IRC log for #koha, 2005-01-16

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
13:53 garth hey folks, I having an issue with the ze9.50 daemon on 1.2.3, due to work overload I'm not able to update koha to 2.x, I get the following eror
13:54 garth Processing author="test" at 1 z3950.loc.gov:7090 voyager (1 forks)
13:54 garth Q: @attr 1=1003 "test"
13:54 garth ERROR: Can't call method "option" on an undefined value at /home/eigcampus/domains/library.eigca​mpus.org/public_html/intranet/cgi-bin​/acqui.simple/z3950/processz3950queue line 163, <KC> line 20.
13:55 garth any thoughts folks? I would like to at least have z39.50 running on the new server
14:38 kados garth so the error is happening on koha 1.2.3 or koha 2.2?
15:50 owen z3950 problems seem to always top the list of frequently-asked questions.
16:00 kados yep ... but not server problems ;-)
16:00 kados the client is much more complex
16:01 owen Did Paul write the client?
16:01 owen I'm assuming that was part of the original MARC work?
16:01 kados I can't remember now ... I think chris may have done the original for 1.x
16:01 owen Hm.  1.2.3 seems so long ago now.
16:02 kados yea.
16:05 owen kados, have you had time to work on any of your Koha special projects lately?
16:06 garth hi folks, I don't have the time right now to update koha to 2.2 so I was just wondering if you guys had a quick fix for the 1.2.3 z39.50 problem I have. If not, the user will have to wait until I update to 2.x
16:06 kados garth: I don't know of a quick fix
16:06 kados garth: have you checked the mailing list archive?
16:07 owen Hard for us to diagnose since we don't have a 1.2.3 installation
16:08 kados there are two mailing list archives listed at
16:08 kados http://www.koha.org/mailing/
16:08 kados you could search there for a similar error
16:08 garth yeah, I was wondering, do you see alot of z39.50 errors in the 2.x series?
16:09 kados owen: I haven't had a chance lately.  The amazon and spellcheck stuff is almost ready to be committed into 2.3
16:09 kados garth: we don't use that module at NPL
16:09 garth The reason I ask is other than the z39.50 issues Koha has worked excellent for us
16:09 kados garth: but I do recall quite a bit of the mailing list questions having to do with Z39.50
16:10 kados garth: Your best bet would be to post a message to the list with details on the version of Koha, what you're trying to do, and the exact error messages ... paul will likely write you back within a day or so
16:11 kados owen: network outage?
16:11 garth ok, I was just wondering if anyone here has had experience with z39.50 in the 2.x series
16:12 kados garth: well I wrote the Z-Server ... but that's different ;-)
16:12 garth cool
16:12 kados garth: and it requires MARC
16:12 kados although ... it would be possible to do it without Koha's MARC
16:13 garth My upgrade path is to move to 2.2 with MARC for my current 1.2.3 installtion
16:13 garth And the client LOOOVES z39.50!!
16:14 kados yea ... it's pretty important to our operation too ... we use BookWhere to nab records ... and we do resource sharing with our Z39.50 server
16:14 kados anyone seen this link? http://www.libraryelf.com/
16:14 kados pretty neat service
16:15 kados garth: I'd recommend investing your time in getting 2.2 up rather than getting Z39.50 working with 1.2.3 ... but that's just my two cents
16:17 garth I agree completely
16:38 kados si around?
16:39 si indeed I am
16:39 kados I just got my first soekris 4801
16:39 si ecellent
16:39 kados any pointers?
16:40 kados I'd like to run one of the BSDs
16:40 kados and do firewall/transparent proxy/dhcp/dns cacheing
16:41 kados I don't have a BDS installed on my laptop but I just made room on my HD to install it in case it's needed (looks like it from what I can tell)
16:41 si mmm
16:41 kados s/BDS/BSD/ ;-)
16:41 si if you just want something that works out of the box with very little effort, then monowall is fun
16:42 si but I'm not sure whether it'll manage transparent proxying
16:42 kados do you do any of that at katipo?
16:42 si any of which?
16:43 kados transparent proxying
16:43 si the BSD stuff, or transparent proxying?
