Mahara
At the simplest level, Mahara is two things: an e-portfolio and a social networking system combined. An e-portfolio is a system in which students can record "evidences of lifelong learning" - such as essays, artwork or other such things they produce that can be stored digitally. Such things are known as artefacts in Mahara. Social networking systems need little introduction - think Myspace, Facebook or Bebo. Basically, they give a way for people to interact with their friends and create their own online communities.
But Mahara is much more than just a place to store files. Mahara also includes blogging, a resumé builder, Moodle integration and the standout views framework.
Install lighttpd, PHP, and MySql
For installing the additional packages first activate community packages:
vi /etc/apk/repositories
Uncomment the following:
http://pkg.example.com/alpine/v3.11/community
Update the packagelist:
apk update
Install the additional packages:
apk add lighttpd php7-common php7-session php7-iconv php7-json php7-gd php7-curl php7-xml php7-mysqli php7-imap php7-cgi fcgi php7-pdo php7-pdo_mysql php7-soap php7-xmlrpc php7-posix php7-mcrypt php7-gettext php7-ldap php7-ctype php7-dom php7-simplexml
Configure Lighttpd
Edit lighttpd.conf
vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
Uncomment line:
include "mod_fastcgi.conf"
Start lighttpd service and add to needed runlevel
rc-service lighttpd start && rc-update add lighttpd default
Install extra packages:
apk add php-mysql mysql mysql-client
Installing and configuring Mahara
Create the webapps folder
mkdir -p /usr/share/webapps/
Download the source code archive
cd /usr/share/webapps/ wget http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/archive-tarball/1.5_STABLE
Unpack the archive and delete it afterwards
tar -xzvf tar zxvf 1.5_STABLE rm 1.5_STABLE
Crate a symlink to the Mahara folder
mv /var/www/localhost/htdocs/ /var/www/localhost/htdocs.old ln -s /usr/share/webapps/mahara-mahara/htdocs/ /var/www/localhost/htdocs
Edit the config file
cp mahara-mahara/htdocs/config-dist.php mahara-mahara/htdocs/config.php vi mahara-mahara/htdocs/config.php
Change
- Set:
// database connection details // valid values for dbtype are 'postgres8' and 'mysql5' $cfg->dbtype = 'mysql5'; $cfg->dbhost = 'localhost'; $cfg->dbport = null; $cfg->dbname = 'mahara'; $cfg->dbuser = 'root'; $cfg->dbpass = 'password';
$cfg->dataroot = '/tmp/';
Edit the php.ini
vi /etc/php/php.ini
- Set:
session.entropy_length = 16 post_max_size = 50M
Restart lighttpd
/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart
Config and start MySql
/usr/bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql /etc/init.d/mysql start && rc-update add mysql default /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'password'
Create the Mahara database
mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE mahara; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mahara.* TO 'mahara'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mahara password'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT
Config your Mahara
Browse to: http://WEBSERVER_IP_ADDRESS/ and click in Install Mahara
After the Successfully installed Mahara. click Continue
- Enter Information needed
- Password, twice
- Your E-mail
You have Mahara working, to access go to http://WEBSERVER_IP_ADDRESS/ and enjoy!