[Koha-devel] Biblio.pm subject of a bug?

[Mark Tompsett]

Greetings,

Zebra is necessary. I apologize the documentation isn't 100% perfect yet. 
I'm in the midst of revising INSTALL.ubuntu as well, and learning more about 
the install process while doing so. This will inevitably lead to more 
revisions.

Koha 3.6.7 installs super cleanly on Ubuntu 12.04. I've done it! The 
./koha_perl_deps.pl -m -u list is empty initially! There is no need for 
anything to be installed via CPAN. And best yet, you can get away with just 
the default Ubuntu repositories if you follow the instructions. If you wish 
to vary, put your MySQL server on another machine, use a memcached server, 
or something else, you may wish to add the external repository, and those 
are left as an exercise for the reader. The goal of the instructions is a 
basic working, single site setup.

I agree that that first "sudo apt-get" in the wiki instructions is overkill. 
However, I was working with the old documentation in the first place. I 
merely expanded existing documentation, and did very little removal. If you 
look at http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/attachment.cgi?id=11104 you 
will see my current attempt at revising the INSTALL.ubuntu file. These 
instructions add an external repository, debian.koha-community.org, to 
provide those libraries not packaged in Ubuntu by default. You will also 
note it does Apache and MySQL separately, like you prefer. I'm hoping to get 
the wiki and INSTALL files to be closer in content and order.

SSH is not required to run Koha, and hence is beyond the scope of the 
documentation. Samba is not required to run Koha, and hence is beyond the 
scope of the documentation. This does not prevent you from installing those 
yourself. If you know about these, you probably are capable enough to 
install and configure them.

Similarly, the instructions do not use memcached and memoize. They are not 
necessary for Koha to work. That is why the answers in Appendix A are 'no' 
for the memcached server. However, if you are familiar with setting them up, 
feel free to contribute documentation. I did not sit down and write in 
detail why the answers in Appendix A are the way they are. I hope to do that 
some time.

It is my experience, while doing various installs, that Perl's memcached 
libraries are rather antiquated, at least in Ubuntu. I got warnings while 
grabbing them initially from CPAN. Yes, I admit it. I used CPAN, despite the 
warnings against it. I didn't know about the external repository at the 
time, and I prefer to use only Ubuntu default libraries on Ubuntu. It adds a 
level of cleanness.

I must admit, I personally prefer doing the installation of SSH server and 
LAMP while installing Ubuntu. The disadvantage being this means PHP is 
installed and could create potential memory issues for systems with less 
memory. Our system initially only had 512MB.

If you have had indexing issues, feel free to look at the bizarre journey I 
had here: 
http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Automatic-email-new-accounts-td5717388.html#a5720725

I hope some of this commentary is applicable and useful.

Mark Tompsett