16:43 si I have a colleague of genuine Irish extraction
16:43 kados :-)
16:43 si who is fond of labelling various things "the devils work"
16:43 kados even better :-)
16:43 si NAT
16:43 si Windows
16:44 kados it's true ... transparent proxies fall into that category
16:44 si and other things that I don't immediately recall
16:44 kados :-)
16:44 si and I suspect that he regards tp similarly
16:44 kados well do you think m0n0BSD could handle it?
16:44 si and I can't help but concur
16:44 kados yep
16:44 kados me too
16:44 kados but the library wants it
16:45 si do they?
16:45 si or do they want proxying?
16:45 kados for filtering
16:45 si Neither my Irish friend nor I have any issues with proxying
16:45 si it's monkeying with the TCP streams that we find objectionable
16:45 kados well they want 'patron controlled filtering that doesn't require an initial login but only prompts for a login when they visit a questionable site and that's centralized and doesn't require browser muching'
16:45 kados s/muching/mucking/
16:46 si both mozilla and IE have mechanisms to centrally configure them via Javascript
16:46 si you can use that to force use of proxies
16:46 kados from where do you configure them?
16:47 si you point them at a carefully crafted page on your webserver
16:47 kados hehe
16:48 si "Automatic proxy configuratino URL"
16:48 si it's in the firefox proxies tab
16:48 kados hmmm, well that's an option
16:48 kados right ... well the problem is that not all of our machines are locked down enough
16:49 kados so patrons could potentially override the filter (i.e., teenage boys who know more about computers than my staff)
16:49 kados a transparent proxy (we have one now that we pay lots for) eliminates the need
16:49 si just firewall direct access off at the edge
16:49 kados hmmm ... tell me more
16:50 si however, if it's only members of the public using it, what do you care if the tranny proxy mucks them up :-)
16:50 kados right :-)
16:50 si well, if you set machines to use a standard proxy - squid, apache, or something commercial
16:51 si then from the POV of your NAT firewall, all requests are coming from the cache, not from the end users
16:51 si so you can firewall the endusers internally
16:51 si and not allow them to make outbound http/https/ftp requests
16:51 si we did this for the opacs at HLT, to force them to use the proxy
16:51 si ie, if they disabled the proxy, nothing worked
16:51 kados that sounds like a nice setup
16:52 si it's pretty low rent, and does require that the machines be configured to use the proxy
16:52 kados our network is pretty messy currently
16:52 si but it does tend to make the browsing experience a little more reliable
16:52 kados yea ..
16:53 si than using transparent proxies
16:53 si which are the devils work :-)
16:53 kados :-)
16:53 si anyhoo, choices over how you implement your proxy is kind of up to you, if you can cope with the vagueness that transparent proxying introduces, then run with it
16:54 si how many users are you going to be putting through the proxy, and at what sort of bandwidth utilisations?
16:55 si and what software do you propose to use for the tp?
16:55 kados about 200 users at about 1.0Mb spread over seven locations
16:55 kados maybe squid or squidguard
16:56 kados our network is so messy currently it's hard to even talk about
16:56 kados we used to be fairly centralized with one gateway router at NPL
16:56 kados hmmm, we've been using IPrism which as far as I can tell is a tp
16:56 kados but costs a pretty penny
16:57 kados (for us)
16:57 si I don't know if they've been resolved or not, I think at the time they looked pretty fundamental
16:58 kados well I guess as long as I had a way to avoid having to change every browser, and could still offer temporary overrides and not force any kind of login I'd be ok with any solution
16:58 kados thos are the three main requirements
16:59 si yes, 200 desktops is a fair number
16:59 kados I thought the easiest way to solve our current overall network prob would be to put a firewall at each branch that did transparent proxying and dhcp + dns cacheing
16:59 si so what's wrong with the current box?
16:59 kados we don't have a firewall currently at any location
16:59 kados and our networks are decentralizing
17:00 kados so we're losing our 'gateway'
17:00 si righto, so your libraries are moving onto DSL-like services that are connected to the interweb directly?
