[Koha] FAQ (final?)

[Simon Blake]

Hi Julian

On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 08:19:31AM +1300, Julian Davison said:
> Simon Blake wrote:
> [snip]
> > We had the Athlon because the server before that (a K6 400) ran the
> > database *and* about six copies of Netscape 4.77 for linux (for the
> > diskless opacs).  Every so often, Netscape would go nova, stealing all
> > available RAM and CPU, which rendered the K6/400 fairly insensible.  So
> > we split the tasks, and put Koha on the Athlon - however, Koha did run
> > fine on a K6/400 with 384Mb of RAM, when Netscape wasn't being a
> > resource hog.
> 
> What're the diskless opacs, if I may enquire? :)
> PCs running linux and X to get Netscape?

They're the diskless 16Mb 486SX's with Novell boot roms that ran the
DOS-based opac for the old system.  Basically, I run a little
mini-netware server on one of the linux boxes, enough to talk IPX to the
netware ROMS and get the diskless clients into DOS, whereupon they run
loadlin, boot an nfsroot linux kernel, and run XDM for the opacs to
login.  

It was done this way because the 486's didn't have enough power to run a
browser locally, nor were they anything like Y2K compiliant (I believe
their native times bounce around between 1974 and 2048, depending on the
BIOS release :-).  So it was either use them as xterms, or junk them.

It all works pretty well, except for the problems with Netscape
going troppo occasionally, and also that I haven't tied down netscape
particularly tightly, so occasionally the kids set the foreground and
background colours the same :-(.  At some stage in the medium future,
we'll try putting mozilla on instead, and using the opacs to grant
Internet access as well, but that's another story.

Cheers
Si

-- 
Simon Blake                                             simon at katipo.co.nz 
Katipo Communications                                       +64 21 402 004