Hi Chris, Roger and everyone else, I have been thinking about this issue as well. As part of the get-everything-templated program it has become necessary to rationalise the file system structure in koha.
Are the 'opac' and 'intranet' designed to be installed as 'stand-alone' on physically separate servers?
If designed to support optional 'stand-alone', then I don't think the existing installation would support that. The OPAC relies on stuff stored in the 'intranet' folders.
At present the opac-intranet divide has certainly become blury! however with respect to what chris has said:
So the aim is to make it possible/easy for big libraries to use koha while not making it hard for small ones.
Spreading server loads and allowing for a little more security, I think we should attempt to reinforce the opac / intranet divide. As I reoganise the opac I am attempting to make it as stand alone as possible. The only thing they should share is the database. To this end I propose the following structure for the opac servers file system... <server root>/cgi-bin/<opac only scripts> <server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/<theme specific templates> <server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/images/<theme specific images> <server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/includes/<theme specific includes> I dont see the problem with having multiple copies of some of the images and includes if they are the same accross different theme/lang settings. If you were really worried we could put some sym-links in? Note that all this stuff is only intended for the opac. I.e. non of these files will have settings like "$type = 'opac' | 'intra' " That just leads to too much complication, and ties the opac and the intranet together, which is what we want to avoid. I will also attemp to renaim all the scripts and template files so that they have the same name just different suffix: opac-search.pl goes with opac-search.tmpl and if there is a search.pl in the intranet and a search.pl in the opac I think they should be renamed opac-search.pl and intra-search.pl. It doesnt matter if these two files do almost the same thing, we want them to be seperate. With regards themes and language settings. I think we should expect that the themes in the intranet and in the opac might be quite different. For example there might be a "junior" theme for the opac, set up in the childrens section of the library. And there might be a "frontdesk" theme in the intranet for the front desk only. So in cvs I think we will need to keep these seperate. We can follow Dorian's lead and have: koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/<theme>/<lang>/ koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/<theme>/<lang>/ for all the templates. in the main branch we have all the cgi-bin stuff mixed together. I think this is a little confusing. We can put the opac stuff in the koha/opac/ directory? At the moment I have put the template-only opac scripts into a koha/tmpl/ directory, that I will move into koha/opac/ when its ready. (which it basically is) All the C4 modules can be shared byt the opac and intranet. Dont see any reaon to keep them seperate? Systempreferences: We need to get a standard list of system preferences. I will write another email about that as this one has gotten quite long enough :-) Finlay On Wed, 2002-09-18 at 11:05, Chris Cormack wrote:
On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 08:36:07AM +1000, Roger Buck said:
I think there are still some general questions about Koha file and directory structure that are worth investigating.
This is not just idle comment - I'm happy to do some work on this (under direction) if it's generally considered worthwhile.
QUESTION 1: Are the 'opac' and 'intranet' designed to be installed as 'stand-alone' on physically separate servers?
If designed to support optional 'stand-alone', then I don't think the existing installation would support that. The OPAC relies on stuff stored in the 'intranet' folders.
Yep the plan is to fix this, so that the can exist on separate servers. We are getting there, the work on templating the opac is helping us achieve this end.
If designed to be installed on same physical server, then why duplicate stuff like images, templates, 'includes' folders and related files? The duplication adds to installation and maintenance complexity and I can't figure out what advantage(s) it provides?
Same question arises for the need for virtual hosts.
Virtual hosts have a few advantages, for example you can have your opac listening on an external interface. and your intranet only listening on the internal one. This is how HLT works. Provides another level of security as the intranet is not available to the outside world. I think this would be attractive to biggish libraries.
The idea with being able to run on separate servers is that we can also make use of mysql's replication features to run a mirror of the database on a separate machine. This way you can have the opac not slow issues, and vice versa. You could even go as far as using LVS http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/ To build a cluster of opac servers, to balance load. For a big library ie one with 100's of 1000's of borrowers this could be a very useful thing to do.
So the aim is to make it possible/easy for big libraries to use koha while not making it hard for small ones.
Chris
-- Chris Cormack Programmer 025 500 789 Katipo Communications Ltd chris@katipo.co.nz www.katipo.co.nz
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