It sounds as if you're sort of in the same place I was five years ago, except that I had a small medical library I was hoping to put onto Koha, and I already had a collection of bibs and items to experiment with. I mostly taught myself, basically by installing and re-installing Koha until I got it right.
Do you have a spare PC sitting in a closet somewhere? If it has 2GB RAM (preferably 4 or more) and around 40GB HD, that's enough to get started with. If not, try getting some space on a cloud server--you can get enough to run a practice Koha setup for USD10 per month. The great advantage of those is that Linux is already set up, and if you do something horrible, you can wipe that one out and start over. I assume you've seen this? https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_ubuntu_-_packages I used it to rebuild a Koha system yesterday and it went smoothly. Good luck! Koha's a lot of fun. Fred King Medical Librarian, MedStar Washington Hospital Center Member at Large, koha-US fred.k...@medstar.net 202-877-6670 ORCID 0000-0001-5266-0279 MedStar Authors Catalog: http://medstarauthors.org It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. --Douglas Adams -----Original Message----- From: Koha [mailto:koha-boun...@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Raimund Klein Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2018 7:02 AM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: [Koha] Koha for our office library Hi there, This is Raimund from ThoughtWorks Manchester. We're looking at adding a management system to our little office library, mainly with the view of adding electronic checkout capabilities - we're a Tech company highly interested in all things that have to do with little sensors etc., so this seems like a reasonable project which could actually show off some ideas to our clients in the future. We already have some capability on the sensor side, but I don't want to write an inventory system from scratch. A librarian friend of mine pointed me to Koha, and I played around with the demo on the web - quite impressive. My next step would be to try it out in combination with sticking a tag into a few of our books - for now on my dev machine (a Mac). Now I understand from the website that Koha usually runs on some flavour of Linux, preferably Debian. So I tried several things: - Setting up a Debian Virtual Box and installing everything there. Turned into a lot of pain, probably because I didn't find a good raw Debian image to start with. - Tried the same with CentOS. I actually got much further, but then I noticed that I didn't understand the Koha installation itself. - I stumbled upon the Docker image <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__hub.docker.com_r_digibib_koha_&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=Cd5f6C_zuUvKw3hVFeZ0X2BQiGB0gPxBXxOOUSCdvbA&e=> from the Oslo Public Library. For my purposes, this sounds ideal; however, it doesn't seem to work out of the box. When I start it and point my browser to localhost:8080 or 8081, all I get is a HTTP 500; the logs indicate that the DB isn't set up properly: ==> /var/log/koha/name/plack-error.log <== DBD::mysql::db do failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement " SELECT * FROM systempreferences WHERE 1 = 0 "] at /usr/share/koha/lib/Koha/https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__Database.pm&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=YUqfJTcMGB7BiO2o0h9psp1jKL3jN_SGMasx1fm2qzI&e= line 93. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casauthentication'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__DBI.pm&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=x0uVS_F23luOwDVErPhGfQXFuXpXQqnQLk-_8QwVtNY&e= line 1832. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='caslogout'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__DBI.pm&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=x0uVS_F23luOwDVErPhGfQXFuXpXQqnQLk-_8QwVtNY&e= line 1832. DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Table 'koha_name.systempreferences' doesn't exist [for Statement "SELECT `me`.`variable`, `me`.`value`, `me`.`options`, `me`.`explanation`, `me`.`type` FROM `systempreferences` `me` WHERE ( `me`.`variable` = ? )" with ParamValues: 0='casserverurl'] at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__DBI.pm&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=x0uVS_F23luOwDVErPhGfQXFuXpXQqnQLk-_8QwVtNY&e= line 1832. - Finally I tried the Vagrant based kohadevbox <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__github.com_digibib_kohadevbox&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=FX5v9TQ0zwXUUhaaeONPNPpA-dQvwjUzfc-nfdGq9I8&e=> (from Oslo as well). That won't even start for me: TASK [Update apt cache if needed] ********************************************** fatal: [jessie]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "'/usr/bin/apt-get dist-upgrade' failed: E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.\n", "rc": 100, "stdout": "Reading package lists...\nBuilding dependency tree...\nReading state information...\nThe following NEW packages will be installed:\n firmware-linux-free irqbalance libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libnuma1\n linux-image-3.16.0-5-amd64 shared-mime-info xdg-user-dirs\nThe following packages will be upgraded:\n bind9-host dnsutils exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light\n gcc-4.9-base host isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libbind9-90\n libcurl3-gnutls libdns-export100 libdns100 libgcc1 libicu52 libirs-export91\n libisc-export95 libisc95 libisccc90 libisccfg-export90 libisccfg90\n liblwres90 libssl1.0.0 libstdc++6 libtiff5 libxml2 linux-image-amd64 openssl\n perl perl-base perl-modules sensible-utils\n33 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.\nNeed to get 60.6 MB of archives.\nAfter this operation, 182 MB of additional disk space will be used.\n", "stdout_lines": ["Reading package lists...", "Building dependency tree...", "Reading state information...", "The following NEW packages will be installed:", " firmware-linux-free irqbalance libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libnuma1", " linux-image-3.16.0-5-amd64 shared-mime-info xdg-user-dirs", "The following packages will be upgraded:", " bind9-host dnsutils exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light", " gcc-4.9-base host isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libbind9-90", " libcurl3-gnutls libdns-export100 libdns100 libgcc1 libicu52 libirs-export91", " libisc-export95 libisc95 libisccc90 libisccfg-export90 libisccfg90", " liblwres90 libssl1.0.0 libstdc++6 libtiff5 libxml2 linux-image-amd64 openssl", " perl perl-base perl-modules sensible-utils", "33 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.", "Need to get 60.6 MB of archives.", "After this operation, 182 MB of additional disk space will be used."]} At this point, I'm happy to receive any help. Ideally, I'd like to get the Docker image to work. (Should I have sent this to the wrong mailing list, please let me know. Since I'm not planning to do any development on Koha itself, I still view myself as a user; but please let me know if my understanding is wrong.) Kind regards Raimund Klein -- Raimund Klein Technical Lead Email rkl...@thoughtworks.com Telephone +447941061959 [image: ThoughtWorks] <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.thoughtworks.com_-3Futm-5Fcampaign-3Draimund-2Dklein-2Dsignature-26utm-5Fmedium-3Demail-26utm-5Fsource-3Dthoughtworks-2Demail-2Dsignature-2Dgenerator&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=DKbojD5en9JpPE1M41m4-BS2TYrwvGX1oStOWTCXX1k&e=> _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__koha-2Dcommunity.org&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=fkv8eblrIKdxh63sLJTqmYcZmyZExkGK5tKIK8GEqnA&e= Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.katipo.co.nz_mailman_listinfo_koha&d=DwIGaQ&c=RvBXVp2Kc-itN3g6r3sN0QK_zL4whPpndVxj8-bJ04M&r=vKh6XwOmjyC51IkP1OfsdjQZoWT2vpi6VZl8El8EPRI&m=CQ18fCMFP-4uz3Ak7c5cE51O5voGPdtLzDm3y-8uJoU&s=QQOHW4MqUkuezB1DEdwIOB4P_7c8MQP-BuruHNNty5I&e= _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha