Installing Koha 3 on Ubuntu 8.10: A Tutorial

I’ve posted a rea­son­ably exten­sive tuto­r­ial for peo­ple who’d like to exper­i­ment with Koha.

My tar­get audi­ence is… well, I guess it’s me a few months ago: some­one who’s com­fort­able with tech­nol­ogy and not scared by a terminal/command prompt, but who isn’t yet an expert on either Linux or Koha.

The guide begins with a clean Ubuntu instal­la­tion, treads lightly through LAMP con­fig­u­ra­tion, explains how to install Koha and work through likely instal­la­tion issues, and ends with a reflec­tion on what you need to think about before host­ing your own live Koha implementation.

There are 23 responses to this post.

By Vimal Kumar on December 22, 2008 at 12:00 am

Dear Andy,
Con­grats you to wrote a very very use­ful Koha 3 instal­la­tion for Ubuntu. My search for a nice Ubuntu-Koha doc­u­men­ta­tion ends here.

Your doc­u­men­ta­tion is help­ful for us. We are plan to orga­nize work­shops on Koha and wish to install koha for some libraries in my city.

Thank you again,
Vimal Kumar
Asst. Librar­ian
Asian School of Busi­ness
India

By Andy Giesler on December 29, 2008 at 3:13 pm

Thanks for let­ting me know, Vimal. I’m glad to hear you’ll find my tuto­r­ial helpful.

By Ken Yap on February 2, 2009 at 8:18 am

Thanks for that tute. I did it on 8.04.2 (for the LTS) and every­thing worked. Well, like you I didn’t opt for Zebra.

By Ben Ostrowsky on February 2, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Thanks for writ­ing this! There was a typo on page 7 (“Koga”); not sure if it appears any­where else.

By Andy Giesler on February 2, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Thanks for let­ting me know, Ben. I’ve fixed it and con­firmed it was just in that one place.

By Chuck on March 18, 2009 at 7:12 pm

Excel­lent guide. My eyes have gone fuzzy read­ing many, many install guides. This is one of the finest. Thanks!!!!

By Eric Hartnett on March 20, 2009 at 11:09 am

This is one of the best step-by-step guides I’ve ever seen for any­thing. Fol­low­ing your guide I was able to install Koha on Ubuntu 8.04 with­out a sin­gle prob­lem. Thanks for your hard work.

By Hilaire DOVONON on April 6, 2009 at 8:48 am

i just gonna try that tute; it’s seems a won­der­ful one to taste KOHA on Ubuntu. thanks !

By Luis Olguin - Argentina on June 1, 2009 at 2:39 pm

Bue­nas Tardes.
Felic­ita­ciones por este exce­lente tuto­r­ial acerca de Koha.

El unico incon­ve­niente que tuve fue con la insta­lación de Net::Z33950::ZOOM

Aparece error al eje­cu­tar los test.

Usando cpan force install Net::Z33950::ZOOM se puede com­ple­tar la instalación?.

Agrade­ceré su respuesta.

Luis oLguin — Argentina
——————————–
Good evening.
Con­grat­u­la­tions on this excel­lent tuto­r­ial on Koha.

The only draw­back was that I had to install Net:: Z33950: ZOOM

Error appears when run­ning the test.

Using CPAN force install Net:: Z33950: ZOOM can com­plete the installation?.

I would appre­ci­ate your response.

Olguin Luis — Argentina

By Shiv on June 25, 2009 at 5:04 am

excel­lent descrip­tion works with ubuntu 9.04 also

By Shiv on June 25, 2009 at 5:07 am

u need to install by force,

> myhost # cpan
>
> cpan[1]> force install Net::Z3950::ZOOM
>
> cpan[2]> quit
> Lock­file removed.

