IRC log for #koha, 2005-10-29

All times shown according to UTC.

Time S Nick Message
16:20 paul_away hello kiwi librarian !
16:21 rosa hello paul
16:21 paul chris told me you were now on Koha 2.2.4
16:21 rosa yes, indeed
16:21 paul happy with it ?
16:22 paul (you have a very very very nice theme indeed)
16:22 rosa that's due to Katipo's smart designers
16:23 paul yes. I would be very happy if it were used in Koha 3.0.
16:23 rosa we've lost a bit of functionality, and chris has struggles to replace some other bits of functionality. We're very happy with the new OPACs
16:24 rosa and we're certainly not unhappy with the whole
21:50 chris hi
21:50 destinati Hello
21:51 destinati I don't suppose anyone there is willing to help a Koha newbie? :)
21:51 chris i can give it a try
21:51 chris welcome back mike
21:51 Mike thanks chris
21:52 destinati I'm setting up Koha 2.2.4 up for a collection of about 3,000 items
21:52 chris righto
21:52 destinati Ideally, we'd like to have it be a kiosk
21:52 Mike i'll just lurk here while I play with my own install, will ask when I have something specific.
21:53 destinati where people simply walk up to it and scan their books at a barcode reader
21:53 destinati so we can keep track of things
21:53 destinati No real librarians there to assist
21:53 chris right
21:53 destinati That's the long term goal anyway
21:53 chris id take a look here
21:53 destinati But, I have a few smaller issues first
21:53 destinati I'm running Apache 2.0 on a Windows XP box
21:53 destinati and I used the 2.2.3 installer
21:53 chris http://liblime.com/c/demos.html#selfcheckdemo
21:54 destinati and then moved the appropriate 2.2.4 code to the right folders
21:54 chris ahh
21:54 destinati and everything works well when I go to opac and intranet
21:54 destinati except.. well, the menus are a bit off
21:54 destinati It's probably a css/javascript mismatch
21:54 chris that will only work if nothing has changed inthe database structure between 2.2.3 and 2.2.4 and i think some has
21:55 destinati but.. in FireFox and Internet Explorer... the members screen is about halfway in the screen
21:55 destinati and hovering above the top menus displays on the top half of the screen
21:55 chris sounds like a css problem to me
21:56 chris unfortunately i dont know much about html/css ... i do the stuff in the background :)
21:56 destinati Hopefully I'll get to that soon
21:56 destinati During the day I work as a software engineer
21:56 chris cool
21:57 destinati One of the initial things I want to do is set up our bar code reader so that all that I have to do is scan the ISBN number
21:57 destinati and have it pull the catalog data in from other sources
21:57 chris yep, thats possible, the problem is
21:57 destinati like Amazon or Library of Congress
21:57 chris its very hard to get the z3950 code to work under windows
21:57 chris it makes use of a perl module called Event.pm
21:57 destinati I've read about that
21:58 chris that i dont think anyone has managed to install on windows yet
21:58 destinati Maybe I'm confused
21:58 destinati I've sent an XML query to a library of congress gateway
21:58 destinati and got the reply with the catalog info
21:59 destinati So, I was thinking that the bar code reader scans... types the numbers in.. presses enter
21:59 destinati the perl code hits that server with the ISBN
21:59 destinati gets the data back
21:59 destinati and then populates the database
21:59 destinati probably as fast as the person can pick up a book and scan it
21:59 destinati ?
22:00 destinati I'm probably missing something though
22:00 chris yep thats right
22:01 chris but the way Koha does it, is by use of a z3950 client that hits the library of congress's z3950 server
22:01 chris which works on unix/linux .. doesnt work so well on windows
22:02 chris the idea is that z39.50 is a standard, so you can query lots of different libraries with it
22:02 destinati Right. That makes sense
22:02 destinati Is there a standard way to get book images?
