[Koha-devel] Koha on Ubuntu LTS

[Paul]

Over the last few days, I've looked into the cron "problem" that I raised 
the other day and just to be sure, I've just reformatted and installed the 
whole server+Koha again, using 3.6.7's INSTALL.ubuntu, Tomas' Wiki page and 
my own notes.

I created the user koha by:
$ sudo adduser koha
but did not use either of the following:
$ sudo adduser koha sudo   [to give sudo rights]
$ sudo adduser koha adm    [to give full admin rights]

This gives rise to user=koha not being able to use crontab -e, as can be seen:
paul at server2:/$ su koha
Password:
koha at server2:/$ crontab -e
crontabs/koha/: fdopen: Permission denied
koha at server2:/$ sudo crontab -e
[sudo] password for koha:
koha is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.
koha at server2:/$

However, using a normal sudo account for crontab -e, use vi, add:

KOHA_CONF=/etc/koha/koha-conf.xml
KOHAPATH=/usr/share/koha
PERL5LIB=$KOHAPATH/lib
* * * * *  koha  $KOHAPATH/bin/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl -a -b -z 
2>&1 > /dev/null

makes a fully functional cron for incrementing Zebra, albeit in 
/var/spool/cron/crontab/ with root:root ownership. All that remains to be 
done is to rename the koha file in /etc/cron.d to koha.old (or plain remove 
it.) [N.B. the job is quasi-instantaneous, so running every minute is 
imperceptible as overhead.]

ALSO, I've had to relook at how to do a complete Zebra re-index, given the 
permissions to user=koha.  The following is fully functional:

$  su koha
$  cd usr/share/koha
$  KOHA_CONF=/etc/koha/koha-conf.xml PERL5LIB=/usr/share/koha/lib 
./bin/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl -a -r -v
$  KOHA_CONF=/etc/koha/koha-conf.xml PERL5LIB=/usr/share/koha/lib 
./bin/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra.pl -b -r -v -x

[N.B. This differs from the Wiki Appendix C., which relies on user=koha 
having sudo rights.]

All of this could possibly be avoided by giving user=koha sudo rights [$ 
sudo adduser koha sudo], but I am for various reasons loath to do so. The 
solution outlined above works, and I have not yet found a specific 
user=koha task that fails.

So my question is 'have I missed something else that requires user=koha to 
have sudo rights?'

If not, I would suggest that a revamp of the Ubuntu installation should be 
written -- I'll be happy to do so.

Best - Paul

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