08 February 2014, 11:00

I have inherited a Mahara 1.4 site that has been unmaintained for years.  I found some compromised accounts so I shutdown the server for a while so I could do some forensics.

I reenabled the site but I have it firewalled so that you can only get to it from inside our network.

Given all the issues, and given all the headaches and the security vulnerability, I don't trust the database content.

I'd like to setup a parallel mahara site and then give users a change to migrate their own data but I don't have any idea how easy or hard that would be.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Rance

09 February 2014, 16:22

Hello Rance,

If you set up a new Mahara site and then ask your students to migrate their portfolios, that should be relatively easy. It would be best though to check if a Leap2A file exported from your current Mahara instance imports nicely into your new Mahara instance. There are a few ways of exporting and importing content.

1. Students export their portfolio as Leap2A file, register on the new site, you approve their accounts (make sure you have "Confirm registration" ticked to avoid any stray accounts being created), and then they import their own file via Portfolio -> Import.
2. Students export their portfolio as Leap2A file, you create accounts for all your students, e.g. via CSV file, or linke to an external authentication method such as MNet, LDAP, SAML, and they upload their portfolios again via Portfolio -> Import.
3. Students need to respond to your query by day X, you then export all the portfolios of these students using the experimental bulk export functionality and then import all accounts / or a subset of them depending on the size of the portfolios with the bulk import functionality. Accounts are created as part of that process.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Kristina