Today I tested the performance of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with the MoodleBox 4.0.0 software.
It was easy to get the image for my Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W ... you need to load the latest MoodleBox 4.0.0 because the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W needs the 2021-10-30-raspios-bullseye-armhf.zip software and does not work with an earlier version.
After you copied the image to a microSD card you will be ready to start the MoodleBox on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. In this case the MoodleBox will not be connected with the internet.
If you want get an internet connection then you should add two file to the microSD card.
Insert back the card into your computer again. To allow ssh with the Raspberry Pi you create an empty file /boot/ssh. And then you copy the file /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf from https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/275-feedback-about-moodlebox-400/5
The content of the file /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf is the following:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=CH
network={
scan_ssid=1
ssid="<Name of your wireless LAN>"
psk="<Password for your wireless LAN>"
proto=RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP
auth_alg=OPEN
}
Edit this file for your own settings. The country code should be the real code for the country where the MoodleBox should work. The ssid is the name of the wifi which you want to connect. And the psk is the password of this wifi. All characters of the name and the password are readable in this file. Yes, you should not delete the quotes.
Then you put the sd card into the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and connect the USB power. The MoodleBox starts on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W but it's very slow. The first start took a few minutes. The MoodleBox wifi comes up and you can connect your device.
Open your browser and go to http://moodlebox.home. Log in with the user moodlebox and the password Moodlebox4$. You can create courses with content and you can add users. I think that you can use the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W to load some single files or text pages. I tried to get a page from the internet but I could not get any. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is too slow and I only got timeouts.
I opened the MoodleBox dashboard to see if the MoodleBox is connected to the internet. Ethernet is not connected ... okay, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W has no ethernet connector. Then I noticed that the system time was correct and this must be loaded from the internet.
In the next step I connected to the ssh terminal. I opened the folder /var/www/moodle and tried the moodle update via git pull. Yes, it works. The download of the Moodle update loaded very slow but the internet connection via the second wifi is connected and working. I opened the browser again to finish the update ... and again it took a long time. I got the version Moodle 3.11.4+ (20211207).
The system notifications told me to update the MoodleBox plugin. Okay, a new test for the internet connection. Yes, the plugin updated up to 2.11.1 (2021120100). The MoodleBox needed to be updated. The reboot took really long.
I opened the Moodle plugin again to change the wifi name to MoodleBox-Zero2W. And it also worked.
My last test was to import a course from another Moodle plattform. I wanted to get the complete course. The backup file has 120 mb. I had to upload this course via sftp or usb disk https://moodlebox.net/en/help/using-files-with-the-moodlebox/ because the maximal file size in the web interface is 50 mb. The upload from the file repository needed more than 4 minutes and the course restore needed 10 minutes. While the process I thought that the course restore was broken but at the end the course was okay.
In the course are some text pages, a lot of pictures, a film (63 mb), a book (30 chapters), a few pdf files (one with more than 25 mb) and some links. All offline content works fine but the links to the internet get timeouts. To see the course please look at https://machmitnetz.de/course/view.php?id=182.
