Re: [Koha-devel] Reviewing Directory Structure

[Finlay Thompson]

Hi Chris, Roger and everyone else,

I have been thinking about this issue as well.

As part of the get-everything-templated program it has become necessary
to rationalise the file system structure in koha.

> > Are the 'opac' and 'intranet' designed to be installed as 'stand-alone'
> > on physically separate servers?
> > 
> > If designed to support optional 'stand-alone', then I don't think the
> > existing installation would support that. The OPAC relies on stuff
> > stored in the 'intranet' folders.

At present the opac-intranet divide has certainly become blury! however
with respect to what chris has said:
> So the aim is to make it possible/easy for big libraries to use koha while
> not making it hard for small ones.

Spreading server loads and allowing for a little more security, I think
we should attempt to reinforce the opac / intranet divide. 

As I reoganise the opac I am attempting to make it as stand alone as
possible. The only thing they should share is the database.

To this end I propose the following structure for the opac servers file
system...

<server root>/cgi-bin/<opac only scripts>   

<server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/<theme specific templates>
<server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/images/<theme specific images>
<server root>/htdocs/<theme>/<lang>/includes/<theme specific includes>

I dont see the problem with having multiple copies of some of the images
and includes if they are the same accross different theme/lang settings.
If you were really worried we could put some sym-links in?

Note that all this stuff is only intended for the opac. I.e. non of
these files will have settings like "$type = 'opac' | 'intra' "

That just leads to too much complication, and ties the opac and the
intranet together, which is what we want to avoid.

I will also attemp to renaim all the scripts and template files so that
they have the same name just different suffix: 
opac-search.pl  goes with opac-search.tmpl

and if there is a search.pl in the intranet and a search.pl in the opac
I think they should be renamed opac-search.pl and intra-search.pl.

It doesnt matter if these two files do almost the same thing, we want
them to be seperate.

With regards themes and language settings. I think we should expect that
the themes in the intranet and in the opac might be quite different. For
example there might be a "junior" theme for the opac, set up in the
childrens section of the library. And there might be a "frontdesk" theme
in the intranet for the front desk only.

So in cvs I think we will need to keep these seperate. We can follow
Dorian's lead and have:

koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/<theme>/<lang>/
koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/<theme>/<lang>/

for all the templates.

in the main branch we have all the cgi-bin stuff mixed together. I think
this is a little confusing. We can put the opac stuff in the koha/opac/
directory?

At the moment I have put the template-only opac scripts into a
koha/tmpl/ directory, that I will move into koha/opac/ when its ready.
(which it basically is)

All the C4 modules can be shared byt the opac and intranet. Dont see any
reaon to keep them seperate?

Systempreferences:

We need to get a standard list of system preferences.

I will write another email about that as this one has gotten quite long
enough :-)

Finlay


On Wed, 2002-09-18 at 11:05, Chris Cormack wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 08:36:07AM +1000, Roger Buck said:
> > I think there are still some general questions about Koha file and
> > directory structure that are worth investigating.
> > 
> > This is not just idle comment - I'm happy to do some work on this (under
> > direction) if it's generally considered worthwhile.
> > 
> > QUESTION 1:
> > Are the 'opac' and 'intranet' designed to be installed as 'stand-alone'
> > on physically separate servers?
> > 
> > If designed to support optional 'stand-alone', then I don't think the
> > existing installation would support that. The OPAC relies on stuff
> > stored in the 'intranet' folders.
> > 
> Yep the plan is to fix this, so that the can exist on separate servers.
> We are getting there, the work on templating the opac is helping us achieve
> this end.
> 
> > If designed to be installed on same physical server, then why duplicate
> > stuff like images, templates, 'includes' folders and related files? The
> > duplication adds to installation and maintenance complexity and I can't
> > figure out what advantage(s) it provides?
> > 
> > Same question arises for the need for virtual hosts.
> > 
> Virtual hosts have a few advantages, for example you can have your opac
> listening on an external interface. and your intranet only listening on the
> internal one. This is how HLT works. Provides another level of security as
> the intranet is not available to the outside world.
> I think this would be attractive to biggish libraries.
> 
> The idea with being able to run on separate servers is that we can also make
> use of mysql's replication features to run a mirror of the database on a
> separate machine. This way you can have the opac not slow issues, and vice
> versa. You could even go as far as using LVS
> http://www.linuxvirtualserver.org/
> To build a cluster of opac servers, to balance load. For a big library ie
> one with 100's of 1000's of borrowers this could be a very useful thing to do.
> 
> So the aim is to make it possible/easy for big libraries to use koha while
> not making it hard for small ones.
> 
> Chris
> 
> -- 
> Chris Cormack                                                     Programmer
> 025 500 789                                        Katipo Communications Ltd
> address@hidden                                          www.katipo.co.nz
> 
> 
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