VuFind

Introduction
This wiki page documents the installation and configuration of VuFind on an Ubuntu server inside our campus firewall.

This is a one year pilot project to extensively evaluate VuFind.

See: http://vufind.org and http://vufind.org/features.php

Step 1
Install the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64 Bit server software.

When asked for additional software to install with "Tasksel", select OpenSSH and LAMP Stack.

For our test server we used a 100GB virtual machine, 20GB was used for the root partition, 1GB for swap and the rest mounted on the /var folder.

We are using http://search.sun.ac.za as the hostname and the service will be advertised as SUNSearch.

Step 2
Login to the server remotely and setup the software sources for the server. See: http://ubuntu.sun.ac.za/wiki/index.php/Repositories-12.04-LTS then update the software.

Step 3
Install the following software. sudo apt-get -y install php5 php5-dev php-pear php5-json php5-ldap php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-xsl php5-intl php5-gd sudo apt-get -y install default-jdk

Step 4
Download the VuFind software to the /tmp folder and create an installation folder as follows. cd /tmp wget http://web.lib.sun.ac.za/files/vufind/vufind-2.2.1.tar.gz tar -xzvf vufind-2.2.1.tar.gz mv vufind-2.2.1 /usr/local/vufind

Step 5
Setup local file and folder permissions as follows. sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/local/vufind/local/cache sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/local/vufind/local/config mkdir /usr/local/vufind/local/cache/cli chmod 777 /usr/local/vufind/local/cache/cli

Step 6
Enable Apache2 configuration for VuFind as follows. sudo apt-get -y install apache2 sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo ln -s /usr/local/vufind/config/vufind/httpd-vufind.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/vufind sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Step 7
Setup the environment variables as follows. sudo sh -c 'echo export JAVA_HOME=\"/usr/lib/jvm/default-java\" >> /etc/profile' sudo sh -c 'echo export VUFIND_HOME=\"/usr/local/vufind\" >> /etc/profile' sudo sh -c 'echo export VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR=\"/usr/local/vufind/local\" >> /etc/profile' source /etc/profile

Step 8
To remove the /vufind sub-site definition so that VuFind loads at the root of your domain, follow the steps below.
 * In the [Site] section of /usr/local/vufind/config/vufind/config.ini, set the “url” setting to “http://yourdomain.edu” (obviously replacing this with your real domain name).

ServerAdmin hgibson@sun.ac.za DocumentRoot /usr/local/vufind/public ServerName search.sun.ac.za ServerAlias search.sun.ac.za   Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all 
 * In /usr/local/vufind/config/vufind/httpd-vufind.conf, make the following changes:
 * 1) In the AliasMatch lines at the top, change “AliasMatch ^/vufind2/themes/…” to “AliasMatch ^/themes/…”.
 * 2) Remove the Alias line under “Configuration for general VuFind base”.
 * 3) RewriteBase should be /
 * In the /etc/apache2/sites-enable/000-default file add the following under the virtual host directive.

Step 9
To setup the VuFind service on an Ubuntu server, apply the following.
 * Step 1. Fix vufind.sh errors

Edit the service config file: /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh and replace all instances of vufind2 with vufind. sudo nano /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh


 * Step 2. Install the VuFind service

Start VuFind as follows. cd /etc/init.d sudo ln -s /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh vufind sudo update-rc.d vufind defaults sudo service vufind check sudo service vufind start

Step 10
To communicate with users you will need an email server. See the link below to setup postfix for your server on your campus. http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Prepare_Ubuntu/S07

Step 11
To ensure the continued operation of your server, it is best practice to setup a disaster recovery system. See the link below. http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php/SUNScholar/Disaster_Recovery

Auto Configuration
Open a web browser, and browse to this URL: http://%your-server-name%/Install/Home Replace %your-server-name% with your servers name. If the installation was successful, you should now see an "Auto Configure" screen. Some items on the list will be marked “Failed” with “Fix” links next to them. Click on each Fix link in turn and follow the on-screen instructions. After an issue is successfully resolved, you can click the “Auto Configure” breadcrumb to go back to the main list and proceed to the next problem.

Notes: To set up VuFind's database, you will need to have the root password you set when installing MySQL.



ILS Integration
See the links below for help about integrating your ILS with VuFind.
 * https://vufind.org/wiki/real-time_ils_integration
 * https://vufind.org/wiki/linking_to_vufind_from_external_systems
 * https://vufind.org/wiki/importing_records
 * https://vufind.org/wiki/automation

Demo
http://search.sun.ac.za