Apache Friends Support Forum

Hello:

I have installed Moodle 2.3.3 in a Windows 2003 development server using XAMPP 1.7.4 and everything was good, Moodle is running very nice. The situation now is that the productive version of Moodle is going to be installed in the productive server with the following features:

1. The server is actually running several applications, which uses PHP 5.3.5 on IIS 6.
2. It is necessary that all applications, Moodle included, share the same PHP.
3. PHP is installed in C:\PHP.
4. IIS and APACHE will use port 80 of different IP addresses.

My questions:

- Which would be the configuration should I to make on PHP and APACHE for avoiding troubles with Moodle installation?
- Which special considerations do I have to take in account for not affecting actual apps because they are sharing the PHP with Moodle?
- As I am going to delete the PHP folder that comes with XAMPP, can this cause any problem with MOODLE operation? Which files do I have keep and copy in C:\PHP?

Thank you for your help in advance.

Hey telmeca,
Let me see how to answer this clearly ...

PHP runs independently of any web applications (i.e. Moodle) and multiple web applications can and do use the same installation of PHP. XAMPP is simply a web server environment, sorta like an "Operating System" is to a computer. And just as you can install multiple programs in say Windows without having to install a new installation of Windows for each new program, same goes for PHP applications.

Now as far as migrating your installation goes ...
I personally haven't tinkered with Moodle, but just based on past experiences, it'd be best if you can install it fresh on your production server, then import any database data and files accordingly. Many web applications store absolute path information in the database/configuration files that's automatically configured upon installation and this is where migrating to another server can be a real headache. There is a page on their website explaining how to Migrate Moodle, http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Moodle_migration .

Hope that helps!

Hi amereservant:

Thank you for taking time to help me in this topic. Your first comment was very relaxing for me, because I see now that sharing the same PHP for all apps, would not be a problem.

Regarding the migration, that is not what I want. The Moodle installation I did with XAMPP was on a virtual machine and it is not required any data from there.

I will install now the Moodle from the very beginning on the production server, but after that I will have the whole package, I mean APACHE, MYSQL, PHP and MOODLE in a single folder (C:\XAMPP). Then as the others apps are using the PHP located at C:\PHP, I would need to delete the C:\XAMPP\PHP folder and then make the fixes for getting PHP, MySQL and APACHE work together again. So I really appreciate to have some instructions before I go ahead with this travel.

I think I can handle all of the modifications and configurations at the Moodle side.

Thank you!

telmeca wrote:... I mean APACHE, MYSQL, PHP and MOODLE in a single folder (C:\XAMPP). Then as the others apps are using the PHP located at C:\PHP, I would need to delete the C:\XAMPP\PHP folder and then make the fixes for getting PHP, MySQL and APACHE work together again ....

I think you're still getting it confused.... If you already have scripts running on your production server, then you do not need to install XAMPP on it, nor would you even want to try (It'll cause a big mess at best!). If your production server has Apache/MySQL/PHP running already, then that part is done and XAMPP is not needed. All you need to do at this point is download Moodle and upload it's files to your server, then just go through the installation process for configuring Moodle.

XAMPP is only needed when you don't have Apache/MySQL/PHP installed and want to install these server programs easily. You'll need to upload your Moodle to the htdocs directory (or whatever it's named on your production server), then follow the installation guide. Take a look at the Installation Guide at http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Installing_Moodle for more details.

Hi amereservant:

APACHE and MySQL are not installed on my production server, actually we are using IIS 6 and MSSQL.

Thank you.

Ahhh, ok. Well that's a whole different ordeal then. You're probably going to want to just install Moodle on your IIS environment then, because it'll be quite a headache trying to configure Apache to run along side of IIS and not have conflict. I'm sure it can be done, but if you have an HTTP server running, there's not a lot of reasons to have two running side-by-side on the same machine. And unless Moodle doesn't support MSSQL, I would just look into using MSSQL instead of MySQL for the same reasons.

The situation is that IIS 6 give some limitations to Moodle and change to IIS 7 push us to change to Windows 2008, which would be more expensive. In addtion, Moodle runs better with MySQL and APACHE.

I recommend 3 things, which I can tell you this topic is beyond the support forum for XAMPP ...

1. Migrate everything on the server over to Apache/MySQL. I'd also seriously consider changing the OS to Linux, but that's just me.
2. Run a separate machine side-by-side to your IIS server, which would mean you'd probably have to configure a local DNS server to properly route the web traffic to the correct server.
3. Hire someone with expertise in that area. I'm sure there's a few gurus out there that can set that up for ya.

Best of luck!