[Koha] uninstalling

[Roger Horne]

On Wed 14 Apr, MJ Ray wrote:
> > ... The second is that it does not recognise the 
> > fact that
> > people may want to use name-based virtual hosts.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean by that. Can you explain what you 
> think it should do, please?
> 
> I use name-based virtual hosts myself. All it took on the simplest 
> machine was symlinking /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/koha to the 
> koha-httpd.conf (debian directory-based vhost config).

Ah well, I am an amateur and my use of symlinks is pretty slim at the
moment. What I wa referring to was the fact that the installer requires you
to use two addresses, eg opac and library, listening on different ports, eg
80 and 8080. Suse 9 seems to set up things differently from debian.
/etc/apache2 contains vhosts.d which contains a couple of templates. I have
koha-httpd.conf in that directory and it includes my default host (beowulf)
as well. The machine "listens" for beowulf, library and opac.

> The installer 
> doesn't handle many complicated cases, but we could go happily insane 
> before we get them all.

I of course accept that. What I think might be useful would be for it to
give pointers at that point to where people should look for further
documentation, eg http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/vhosts/

It does seem to me that Koha has a mixture of simple installation
instructions (such as the main part of your installer) and ones which might
perplex a linux guru (such as the virtually non-existent instructions for
the z* daemon which I have yet to get running here (but then I am far from
being any kind of guru). 

And while I am grumbling, I do think that Koha gives the impression in
some respects of being amateurish and unfinished. (I know that one should
not look a gift horse in the mouth but ...)

Some months ago I tried the earlier version but gave up. So having
successfully uninstalled the old vesion I tried again with v2. After the
minor problems I have mentioned this went fine. 

So I tried to use it. As I said some months ago, I am a barrister. We have a
Chambers library but all members also own their own books. So Room A might
contain Snell on Equity belonging to Chambers as a whole and my room, Room
B, might contain Lewin on Trusts, both of which are books on trusts. So it
seemed to me that it would be a good idea to set up a number of different
branches, eg one for Chambers and one for me. So I did that and set up a
separate "book fund" for each of them. And set up several types, including
law report (LR) and text book (TB).

And I chose the budget based entry system. At the moment we have no
electronic catalogue: everything will hve to be entered manually. So I
followed the instructions and set up a supplier called "Already Owned". Now
to enter a book I have to go to acquisitions and enter "al" as the supplier.
Yippee, it exists. So I click on the "order" field and I get a form which
enables me to search for the title. Since I have not as yet entered it, this
naturally does not produce any result other than produce a "new search" page
which enables me to "add new biblio".

The form is
http://library/cgi-bin/koha/acqui/newbiblio.pl?id=2&basket=3&sub= 
I completed this using: 
Title: Family Breakdown and Trusts 
Author: Longrigg Higgins [e 2 separate authors] 
Publisher: Butterworths 
Copyright Date: 2003
Item type: Text book [chosen from drop down menu] 
ISBN; 0406948291 
Series [blank] 
Branch: Roger Horne [chosen from drop down menu] 

and in "Accounting details" I again selected Roger Horne as Bookfund and
entered the cost as 0 (since I bought it before the current accounting
period). I then clicked on OK.

I then chose quick search, searching for Longrigg as author. This found the
book, displaying the correct title and Authors, and copyright date, but
claiming that there were 0 items and leaving the location field blank. There
was no indication of the branch. (A customer searching a catalogue where the
branches were several miles apart might find this annoying.)

Clicking on the title produced a partial display of the Marc entries:
      
020 -INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
a International Standard Book Number 0406948291

852 -LOCATION/CALL NUMBER
k Call number prefix (NR) TB
      
100 -MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME
a Personal name Longrigg Higgins

245 -TITLE STATEMENT
a Title Family Breakdown and Trusts

260 -PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT)
c Date of publication, distribution, etc 2003
    
300 -PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
f Type of unit TB
      
650 -SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
a Topical term or geographic name as entry element

[followed by a box containing]       

homebranch
RH

"TB" stands for text book so the 852 line would seem to be wrong. (If I go
to edit I am given a drop down box for that line with text book, law report
etc.)

If I go back to the search window I am given the opportunity to search on
"Subject". I am not entirely sure of the difference between "Subject" and
"Keyword" but I assume that the latter means simply words in the Title,
author, etc fields.

Since the original form did not have an entry with the heading Subject
the result of the search is, of course, empty. So I go back to the Marc
entry page,
http://library/cgi-bin/koha/acqui.simple/addbiblio.pl?oldbiblionumber=3 in
this case, and modify the 650 line to add the word "divorce" and save it.
Now when I look at the MArc entry I see

650 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
a Topical term or geographic name as entry element   divorce

So I search using the Subject line of the quick search form as "divorce":
"Results 1 through 0 of 0 records [blank]" ...
(And searching keywords for "divorce" also gives a nil result.


I would try correcting this myself but I just do not know where even to
start. (A quick search for eg "subject" through the perl scripts produces
about 100 results.)

</grumble>

Entering books manually seems likely to take in excess of 10 minutes a
title, which I consider to be unacceptable. Would it be possible for me to
create a file of books and to run a script to enter them? (Many books are
old and do not have ISBNs.)

Roger
-- 
Roger Horne, 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB
mailto:roger at hrothgar.co.uk
http://hrothgar.co.uk/YAWS/