[Koha-devel] Reviewing Directory Structure

[Chris Cormack]

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 at katipo.co.nz                                          www.katipo.co.nz