17:00 kados some have gone to DSL, some to Cable Modem
17:00 kados yep
17:01 kados so firewalling is really important now
17:01 si and by their assymetrical nature, you don't want to haul that data back to a central point via VPNs
17:01 kados (before our ISP sorta handled that )
17:01 kados right!
17:01 si modems
17:01 si and dsl
17:01 si are more of my Irishmans devils work...
17:01 kados :-)
17:02 si he freely acknowledges that the devil is a busy entity :-)
17:02 kados hehe
17:03 si are you after the caching aspects of a proxy?
17:03 si or just the content mediation?
17:03 kados nope
17:03 kados just content mediation
17:03 kados dns caching would be nice for security reasons
17:03 kados but that's all
17:03 si DNS caching is a much less intensive task
17:04 si you can cache a lot of DNS in 1MB of RAM
17:04 si but sweet FA of the interweb
17:04 kados well ... here's the other side of this coin ... we want to use our Koha database to determine who has override privileges :-)
17:05 kados and I'd like to use the dmoz directory to determine what falls into the 'moderated' category (currently only porn and chat do)
17:05 si you get 128MB RAM with the 4801?
17:05 si dmoz?
17:05 kados open directory = dmoz
17:06 kados dmoz.org
17:06 si ahh
17:06 kados I think I can do a CF on the 4801
17:06 rach hello
17:07 kados hey rach
17:07 si dmoz.org provides some kind of filtered access?
17:07 kados no ... just a human edited directory with nifty categories like 'porn'
17:07 si so how do you use it at the moment?
17:08 kados we don't use dmoz atm
17:08 kados IPrism maintains a database of their own
17:08 si so it does
17:08 kados this would be the 'free' version
17:09 si so you want the punters to have free access until they go somewhere dubious
17:09 si and at that point you want them to auth
17:09 kados yep
17:10 si and you don't yet have a machine readable definition of dubious
17:10 kados and the list of who can auth comes from our borrower table
17:10 si that breaks down to a list of URL's?
17:11 kados no ... but I'm pretty sure that's easy to get out of dmoz
17:11 kados yep there is a CF slot here
17:12 kados so that'd take care of storage issues I should think
17:12 si there is active blacklisting in squidguard
17:13 kados yep ... we'd like to have that list oo
17:13 kados too even
17:13 kados last I checked I don't think squidguard did transparent proxies
17:14 si sg sits inside squid
17:14 kados and since the last release was Dec 2001 I'd say it hasn't changed
17:14 si so you presumably need squid to handle the actual heavy lifting
17:15 kados probably ... though recently I was wondering if I could do the whole thing with iptables and linux
17:15 kados and maybe some perl ;-)
17:15 kados but that's probably a bad idea
17:16 kados my tcp/ip isn't that strong
17:16 si mm, ok
17:16 si you've never setup a tranny proxy before?
17:17 kados nope
17:17 si the answer, in a nutshell, is that you need all those things
17:17 kados hehe
17:17 si you need some device that sees all the traffic, to pick up the http requests
17:17 si normally that would be your NAT firewall
17:18 si but it could be some other bridging device that you stick live in the network
17:18 kados my idea was that the soekris would be the NAT firewall
17:18 si either way, it has to see the entire communication between the client, and the interweb
17:18 kados right
17:19 si once you've got that, and iptables or pf or similar, then you can redirect the http/https traffic to another TCP port
17:19 si that TCP port could be on the same machine, or it could be elsewhere on your network
17:20 si there is no particular requirement that hte transparent proxy be on the same machine as the "http stealing" firewall rules
17:20 kados right ... and by TCP port you mean a logical port ... could be the same interface right?
17:20 si listening on that TCP port is a process that knows how to read the HTTP request, and service it
17:20 si ie, squid, or similar
17:21 kados ok
17:21 si so at that point, squid is deciding what to do with the http request, based on it's configuratino, which may include lookups through squidguard
17:22 kados (this is starting to make sense) ...
17:22 kados I was wondering how the two interacted
17:22 si it is certainly easiest to do all this on the same box, but you could in theory have your firewall redirects, your squid, and your squidguard all on seperate boxes
17:23 kados right ...
