Update: The instructions on installing Vufind have been moved to the Vufind Wiki. Please check there for the most up-to-date instructions.
This is an update to my previous post on configuring Ubuntu to run Vufind…
First, upgrade your server distribution to the latest-and-greatest
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
If you’re on Edgy (7.04), this may take a while. Next install the Java 6 JDK and build-essential (for building Yaz).
sudo apt-get -y install sun-java6-jdk build-essential
When you’re prompted, answer the questions and let Ubuntu finish setting up Java. As a side note, the reason you want the JDK and not the JRE is that we want to run the Solr instance with a server switch to improve the performance. To do this, you need to the JDK.
Next, we install Apache2 and configure the mod_rewrite extension (and reload Apache2):
sudo apt-get -y install apache2
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
Now, to download Vufind:
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/vufind/VuFind-0.6.1.tar.gz?use_mirror=superb-east
tar zxvf VuFind-0.6.1.tar.gz
Now, we need to move the Vufind files to the proper location. By default this should be /usr/local/vufind. If you choose a different location, you’ll need to set an environmental variable for VUFIND_HOME that points to your installation location, but I’ll get more into that a bit later. You also need to change the permissions on the compile and cache folders in the web/interface folder.
sudo mv vufind-0.6.1 /usr/local/vufind
sudo chown www-data:www-data /usr/local/vufind/web/interface/compile
sudo chown www-data:www-data /usr/local/vufind/web/interface/cache
Now to work install MySQL
sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server
PHP5 is required for Vufind with several dependencies.
sudo apt-get -y install php5 php5-dev php-pear php5-ldap php5-mysql php5-xsl php5-pspell aspell aspell-en
I don’t have an Oracle backend, so I haven’t tested the installation of the pdo-oci driver listed in the “official” documentation, but this page will hopefully walk you through installing the driver.
Lastly, we need the Yaz library.
cd /tmp
wget http://ftp.indexdata.dk/pub/yaz/yaz-3.0.14.tar.gz
tar -zxvf yaz-3.0.14.tar.gz
cd yaz-3.0.14
./configure
make
sudo make install
Ok, we’re now finished with adding the packages to get Vufind running. It’s time to run the installation script.
sudo /usr/local/vufind/install
You’ll be walked through the configuration of your Vufind instance. There’s a slight issue in the the database setup script as it assumes you haven’t set a root password (you actually set a password when you set up MySQL in Gutsy now). No biggy, just let the script run through the installation of the PEAR libraries and we’ll fix it with the following:
mysql -u root -p
GRANT ALL ON vufind.* TO vufind@localhost IDENTIFIED BY “secretPassword”;
quit
Now we need to edit a few files. First, we’ll edit /usr/local/vufind/web/conf/config.ini. The big sections that need editing are Site, Amazon, and Catalog (though you probably want to take a look at LDAP too). The Amazon id is your web services access id (not your affiliate ID) and you much change your drive to the appropriate driver that you’re using (e.g. Voyager, SirsiDynix, Koha, Evergreen, Aleph).
Next, the /usr/local/vufind/web/.htaccess file. You’ll need to change the rewrite base. And, you’ll most likely need to tweak the RewriteRule lines for your specific institution. The default is to use numeric call numbers, but if you’re like us, we have OCLC numbers, and many others. In case you’re not a RegEx expert, these are the settings I use:
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z]*[0-9\s]+)/(.+)$
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([a-zA-Z]+[0-9\s]+)$
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^0-9/]+)$
We’re almost there!
By default, the Ubuntu Apache2 distribution ignores .htaccess files, so we need to configure Apache to actually use the file. Edit the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf file with the following:
Alias /vufind /usr/local/vufind/web
<Directory /usr/local/vufind/web/>
AllowOverride ALL
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
And reload Apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Ok, let’s check to make sure that the interface is working before we do the final installation of the Solr backend. If you point your browser to http:<your_server>/vufind, you should see the default template. You should see a message on the page stating “Hey! You should customize this space.” If you see a message, you’ll need to do a little debugging (just read the message).
Ok, now for Solr. Vufind is packaged with Solr and Jetty. And, before we get going, we need to set an environmental variable JAVA_HOME. The way I do it is by adding the following line to /etc/profile
JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"
export JAVA_HOME
I always reboot, just to make sure that this really takes.
I forgot to change the permissions on startup script when I sent it to Andrew, so you need to make it executable
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh
And now to fire everything up
sudo /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh start
Now, we want to make sure that Jetty and Solr start up all the time, so we create a symbolic link into /etc/init.d to the /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh script and then run the update-rc.d script:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/vufind/vufind.sh /etc/init.d/vufind
sudo update-rc.d vufind defaults
Now, if everything went well, you should be able to check out the Solr interface at http://<your_server>:8080/solr/admin.
With everything running, it’s time to create the index of marc records.
First, export your catalog holdings in marc format and put them in your /usr/local/vufind/import folder. The way I do this is I get the exported files and use scp to copy them to the user account and then sudo mv them to the location:
[On the ILS server]
tar czvf catalog.tar.gz catalog.mrc
scp catalog.tar.gz user@your.vufind.server:~
[On your Ubuntu server]
sudo mv ~/catalog.tar.gz /usr/local/vufind/import
tar zxvf /usr/local/vufind/import/catalog.tar.gz
Now, we need to create the MarcXML file:
sudo touch catalog.xml
sudo yaz-marcdump -f MARC-8 -t UTF-8 -o marcxml catalog.mrc > catalog.xml
sudo php import-solr.php
This is a good time to take a coffee break…or a lunch break…or come back tomorrow 😉 Seriously, the import takes a while. There are some big (ok, they’re HUGE) improvements in the speed in which the files are indexed in the Subversion branch, but those haven’t been officially tagged yet, so just be aware that while this is slow, it’s been significantly improved for future releases.
The only thing to do is to tune the JVM.
As always, if you have questions, leave a comment, or join the Vufind lists.
Swem Review of Technology 
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