How to install Moodle CMS on Centos 7

To install Moodle CMS on CentOS 7

Moodle is an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) and it has become one of the most popular LMSs among educators around the world as a tool for creating single robust, secure and integrated system that can help you create personalized learning environments and online courses as a dynamic website. In this tutorial, we will cover the installation of Moodle CMS on CentOS 7

Installing

We are going to install PHP 7 which is not provided by the official RHEL repository so we need to add “ Webtatic” repository in order to get access to PHP 7. In order to do that first, we need to install EPEL repo.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# yum install epel-release
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
base                                                                                                                 | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
extras                                                                                                               | 3.4 kB  00:00:00     
updates                                                                                                              | 3.4 kB  00:00:00     
(1/2): extras/7/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                    | 185 kB  00:00:00     
(2/2): updates/7/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                   | 6.9 MB  00:00:10     
Determining fastest mirrors
 * base: mirror.vbctv.in
.
.
Running transaction
  Installing : epel-release-7-9.noarch                                                                                                  1/1 
  Verifying  : epel-release-7-9.noarch                                                                                                  1/1 

Installed:
  epel-release.noarch 0:7-9                                                                                                                 

Complete!

Now you can add Webtatic with the following command.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm
Retrieving https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.d50rvI: Header V4 RSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 62e74ca5: NOKEY
Preparing...                          ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing...
   1:webtatic-release-7-3             ################################# [100%]

Next, you can easily install PHP 7 and the needed dependencies with the command below.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# yum install php70w php70w-curl php70w-gd php70w-intl php70w-ldap php70w-mysql php70w-pspell php70w-xml php70w-xmlrpc php70w-zip php70w-common php70w-opcache 
php70w-mbstring php70w-soap
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
epel/x86_64/metalink                                                                                                 | 6.6 kB  00:00:00     
epel                                                                                                                 | 4.7 kB  00:00:00     
webtatic                                                                                                             | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
(1/5): webtatic/x86_64/group_gz                                                                                      |  448 B  00:00:00     
(2/5): webtatic/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                    | 134 kB  00:00:02     
(3/5): epel/x86_64/group_gz                                                                                          | 266 kB  00:00:03     
Installed:
  php70w.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7                 php70w-common.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7            php70w-gd.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7                
  php70w-intl.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7            php70w-ldap.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7              php70w-mbstring.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7          
  php70w-mysql.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7           php70w-opcache.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7           php70w-pspell.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7            
  php70w-soap.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7            php70w-xml.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7               php70w-xmlrpc.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7            

Dependency Installed:
  apr.x86_64 0:1.4.8-3.el7_4.1                  apr-util.x86_64 0:1.5.2-6.el7                       aspell.x86_64 12:0.60.6.1-9.el7         
  httpd.x86_64 0:2.4.6-67.el7.centos.6          httpd-tools.x86_64 0:2.4.6-67.el7.centos.6          mailcap.noarch 0:2.1.41-2.el7           
  php70w-cli.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7               php70w-pdo.x86_64 0:7.0.27-1.w7                    

Complete!

Next, Install Apache. In order to serve our Moodle, we need a web server. we are going to install Apache as our web server.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# yum install httpd                                                                                    
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: mirror.vbctv.in
 * epel: ftp.jaist.ac.jp
.
.
* updates: mirror.digistar.vn
 * webtatic: sp.repo.webtatic.com
Installed 

After the installation process is finished, you have to start and enable the Apache service with following commands.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl enable httpd
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/httpd.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service.
[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl start httpd

And then, for setting the correct DocumentRoot, open your Apache configuration file with the command below.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Find the line that refers to “ DocumentRoot” and change it like below.

DocumentRoot " /var/www/html/moodle/" 

Now, Install and configure MariaDB. you can execute the following command to install MariaDB and its service.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# yum install mariadb-server
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: mirror.vbctv.in
 * epel: mirror.nes.co.id
 * extras: mirrors.viethosting.com
 * updates: mirror.digistar.vn
 * webtatic: sp.repo.webtatic.com
.
.
Installed:
  mariadb-server.x86_64 1:5.5.56-2.el7                                                                                                      

Dependency Installed:
  mariadb.x86_64 1:5.5.56-2.el7             perl-Compress-Raw-Bzip2.x86_64 0:2.061-3.el7     perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib.x86_64 1:2.061-4.el7    
  perl-DBD-MySQL.x86_64 0:4.023-5.el7       perl-DBI.x86_64 0:1.627-4.el7                    perl-Data-Dumper.x86_64 0:2.145-3.el7          
  perl-IO-Compress.noarch 0:2.061-2.el7     perl-Net-Daemon.noarch 0:0.48-5.el7              perl-PlRPC.noarch 0:0.2020-14.el7              

After installing the MariaDB Start and enable the service.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl start mariadb
[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl enable mariadb
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mariadb.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service.

Now we have to Configure MariaDB. In order to get your MariaDB to be compatible with Moodle, you need to enable “ InnoDB” engine so Open MariaDB configuration file with your text editor.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# nano /etc/my.cnf.d/server.cnf                                                                    

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
innodb_file_format = Barracuda
innodb_file_per_table = 1
innodb_large_prefix

character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

Then save and exit. Restart MariaDB service to make the changes take effect.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl restart mariadb

we are going to create a Database for Moodle.

[root@linuxhelp ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with   or g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 2
Server version: 5.5.56-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Copyright (c) 2000, 2017, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type ' help '  or ' h'  for help. Type ' c'  to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]>  create database moodle 
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB [(none)]>  grant all privileges on moodle.* to ' admin' @' localhost'  identified by ' password'  
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>  exit
Bye

[root@linuxhelp ~]# wget https://download.moodle.org/stable34/moodle-latest-34.tgz
--2018-04-11 06:46:56--  https://download.moodle.org/stable34/moodle-latest-34.tgz
Resolving download.moodle.org (download.moodle.org)... 104.20.218.25, 104.20.219.25, 2400:cb00:2048:1::6814:da19, ...
Connecting to download.moodle.org (download.moodle.org)|104.20.218.25|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 45034444 (43M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘ moodle-latest-34.tgz’ 

100%[==================================================================================================> ] 4,50,34,444 1.12MB/s   in 39s    

2018-04-11 06:47:36 (1.10 MB/s) - ‘ moodle-latest-34.tgz’  saved [45034444/45034444]

[root@linuxhelp ~]# tar xzf moodle-latest-34.tgz -C /var/www/html/

[root@linuxhelp ~]# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/
[root@linuxhelp ~]# systemctl restart httpd.service