[Koha-win32] my windows lessons

[georgejenner at belgacom.net]

Hi there.

This will probably be my first and last post to the list as I've run out of time to get koha going on Windows. I'll share what I've learnt inthe hope someone can get it 
going. I approached it from a complete novice in web hosted applications, and that has been my downfall.  We'll be using somehting called Isis that is used in 
another library at the school. 

I got a good bit of help from  www.desilva.biz about installing perl, apache and mysql, and virtual hosts.  Other things I found out by banging my head.  Some things 
may or may not be necessary.  Dunno as nothing worked entirely.

1.  Installing perl.

The perl website (cpan) is unfriendly and smug.  It implies the only sensible way to install perl is to compile it on your own machine.  Well I have the right compiler and 
of course it doesn't compile.  So  download a binary.  I tried the one from activestate, and it seems good to me.

Install Perl to c:\usr rather than the defaul of c:\perl.  This is to do with the shebang line at the top of all perl scripts, which apparently tells the interpreter where to 
find perl.exe, which I suppose is the interpreter.

The modules.  These are extra bits of perl you need.  Don't follow the advice to download them and install them manually.  You'll find in perl bin two proggies called 
ppm.bat and ppm3.bat.  This is perl package manager.  Connect to the internet and then run ppm.  All you then have to do is type "install <module name>" and it's 
done.  ppm3 did not work on my machine, but ppm is fine.

2.  Installing mysql

This appears straightforward.  If you also download myodbc you can accss the database with MS Access or even OpenOffice Write, if you've got opensource tools.  
Why didn't anybody tell me this?

3.  Installing Apache.

Apache 2 doesn't work at all on my Win ME machine.

You have to edit the hosts.sam file in your Windows directory to include the names of any virtual hosts you'll be using.  See details at desilva.biz.  That will also help 
with localhost issues.  Don't know what localhost means?  And I thought I was the only idiot trying to do this.

The apache config stuff in koha/installation hints seem to work.  All you have to do is change the directory names.  Put in complete paths and always remember to 
change  \ to / in your pathnames.  ( I bet you forget at least once)

4.  Installing Koha

I went through manual installation.  The main problem was updataing databases.  Eventually I changed the line in database.pm  and updatedatabase worked.

#   $database=$configfile{'database'};
      $database='koha';

5.  Running Koha

This section intentionally left blank.

Bits of it sort of worked. Eventually I decided that it wasn't accessing mysql properly, but I've given up now.

Good luck for the rest of you :-)

George