22:03 destinati I saw that the Nelsonville library had cover photos
22:03 chris its due for a rewrite for koha 3.0 (coming out next year) and it should be much more robust, and work on windows
22:03 chris hmm i dont think so, im not sure where they got their images from, perhaps amazon
22:03 chris i dont think any of them are around at the moment
22:04 chris kados is on, but i think lurking
22:04 chris the main issue with images afaik is copyright
22:05 chris technically its really easy to grab them from somewhere like amazon .. legally .. well thats another question :)
22:05 destinati Seems like it's fair use
22:05 chris i think if you register with amazon, you can use them, or something like that
22:06 chris it would seem like it ... but then most IP contradicts any common sense anyway :)
22:06 chris IP law that is
22:07 destinati Ah ha! I feel like I deserve an egg on my face. I noticed that when I logged on to the intranet site it still said "Welcome to Koha 2.2.3".. I fixed the etc, but aparently didn't change a certain line in my Apache config file... so it pointed to an old directory.. now the menu problem is gone
22:07 chris :-)
22:07 destinati rookie mistake :)
22:09 destinati unfortunately there is a server error at the self checkout demo
22:10 destinati If you were going to start a library right now, would you use 2.2.4 or a 3.0 beta?
22:10 destinati Since you have been in the code
22:11 chris definitely 2.2.4
22:11 chris 3.0 will probably eat your data, and corrupt your children or something
22:11 destinati haha
22:11 chris its not close to beta yet
22:11 destinati Anything is better than our current system
22:11 destinati currently we have a pretty big room filled with books
22:12 destinati and when people want to check out something, they fill out a card with the name of the book and their name
22:12 destinati and put it in a basket
22:12 destinati It's a lot on the honor system
22:12 chris :)
22:12 destinati That's how it's been for years
22:12 destinati And then I came onboard
22:12 chris i reckon liblimes self checkout might be worth looking at
22:12 destinati Sort of the "nerd to the rescue"
22:13 chris except its erroring at the moment, i better let kados know :)
22:13 destinati Well, before we get to the self-checkout.. we have to issue cards to about 500 people
22:14 destinati That's a logistics issue in itself
22:14 chris true
22:14 destinati I wanted to get a biometric device
22:14 destinati but that was scary to some...
22:15 russ retina scan and thumb print to issue an item :-)
22:15 destinati hehe.. no
22:15 destinati surely there is a way to get a nice string of numbers from a thumbprint alone
22:15 destinati Don't need to go *over*board :)
22:16 destinati Hmm.. I'm trying to see what's the most painfree way of sending just an ISBN to the LOC and getting data back on the Windows side
22:16 destinati How normalized are the tables?
22:17 destinati Let's see...
22:17 destinati 7 biblio* tables
22:17 chris there are a bunch of routines to help you
22:18 chris because you want to populate the marc tables also
22:18 chris C4::Biblio
22:18 chris is the perl module that has all the routines for adding an modify
22:18 destinati All I want to do is have a way to populate as much as possible so that I can have my wife scan just the ISBN
22:18 chris right
22:18 destinati because she'd have fun with that part
22:18 chris something like this
22:19 chris use C4::Biblio;
22:19 chris get isbn number from input
22:19 chris find matching bibliographic record
22:19 chris then
22:20 chris my $biblio= { title => the title ,
22:20 chris author=>author
22:20 chris subtitle=>subtitle
22:20 chris seriestitle=>
22:20 chris coprightdate=>
22:20 chris abstract=>
22:20 chris notes=>
22:20 chris };
22:21 chris my $biblionumber= newbiblio($biblio);
22:21 chris then
22:21 chris my $biblioitem = {
22:21 chris biblionumber => $biblionumber,
22:21 chris itemtype => whatever you fetched
22:22 chris isbn => isbn
22:22 chris publishercode=>
22:22 chris ...
22:22 chris notes =>
22:22 chris };
22:22 chris my $biblioitemnumber=newbiblioitem($biblioitem);
22:22 chris and finally the item
22:23 chris my $item={
22:23 chris biblionumber=$biblionumber,
22:23 chris biblioitemnumber=$biblioitemnumber,
22:23 chris sorry that should be
22:23 chris biblionumber=>$biblionumber,
22:23 chris biblioitemnumber=<$biblioitemnumber,
22:23 chris biblioitemnumber=>$biblioitemnumber,
22:23 chris even
22:24 chris homebranch=>branchcode
22:24 chris holdingbranch=>branchcode,
22:24 chris replacementprice=>
22:24 chris };
22:24 destinati oh wow.. quite extensive on the properties
22:24 destinati Is it smart to go that route or should I do it via MARC?
