Mahara installation on CentOS

There are five blogs in this series.

Please select the link below as required:-

DSpace Install Blog

LAMS Install Blog

Mahara Install Blog

OpenSim Install Blog

Server Syncronisation Blog

This blog was written after installing Mahara 1.1.2 on a CentOS 5.3 box already running Moodle, LAMS and DSpace.

The process I followed is explained below:

Login as root
su - postgres

Create the Mahara user and database in postgresql:
Note that postgresql was already installed and configured during the DSpace installation. For more information please select this link.

-bash-3.2$ createuser -U postgres -d -A -P mahara
Enter password for new role:
Enter it again:
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n
CREATE ROLE
-bash-3.2$ createdb -U mahara -EUTF8 mahara
CREATE DATABASE
-bash-3.2$ exit

nano /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf and add the line
host mahara mahara 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 md5
service postgresql restart

Download and install Mahara:

cd
lynx http://eduforge.org/frs/?group_id=176
tar -xzvf mahara-1.1.2.tar.gz
cd mahara-1.1.2
cp -pr htdocs /var/www/html/mahara
cd /var/www/html/mahara
cp config-dist.php config.php
nano config.php

/**
* Mahara: Electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking
* Copyright (C) 2006-2008 Catalyst IT Ltd (http://www.catalyst.net.nz)
*
* This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program. If not, see .
*
* @package mahara
* @subpackage core
* @author Catalyst IT Ltd
* @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU GPL
* @copyright (C) 2006-2008 Catalyst IT Ltd http://catalyst.net.nz
*
*/
//
// MAHARA CONFIGURATION FILE
//
// Copy this file from config-dist.php to config.php, and change the values in
// it to suit your environment.
//
// Information about this file is available on the Mahara wiki:
// http://wiki.mahara.org/System_Administrator%27s_Guide/Installing_Mahara#Mahara_Configuration
//
$cfg = new StdClass;

// database connection details
// valid values for dbtype are 'postgres8' and 'mysql5'
$cfg->dbtype = 'postgres8';
$cfg->dbhost = 'localhost';
$cfg->dbport = null;
$cfg->dbname = 'mahara';
$cfg->dbuser = 'mahara';
$cfg->dbpass = 'XXXX';
// Note: database prefix is NOT required, you don't need to set one except if
// you're installing Mahara into a database being shared with other
// applications (this happens most often on shared hosting)
$cfg->dbprefix = '';
// wwwroot - the web-visible path to your Mahara installation
// Normally, this is automatically detected - if it doesn't work for you
// then try specifying it here
//$cfg->wwwroot = 'http://vleinternal.bromley.ac.uk/mahara/';
// dataroot - uploaded files are stored here
// This is a ABSOLUTE FILESYSTEM PATH. This is NOT a URL.
// For example, valid paths are:
// * /home/user/maharadata
// * /var/lib/mahara
// * c:\maharadata
// INVALID paths:
// * http://yoursite/files
// * ~/files
// * ../data
//
// This path must be writable by the webserver and outside document root (the
// place where the Mahara files like index.php have been installed).
// Mahara will NOT RUN if this is inside your document root, because
// this is a big security hole.
$cfg->dataroot = '/home/mahara';
?>

mkdir /home/mahara
chown apache:apache /home/mahara

[root@vleinternal mahara]# crontab -e
Add last line to root crontab:

*/5 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://127.0.0.1/ict/admin/cron.php
* * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://127.0.0.1/mahara/lib/cron.php

It is necessary to now install the following php modules before Mahara's Web based installer will run:

yum install php-devel
yum install php-pear
pear install pecl/json
yum install php-pgsql
yum install php-gd

nano /etc/php.d/json.ini and add
extension=json.so

nano /etc/php.d/pgsql.so and add
extension=pgsql.so

nano /etc/php.d/gd.so
extension=gd.so

Edit httpd.conf and set AllowOverride = All
restart apache
visit http://vleinternal.bromley.ac.uk/mahara/ to complete install

Once Mahara is installed you can login as follows:

Username: admin
Password: mahara

You will be prompted to change the password on first login.

Moodle-Mahara integration is straightforward and I successfully followed the instructions contained in the file mahoodle.pdf available from eduforge.


Mahara Upgrade Process

Below is the process I followed to upgrade Mahara from version 1.1.2 to version 1.1.3

A very similar process worked successfully to upgrade mahara to later versions.

Login as root and move the existing mahara folder somewhere safe.

mv /var/www/html/mahara /root/mahara_old_1.1.2

Download mahara-1.1.3.tar.gz as root, extract the contents of the tar archive and install the new version.

lynx http://eduforge.org/frs/?group_id=176
tar -xzvf mahara-1.1.3.tar.gz
cd mahara-1.1.3
cp -pr htdocs /var/www/html
mv /var/www/html/htdocs /var/www/html/mahara
cp /root/mahara_old_1.1.2/config.php /var/www/html/mahara

Then visit the upgrade script in Mahara from the browser to complete the upgrade:

http://vleinternal.bromley.ac.uk/mahara/admin/upgrade.php

When I upgraded from 1.1.7 to 1.2.0 I had the following error message when I went to the admin page:

Mahara: Site unavailable
Your server configuration does not include the dom extension. Mahara requires this in order to parse XML data from a variety of sources.

This was solved by installing php-xml and restarting Apache as shown below:

yum install php-xml
service httpd stop
service httpd start

When I upgraded from 1.2.0 to 1.2.2 the above process worked fine, although the download site URL has changed:

lynx https://launchpad.net/mahara/+download

When I upgraded from 1.2.2 to 1.2.3 the above process worked fine.

# posted by clive : 5:35 AM  0 comments