Error site is being upgraded please retry later

Moodle 2.3 was released on Tuesday (release notes).
I updated my college’s Moodle from 2.2.3 to Moodle 2.3 last night. The upgrade took 21 minutes.
I encountered a few problems during the upgrade so thought I’d post these here.

In making the move to Moodle 2, we decided to create a fresh install, then import courses and resources from 1.9 to our fresh 2.2 install. Two temporary virtual servers were created for our fresh install.

Our Server Setup

Moodle code and MoodleData server

• Windows Server 2008 Standard (SP1) (64-bit)
• (2x) 2.4 GHz Intel Processors
• 4 GB RAM
• IIS7
• PHP 5.4 (x86) (Non thread safe, PHP via FastCGI)

Database server

• Windows Server 2008 Standard (SP1) (64-bit)
• (2x) 2.4 GHz Intel Processors
• 4 GB RAM
• MySQL 5.5.23 (InnoDB table engine used)

Problem 1

Getting MOODLE_23_STABLE into our forked copy of Moodle
Having forked Moodle in April 2012 our copy did not contain the latest MOODLE_23_STABLE branch so I had to get this branch from upstream.

I used the following Git commands to do grab MOODLE_23_STABLE:

# get MOODLE_23_STABLE branch and other changes
git fetch upstream

# create a new branch that tracks MOODLE_23_STABLE from the official Moodle repository
git checkout -b MOODLE_23_STABLE upstream/MOODLE_23_STABLE

# The -u switch sets up tracking to the specified remote: our copy of moodle, 'origin'
git push -u origin MOODLE_23_STABLE

# switch to the latest stable branch
git checkout MOODLE_23_STABLE

# pull down the latest changes locally
git pull MOODLE_23_STABLE

I now had the latest stable version of Moodle on our server so could continue with the upgrade.

Following Instructions

I followed the guide to upgrading to Moodle 2.3: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.3

System Requirements
I checked the system requirements for Moodle 2.3 and saw that we met them.

Maintenance Mode
I put our Moodle 2.23 into maintenance mode so only the administrator could work on the site.
I then went into IIS7 Server Manager and stopped the server. I wanted to make sure no changes would be made to the Moodle database or MoodleData.

Disabled The Cron Scheduled Task

Backup!
I backed up our:

• Database
• MoodleData folder (98 GB)
• Moodle files (2.23) (checked out conel-MOODLE_22_STABLE using Git and copied the contents)

I used MySQL Workbench to backup our Moodle database. I used the ‘Export to Dump Project Folder’ option. This saves each table into a separate file, allowing a selective restore. You can still import all tables at the same time by selecting the folder these are stored in.
I copied MoodleData and the core moodle files using Windows Explorer, renaming them moodle22_backup, moodle22_DBbackup, moodle22_MoodleData.

It took 1.5 hours to copy our 98 GB of MoodleData.

While it was copying I read the Moodle installation problems forum to get an idea of common upgrade problems I might face. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=28

When MoodleData had finished copying and I was confident I could restore to 2.2 if anything went wrong with the upgrade, I started the server and browsed to the admin page.

It detected the new Moodle 2.3 version and went through the requirements check – OK.
The next page listed the updates that were to be made. There was a useful button which checked for any updates to blocks and modules. It’s recommended that before upgrading, you have the latest versions of blocks and modules. I updated one block that had updates and pressed next to start the upgrade.

Time Your Upgrade
It’s a good idea to time your upgrade. I started my timer. After five minutes I experienced a server timeout error.

Problem 2

Server timeouts
My first and second attempt to upgrade Moodle failed after 5 minutes. This suggested to me that I needed to increase timeout settings on our server.
I updated PHP’s maximum execution time to be 3600 seconds (1 hour). Not knowing how long upgrades took, I thought this would be fine. I restarted the server.

