[Koha] koha 2.0.0pre4 is out

[Tim Bell]

Hi,

We're currently experiencing a number of problems with our existing
library system, and switching to Koha is a possibility I'd like to
explore.  We're nowhere near making a decision on this yet, but I
thought it would be useful for me (as the system administrator) to try
installing Koha and see how it went.

I encountered a number of problems along the way, and I thought it might
be productive to mention them here.  Some problems were undoubtably due
to operator error or not reading the documentation properly, but some
may be bugs which need to be addressed.

Now, onto my "problems".

My first problem was that I started installing 2.0.0pre4 using the
instructions from quick-start.html, which I only later realised was for
an earlier released version.  (It would be helpful to have the versions
which documentation applies to clearly indicated near the start of the
documents.)

Having thrown out my first attempt, I then tried again using
installer.pl, which was much more successful, and I didn't encounter any
major difficulties.  (By the way, I'm installing onto a Debian system.)

I did however encounter problems finding the documentation.  Having
unpacked koha-2.0.0pre4.tar.gz, I found the "docs" directory was empty.
However, in intranet-cgi, I found (alongside a vast array of other
files and directories which don't seem to me to belong there) a "doc"
directory with some useful documents.

I then tried to import a MARC record using the import/breeding.pl page.
This yielded this error in koha-error_log:

  DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Column 'z3950random' cannot be null at
  /home/koha/intranet/modules/C4/Breeding.pm line 115, <fh00001stevens>
  line 26.

along with a result page saying "1 imported records" -- which turned out
to be not the case.  So there are really two problems here -- the one
which caused the error message above, and the fact that "success" was
reported, even though the record was not in fact imported successfully.

I then tried adding a biblio using the page at acqui.simple/addbiblio.pl.
I entered an ISBN, and clicked the "z3950 search" link.  (I was using
the preconfigured LOC Z39.50 server.)  This gave some errors, which
prompted me to realise that I needed the processz3950queue daemon running.
That didn't seem to have been configured properly by the install script,
so I did that, cleared out the z3950queue database table (to get a fresh
start) and set it running (using z3950-daemon-launch.sh).  I then
clicked the "z3950 search" link again.  This gave the following errors
in koha-error_log:

  search.pl :  /  /  / 0201633469 at /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/z3950/search.pl line 52.
  NO RANDOM at /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/z3950/search.pl line 59.
  ADD ISBN 0201633469 at /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/z3950/search.pl line 61.
  search.pl :  /  /  /  at /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/z3950/search.pl line 52.

with the last line repeating until I closed the search window.  In the
z3950-daemon-20030925-xxxx.log file, there were errors like this:

  Library ==>  at /home/koha/z3950/processz3950queue line 156.
  Processing isbn="0201633469" at Library    (1 forks)
  Library ERROR: Can't call method "option" on an undefined value at /home/koha/z3950/processz3950queue line 157.

So that really didn't work for me either, although I was able to confirm
that a network connection had been made to ilsweb.loc.gov:7090.

I was able to manually catalogue a book using addbiblio.pl, but since
I'm not a librarian, I probably got the MARC quite wrong.  Still, I was
able to successfully search for the book by author, so it seems my Koha
installation is at least a little bit functional.

While I'm interested in hearing what I may have done wrong with any
of the above, I'm not desperate to get it working at this stage.  I
probably won't go any further with my current installation, but rather
wait until the proper 2.0.0 release to try again.  I hope that there
might be something useful in what I've provided above to help improve
Koha.

Regards,

Tim.
-- 
Tim Bell  --  bhat at trinity.unimelb.edu.au  --  System Administrator
Trinity College, Royal Parade, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia