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
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
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
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
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!