Hello all -- I'm volunteering some IT consulting at a small research library in Oaxaca, Mexico, that wishes to use koha. To start the project I'm trying to install a test instance of koha 19.11 on a fresh install of Debian 9, which the documentation suggests is one of the preferred platforms. I've carefully followed the wiki document "Koha on Debian" ( https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_Debian), performing all steps in the order indicated. So far I found one (known but unfixed) documentation bug and applied the workaround -- one needs to add a backports repository -- but this time I'm running up against something that isn't so easy. The problem manifests as the web UI seeming to hang after going through all the configuration screens and clicking on the button to create the database tables. After several minutes of no activity, the brower reports "Gateway Timeout" The gateway did not receive a timely response from the upstream server or application. There are two possible causes that I've been able to see so far: POSSIBILITY 1: There is an indexer problem that occurs even before the point where the web installer is run. The file /var/log/koha/opac (I'm calling my instance "opac") begins to fill up with error messages. The first few are: DBD::mysql::db do failed: Table 'koha_opac.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement " SELECT * FROM systempreferences WHERE 1 = 0 "] at /usr/share/koha/lib/Koha/Database.pm line 114. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_opac.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casauthentication'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1836. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_opac.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='caslogout'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1836. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_opac.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casserverurl'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1836. DBD::mysql::db selectall_arrayref failed: Table 'koha_opac.marc_subfield_structure' doesn't exist [for Statement " SELECT * FROM marc_subfield_structure WHERE frameworkcode = ? AND kohafield > '' ORDER BY frameworkcode,tagfield,tagsubfield "] at /usr/share/koha/lib/C4/Biblio.pm line 1013. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_opac.zebraqueue' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM zebraqueue WHERE done = 0;"] at /usr/share/koha/bin/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl line 324. DBD::mysql::st fetchrow_arrayref failed: fetch() without execute() [for Statement "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM zebraqueue WHERE done = 0;"] at /usr/share/koha/bin/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl line 325. After this, the log continues to grow with the last two lines constantly added over and over. Curiously, though, this seems to stop about the time that the web installer is run. POSSIBILITY 2: The creation of database tables takes so long that the browser or installer times out, or race conditions arise. I watched table creation in another window as the web installer was running. Table creation seemed to go slow (roughly a table every second) even though there was plenty of free memory, free disk space (with low disk activity), and the CPUs were over 95% idle. Table creation stopped at 162 tables, at almost the exact same moment that the browser gave the timeout message, so I'm not sure if that's all the tables or if there are supposed to be more. What's odd here is that the web installer writes a good number of messages to /var/log/koha/opac/intranet-error.log, each saying that one of these database tables do not exist: language_descriptions, language_subtag_registry, or systempreferences. However, all of these tables *do* exist in the database when one examines it later, which suggests a race condition. OTHER INFO: - Virtualization: VirtualBox 5.2.34_Ubuntu r133883, 2 i7 CPUs, pre-allocated fixed disk (32Gb), 2GB RAM - Debian version: 4.9.0-12-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.9.210-1 (2020-01-20) i686 - Koha version: 19.11 - Following: stable - Database: mariadb, on same host as koha - During WebUI installer: - All Perl dependencies installed and OK - All DB settings look reasonable, connection established, and database koha_opac exists and can be accessed Please help! I've spent hours upon hours doing the installation over and over, making sure everything is clean and updated, and all changes and actions are exactly as the documentation requests. I've kept configuration changes to the minimum required by the documentation in order to avoid complications. What do I need to do to get koha installed? --Dwight (Memo)