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Author: dgeportfolioadmin

Make Moodle site read only

Make Moodle site read only

One of the most difficult things for me in the past has been preventing changes to the archived Moodle site which is deposited on a separate server each year. I have been using chatGPT to create a safe MySql query which removes editing rights from Lecturers and students while still allowing logins to the site. I should note that there’s no running cron either, since this would do pointless work on an otherwise “frozen” site. The first part of the…

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A bit of Linux for a change

A bit of Linux for a change

1 Tb has been added to the Virtual disk the linux backup server sits on. In order to take advantage of the new space, we have to make sure that there is room above the /var partition for it to be extended. The current layout There is a swap partition which can be removed to make room for the xfs partition (4) to grow, then be added back on if necessary. Using swapon I found there were 2 swap areas,…

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A Bootstrap Welcome area for Moodle

A Bootstrap Welcome area for Moodle

While working on the minimum expectations and online course design rubric, I have created a template welcome area which can be copied and pasted into the “Welcome” area on your Moodle course to create a ready made, tabbed, welcome area. To get started, first download the template from the Learning and Teaching area on AdminNet. Here is a direct link to the file. Once downloaded, open the file in notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac). Don’t use Word Processors like Word…

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Unusual Problem with MySQL Field

Unusual Problem with MySQL Field

Since we no longer update our LM repository we have switched to using it as a read-only pool of files. The moodle module holds an external URL which would redirect to the stored file repository/file.php?f=4000. I needed to change this to e.g. /repository/a4000/4000.xlsx The file extension is thankfully held in the repository module table so I thought it would be quite easy to manipulate the URL to point straight to the file. The only difficulty I encountered was extracting the…

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Munin Plugin to Monitor Raspberry Pis

Munin Plugin to Monitor Raspberry Pis

We have various digital signage screens around the college. These have run all manner of solutions such as Display Monkey, OneLan and others in the past. To allow these to be managed in the same way (if not in the same screen!) we have switched them all over to Raspberry Pi 3B+ units running the community edition of Screenly (OSE). As the screens are often in areas where no hard wiring is available we rely on Wifi to connect to…

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