Guides - Deploy Moodle through the Linode Marketplace
Quickly deploy a Compute Instance with many various software applications pre-installed and ready to use.
Moodle is the most widely used open source learning management system. It is aimed to provide learners, educators, and administrators with a single robust, secure, and integrated solution to develop customized learning environments.
Deploying a Marketplace App
The Linode Marketplace allows you to easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using the Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.
Log in to the Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.
Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.
Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.
Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.
To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.
Configuration Options
- Supported distributions: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
- Recommended minimum plan: All plan types and sizes can be used.
Moodle Options
- Moodle Admin Password (required): Enter a strong password for the Moodle admin account.
- Moodle Admin Email (required): The email address you wish to use with the Moodle admin account. | MySQL Root Password (required): Enter a strong password for the MySQL root user.
- Moodle database User Password (required): Enter a strong password for the database user.
- Limited sudo user (required): Enter your preferred username for the limited user.
- Password for the limited user (required): Enter a strong password for the new user.
Custom Domain (Optional)
If you wish to automatically configure a custom domain, you first need to configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers. This is typically accomplished directly through your registrar. See Use Linode’s Name Servers with Your Domain. Once that is finished, you can fill out the following fields for the Marketplace App:
- Linode API Token: If you wish to use the Linode’s DNS Manager to manage DNS records for your custom domain, create a Linode API Personal Access Token on your account with Read/Write access to Domains. If this is provided along with the subdomain and domain fields (outlined below), the installation attempts to create DNS records via the Linode API. See Get an API Access Token. If you do not provide this field, you need to manually configure your DNS records through your DNS provider and point them to the IP address of the new instance.
- Subdomain: The subdomain you wish to use, such as www for
www.example.com. - Domain: The domain name you wish to use, such as example.com.
") within any of the App-specific configuration fields, including user and database password fields. This special character may cause issues during deployment.Limited User SSH Options (Optional)
- SSH public key for the limited user: If you wish to login as the limited user through public key authentication (without entering a password), enter your public key here. See Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server for instructions on generating a key pair.
- Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes (recommended). You can still switch to the root user once logged in and you can also log in as root through Lish.
Getting Started After Deployment
Access Your Moodle App
To access your Moodle instance, Open a browser and navigate to your Linode rDNS domain https://203-0-113-0.ip.linodeusercontent.com. Replace https://203-0-113-0.ip.linodeusercontent.com with your
Linode’s RDNS domain.
From there, you can login by clicking the box on the top right of the page. Once you see the login page, you can enter moodle as the username and the password that was entered during the creation of the Linode.
Now that you’ve accessed your dashboard, checkout the official Moodle documentation to learn how to further configure your instance.
Software Included
The Moodle Marketplace App installs the following required software on your Linode:
| Software | Description |
|---|---|
| PHP | A popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development. |
| MariaDB Server | A relational database server. The root password is set, locking down access outside the system. To gain access to the root user, obtain the password from /root/.root_mysql_password file. |
| UFW | Firewall utility that allows access only for SSH (port 22, rate limited), HTTP (port 80), and HTTPS (port 443). |
| Certbot | Certbot is a fully-featured, easy-to-use, extensible client for the Let’s Encrypt CA. |
| Apache2 | HTTP Server. |
More Information
You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.
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