Mahara

If you're wondering what Mahara or an e-portfolio is, why you might want one and what it can do for you, then read on - you're about to find out.

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.

Basic Installation

For installing the additional packages first activate community packages and update the package index

Install the required packages:

# apk add lighttpd php82 fcgi php82-cgi

Configure Lighttpd

Edit lighttpd.conf (/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf) and uncomment the line:

Contents of /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

... include "mod_fastcgi.conf" ...

Edit mod_fastcgi.conf (/etc/lighttpd/mod_fastcgi.conf), find and change /usr/bin/php-cgi to /usr/bin/php-cgi82.

Contents of /etc/lighttpd/mod_fastcgi.conf

... "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi82" # php-cgi ...

Start lighttpd service and add it to default runlevel

# rc-service lighttpd start # rc-update add lighttpd default

Install extra packages:

apk add php-mysql mysql mysql-client

Installing and configuring Mahara

Install Mahara

Make webapps folder

mkdir /usr/share/webapps/ -p

Download

cd /usr/share/webapps/ wget http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/archive-tarball/1.5_STABLE

Unpack

tar -xzvf tar zxvf 1.5_STABLE rm 1.5_STABLE

Make symlinks to Mahara

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!