Re: [VuFind-General] VuFind Install Problem

[Till K. <kin...@gm...>]

Roland Mischke schrieb:
> 1.  A question on the appropriateness of VuFind for our situation.  Our 
> retirement home has a modest library (maybe 4000 volumes), and very few 
> computer knowledgeable people.  Our current "ILS" consists of a database 
> (MS Works) from which we can export delimited data and use mailmerge (MS 
> Word) to print cards and various labels.  A simple, pretty foolproof 
> system.  Searching for books within MS Works, though, is pretty klutzy 
> (on a good day).  VuFind looks like a good way to get a user friendly 
> "front end" for old folks to use.

Would be great to hear your experiences using VuFind in such a scenario...

> We can export delimited data from the 
> database, open in a spreadsheet, then save and process in MarcEdit to 
> map fields and produce a Marc record. 

OK, as long as you have MARCish records, VuFind doesn't care how you get 
them...

> All we need from VuFind is the 
> user interface and the ability to search for books and to slurp up Marc 
> records.  Is this reasonable?

Yes, though VuFind is designed to search much bigger libraries. But if 
you feel comfortable with VuFind, that's a perfect job for it.

> 2. I've been trying to install VuFind 1.0RC2 on a server running Ubuntu 
> 8.10.  After many false starts, I've gotten to the point where I can log 
> into  "[local wireless network URL]/vufind"  and not get a "not found" 
> error.  I do get an error screen which says "Solr Index offline".  

Solr is the search engine used by VuFind. This error message tells you, 
that VuFind can't connect to that Solr search engine.
 From what you write below, I understand, you did run
./vufind.sh start
in the VuFind installation directory, correct? This command starts up 
the Solr search engine (see 
http://vufind.org/wiki/starting_and_stopping_vufind).
It dumps a lot of output to the screen, just as you noticed. There 
should be a line saying "Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8080" 
somewhere near the end of the output. If you see that line, Solr should 
be running fine.
You may check this by pointing your Web browser to
http://[VuFind-machine]:8080/solr/biblio/admin (replace [VuFind-machine] 
with the address of the Computer you installed VuFind on).
If Solr is running fine, that brings up the Solr web administration 
interface in your browser (a web page in grey and yellow). If you see 
that, Solr is running fine, if not, there is some problem with Solr.
To find out, what's wrong, you may redirect the output of the vufind.sh 
start command to a file and send this file to this mailinglist, so we 
may have a look what's happening. To do that type
export JETTY_CONSOLE=/tmp/output_jetty.txt
on the command line before running
./vufind.sh start
Then the Solr startup output is written to a file output_jetty.txt in 
directory /tmp of your server. Send us that file.

> VuFind is set up with the "Sample" pseudo ILS.  

That's fine. The ILS interface is used to retrieve the loan status of 
items, do patron authentication and other loan related functions in 
VuFind. It is not needed to index records and make them findable.
Your setup is correct, if you don't need those loan functions or don't 
have a supported ILS, the "Sample" ILS driver is the correct choice.

> When VuFind loads, the screen entries rush 
> by rather fast. 

That's the output of Solr starting up I talked about above.

> There seems to be at least one message that talks about 
> a war between Solr and something else, 

Hmmm, no, it's peaceful christmas time, no wars between software 
components :-) WAR is a file format used for Java web applications. Solr 
is such a Java web application distributed in such a WAR file. That's 
why the output mentions a WAR. No need to worry...

> Any help would be appreciated.  My Linux knowledge is rather limited 
> (maybe not even enough to be dangerous).

Good luck! And feel free to report any problems you have getting VuFind 
up and running.

Till