[Koha] Problems with migrating from Koha 16.05 to 16.11

Chris Cormack chrisc at catalyst.net.nz
Tue Dec 27 14:55:04 NZDT 2016 

* David Whelchel (dlwhelchel at outlook.com) wrote:
>Hello All,

Hi David

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you too

>
>I have been carefully and regularly updating the koha-common package version on Debian Wheezy 3.2.82-1 x86_64 (and its updates) since Koha version 3.14. Prior to that I ran Koha on the old Windows version (that is now thankfully dead). Now comes Version 16.11. Being an old hand but not being an active programmer, and having years of successful upgrades and builds for my and other libraries I thought, No Problem. Well not so!! I have tried a number of permutations to get this version of Koha built without success.
>
>1) To try a test run I set up an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system as recommend in the online documentation and selected the old stable option as I would need to migrate my database (in MySQL of course). No joy – received “koha-common : Depends: libgd-perl but it is not going to be installed”  at the sudo apt-get install koha-common step.
>
>2) Well, so maybe I should use a fresh install the stable version and see if I can still use MySQL – after all it is still supported in 14.04. But again problems. More dependencies:
>
>koha at koha314:~$ sudo apt-get install koha-common
>Reading package lists... Done
>Building dependency tree
>Reading state information... Done
>Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
>requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
>distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
>or been moved out of Incoming.
>The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>
>The following packages have unmet dependencies
>koha-common : Depends: libarchive-extract-perl but it is not installable
>               Depends: libgd-perl but it is not installable
>               Depends: libpath-tiny-perl but it is not installable
>               Depends: libsereal-decoder-perl but it is not installable
>               Depends: libsereal-encoder-perl but it is not installable
>               Depends: libwww-youtube-download-perl but it is not installable
>E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
>
>Ok So maybe Ubuntu changes too fast for this version of Koha to keep up with. So I’ll try Debian with both 16.05 and 16.11. But again similar problems and not success.
>
>Where to now. Try the latest LTS versions of Ubuntu and Debian. Bumpkus – but at least I am persistent.
>
>So why this long ramble?


Interestingly enough I have 16.11 running on 3 servers from the packages
(all on Debian 8). 2 Upgraded from 16.05, so I am not sure what you have
done differently. 

For the record libgd-perl is packaged for debian Jessie (the latest
stable version of Debian (it is also in testing and unstable too of
course). https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libgd-perl

So you must have done something non standard if you can not get it
working on debian 8. 

libgd-perl is in Ubuntu 14.04 too 
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libgd-perl

So again, I am not sure what you did, maybe your sources are set up
wrong?

>
>First I believe that there need to be some effort in either making 16.11 work in the recommended Ubuntu and Debian releases as documented or put a real effort into updating the Koha code and dependent applications up to date so that a migration from 16.05 (or earlier versions) can be made seamlessly 50 16.11.x without our librarian non-programmers  going crazy (and not all of them have tech support).
>
>Now put on your flame suits:
>
Here's a tip, if you ever think, oh I should start flaming ... think
again. 


>I have been actively working in a university central computing center for more than 35 years. The discussion recently about mapping Koha library sites and whether the information and whether Marshall’s map program is open source or not started me to doubt the long term stability of the Koha-common project. I even broke my personal rule and commented to the thread (my commends received silence).
>
>In order for this effort to succeed problems like the inability to use the package upgrade from previous versions to the newest version without problem must be a priority. Koha is a fabulous application and community. I hate to tell you Chris, but proprietary software seldom has these problems; they depend on the stability of their product for their pay checks.
>
>Flame off:

While I disagree entirely with your assertion that every proprietary
software upgrade is smooth (a 2 second search of the web for things like
windows vista would prove the falsehood of that) I do agree it should
be as smooth as possible, and people are working on that. However I have
done 2 successful upgrades, so I will need to try and recreate your
particular set up to see if I can find what you did differently.

Having said all that, I do not feel I deserve to be personally attacked
like you have just done. I am a person with feelings who has spent 17
years working on Koha, and as far as I am aware this is the first time
you have personally mentioned me. 
The community combined has put in 201 years worth of effort (according
to blackduck https://www.openhub.net/p/koha/estimated_cost) with over
300 people having contributed code and many more having contributing
time and effort in many other ways. 
Over 15,000 libraries (rough estimate) have benefitted from this work.
There are libraries who have been automated for the first time ever,
using Koha. Universities in Nigeria who have been acreditted at higher
levels, because they now have automated libraries. People in Vietnam
making their livelihood from offering Koha support. The list goes on and
on.
There is no chance of Koha going away anytime soon, it (from Marshalls
own words) is likely the most installed Library system in the world. Far
too many people depend on it, and far too many of us will keep working
on it, even when we are flamed.


>
>Oh Yeah – if anyone has a solution to an in place upgrade to that the Koha database can be carried forward please let all of us who are experiencing problem know. But I am still expecting crickets.

Putting aside the offense, let's try and figure out why you can install
the 16.11 koha-common package

I think you need to figure out what is wrong with your apt sources, that
you can't install koha-common, as it is working here.

Can you paste what your sources are please?

Naku noa 

Na chris



>
>Thanks
>
>--Dave
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>David L. Whelchel
>725 SE Derby Street
>Pullman, WA 99163
>whelchel at pullman.com<mailto:whelchel at pullman.com>
>
>http://www.dlwa.com
>
>_______________________________________________
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-- 
Chris Cormack
Catalyst IT Ltd.
+64 4 803 2238
PO Box 11-053, Manners St, Wellington 6142, New Zealand
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