Not knowing if the Moodle upgrade would continue where it left off, I refreshed Moodle and saw a message saying, “Site is being upgraded, please retry later”.
Knowing I’d restarted the server already so killed any PHP processes running during the upgrade I restored the database to its previous 2.23 state. I then retried the upgrade.

My second attempt at upgrading failed with the same 500 Internal Server Error message. I realised then that I had not changed FastCGI’s timeout settings.
In FastCGI settings I changed: Activity Timeout, Idle Timout and Request Timeout to 3600 seconds (1 hour). I restored the database to its previous 2.23 state again. I didn’t restore MoodleData. I restarted the server.

My third attempt was successful!
It took 21 minutes to upgrade.

Moodle then displayed lots of updated plugin settings. I left most as their defaults and continued. I then took Moodle out of maintenance mode and had a quick play with the new file enhancements. They’re great!

A big thanks to all the developers who contributed to this fine release!

Installing and upgrading help

How to recover from «Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

How to recover from «Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

In the course of upgrading from 3.10+ to 3.11, after reviewing the list of plugins to be upgraded or installed and giving the go-ahead, I got a «coding error» message, with no indication at all of where that error might be. Then, any attempt to do anything in the browser gives the message: «Error. Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

Is there an elegant way to recover from the state in which my system is, or do I have to restore backups and start from scratch again?

And if I do restore backups, is there any way to capture more details about what that coding error might be?

Re: How to recover from «Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

If you enable debugging in config.php hopefully the coding error will include more detail which will help troubleshoot that problem.

Whether the upgrade is then recoverable or you need to restore from backups is hard to say without knowing what the problem was. I think restoring from a recent database backup of the 3.10+ site would make sense. Then hopefully the coding error will occur again but with details and can be fixed. Then restore the 3.10+ database again and proceed with the upgrade.

Not much help now but for next time: 1) take a database backup immediately before a major version upgrade like this, and 2) if possible test the upgrade process on a test site to ensure there are no problems on the production site.

Re: How to recover from «Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

Thank you, Leon, for this feedback. The issue I have encountered is indeed in a test environment, one virtually identical to the prod env. One of the differences is that debugging is already enabled in config.php, but this had no apparent influence on the error message displayed. Nor was the message in the web server error log.

Re: How to recover from «Site is being upgraded, please retry later.»

So did you manage to complete the upgrade, or are you still getting the coding error message? If you’re still getting the message can you share a screenshot? It might help us understand what’s happening.

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Installing and upgrading help

«Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

«Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Hello. I have an issue installing a new moodle system onto my domain.

I’d like to point out that I already have an existing moodle system, so I need to install a new moodle system for a separate LMS project.

I am installing Moodle through cpanel, and I edited my «config_dist.php» with its database and config settings.

I made sure that the webserver is correct, as well as the database settings and privileges, as well as the dataroot settings.

I also renamed it to «config.php» and had to re-run the installation using my webserver.

But when I tried continuing the installation, it stops after it checks for php_extensions settings. All of them seem to have an «OK» status, so I continued. After 2-3 minutes, I am directed to a plugin check which later, gives me the page with the text «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

I am trying to follow the installation guide in this community, and have tried multiple times on installing moodle. Is there something I am doing wrong? I hope to hear some solutions and support. Thank you!

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Yes, my video starts by assuming that your server meets all Moodles requirements.

One way to check your php settings, quickly, is to put this file (below) on your server and then go to it, as in https://mydomain.com/info.php. Compare your results to Moodle’s requirements.

From my own notes (and probably in the Moodle docs, somewhere) I have:
PHP Extensions Added: turn on curl, fileinfo, gd, iconv, intl, mbstring, mysqlnd, opcache.s, soap, xmlrpc, zip
If these extensions are missing from the results of info.php, you have to figure out how to turn these on.

Also, verify that your version of mySQL meets Moodle’s requirements.

It is recommended to remove info.php after you are done with it.