22:24 chris my $barcode='some unique identifier';
22:25 chris newitems($item,($barcode));
22:25 chris that will populate the marc and biblio tables
22:25 chris or you can fetch marc records
22:25 chris and use bulkmarcimport.pl to load them in
22:26 destinati Hmm.. I may be foiled again
22:26 destinati It seems that on most books I just have the UPC
22:26 destinati so I'll have to translate that first
22:28 destinati Do you run the Katip library?
22:28 destinati er
22:28 destinati Katipo
22:31 chris nope im a programmer
22:31 chris katipo only has a little library
22:31 chris (we wrote koha originally)
22:35 destinati What do you use as your IDE?
22:37 russ Integrated Development Environment?
22:37 destinati correct
22:37 destinati or do you just use Vim or Emacs?
22:37 chris i use jed
22:37 chris screen + ssh + jed and a web browser
22:38 chris is about all i need
22:38 destinati ah
22:41 destinati Hmm, I suppose I should set up the library before the script
22:41 destinati I think I remember seeing documentation on what I should do
22:41 destinati Adding a branch...
22:41 chris www.kohadocs.org
22:41 chris lots of help there
22:42 chris http://www.kohadocs.org/newbieguide.html is a good one
22:43 destinati Thanks. I appreciate your help... especially the Perl
22:43 chris no problem
22:46 destinati Does Stephen Hedges stop by here?
22:46 chris at times, i havent seen him in a little while though
22:47 destinati I'd be curious to ask him how they did the images
22:47 chris owen or kados would know too, owen isnt here, and kados might be asleep though
22:48 destinati I imagine it's about 3:48 PM on Friday there?
22:48 destinati (I'm in Indianapolis, Indiana in the USA... it's 9:48 PM here.. on Thursday)
22:49 chris where in nz? yes
22:49 chris kados is in ohio tho ;)
22:49 destinati Ah ha!
22:49 destinati 10:49 PM then :)
23:09 destinati Would you happen to know if I used the suggestion on http://perl.z3950.org/support/windows.html
23:09 destinati if the z3950 code in Koha would work?
23:10 chris not sure
23:11 destinati Maybe an even more basic question... where does one go to use the Z3950 code in the UI?
23:11 chris you would have to rewrite some code but it should/might work
23:11 chris you need marc cataloguing turned on
23:11 chris then in acquisitions
23:14 destinati Hmm.
23:14 destinati Acquisitions complains about no book funds.. but when I add a book fund.. it lets me do it.. but it doesn't seem to save it
23:15 chris i suspect as you installed 2.2.3 that there might have been some changes in the database structure between it and 2.2.4
23:15 destinati hmm
23:16 chris but, you dont need bookfunds to use the z3950
23:16 chris if you go to systempreferences
23:16 chris and swithc acquisitions to simple
23:16 chris then try again
23:16 destinati None of the variables show up
23:17 destinati Perhaps it's easier to throw away the database and start over before proceeding
23:17 destinati is there a simple SQL that sets up everything for 2.2.4?
23:17 destinati I have no books in the database now
23:17 chris there is a script
23:17 chris called updatedatabase
23:17 destinati MySQL SQL rather
23:17 destinati I mean.. script of SQL commands
23:17 chris if you perl updatedabase
23:17 chris that oughta do it
23:18 chris its run by koha.upgrade when u upgrade
23:18 destinati from windows? :)
23:18 destinati I didn't know if there were things like bash scripts in there
23:18 chris its perl
23:18 destinati or some other *nix specifics
23:18 destinati right right
23:18 destinati worth a shot
23:19 chris so you should be able to run it, it must have been run to set up the 2.2.3 database
23:19 destinati the koha.upgrade is located where?
23:19 chris pass on windows
23:19 chris if you download the tarball
23:19 chris from sourceforge
23:20 chris it should be in the base of that
23:20 chris and in scripts/updater
23:20 destinati hmm
23:20 chris there is updatedatabase
23:21 destinati It's definitely meant to be run from an ANSI terminal
23:21 chris koha.upgrade is
23:21 chris but updatedatabase shouldnt need to be
23:21 destinati seems good
23:21 destinati It ran without errors I think
23:22 destinati Once again, you are right
23:22 destinati Now the book funds work
23:22 chris cool
23:22 destinati and the variables too
23:23 chris i think you can only use the z3950 in simple acquisitions
23:24 destinati ok set
23:33 destinati hmm.. seems like it'll take awhile. I'll chalk today up as a learning experience and getting it going. Perhaps tomorrow I can delve more into the z3950. Thanks again Chris for your help. I'm off to bed. Have a great afternoon!