17:23 kados good news then
17:23 si now, here in NZ, we normally run squid for content caching
17:23 si since we're a stupidly long way from anywhere
17:24 kados :-)
17:24 si and trans pacific bandwidth costs amounts of money that truly would make your Ohio eyes water
17:24 kados I'm sure
17:24 si so there's real incentive to not use it, if you can avoid it
17:25 si apparently Cisco's content caching divisino is actually housed in Australia, for much the same sorts of reasons
17:25 si all the caching gurus are down under, and not in the US
17:25 kados :-)
17:25 si so we sould normally spec quite a big box for caching
17:25 si since you'r aiming to store a pile of stuff
17:26 si so you need much disk, and thus CPU and RAM as well
17:26 kados right ...
17:26 si so in rigs I've built down here, we've had the firewall running fairly lightweight, off flash, redirecting to a seperate box running squid
17:27 si in terms of the 4801, you can either run with CF, or you can get a 2.5inch HD mount
17:28 si what OS do you use for servers?
17:28 kados currently linux (mix between debian and redhat/fedora)
17:28 kados but I'd like to branch into the BSDs to expand my knowledge a bit (iykwim)
17:28 si and you're thinking BSD for the 4801?
17:29 kados yea
17:29 si fair enough
17:29 si for ease of setup and use, it's pretty hard to go past debian on CF
17:29 kados I'm not opposed to linux tho if it'd do the job as well
17:30 si we're using debian on 1GB flash
17:30 si basic debian takes about 270MB
17:30 si so that gives you a certain amount of room to play in
17:30 kados right
17:30 kados sounds promising
17:30 si where you need to be careful is that you have enough RAM for everything you want to do
17:30 kados 128MB sound like enough?
17:31 si because you don't have a lot of swap available
17:31 kados ahh ... right
17:31 si it's certainly more than enough for the basic firewalling and NAT and whatnot
17:31 si since that all takes place in the kernel
17:32 si you'll get change from 32MB if that's all you do with the box
17:34 kados I'm thinking that the dmoz and squidguard lists aren't that big ...
17:34 si byw way of comparison, this is a P4 box with 16 ethernet interfaces, that's been up for 65 days, and it runs ssh, snmpd, zebra, cron, inetd and a few gettys
17:34 si it has a metric truckload of firewall rules
17:34 si MemTotal:       256508 kB
17:34 si MemFree:        225556 kB
17:35 si it's using 31MB RAM, after 60 days of operation
17:35 kados wow
17:35 kados that's pretty cool
17:36 si sadly, it crashes every four months or so, for reasons I haven't been able to fathom
17:36 kados :-)
17:37 si MemTotal:        63192 kB
17:37 si MemFree:         43900 kB
17:37 si 19MB in use
17:37 kados wow that's great
17:38 si the difference is probably zebra, which can use an arbitrary amount of RAM, depending on how many routes there are in your route table
17:38 kados I wonder how much hp squid would take up if it was just doing tp for a small list like dmoz and squidguard
17:38 si from memory, squid uses loads of RAM, but uses it for caching objects, and keeping indexes of it's cache
17:38 si if you're not caching, you'll probably be ok
17:38 kados cool
17:39 si I've no idea what the RAM utilisation of sg is, I've never run it
17:39 kados right
17:39 kados what debian distro do you use for your soekris?
17:39 si we don't use debian on the soekris's
17:39 kados ahh
17:40 kados openbsd?
17:40 si I've been experimenting with debian of flash on some more stock EPIA motherboards
17:40 si which works ok, but the mobos in questino have at least 512MB RAM
17:41 si because we're running apache, perl, mysql and so forth off the flash
17:41 kados what's the application ?
17:41 si there's absolutely no reason why a stock debian shouldn't work off flash in 128MB RAM, so long as you didn't go hog wild with extra clag
17:41 si like X, and so forth
17:42 si and kept the number of listening daemons to an absolute minimum
17:42 kados right ... none of my debs have X (except one partition on my laptop)
17:42 si my inclination would be to attach a hard disk with debian on it to your soekris
17:43 si and turn off swap
17:43 si and make sure that you can get everything you want to get running running
17:43 si then transfer that to CF
17:43 si you might want to invest in a CF <-> IDE adapter
17:44 kados this soekris board came out of my pocket ...
