[Koha] Koha for our office library

Thu Apr 19 23:02:02 NZST 2018

Hi there,

This is Raimund from ThoughtWorks Manchester.

We're looking at adding a management system to our little office library,
mainly with the view of adding electronic checkout capabilities - we're a
Tech company highly interested in all things that have to do with little
sensors etc., so this seems like a reasonable project which could actually
show off some ideas to our clients in the future.

We already have some capability on the sensor side, but I don't want to
write an inventory system from scratch. A librarian friend of mine pointed
me to Koha, and I played around with the demo on the web - quite
impressive. My next step would be to try it out in combination with
sticking a tag into a few of our books - for now on my dev machine (a Mac).

Now I understand from the website that Koha usually runs on some flavour of
Linux, preferably Debian. So I tried several things:

- Setting up a Debian Virtual Box and installing everything there. Turned
into a lot of pain, probably because I didn't find a good raw Debian image
to start with.
- Tried the same with CentOS. I actually got much further, but then I
noticed that I didn't understand the Koha installation itself.
- I stumbled upon the Docker image <https://hub.docker.com/r/digibib/koha/>
from the Oslo Public Library. For my purposes, this sounds ideal; however,
it doesn't seem to work out of the box. When I start it and point my
browser to localhost:8080 or 8081, all I get is a HTTP 500; the logs
indicate that the DB isn't set up properly:
==> /var/log/koha/name/plack-error.log <==
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't exist
[for Statement "
            SELECT * FROM systempreferences WHERE 1 = 0 "] at
/usr/share/koha/lib/Koha/Database.pm line 93.
DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't
exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`,
`me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE (
`me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casauthentication'] at
/usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1832.
DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't
exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`,
`me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE (
`me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='caslogout'] at
/usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1832.
DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't
exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`,
`me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE (
`me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casserverurl'] at
/usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1832.

- Finally I tried the Vagrant based kohadevbox
<https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox> (from Oslo as well). That won't
even start for me:
TASK [Update apt cache if needed]
**********************************************
fatal: [jessie]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "'/usr/bin/apt-get
dist-upgrade' failed: E: You don't have enough free space in
/var/cache/apt/archives/.\n", "rc": 100, "stdout": "Reading package
lists...\nBuilding dependency tree...\nReading state information...\nThe
following NEW packages will be installed:\n  firmware-linux-free irqbalance
libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libnuma1\n  linux-image-3.16.0-5-amd64
shared-mime-info xdg-user-dirs\nThe following packages will be upgraded:\n
bind9-host dnsutils exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light\n
gcc-4.9-base host isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libbind9-90\n
libcurl3-gnutls libdns-export100 libdns100 libgcc1 libicu52
libirs-export91\n  libisc-export95 libisc95 libisccc90 libisccfg-export90
libisccfg90\n  liblwres90 libssl1.0.0 libstdc++6 libtiff5 libxml2
linux-image-amd64 openssl\n  perl perl-base perl-modules sensible-utils\n33
upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.\nNeed to get
60.6 MB of archives.\nAfter this operation, 182 MB of additional disk space
will be used.\n", "stdout_lines": ["Reading package lists...", "Building
dependency tree...", "Reading state information...", "The following NEW
packages will be installed:", "  firmware-linux-free irqbalance
libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libnuma1", "  linux-image-3.16.0-5-amd64
shared-mime-info xdg-user-dirs", "The following packages will be
upgraded:", "  bind9-host dnsutils exim4 exim4-base exim4-config
exim4-daemon-light", "  gcc-4.9-base host isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common
libbind9-90", "  libcurl3-gnutls libdns-export100 libdns100 libgcc1
libicu52 libirs-export91", "  libisc-export95 libisc95 libisccc90
libisccfg-export90 libisccfg90", "  liblwres90 libssl1.0.0 libstdc++6
libtiff5 libxml2 linux-image-amd64 openssl", "  perl perl-base perl-modules
sensible-utils", "33 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not
upgraded.", "Need to get 60.6 MB of archives.", "After this operation, 182
MB of additional disk space will be used."]}

At this point, I'm happy to receive any help. Ideally, I'd like to get the
Docker image to work.

(Should I have sent this to the wrong mailing list, please let me know.
Since I'm not planning to do any development on Koha itself, I still view
myself as a user; but please let me know if my understanding is wrong.)

Kind regards
Raimund Klein
-- 
Raimund Klein
Technical Lead
Email rklein at thoughtworks.com
Telephone +447941061959
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