Moodle

Hi Paolo,

I've just attempted to replicate this on 1.9.5 (from CVS) and was unable to.

I created a course, hid it, and then assigned three users to the following roles within the course as follows:

User 1: Teacher
User 2: Teacher and Student
User 3: Student

Users 1 and 2 could then access the course, and user 3 could not.

Did you go through a similar process or is there something else that I need to do in order to replicate this problem?

Cheers
Sam

Hi Paolo,

Just wondering which contexts the two roles were assigned in - are they both assigned in the course context?

PS Discussion about this issue: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=132517

Hi Sam,
Thanks for trying this. Yes I have done something similar, but using Guest instead of Student. In selected instances only user 1 got access. I haven't worked the different conditions are yet.
Hi Helen,
Yes, at course level.
Paolo

Actually its not selected instances its all instances. Sam, could you try the same thing with Guest access

User 1: Teacher
User 2: Teacher and Guest
User 3: Guest

Thanks,
Paolo

I notice now it is my use of the Guest role that is causing the problem.

To explain, some departments have requested access to all Moodle courses in their department. In order to do this I decided to give these "auditors" the Guest role. As a result, sometimes Editing Teachers manually add other users to new roles such as Teacher without removing them from the Guest role, inadvertently creating a user with two roles in the course context.

However, it seems if a user has both a Guest and a Tutor role they are not able to enter the course. Instead they are returned the error message:

This course site is currently unavailable to students

Please note if the user had a Student and a Tutor role they could have entered the site with the correct permissions.

For more information follow Helen's link to the discussion.

Thanks,
Paolo

Assigning this to Petr, I am pretty sure he has something to add here

Paolo, as far as I know, this is unfortunately expected behaviour. If you have two roles in the course and one of them prevents you from something while the other allows you to do it, you can't do it. There is a long ongoing discussion among core developers on whether such behaviour is natural or not. Common access right control systems usually expect that once at least one your role gives you some permission, you should be able to do it. Or, in your case, the Guest role should not have a chance of influencing the other (Teacher) role. Unless you use prohibit, of course.

Yes, this is a known "feature" in 1.9.x - we are discussing possibilities to change this in 2.0dev because it is confusing for many people including myself

At present I would strongly discourage admins from using PREVENT in any role like Guest, registered user or frontpage user.

This should be finally solved in 2.0dev, the changes were fundamental, it is not possible to backport the solution to previous versions.

Thank you for the report.

Petr Skoda