17:44 kados I didn't want to spend library money if it flopped :-)
17:44 kados I've got a few CFs however
17:46 si fair enough
17:46 si any of the CF bigger than 256MB?
17:46 kados 256 is the biggest I've got atm
17:46 si my experience is that getting debian in less than 256 is a bit tedious
17:46 si to the point where you might as well start playing with the CF specific distros
17:46 si on our soekris's we use Bering
17:47 kados bering eh?
17:47 si which takes up about 8MB of flash for our default load
17:47 kados :-)
17:47 si which in fact includes 1.2MB of DOS6.22 :-)
17:47 kados :-)
17:47 kados ahh Dos6.22
17:47 kados those were the days
17:48 si yet another of the devils works
17:48 kados dad deleting it
17:48 kados and the wonders of undelete ;-)
17:48 si and my irishman isn't even a catholic :-)
17:48 kados :-)
17:49 kados so would you recommend bering for squid/sg?
17:49 si to save yourself going utterly mental, you might want to go for one of these:
17:49 si http://www.pcengines.ch/cflash.htm
17:49 si although finding one closer than switzerland would be the go
17:50 kados wow ... that does look nice
17:50 kados I could install the os on a regular pc and then just plug it in, eh?
17:51 si yes
17:51 kados nice!
17:51 si it saves a whole bunch of grief around getting the thing bootable
17:51 kados yea ... I was dreading that
17:51 kados mucking about with serial and such :-)
17:52 si which can be difficult to do in pcmcia or USB adapters
17:52 si since getting a CDROM drive or similar onto the soekris is non trivial, it's easier to do it on a more standard machine
17:53 si althougk, I do note that the bering people now have a pxelinux rig
17:53 si which also may be worth a look
17:53 si http://leaf.sourceforge.net/be[…]&MMN_position=3:3
17:53 si http://leaf.sourceforge.net/in[…]op=view&ANN_id=37
17:54 si things to watch out with the soekris, are that not all CF are created equal
17:54 kados I've had the same problem with my Zaurus
17:54 si you may struggle to get older CF bootable
17:55 si sandisk CF have been good for us
17:55 si there looks to be a squid package for bering
17:56 si we use a homebuilt PXE installation to setup our soekris's
17:56 kados I've got a lexar CF ... no sandisks
17:56 si it might be the way to go for you
17:56 kados yea?
17:56 si you'll certainly learn some stuff :-)
17:56 si PXE is netbooting
17:56 si so you setup a DHCP server with some extra info, and a TFTP server
17:57 si and the machines download their kernels from off the ethernet
17:57 kados sounds a bit like LTSP
17:57 si yes, a lot like
17:57 kados yea I've got lots to learn
17:57 si if you're familiar with ltsp, then setting up pxe to setup the soekris shouldn't be too hard
17:58 kados well I've done ltsp ... I wouldn't say I'm particularly farmiliar with it ;-)
18:01 si well, you've some kind of time<->pfaffing<->money tradeoff here
18:01 si if you just wnat it to work, get a bigger CF and an IDE convertoer, wack it in an ordinary PC to do setup, and you'll be good to go licketysplit
18:01 kados :-)
18:01 si if you want to muck around and learn some for the leat amount of dollars spent
18:02 si then stick a 32MB CF in, and muck around with PXE Installs
18:02 si you'll have great fun
18:02 kados hehe
18:02 kados I think I'll do both while I wait for the IDE convertor to arrive :-)
18:02 si monowall is definitely worth a look, if only because it's real easy to setup
18:03 si I've not played with the other bsd based flash boot systems
18:03 si they all looked like they weren't as well sorted as bering
18:03 si which has been around a lot longer
18:03 si the BSD people weren't as quick out of the blocks in getting their OS's running out of RAM disks
18:03 si ohh, one thing to bear in mind
18:04 si is that debian will be less consumptive of RAM than bering
18:04 si Bering boots from your boot media, and extracts all the files into a ram disk
18:04 si of 6-12MB
18:04 si which you lose as operating RAM
18:04 kados ahh
18:04 si that's one of the tradeoffs
18:05 kados are new kernels being used (2.6es?)
