Ratna

Ratna · 2025-05-25T02:43:32+00:00

Nicolas Yeah, the route-metric is 99. (full WifiSTA.rmconnection is quoted).

Now (after a couple of power cycles) I looked at the route:

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    99     0        0 wlan0
0.0.0.0         10.0.0.1        0.0.0.0         UG    600    0        0 uap0
10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     600    0        0 uap0
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     99     0        0 wlan0

So the gateway through uap0 (line 2) is back. The high metric is keeping it inactive.

This is the expected behaviour I suppose. The initial problems were probably due to me touching the configuration unnecessarily. The MB is now ready for production, so I don't want to tinker too much - unless I encounter further hiccups.

[connection]
id=WifiSTA
uuid=715fbcc0-8c78-4f50-91f2-4a955f354262
type=wifi
interface-name=wlan0

[wifi]
mode=infrastructure
ssid=MYSSID

[wifi-security]
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
psk=PASSWORD

[ipv4]
method=auto
route-metric=99

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=default
method=auto

[proxy]

Ratna · 2025-05-24T12:23:11+00:00

Nicolas The new scheme works, but not reliable. Maybe I'm over-caring, not expecting the new "automation". Set it up with nmcli and double checked the WifiSTA.nmconnection. The MB refused to connect to wi-fi. Checked rfkill etc. But then in a later try couple of hours later it connected.

But my laptop connected to the MoodleBox wi-fi didn't have Internet access. Saw that its routing was confused:

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    99     0        0 wlan0
0.0.0.0         10.0.0.1        0.0.0.0         UG    600    0        0 uap0
10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     600    0        0 uap0
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     99     0        0 wlan0

route del -net 0.0.0.0 uap0 corrected it.

Working right now connected to the MoodleBox wi-fi and then another leg through my home-office wi-fi. Not having a good feeling. The positive thing is, the laptop always connect to MoodleBox wi-fi, so I can log in to its shell and iron out what comes. I'm trying to get used to the new networking concept.

Ref. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/nmcli-wifi-on-raspberry-pi-os-12-bookworm

Ratna · 22 May

ralfkrause Who said Debian is conservative? :-(

Well, there is a positive side to it too. I have a set of very old iMacs (2011-13), that function great under Debian. Only thing no wireless drivers at install - from past experience. You need to get the closed-source driver packages and install separately, not user friendly.

That was until Debian 11. The other day I wiped them with Debian 12 and was hugely surprised that the wireless interface was detected and could continue the installation on wireless. It was DebianEdu Bookworm, to be more accurate.

Ratna · 22 May

ralfkrause Thanks, Ralf! You understood my application.

So it is the change from wpa_supplicant to NetWorkManager between Debian 11 and 12 that made my investigation of wpa_supplicant pointless. Unterstood.

But also I wrote "This could be easily done in the 'raspi-config' program in the Raspberry Pi OS." in https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/461-connecting-a-rpi-zero-2-w-bullseye-moodlebox-to-a-wireless-lan-as-well/3 in the same thread. Was that wrong? Or was it correct but now obsolete?

Either way, I will try your method https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/451-connecting-the-moodlebox-to-a-wifi-network/14 next time.

Ratna · 21 May

Hi all

This is about the MB in https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/485-moodlebox-490/2 - a RPi 400, MB 4.9.0.

Last time I did this, https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/461-connecting-a-rpi-zero-2-w-bullseye-moodlebox-to-a-wireless-lan-as-well, but with too much manual interference. This time I open raspi-config and enter the ESSID and WPA passphrase. Bus as soon as I save the values, the MB's access point (ESSID MoodleBox) stops.

I didn't find anything unusual in /etc/wpa_supplicant other than funstions.sh is not executable. It is only a library for the other scripts, I discovered.

Once the MB access point stops, I have to take the RPi through a power cycle. Since the MB is truly headless, once its AP is gone, I am locked out.

Ratna · 18 May

I can confirm that MoodleBox 4.9.0 too can be transferred to the micro-SD the "old fashioned" way:
$ unxz moodlebox-4.9.0.img.xz sudo dd if=moodlebox-4.9.0.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=4M && sync

The "MoodleBox" wi-fi network was immediately available and accepted the connection as documented.

Only glitch was, initially my browser didn't respond to http://moodlebox.hom/. I had to visit http://10.0.0.1/ first. Then it switched.

The Moodle 4.5 LTS arrived at the correct time for a demo the end of month. Thanks, Nicolas!

