[Koha] Creating a Z39.50 Target - No connection

[Craig Butosi]

Hi Viv,

In my experience, whenever you cannot telnet to the port that you set in koha-conf.xml, it doesn't necessarily mean that the port is closed (say by a firewall or some such setting), but rather that no service is running on it yet. In other words, your system does not recognize the Z39.50 as "activated". On the two separate occasions where I activated the Z39.50 settings in /etc/koha/sites/<instance>/koha-conf.xml (not koha-conf.xml.in), I had to completely reboot my server. I know the instructions say to restart Zebra by running sudo koha-restart-zebra <instance>, but the reboot was what did it for me. Be sure to save your koha-conf settings as root though! <-- I didn’t do this the first time.

So, what I did was this:

1. As root user, navigate to /etc/koha/sites/<instance>/koha-conf.xml  [Open with nano (or some other editor)]
2. Uncomment the necessary sections of koha-conf.xml
3. Set the <listen id> tag content to the port of your choice (I chose 9999, thus " <listen id="publicserver">tcp:@:9999</listen>"
4. Save your file and exit (Ctrl+O, then Ctrl+X)
5. Restart Zebra: koha-restart-zebra <instance>
6. Check if you can telnet to the port you set: telnet localhost <port #>   (without '<>' of course)
7. If it gives you a "connection refused" error, check koha-conf.xml again.
8. If all is well, then restart Zebra again.
9. If connection refused after telnetting to port for the second time, reboot server.
10. In my case, this is what did it. Everything was up and running. I tested the connection using MarcEdit's ILS integration module.

It's also handy to take a look at your Zebra logs, which should be here: /var/log/koha/library    ;  it is here that you will find clues as to what might be preventing you from connecting.

You know Z39.50 is working when you visit, <url:port/biblios> in my case, library.craigbutosi.ca:9999/biblios  <--you should see an xml file.

The above is what worked for me. I've learned everything on the advice of Robin and others on this list (thank you all by the way! Love this list!). I've also been told to steer clear of changing iptables. There shouldn't be (generally speaking) any reason to have to modify them for the task here.

I hope this little bit helps!

Thoughts anyone?

Best to all,

Craig Butosi, MA, MLIS, B Mus (Hons.)
LIBRARY SERVICES MANAGER
THE ROYAL CONSERVATORY
TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning
273 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M5S 1W2
416.408.2824 x338
www.rcmusic.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: Koha [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of cartoonmagic
Sent: May-01-15 6:30 AM
To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: Re: [Koha] Creating a Z39.50 Target - No connection

Hi Craig and Robin,

I'm very new to Koha and I'm implementing a library on Ubuntu 14.04 and I faced the same problem as you did. Would you be able to help me - how did you actually get them to work please?

I can't telnet to the port I've set. I tried changing the iptables, and I have also tried different ports on the koha-conf.xml, but with no success.
Does it make a difference if I set it on the UDP or TCP port? As I couldn't add it using iptable rules, I've added it in apache2's port. Am I doing something wrong here?

Cheers,
Viv



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