18:05 si since Bering was and is still designed to run off a floppy
18:05 si so the softwar on it is compressed to death
18:05 si so you can't run from it directly
18:05 kados ahh
18:05 si where as with a stock debian install, you just run straight from CF
18:06 kados makes sense ... it needs to eb decompressed before the files are readable ...
18:06 kados gotcha
18:06 si OTOH, the bering style systems won't wear out your CF, but the debian install will
18:06 si although you could mitigate most of that by logging back to a central syslog server
18:06 kados 'wear out'?
18:07 si urban myth suggests that CF have much lower duty cycles than spinning hard disks
18:07 kados ahh
18:07 kados well if I get a couple of years out of them I'll be happy
18:07 si especially, that you only get a finite number of writes, which may not be very high
18:08 si modern flash is apparently a lot better
18:08 si flash is also somewhat slower than a spinning disk, somewhat counterintuitively
18:08 si which is to say, it's seek times are much better, but it's transfer rates are dismal
18:08 kados right I've heard that
18:08 si so you get a somewhat more responsive system running the Bering way, out of RAMdisk
18:08 kados that little disk spins pretty quickly for a reason ;-)
18:09 si indeed it does
18:09 si and once it's found the data, it hoovers it off pretty quickly
18:09 kados hehe
18:10 si as always, in the wonder world of open source, there are myriad ways to waste great wads of your time
18:10 kados yep
18:10 kados :-)
18:10 si right now, however, it's a beautiful summers day here, the sun is pouring in the window
18:10 si so I'm going to go help Rach train dogs
18:10 kados sounds like fun
18:10 kados thanks for the help si!
18:11 si first day back after the summer break
18:11 kados wow!
18:11 si the pups will doubtless all be bigger
18:11 si and awful :-)
18:11 kados :-)
18:11 si yes, you have to remember that here in NZ, Christmas and the summer break become one big holiday
18:11 si since they fall at the same time of year
18:12 si so there are lots of companies still closed until Monday
18:12 si lots of people not yet back at work, and many won't be till the end of January
18:13 si and things like recreational sport and clubs and whotnot tend to  shutdown for a few weeks
18:13 kados that's really nice
18:13 kados things aren't as relaxed here
18:13 si hence the reason that we've not done any dog training with the club since mid december
18:13 kados I've thought about moving to NZ
18:14 kados but haven't had a chance to visit yet
18:14 si well, the downside is that we don't get a holiday in the middle of the year like the norther hemisphere does
18:14 si since that's winter
18:14 si but we do tend to bunk off and go snoeboarding then anyway
18:14 kados :-)
18:15 si hmm, wind is getting up http://www.huttcity.govt.nz/about/weather/
18:15 si could be a blokart day
18:17 si later
18:17 kados thanks again si
18:18 kados wow that looks fun
23:06 kados chris around?
23:07 kados or si?
02:03 kados si back from dog training?
02:04 kados I've got my soekris booted with OpenBSD
02:04 kados (what a chore PXE is!)
02:04 kados but I think I understand the process now
02:17 kados anyhoo ... if you happen by I've got it recognizing the 256MB CF card and I'm trying to sort out how to do the partitions
02:17 kados (what the best allocation would be that is)
02:53 kados hehe ...
02:54 kados the good news is that open bsd is running on the soekris
02:58 kados sweet it worked
03:05 ambrose for your amusement, http://ada.dhs.org/~gniw/rcl.html pretty much summarizes the stupid parts of our issuing rules :-)
03:08 kados ambrose: did you write that up?
03:09 ambrose kados: yes, i wrote that up :-)
03:09 kados :-)
03:09 kados I agree with the last paragraph:-)
03:10 ambrose :-)
03:10 ambrose i think i'll get the videos catalogued with koha next week, whether my manager likes it or not. no one can search the video catalogue (which exists as just a simple printed list) right now
03:11 ambrose i tried to do one video today and found that i don't know how to enter the call number
03:20 ambrose indeed

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