Moodle

Occasional Partial Content Delivery - Page stops half way through loading - Abrupt cutoff in HTML code

Details

  • Type: Bug Bug
  • Status: Closed Closed
  • Priority: Major Major
  • Resolution: Not a bug
  • Affects Version/s: 1.9.2
  • Fix Version/s: None
  • Component/s: Quiz, SCORM, Unknown
  • Labels:
    None
  • Environment:
    Windows 2003 Server running IIS, MySQL 5.0.45 and PHP 5.2.5. Internet Explorer 7 is used on the client side in most cases.
  • Database:
    MySQL
  • URL:
    N/A
  • Affected Branches:
    MOODLE_19_STABLE

Description

We have an occasional problem where all of the HTML content does not get delivered, the page is rendered incompletely. The most recent instance was during a 50 question quiz, one student's page stopped at 41. When viewing source the page just stopped in the middle of the HTLM.

All of the other times we've seen this issue it's been with SCORM content where file.php seemed not to deliver the entire page. Again with viewing source it just stops abruptly in the middle of an HTML tag.

It's hard to track or pin down as most of the time it works fine. I've view over 100 pages without any issue and others have not been so lucky.

We thought we had solved this with upgrading from 1.8.6 to 1.9.2, but it has been brought to our attention again.

This is my first post and I couldn't find anything like this when searching the Moodle tracker. I'm stumped any assistance would be appreciated.

Activity

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Tim Hunt added a comment -

This is probably PHP hitting one of its limits, either memory, or more likely execution time. See, for example http://au2.php.net/manual/en/info.configuration.php#ini.max-execution-time.

If you turn on debugging (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Debugging), you should see an error message at the point where the page it truncated.

So this is not really a Moodle bug, as such. More a bad interaction between how you are using Moodle, and your server configuration. (For example, 50 question quiz, all questions on one page, is not really recommended.)

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Tim Hunt added a comment - This is probably PHP hitting one of its limits, either memory, or more likely execution time. See, for example http://au2.php.net/manual/en/info.configuration.php#ini.max-execution-time. If you turn on debugging (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Debugging), you should see an error message at the point where the page it truncated. So this is not really a Moodle bug, as such. More a bad interaction between how you are using Moodle, and your server configuration. (For example, 50 question quiz, all questions on one page, is not really recommended.)
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Greg Johnston added a comment -

I can see how this might be a PHP issue and thank you for the link and comment. We've changed a couple of settings and will have to wait and see if that fixes the issue.

Debugging is not a good option for us as we cannot trigger the problem. It has only happened to me a couple of times over months of casual use. Unfortunately it also happens to our students too.

The quiz was only one example, the others have occurred with SCORM pages which deliver rich media. I can't see why having 50 questions on a single page would not be recommended. It seems like a simple enough thing to handle.

Show
Greg Johnston added a comment - I can see how this might be a PHP issue and thank you for the link and comment. We've changed a couple of settings and will have to wait and see if that fixes the issue. Debugging is not a good option for us as we cannot trigger the problem. It has only happened to me a couple of times over months of casual use. Unfortunately it also happens to our students too. The quiz was only one example, the others have occurred with SCORM pages which deliver rich media. I can't see why having 50 questions on a single page would not be recommended. It seems like a simple enough thing to handle.
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Dan Marsden added a comment -

one reason to split up the quiz into smaller numbers of questions per page - when the user goes to the "next" page - all the previous answers are saved, but if all the questions are on the same page, a user could have answered 20-30 and then a power failure/computer failure/server failure could occur, and they would lose the response for all questions they had answered already. There several other reasons to split them up - incluiding improving the usability of the quiz - not requiring large amounts of scrolling etc.

Show
Dan Marsden added a comment - one reason to split up the quiz into smaller numbers of questions per page - when the user goes to the "next" page - all the previous answers are saved, but if all the questions are on the same page, a user could have answered 20-30 and then a power failure/computer failure/server failure could occur, and they would lose the response for all questions they had answered already. There several other reasons to split them up - incluiding improving the usability of the quiz - not requiring large amounts of scrolling etc.

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Dates

  • Created:
    Updated:
    Resolved:
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