Evergreen on Debian VMWare image: Evergreen version 1.2.2.3

This VMWare Debian image of Evergreen server, built following Evergreen documentation, is provided for those who would like to take a quick look at Evergreen “under the hood” without the bother of compiling.

The image comes pre-installed with 13,000 records from Project Gutenberg.

If you just want to see Evergreen in action, see our Evergreen demo server or select a live installation.

If you just want to explore the circulation, cataloging, and reports services, you can simply download the Evergreen staff client (available for Windows, Linux, and Mac) and point it at the Evergreen demo server.

• It's well-known that performance is poor on virtual machines, due to all the abstraction going on. Once you've had a peek, please install Evergreen to see how well it works in action.

• This image is usually one or two versions behind the current Evergreen production release. See the Evergreen download page for the latest current stable version of Evergreen.

• A workstation with 1GB of RAM or more should be sufficient to run this VMWare image (the VMWare image itself only requires 512 MB of RAM).

• Download and install a VMWare product onto your system. (VMWare Player and VMWare Server are both free downloads, and either will work; if you're not planning to create your own VMWare images, VMWare Player is sufficient.)

• Extract the zipped Evergreen Debian VMWare image from http://evergreen-ils.org/~denials/Evergreen_Debian_1.2.2.3.zip onto your hard drive to create a new directory, Evergreen_Debian.

• This is optional, but if you extract the Evergreen_Debian folder to a root directory (for example, c:\Evergreen_Debian), you may be able to skip modifying the hostname (several steps below).

• In the VMWare product, open the VMWare image by pointing to Evergreen_Debian/Other Linux 2.6.x kernel.vmx file in the Evergreen_Debian directory. Your Evergreen Debian Linux operating system should begin booting up, presenting you with a login prompt.

• To log in to Evergreen:

  userid: root
  password: openils

This is a Debian system with all of the Evergreen development dependencies installed. This VMWare image was built with Evergreen 1.2.2.3.

* The hostname for this image was ''evergreen-server.localdomain''. To determine if this is the hostname for your installation, run the following command:<code>

perl -MNet::Domain=hostfqdn -e 'print hostfqdn'</code>

• If the result is not evergreen-server.localdomain, change the corresponding string in /openils/conf/opensrf.xml from evergreen-server.localdomain to the results of this command.

• To start Evergreen:

  (root) # su - opensrf
  (opensrf) $ cd /openils/bin
  (opensrf) $ osrf_ctl.sh -c /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml -a start_router
  (opensrf) $ osrf_ctl.sh -c /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml -a start_perl
  (opensrf) $ osrf_ctl.sh -c /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml -a start_c
  (opensrf) $ clark-kent.pl --daemon

The three osrf* commands begin the opensrf services. The clark-kent.pl command is optional; it starts the reporting services (Clark Kent – reporter – get it?).

• Once the services are up and running, switch to a new virtual terminal with ALT-F2 and start Apache:

(root) # /etc/init.d/apache2 start

• Now identify the IP address for this virtual machine:

(root) # /sbin/ifconfig

You should see something like this:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:41:54:6B:FF
          inet addr:192.168.1.128 

The number following “inet addr:” is your IP address.

• You can then open up that IP address in the browser on your host machine to see the default Evergreen catalog interface.

Note: at the moment (8/21/2008) we have identified a couple of glitches that prevent the VMWare image of Evergreen from automatically working with the staff client. (In more specific terms, on the image, Apache doesn't expose the symbolic links for xul versions, and HEAD is linked to an older version for xul server files.) We should have a new image available shortly.

1. If you haven't done so already, download and install the Evergreen staff client
2. Launch the staff client on your host operating system
3. For Server/Hostname, enter the IP address of your Evergreen installation
4. For Authentication, use “admin” as the username and “open-ils” as the password

On your local machine, don't expect the snappiest performance from the Evergreen VMWare installation, but a quick search for mark twain or austen should give you a feel for how the OPAC works.

Questions about Evergreen or this image? Contact the open-ils-general mailing list: http://open-ils.org/listserv.html

Dan Scott - dscott@laurentian.ca Laurentian University