[Koha] Troubleshoot file not found (856$u)

[Doug Dearden]

Gopalakrishna,

/home/user/Downloads is not in a location that is accessible from the Apache web server.  On a default package install on Debian the document root for the OPAC is /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs , and the document root for the staff client is /usr/share/koha/intranet/htdocs.  I believe it is the same on Ubuntu.  There are different ways to make files accessible via the url.  One is to create a directory in one of these locations, put the files there and then just point to them.  For instance if your server is at http://mylibrary.mydomain.com you create the directory /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/myfiles , and put the file test.pdf in there.  The url http://mylibrary.mydomain.com/myfiles/test.pdf should point to that file.

To use /home/user/Downloads you can use a symbolic link instead.  You put your files in /home/user/Downloads.  Instead of making the myfiles directory, you make a symbolic link from the OPAC document root:
ln –s /home/user/Downloads /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/myfiles

You put the file test.pdf into /home/user/Downloads .  The url http://mylibrary.mydomain.com/myfiles/test.pdf should point to the file the same as above.  The advantage to this method is you can give a limited user the ability to put files into /home/user/Downloads without ever having to see unneeded parts of the file structure.

Another trick that Galen Charlton pointed out to me was using the Apache redirect directive.  Instead of putting the full url into the 856u field, you can use a placeholder that Apache reinterprets into the full url.  If sometime in the future you run out of space for these files, you can move them to another server and just change the redirect reference in the Apache config file.  For instance, in our example you would use:
Redirect /filelocation http://mylibrary.mydomain.com/myfiles
The url you put into the 856u field would be /filelocation/test.pdf.  If you later move your files to a different server, rather than having to edit all of the 856u fields, you can simply change the Redirect directive to something else like:
Redirect /filelocation http://biggerserver.mydomain.com/myfiles

Best,

Doug



From: Gopalakrishna-BMSIT [mailto:gk.bmsit at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2015 9:49 PM
To: Doug Dearden
Subject: Re: [Koha] Troubleshoot file not found (856$u)

Dear Doug,
I have installed koha using packages on Ubuntu 12.04, also on Debian Squeezy on another system.
Regards,
Gopalakrishna

With Regards,
Gopalakrishna
Librarian,
B.M.S Institute of Technology,
Avalahalli, Doddaballapur Main Road,
Yelahanka, Bangalore-64
Ph: 080-65369469
Mob.: 97418 98674

On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 10:28 PM, Doug Dearden <dearden at sarsf.org<mailto:dearden at sarsf.org>> wrote:
How did you install Koha.  From tarball, or did you use the packages?  What distribution are you installed on, Debian? Ubuntu? Something else?

Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: Koha [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz<mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz>] On Behalf Of Gopalakrishna-BMSIT
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2015 11:00 PM
To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz<mailto:koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>
Subject: [Koha] Troubleshoot file not found (856$u)

I would like to load files in the folder /home/User/Downloads using the field 856$u.  How to do it.

Thanks
Gopalakrishna
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