(Ken, am I close on my advice? Yes, another vote for my video «How to verify that your server meets Moodle’s requirements.»)

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Clue might be in what OP said . ‘only to return a timeout, thus stopping the table-making process’.

While phpinfo page shows settings, for a beginner, that’s kinda intimidating so how about mentioning ‘key’ settings. If ‘timeout’ is the hint, how does one focus on ‘timeouts’ while viewing phpinfo?

As moodle moves forward in versions and requires new versions of PHP and MySQL/MariaDB, think you’ll be creating more videos for cPanel. Might be a full time job! (IMHO!)

 Twitch speed — yes, you now have buttons and labels for steps on the control bar at bottom of video. Is there available a ‘text based’ version of directions?

Are there are sub-steps? Yes. Many.

What were the red info boxes? Would those ‘red boxes’ cause a ‘panic’?

If OP followed the video . how does one ‘fix’ the issue as OP reported in subject line of posting?

«Site is being upgraded. Please try again later«

Questions not for discussion . but ‘food for thought’.

Better yet, maybe you could get the OP to review/comment in detail!

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Yes, that phpinfo results look overwhelming. Quite honestly, when I was brand new to moodle (running Moodle on a hosted server) I was faced with the problem of knowing which php extensions I was missing. Although the output of info.php was overwhelming, each section had a title, and it is also alphabetically sorted. Maybe there were easier ways to figure this out, but I was too ignorant back then.

No, info.php does not show timeouts. That requires one to get into the php.ini file, another task that can be overwhelming to a beginner.

Yes, more videos making it a full-time job (that probably pays $8-$10/hr, instead of $100-$200/hr.)

Yes, there is a text-based version of directions. Turn captions on! Also, if you click on the Share button, you will see a URL that takes you to the Vimeo site to see this video. On that site, one can download the captions to a text file.

I can add or remove any of the sub-steps. Actually, by having «chapter» marks, it is easier to say, for example, «View Rick’s video where he shows making a cron entry.» This «chapter» feature was just introduced into Vimeo earlier this year, and I think that it is pretty cool, because I don’t have to create a SCORM or H5P video to use chapter markers.

I am not sure what you mean by «red info boxes.» Can you give me the timestamp in the video?

No, the OP cannot follow my video to fix their issue. The fix seems to be in my unmade video «How to make sure your server meets Moodle’s requirements.»

Yes, the OP, or anyone else can comment. I certainly do appreciate your comments, too, Ken. Your comments are always great! Thanks much.

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

 PHPInfo seen in Moodle — Site Admin — Server — PHPinfo
Timeouts Connection: 60 — Keep-Alive: 5
In Core section ..
max_execution_time
max_input_time
So there are some related . there are others.

In code think install routine does attempt to grab more memory cause it is a heavy process.

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Ken, over lunch I was thinking about your comment about making videos as a full-time job.

Actually, making videos is part of my full-time job. My full-time job is that I am an online instructor, and I am always making and re-making videos for my students. In each of my courses, I have approximately 50 20-minute long videos that I have made, and manage. So I guess that I am getting paid for video making.

However, if video-making were someday paying more than teaching, I would easily switch. 😀 💲

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

We’re jabber walking again! Ok . I’ll go with the flow . OP you’d better jump back in here and keep the conversation about solving your issue!

I can believe the videos took that long.

Your ‘story’ is pretty close but one would be surprised.

‘Consulting’ . depends upon how one defines . exchange of info via EMail is consulting . when one actually logs on to the server and does ‘work’, that’s another level. In either case, yes, one is paying for expertise . in knowing and/or doing.

One of these days you need to try git . I have a 4K (actually smaller) that:

2. puts site in maintenance mode

3. makes full site backup — backup files are date/time stamped with versions in the filenames.

4. acquires core code update or upgrade if git lines are changed

5. performs the update or upgrade

6. if desired a minimal code and db dump backup for new update or upgrade at the end

7. checks/sets ownerships/permissions on code files/sub-directories

9. takes site out of maintenance mode.

