[Koha] Linux distribution with Koha?

[Krishnan Mani]

Hello,

Thanks to the help of various people on this list, a friend and i managed to get Koha installed on a PC in a location that had no internet access. 

We took the kitchen sink approach: download the necessary .rpms, Koha 3.0, and (!) the entire CPAN archive, ship these across on suitable storage media, and run through the installation a couple of times by trial and error to get things right.

But, of course, all of this, (especially a 6 gig CPAN archive) is definitely more than what Koha itself needs.

We have now gathered enough courage to think that we should create a whole Linux distribution that is focused on Koha. The basic idea is: "Install this OS and you have Koha up and running."

Perhaps, if we focused closely enough on what most libraries (and most non-technical users) really need, it might even be easier to install and get everything running than even a regular Linux install.

So, i think we need inputs on more than a few things:

a) What libraries and librarians (professional and otherwise) really need from their Koha servers? Perhaps you need some basic tools to edit Marc records, or create some spreadsheets. Perhaps you need some reasonable system administration tools and enough stuff lying around to add your own custom scripts...

b) On the technical front, what does Koha really need for a full install? For e.g., it probably uses a few dozen Perl modules, which in turn need (a lot?) more dependencies on other Perl modules, etc.? I'd like the tech gurus advice on how to construct the essential "bill of material" for what needs to be assembled to create the distrib. i haven't even begun to look for the answers.

i know that there are perhaps a lot of questions and opinions and experiences to share. This probably needs its own place that people can go to contribute, debate, etc. If that really is the case, i can put together a separate website (or part of the Wiki?) that can be used to collect all your help and useful information.

i also get the feeling that there are probably things to fix with the Koha installation process itself before we can think of making it to a distribution.

Thanks and regards,



krishnan mani

Pune, India


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