Ratna · 14 May

Tuga_Dev If you can connect your client device to the wi-fi network of the MoodleBox but http://moodlebox.home/ returns "this site can't be reached" in the browser, then try visiting http://10.0.0.1/.

Ratna · 14 May

Tuga_Dev Can't you see the new wi-fi network name under the available networks list in your device? Then you are locked out!

You need to open a different door to your MoodleBox. Connect both devices to your router/DHCP server with Ethernet cables.

Ratna · 3 Apr

ralfkrause Indeed - there's an image https://github.com/moodlebox/moodlebox/releases/tag/v4.9.0 but no announcement https://moodlebox.net/en/news/version-4.9.0/! A stealth release?

Ratna · 2 Apr

The title says it all:
MoonPiLlama: Moodle + Pi + Ollama (Moodlebox + Ollama)

Ratna · 5 Mar

I know, I should try first. Just asking since I don't have the hardware ready.

How do you send your running MoodleBox as a single file to another person? Is it as simple as making a dd file of the SD card, give it to the other person to be dd'd back to his SD card?

Ratna · 24 Jan

Came across this very accessible, nerdy video on YouTube:
MoodleBox: Moodle on Raspberry Pi

It is a bit long for the taste of the typical (casual) visitor, but well-worth if you want to retain something.

The only downsides are, that it is dated, MoodleBox 3.11.0 (Moodle 3.11, May 2021) and the speaker has overlooked the MoodleBox dashboard. The latter is also a good thing. It shows that the speaker only had a cursory look - and came that far!

Ratna · 22 Jan

Germán Valero I don't know whether Nicolas has two SD card readers. I don't.

The first thing I would try would be something like:
# dd if=/dev/DEVICE1 of=/dev/DEVICE2 bs=4M && sync

What those DEVICE1 and 2 are you will find out by reading '# dmesg' before plugging in the SD cards and then after plugging in each SD card.

Ratna · 22 Jan

Germán Valero That is cute!

Found the device on the manufacturer's homepage: Opal (GL-SFT1200). There is a Specifications section. But the maximum number of wi-fi clients are not listed there. There is this discussion Flint/Flint 2: Maximum number of WiFi clients (per radio)? but the answer was not clear to me. Pl. double-check!

Ratna · 17 Jan

That is exactly the question Jeff Geerling asked in the video linked to the first post. There are sure applications that never have enough RAM, but a Moodle server is not one of them. It is very much CPU and I/O bound. One could exchange the I/O limitations against RAM, but that need quite a bit of system administration - like loading the whole database in to the RAM, putting various temporary directories Moodle need, moodledata/cache/, etc. in to their own RAM disks. For the few really concurrent users one gets in a live class, there won't be any "speed" difference between 8 GB or 16 GB for a RPi 5. The "sweet spot" for RPi 4 should be lower, probably 4 GB is already "too much". These are expectations. One could only be sure after sophisticated benchmarking, like with JMeter. See github.com/moodlehq/moodle-performance-comparison.

Ratna · 11 Jan

In the breakdown (#1-9), the results are in seconds. So lower the better. The final score is all those times added and inverted. So a lower score is better. For sample results and a detailed discussion see [Moodle Benchmark] Why is the result of Test 2 good and that of Test 9 bad?.

P.S. I think this topic is better served in the Hardware and performance forum on moodle.org.

Ratna · 11 Jan

Here is the original Moodle Benchmark thread [Moodle BenchMark] Need Beta-tester.

What is the size of the (synchronous) class you run on RPi 5? You know that MoodleBox runs perfectly smoothly on a R Pi Zero 2 W for a handful of synchronous users?

How big is the demand on Geomaxima and STACK backends? Any monitoring (load graphs)?

Ratna · Dec 16, 2024

Christof I assume you are talking about a USB printer (or a parallel printer). If yours is a network printer, then it carries its own "printserver". ;-)

What is the model of the printer?

Ratna · Dec 12, 2024

marcus I had a RPi 400 and tested with the MoodleBox. It ran perfectly and had very good performance - Pi 400 is a Pi 4. And no cooling problems due to the big case. But the additional peripheries, keyboard, trackpad, etc. are of no use for the MoodleBox, which is designed as a (headless) server.

Ratna · Dec 2, 2024

Here's an inspiring presentation about Moodle in extremely inaccessible locations, Melanesian Islands!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq597db8ggw