Web service never in the loop of any of it.

To do above and update or upgrade core . a matter of minutes and there is no prep time.

Uhhh . no don’t think I’ll make a boring video of watching a bash shell script run.

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Yes, jabber walking. But perhaps the OP will see how this goes.

I have done GIT, with success. But it’s all those darn plugins that become troublesome. At what point in your steps above do you take care of plugins?

In my method, it is step 4 where I do the plugins. The rest of the steps I have shell scripts. So my actual upgrade is something like:

sh 1*, sh 2*, sh 3*, then manual 4, 5 (backups) already happened, 6 (maintenance mode) I seldom do, sh 7*, sh 8*, sh 9*. I am done. Yep, a bit boring.

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Really . you’ve done git, but the plugins hang you up.

I let moodle do the plugins. Have found that plugin authors are on their own schedule/calendar so an update might not be ready for when I pull the trigger on core point releases. Also noticed that if one doesn’t do core updates that plugins seem to be slightly ahead of core . but sill compat.

So how many .sh scripts do you have? 9? — one per plugin? . and those plugins don’t have ‘latest’ file names, do they? So each has to be checked and changed to get the plugin zip needed.

Total prep time increased.

Let’s see . 9 .sh vs 1. Guess I’m just too simplistic! 😉

Re: «Site is being upgraded. Please try again later.»

Yep, have done GIT. My shell script, below, is a little old, but it is what I once developed.

So let me see if I understand. You will always upgrade your Moodle first via GIT, then you go into your Moodle and then manually check to see if any plugins need to be upgraded? Have you automated your plugin checks?

Things are always changing, and it has been two years since I dabbled with GIT. Maybe the plugin issues are now under control.

Yes, I have 9 scripts that mirror exactly what I show in my Upgrading Moodle video. I’ll provide a screenshot of my moodletmp folder. Sure, I could combine some of these, but I am a cautious kind of person and would rather do things step by step. I am going to give you my «0» text file, (could be slightly out of date) that describes which steps someone should do for an install, an update, and a migrate.

Every time I upgrade, I manually download the latest version of the plugin. I do not have any script to get, or GIT the plugins. By manually download each plugin (I have I can verify that the versions are correct for my version of Moodle. For example, somewhere along the way, because of the theme changes (maybe Moodle 3.7 or 3.8), it took me a while to fix things. Gareth had already posted a newer Collapsed Topics, but I couldn’t use that version until I got 3.8 working. So had I automated getting the latest plugin, I would have had the wrong one. (Hope this makes sense.)

The other subtle thing that I do is to manually install plugins, as I showed in both my Install and Upgrade videos. Only on my sandbox Moodle will I install a plugin via Moodle (Admin, Plugins, Install) method. But this is experimentation. I don’t do this on my production Moodle. I always manually install.

So, if I wanted to, I would combine my steps 1 to 3 into one shell script. Then do step 4 manually. Then combine steps 5 to 9 into one shell script.

If I am reading you correctly, I think you are saying that since plugin versions change, and their names change, one cannot write a command-line statement to assure that you have the latest plugin. Right? An example would be something like:

wget https: //moodle.org/plugins/download.php/21001/mod_hvp_moodle38_2020020500.zip (an absolute name),

wget https: //moodle.org/plugins/download.php/21001/mod_hvp_moodle_latest.zip (a relative name would be preferred.)

Overall, my goal was to have an easy and consistent way to upgrade. Keep Moodle downtime minimal (yes, under 3 minutes), and be able to «restore» if anything went wrong.

