KohaCon10: Debian Packaging for Koha

by ByWater Staff on Oct 28, 2010

Presented by Robin Sheat

These packages are what Catalyst uses (pretty much) for deploying their MyKoha service in the cloud.

To get the packages:

• sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d
  add “deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha squeeze main”
  add “deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha squeeze-dev main”
• sudo aptitude update
• sudo aptitude install koha-common
  # plain ‘koha’ package not quite ready yet

Does a ‘dev’ install, but set up like a production install. Does not run off Git, since building packages is so straightforward. Once installed, you’ve got a ton of commands you can run. To show valid commands:

• sudo koha-

Creating a new instance of Koha with the database on the same machine:

• sudo koha-create –create-db mylibrary

Navigate to mylibrary.domain.tld to view OPAC, mylibrary-intra.domain.tld to staff client. Staff client login is ‘staff’, and password is generated by script (don’t share it!)

Email is deactivated by default. To activate:

• sudo koha-email-enable mylibrary

(disable works similarly)

Automatically handles backups for every instance running (in /var/spool/koha/mylibrary). Does mysqldumps into sql.gz and non-database preferences (including Zebra index!!) into tar.gz. Command koha-restore to reload.

koha-foreach to loop through every library on a server, and do a command (as that library user). Good for cronjobs. Has options to filter.

One warning: No UNIMARC option at this time! Also, Zebra is not ICU. Both are pretty easy to fix.

[tag]kohacon10[/tag]

[Originally posted by Ian Walls]