Debian isn't my cup of tea, but I'll try to answer your other questions:<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Mahesh T. Pai <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:paivakil@gmail.com">paivakil@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">First, I am not subscribed, So any questions should be cc'ed to<br>
me. And apologies for cross posting - I cannot figure out which list<br>
this should be sent to.<br>
<br>
I got the system at around 6 PM last Saturday, and finished the job<br>
today (11th) morning - around 11 AM. OS install + Koha configuration<br>
took a mere 5 days. The OS installation was a battle, which ended only<br>
on Tuesday morning. I will not bother the list with details. Suffice<br>
it to say that the fault certainly was not Debian's. My ISP was<br>
corrupting the .iso files I was downloading. :-( The OS was Debian<br>
Sid/Unstable amd64 on a Intel D processor. That is all I needed to<br>
know about the hardware. Pristine install using debootstrap, and other<br>
packages added after rebooting from that install.<br>
<br>
Koha debian packages came from <a href="http://git.debian.org" target="_blank">git.debian.org</a>, (see the comments on<br>
<a href="http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2008/08/05/koha-3-packaging/" target="_blank">http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2008/08/05/koha-3-packaging/</a>)<br>
<br>
"deb <a href="http://apt.workbuffer.org/" target="_blank">http://apt.workbuffer.org/</a> intrepid all"<br>
<br>
Is the line I had to add to /etc/apt/sources.lst.<br>
<br>
<br>
The packaging was buggy, but they got the dependencies right. Every<br>
dependency was fixed properly.<br>
<br>
The .debs failed to create sub directories under /etc/koha/ - a<br>
serious problem. I had to create the directories manually, and then do a<br>
"dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archive/koha-<whatever>.deb" manually.<br>
<br>
Easy, eh?? It took me 3 days to sort out problems reaching the koha<br>
web-install page.<br>
<br>
I had the following lines in /etc/hosts<br>
<br>
<a href="http://127.0.0.1" target="_blank">127.0.0.1</a> localhost library<br>
<a href="http://127.0.0.2" target="_blank">127.0.0.2</a> librarian.koha<br>
<a href="http://127.0.0.3" target="_blank">127.0.0.3</a> catalog.koha.<br>
<br>
"Catalog" is easier to remember than "OPAC", right?<br>
<br>
Since it was intended to be a stand alone system, I was tempted to<br>
leave out port 8080 part in apache2 configuration, but decided that<br>
the people who use it (there is a strong community of librarians here<br>
who are well aware of koha) may get confused with absence of 8080 in<br>
the URL.<br>
<br>
All the problems have been already reported on this (or -devel) lists,<br>
and googling was quick to give answers. But that it took 3 days means<br>
there were several problems.<br>
<br>
First was failure of the install scripts to put the table's names,<br>
user name, and password into the /etc/koha/koha-config.xml file.<br>
<br>
And there is some directive in koha-config.xml which put the "method<br>
to access the database as "sql". It ought to have been "mysql". Once<br>
this was sorted out, the catalog page would load, saying that the<br>
server is down for maintenance. But the web install refused to come<br>
up, complaining of some fatal error.<br>
<br>
This meant I had to manually install CGI::session from the tarball on<br>
cpan, as already mentioned in one of the lists. CGI::session I<br>
manually installed was same as the version in Debian. Guess this<br>
should go int INSTALL.debian file. Except the database configuration,<br>
I guess everything else in that file could be handled by debian<br>
installer, IMHO.<br>
<br>
Rounded off the install with a simple index page in /var/www/ with<br>
links to <a href="http://librarian.koha:8080" target="_blank">http://librarian.koha:8080</a> and <a href="http://catalog.koha" target="_blank">http://catalog.koha</a>.<br>
<br>
Further problems with the debian packages (snd some with koha itself). </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
<br>
1. Cid not create the cron jobs. (I did not realise it, till after I<br>
handed over the system. What are the consequences?)</blockquote><div><br>That depends. Most of the cronjobs have to do with notices and billing (updating fines, setting items as lost, etc). If this isn't a requirement, then you won't have problems.<br>
There is one, however, that updates the Zebra search index, that you'll want (rebuild-zebra.pl) regardless.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
2. I guess Debian packages does not create the appropriate files in<br>
/etc/init.d/ for the idzebra daemon. The koha-zebraqueue--ctl.sh is<br>
invoking the "daemon" binary, but debian uses start-stop-daemon<br>
binary. Hope things will run. I installed koha-idzebra-server package;<br>
not the koha-basic one.<br>
<br>
The work around was to NOT specify to use zebra for indexing.</blockquote><div><br>Are you still using this workaround? NoZebra searches are very slow, and not as precise as Zebra is.<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
3. What is the difference between marc21 and unimarc? Librarians would<br>
know it; but not poor souls like me, who would be doing the software<br>
installation. A description of both in the web installer would help; I<br>
chose marc21.<br></blockquote><div> <br>In short: MARC21 is used in Canada/US and UNIMARC is used in Europe. There's many other small variants, but that's the basic story (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards#MARC_variants">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards#MARC_variants</a> for more info)<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
4. What happens if I abort the webinstaller? Some clues on the web<br>
installer pages would be nice.</blockquote><div><br>That depends what step you abort it at; if you stop too early, none of the database tables will be created at all. Stopping it later "merely" means you'll have to enter in things like system preferences and marc frameworks by hand (though you can put them in later using the files in installer/data/mysql/en/).<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">BTW, I did this free as in "free beer" for a friend of mine, at a law<br>
school with a mere 5K volumes. ;-) And I will write about the OS<br>
install elsewhere.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
--<br>
Mahesh T. Pai || <a href="http://paivakil.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://paivakil.blogspot.com</a><br>
REVOLUTION, n. An abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.<br>
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</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Jesse Weaver<br>Software Developer, LibLime<br>