How To Install Moodle on CentOS 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Moodle on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic websites for their students. Moodle brings features to include assignment submission, online quizzes, wiki, grading, instant messages, discussion boards, and others. But since it’s modular software, it can be extended via plugins to add extra functionality.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Moodle course management system (CMS) on CentOS 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Moodle on CentOS 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf update

Step 2. Installing a LAMP server.

A CentOS 8 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Configuring MariaDB for Moodle.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for Moodle. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for Moodle installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE moodledb;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodledb.* TO 'moodleadmin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Your-PassWD';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit

Step 4. Installing Moodle on CentOS 8.

Now we download the latest version of Moodle from the official moodle project website:

wget -c https://download.moodle.org/download.php/direct/stable39/moodle-latest-39.tgz
tar -xzvf moodle-latest-39.tgz
mv moodle /var/www/html/

We will need to change some folders permissions:

chmod 775 -R /var/www/html/moodle
chown nginx:nginx -R /var/www/html/moodle

After that, create a data directory for Moodle:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/moodledata
chmod 770 -R /var/www/html/moodledata
chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/moodledata

Once done, move into the Moodle installation directory and create a config.php file from the sample config.dist.php:

cd /var/www/html/moodle/
cp config-dist.php config.php
nano config.php

Set the correct database type, correct database host, database name, and database user, and the user’s password:

$CFG->dbtype    = 'mariadb';      // 'pgsql', 'mariadb', 'mysqli', 'sqlsrv' or 'oci'
$CFG->dblibrary = 'native';     // 'native' only at the moment
$CFG->dbhost    = 'localhost';  // eg 'localhost' or 'db.isp.com' or IP
$CFG->dbname    = 'moodledb';     // database name, eg moodle
$CFG->dbuser    = 'moodleadmin';   // your database username
$CFG->dbpass    = 'PassWD';   // your database password
$CFG->prefix    = 'mdl_';       // prefix to use for all table names

Also, set the URL used to access your Moodle site:

$CFG->wwwroot = 'http://learning.idroot.us';
$CFG->dataroot = '/var/www/html/moodledata';

Step 5. Configuring Apache.

Now we create an Apache virtual host configuration file for Moodle with the following command:

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/moodle.conf

Add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerAdmin admin@learning.idroot.us
 ServerName learning.idroot.us
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html/moodle
 DirectoryIndex index.php
<Directory /var/www/html/moodle/>
 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
 AllowOverride All
 Order allow,deny
 allow from all
</Directory>
 ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/moodle_error.log
 CustomLog /var/log/httpd/moodle_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file. Restart the apache service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Step 6. Install an SSL certificate.

First, download the required packages and create a new system binary:

wget https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto
sudo mv certbot-auto /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto
sudo chown root /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto

Next, run the certbot command that will download and install all of its dependencies:

sudo /usr/local/bin/certbot-auto --apache

Step 7. Configure Firewall.

Modify firewall rules in order to allow web access:

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 8. Accessing Moodle Web Interface.

Moodle will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to https://learning.idroot.us and complete the required steps to finish the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Moodle. Thanks for using this tutorial to install the Moodle course management system (CMS) on CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Moodle website.