Thank you for your ideas!
> "If you are expecting the 1.9.x backups with users to come in cleanly to your 3.4.x, not sure that's possible. "
I just want to import Moodle v1.9 course content, without users.
> "The files in the restored 3.4 course will be under 'Legacy' and not the
'typical' file system and once in Legacy it will be in Legacy for ever. "
That's bad news. However I can not force teachers to recreate their courses.
>"Plus, if there were any addons (mods/blocks) in the 1.9 courses that do
NOT have a compatible version for 3.4, those also won't restore ...
matter of fact, those might actually stop a restore dead cold in it's
tracks."
I'm PHP developer, I will solve incompatibility problems, I hope
> "Getting 1.9.x backups to an area that 3.4 site see isn't a problem ..."
This is good news
> "in the 3.4.x moodle, setup a file system repository. Then, In the data
directory for 3.4.x, cd moodle34data/repository ... at this point you
have options ... you could create a symlink per teacher's 1.9.x backup directory from the 3.4.x repository or just one for all teachers to navigate. OR
you could copy all the moodle19data/##/backup/backup.zip files (where
## is the course ID for the teachers courses) to the 3.4's moodle34data/repository/19courses/ directory."
Well, per teacher solution is not good. I'd rather copy or symlink a Moodle v1.9 backup file of a course to a backup area of Moodle v3.4, so any teacher of the course could see and import it.
Anyway I'm shocked, that if a data is available in Moodle v1.9 backup file, can not restored, imported, processed in Moodle v3.x correctly, without data loss. Backward compatibility should be a basic thing, which is not kept in this case of Moodle. IMO, this is just a lack of feature, which was not implemented into the import/restore process, as it should...
Thanks for the ideas, I will test how can I solve it the in the most practical way.