Well, now you know how I would do an upgrade using only cPanel. My real method, however, is via these shell scripts. Much easier. Yes, another video is needed «How to make installing and upgrading Moodle easier using FTP and SSH.«

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Installing and upgrading help

Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

I have made a copy of my production site to test a Moodle upgrade to 2.2. The old site is running on 1.9.17. I have set off the update as i usually do. I get the to plugin check page and then press upgrade at the bottom. The page then takes ages to load and then eventually i get an error «Site is being upgraded, please retry later»

We host Moodle on our own IIS 7.5 server.

Any thoughts please?

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

I had the same issue when upgrading my site. I left it for a few hours and when I next loaded it up it worked. Try that and try going to the admin page. For me the upgrade carried on and finished.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Thanks for the reply, when i go back to the admin page a few hours after the update wizzard just starts from the begging.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Mine seemed to pickup at a later stage and simply carry on. Have you let it run through and does it do the same thing again?

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

I wish it would do that. Mine just keeping going back to the start. Upgrading (well trying) to Moodle 2 has given us real issue.

Any ideas please?

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

You may want to consider an incremental upgrade, meaning upgrade your 1.9.X site to 2.0 first and then to 2.2. The file structure and code for 2.2 is vastly different than 1.9. You can go to http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.0 for info on upgrading to 2.0 and http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.2 for info on upgrading to 2.2.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Sorry about the long reply. I tried to upgrade to 2.0 first but it still timed out. Any thoughts please?

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

I had the same issues with my 1.9.19 -> 2.2.3 upgrade (and many others). I ended up setting my php maxecution_time (ph.ini) param to 14400 as well as my fastcgi timeout (IIS) to the same value as well. I then upgraded to 2.0.10 instead of 2.2.3 and got a sql error. I ran the query by had on the sql box and started the 2.2.3 upgrade again. Its been running now for almost two hours and no timeout. I’ll let you know what I get from it (good or bad).

What is your environment (linux/windows, apache/IIS, etc)?

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Changing my PHP timeout setting fixed the issue for me. I switched the to 14400 like you did and rerun the install script.

This Moodle is a buggy lucker with an f instead. But she works.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Turns out that incrementally updating (1.9.7 -> 1.9.19 -> 2.0.10 -> 2.1.7 -> 2.2.4) was the only way that it worked for me. I’m still having issues with broken images/links EVERYWHERE in my courses post upgrade.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

If I read this correctly, you backgraded from 1.9.7 to 1.9.19 then went to 2.0??

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

No. Moodle version increments like 1.9.8 -> 1.9.9 -> 1.9.10 -> 1.9.11 -> . -> 1.9.19. So version 1.9.19 is greater/newer than 1.9.7

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Also Zak, what browser are you using? I always used IE, but I recently I’ve noticed that I get better visual output via chrome and firefox. Seems silly, but if you are using IE and haven’t tried a different browser, give it a shot.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Just finished this morning with the last incremental upgrade and it was a success.

Lessons I’ve learned:

1. If on 1.9.x first update to the latest 1.9 version (1.9.19)

2. Upgrade incrementally (even though you are supposed to be able to jump from 1.9.x to 2.2.x) Go through 2.0.x and 2.1.x first.

This stuff might not help you but it was what I needed to finally get it all to work so if you are having issues, try it.

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

If you are using a browser to do the upgrade then it really depends on how large and complex your site is. Some browsers just choke after being open for hours.

Most sites should be fine to go straight from 1.9.x -> 2.2.x but for larger sites we really recommend you use the command line upgrade. http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Administration_via_command_line#Upgrading_via_command_line

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Our site wasn’t too big. 140ish courses, 2 Gb db, nothing really special or diferent going on. Also, I’m on a windows machine running IIS, and ms sql off box. Out of curiousity, wWould that same command line sequence have worked in my enviornment? Specifically the part about executing the upgrade.php? (I realize that most of the other lines would not have worked. )

Re: Site is being upgraded, please retry later. — While Updating

Martin, everything I read lead me to believe that you could only upgrade via the prompt after 2.0. Is this not true? I would love to try to upgrade from the prompt but my problem is getting to 2.0

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