By Ankit B on December 4, 2009 at 6:44 am

Using Ubuntu 9.04
When I open the browser :http://127.0.1.1/
It dis­plays this
pro­duc­tion mode — trapped fatal error

Help me it urgent

By Andy on December 5, 2009 at 2:23 am

Sorry Ankit, I’m not sure what would cause that error. A quick Google turned up this thread with some pos­si­ble solutions:

http://old.nabble.com/Koha-3.0-beta-on-Kubuntu-gutsy—%22production-mode—trapped-fatal-error%22-td17071451.html

You might want to con­sider post­ing your ques­tion to the Koha mail­ing list. The tech­ni­cal peo­ple who are most active in the Koha com­mu­nity reg­u­larly fol­low that list and sug­gest solu­tions to prob­lems. You can sign up for the Koha mail­ing list here: http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha

By Alberto on January 2, 2010 at 12:04 pm

You just saved my life. This tuto­r­ial is just what i needed. Thank you very much

By Andy on January 5, 2010 at 8:24 am

Glad I could help, Alberto. Thanks for let­ting me know.

By Michelle Fenger on February 14, 2010 at 10:03 pm

I installed ubuntu 9.10 and have tried to fol­low your EXCELLENT step by step tuto­r­ial. How­ever, when­ever I type the cd /build com­mand, I get
bash: cd: build: No such file or directory

Any sug­ges­tions? I have wanted to try Koha for a very long time, but have very min­i­mal linux expe­ri­ence so am hop­ing with your help and your tuto­r­ial I will be able to run a koha trial for my library.

Thank you

By Andy on February 15, 2010 at 4:14 pm

Michelle,

Thanks, glad you like the tuto­r­ial. I’ll con­tact you by email for more detailed diag­nos­tic questions.

One thing I do want to post for oth­ers to see, though, is advice on Linux exper­tise: I’d strongly advise against try­ing to go live with Koha until you have easy access to some­one with a good bit of Linux/Unix expe­ri­ence. That’s less impor­tant when set­ting up a sam­ple sys­tem to play with, but I wouldn’t want to go live with­out a good option for on-site tech­ni­cal support.

By Michelle on February 15, 2010 at 6:15 pm

Andy:
Thanks for con­tact­ing me by email and I will give your sug­ges­tions a try.

I def­i­nitely take your warn­ing to heart about hav­ing an expert in linux to help. Cur­rently I am using this as my next step in intro­duc­ing myself to linux. I’ve waited this long to get this far, I’m in no hurry to make mis­takes. Thanks for your help and I’m sure I’ll be back to ask more.

By mdwafi on March 11, 2010 at 3:46 am

Hi Andy,

Nice job. Congrats…

I’ve prob­lem when installing Perl mod­ules. Is it any other way to install all the mod­ules with­out using the CPAN?

Thank You..

By Andy on March 11, 2010 at 9:34 am

Most of my expe­ri­ence with mod­ules has been using CPAN. In the one case where I couldn’t get CPAN to work I installed the mod­ule man­u­ally. There’s an exam­ple of that process at the top of the “Perl Mod­ules” page: http://www.blazingmoon.org/guides/k3-on-u810-6.html

I’m not at all a Linux expert, though, and there might be other ways. If those two meth­ods don’t work you might want to try post­ing some­thing in a Linux help forum.

You might also find more help on the Koha mail­ing list. Infor­ma­tion on sign­ing up for the list is at http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha.

By Fips on March 16, 2010 at 5:07 am

Excel­lent write-up, and beau­ti­fully pre­sented! Thanks for the hard work, you made installing this soft­ware at least three headaches lighter.

By Galen Charlton on April 8, 2010 at 4:57 pm

Ear­lier today I did some work on a Koha data­base installed by a library who fol­lowed your instruc­tions. There was a minor glitch — as it turns out, sax_parser_print.pl indi­cated that the wrong SAX parser was being used. To resolve the prob­lem, it was nec­es­sary to update /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/XML/SAX/ParserDetails.ini, rather than (as your instruc­tions state) /etc/perl/XML/SAX/ParserDetails.ini. I’m not sure whether that was just some local cir­cum­stance or a con­se­quence of the instruc­tion to install XML::LibXML::SAX::Parser from CPAN, but it may be worth a note in the instructions.

By Andy on April 12, 2010 at 8:49 am

Thanks for not­ing that. I’ll look into it and may make an update. I do remem­ber hav­ing more trou­ble with the SAX parser than any other part of the install. There might be some vari­a­tion between Ubuntu instal­la­tions for some reason.

You aren't currently logged in. You can use the fields below to post a comment without logging in or registering, or you can log in or register now.




By submitting a comment here you grant Blazing Moon a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate comments will be removed at admin's discretion.