23:33 chris cya later, good luck
23:33 destinati I'll let the connection linger and see if I pick up any tips ;)
23:33 chris http://koha.org/irc/
23:33 chris its all logged
23:34 destinati Good to know :)
23:52 chris score
23:52 chris chicken for dinner
23:52 chris doh wrong channel again
23:52 chris man ive been doing that all day
23:52 chris welcome back mike .. as you can see, im happy that im having chicken for dinner tonight :)
23:53 MikeL what time is it in NZ ?
23:54 rach 4.54pm
23:54 rach definitly dinner planning time
23:54 chris 6 minutes till the weekend :)
23:54 MikeL You have 6 mins before your knock off time :-)
23:55 MikeL is anyone there is an expert on apache setup?
23:56 chris im not an expert, i can usually find my way round though
23:57 chris the problem you will have
23:57 chris is that koha expects /cgi-bin/koha/somethting.pl
23:58 MikeL yes so I will need an alias certainly
23:58 chris and maybe even mod_rewrite
23:58 chris since both the opac and the intranet expect things in /cgi-bin/koha
23:59 MikeL I used Alias /opac /home/koha/koha/opac/cgi-bin
23:59 chris yep which is ok, until you try and submit a form
23:59 chris and thats submitting to /cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl
00:00 MikeL and ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/koha/ /home/koha/koha/opac/cgi-bin/
00:01 chris i think you'll bump into problems with the intranet
00:01 chris i dont think ScriptAlias and Alias can be restricted to a directory
00:02 MikeL thats right, and same for DocumentRoot
00:02 chris so when it comes to /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin which is expected to be /cgi-bin/koha
00:02 chris its going to clash with the opac
00:02 MikeL correct
00:03 chris you could just dump all the scripts in /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin
00:04 MikeL yuk, that would be non-standard
00:04 chris yep
00:04 chris and insecure
00:04 MikeL maybe I just need a modification of the VirtualHost directive.
00:04 chris or you could edit the templates for the opac
00:04 chris but that would be a lot of work
00:05 MikeL What I have is a server at royalsoc.org.au that has two entries in httpd.conf
00:05 MikeL www.royalsoc.org.au and nsw.royalsoc.org.au and our provider has entries for those in their DNS
00:06 MikeL They are in <VirtualHost> directives.
00:06 chris right
00:07 chris you could www.royalsoc.org.au/opac
00:07 chris and royalsoc.org.nz/koha or the like
00:07 MikeL thats exactly what I want
00:07 MikeL I want users to see http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/opac
00:07 chris what id do then
00:08 chris in that virtualhost
00:08 chris Alias /opac/ /home/koha/opacs/htdocs
00:08 chris ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/koha/ /home/koha/opac/cgi-bin/
00:08 MikeL OH! I have been thinking of how to add Extra VH's
00:09 MikeL I didnt think of adding commands INSIDE the existing ones.
00:12 MikeL But what would I do about DocRoot. At present I have /home/rsnsw/web/nsw
00:12 MikeL but opac would need to use /home/koha/koha/opac/htdocs
00:12 chris hmm im not sure you need to change it
00:13 chris no, cos there is only one static html page
00:13 chris the rest are all scripts
00:13 chris so if you alias
00:13 chris Alias /opac /home/koha/opac/htdocs
00:14 chris then nsw.royalsoc.org.au/opac will get you to that page, which redirects you to /cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl
00:14 chris and the .pl files all use html::template .. and they know where to get the templates from /etc/koha.conf
00:14 MikeL am making the edits now..... :-)
00:15 chris hmm, it may have problems with the images tho ;(
00:18 MikeL yeah lots of errors in apache logs: it cant open templates
00:19 chris darn
00:20 chris hmm
00:21 chris what does it say in you /etc/koha.conf
00:22 MikeL The welcome appears monentarily, then get errors
00:22 chris whats the error in the error log ?
00:23 MikeL opacdir=/home/koha/koha/opac
00:23 chris is there a opachtdocs= bit as well?
00:24 MikeL opachtdocs=/home/koha/koha/opac/htdocs/opac-tmpl
00:24 chris and thats right?
