-related (without any telling information about your install).

Cheers

Kristina

10 December 2012, 15:49

Thanks for your thoughts,

In answer to why SSO both ways?  I am setting up a community e-learning sie, using some of the principals of MOOC (Mass Open Online Courses). In fact it will be a MiniMOOC with only 5000 users. The age range very young to one foot in the grave, the latter being the expected majority.  I need to keep the look and feel simple, one login and network around the site.  If I want the functionality of Mahara and the Moodle portfolio we need to be able to push back to Mahara.

The error log for a Moodle >> Mahara shown Mahara not configured for SSO in and shown

"[Mon Dec 10 09:50:50 2012] [error] [client 10.0.0.128] [WAR] 06 (auth/xmlrpc/lib.php:112) We don't accept SSO connections from Swan@Dorset Academy, referer: http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle/
[Mon Dec 10 09:50:50 2012] [error] [client 10.0.0.128] Call stack (most recent first):, referer: http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle/
[Mon Dec 10 09:50:50 2012] [error] [client 10.0.0.128]   * AuthXmlrpc->request_user_authorise("d4bb8060ba97dd24c6be3868c4878b26b5a9844e", "http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle") at /var/www/auth/xmlrpc/land.php:94, referer: http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle/
[Mon Dec 10 09:50:50 2012] [error] [client 10.0.0.128] , referer: http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle/ "

When I try to use a forum link having come in via Mahara to Moodle, there is no entry in the error log just this in the access.log

" 10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:45 +1100] "GET /auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=%2Fmod%2Fforum%2Fpost.php%3Freply%3D11 HTTP/1.1" 200 3187 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:46 +1100] "GET /theme/sunset/static/images/btn-bkgd.gif HTTP/1.1" 304 186 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/theme/sunset/static/style/style.css" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:50 +1100] "GET /theme/sunset/static/images/btn-bkgd-hover.gif HTTP/1.1" 304 186 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/theme/sunset/static/style/style.css" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:50 +1100] "POST /auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=/mod/forum/post.php?reply=11 HTTP/1.1" 200 3414 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=%2Fmod%2Fforum%2Fpost.php%3Freply%3D11" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:51 +1100] "GET /theme/raw/static/images/settings.png HTTP/1.1" 304 186 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=/mod/forum/post.php?reply=11" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:51 +1100] "GET /theme/raw/static/images/email.gif HTTP/1.1" 304 187 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/auth/xmlrpc/jump.php?hostwwwroot=http://swan.dorset.org.au/moodle&wantsurl=/mod/forum/post.php?reply=11" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:52 +1100] "GET /theme/sunset/static/images/btn-search.png HTTP/1.1" 304 187 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/theme/sunset/static/style/style.css" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"
10.0.0.128 - - [10/Dec/2012:13:25:52 +1100] "GET /theme/sunset/static/images/transparency.png HTTP/1.1" 304 187 "http://derwent.dorset.org.au/theme/sunset/static/style/style.css" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0"

Cheers

John

11 December 2012, 7:54

Hello John,

Not knowing what your settings are in Mahara, I can't say what you might be missing. Did you make sure to select "They SSO in" when you set up the authentication method in Mahara and have all the Moodle settings correct in the Moodle networking? "We don't accept SSO connections from Swan@Dorset Academy" sounds like you are missing a piece there.

Please note that if you wish to transfer content from Moodle to Mahara, you need to have Moodle -> Mahara set up and not Mahara -> Moodle. Please see https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=5099

Furthermore, if you set up both auth ways, I suspect your users will end up with 2 logins as Mahara would see them as distinct. I suggest you only go one way. You can put the jump link to Mahara into your Moodle navigation as it stays the same and wouldn't have to use the "Network Servers" block.

All the best with your MOOC! 5000 is not a "mini" one. That's already massive and larger than the first MOOC ever.

Cheers

Kristina