00:24 MikeL yes
00:24 MikeL There is a user called koha hence /home/koha
00:24 chris do you have the PERL5LIB line in your virtual host?
00:24 MikeL and the software is installed ina  koha dircetory under that user
00:24 chris right
00:25 chris SetEnv PERL5LIB /home/koha/koha/intranet/modules
00:26 MikeL I have a small cgi script to show vars and it shows PERL5LIB=/home/koha/koha/intranet/modules
00:26 chris cool
00:26 chris in the error log whats it saying when you hit http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/cgi[…]koha/opac-main.pl
00:27 MikeL wait and I'll copy it.
00:27 chris cool
00:29 MikeL go to http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/~mikel/
00:30 MikeL The install of the Koha software went fine ASAIK
00:30 chris yep looks ok to me
00:30 chris although this doesnt look go
00:30 chris od
00:31 MikeL I put the errors from apache up there.
00:31 chris read_config_file(/home/koha/koha/etc/koha.conf) returned undef at /home/koha/koha/intranet/modules/C4/Context.pm line 229.
00:31 chris or is that where the config file is?
00:31 MikeL its at /home/koha/koha/etc/koha.conf
00:32 MikeL i can post it if needed sans password
00:32 chris is it readable by the user that apache runs as?
00:32 MikeL No, oops
00:33 chris hopefully youll get a different set of errors now :)
00:33 MikeL Koha now appears !
00:33 chris sans images
00:34 chris and stylesheets
00:34 MikeL yes sans images
00:34 chris now we can fix the stylesheet problem
00:34 chris if you jump into the koha database (we'd do this in the librarian interface if it was up and running normally)
00:34 chris and do a
00:34 chris select * from systempreferences;
00:35 MikeL okies , wait  atic
00:37 chris there is a row that has opacstylesheet as its variable
00:37 chris so if we do
00:37 MikeL yes
00:37 MikeL what do I adjust
00:38 MikeL also maybe I should do a chown koha:www-data to the koha files  so apache can read them all ?
00:38 MikeL I just did it to koha.conf only
00:38 chris update systempreferences set value="http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/opa[…]ng/stylesheet.css" where variable='opacstylesheet';
00:38 chris im unsure of what the correct url is
00:38 chris ill just try to find out
00:38 MikeL okies I'll look
00:39 chris ahh if we put in our virtual host
00:39 chris Alias /opac/includes/ /home/koha/koha/opac/htdocs/includes/
00:39 chris then value="http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/opac/includes/main.css"
00:40 chris in the sql above
00:40 chris ok, my wife has just arrived home, so i have to wander off for a bit, ill be back a bit later
00:40 MikeL ok
00:58 MikeL under opac I have htdocs/opac-tmpl/ with the different templates there and no main.css , maybe its opac.css.
00:58 MikeL Anyhow this has got me closer to getting the thing up. I'll get the intranet working.
01:24 MikeL For chris if he gets back. I setup an additional VirtualHost 123.456.123.456:8080 and the deafult koha settings. It seems to be working now.
01:44 rachel ah  good
01:50 MikeL Just got Koha going 10 mins ago at http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au:8080
01:52 MikeL You may remember we met in Sydney, I was just at the time considering Koha for the Royal Society of NSW
02:04 MikeL list
04:25 rachel hi paul
04:25 paul hi paul
04:25 paul you are warned on your desktop when someone tries to attack your computer !
04:44 rachel how many have you had?
04:44 paul for instance, just one, tried by me ;-)
04:44 paul (was just to test)
04:45 si paul: what constitutes an attack?
04:45 si port scans?
04:45 paul hi si.
04:45 si hiya
04:45 paul yes, for instance.
04:45 paul (for example)
04:46 paul but I think there are other warnings. like brute force attack on SSH
04:46 si try
04:48 si did you catch that one?
04:48 paul nope.
04:49 paul which ip ?
04:49 si 213.41.174.86
04:50 si is what I scanned
04:50 paul mmm... should have warned me...
04:50 si coming from 202.50.109.222
04:50 si I just did :-)
04:52 paul (on phone)
05:04 chris paul: you will appreciate this http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sect[…]ObjectID=10352414
07:49 Sylvain hi
10:37 kados paul: just sent 'decision' to koha-devel on PROG

| Channels | #koha index | Today | | Search | Google Search | Plain-Text | plain, newest first | summary