This is a guide on how to install Koha as an ILS (Integrated Library System), along with Vufind as an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog).

In this guide I use 3 separate servers. One server for the MariaDB database, used by both systems, one for Koha and one for Vufind. This is not necessary and if you want you can install all services on a single server, or distribute them however you like.

The operating system used is Debian 11. Both Koha and Vufind provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu.

I assume that you are already familiar with installing Debian and doing basic configuration tasks.

To install MariaBD run: sudo apt install mariadb-server. Afterwards make sure you run mysql_secure_installation to secure your instance.

First, download the repository keys:

wget -q -O- https://debian.koha-community.org/koha/gpg.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/koha.asc

Then you have to choose if you want to track a specific version of Koha, or a suite. I recommend tracking the stable suite as it will automatically keep your system up to date. If you choose a version number, you will stay on that version until you manually edit the koha.list file. This can give you time to test changes if you have a staging environment, for example.

To add the Koha repository tracking the stable suite run:

echo 'deb http://debian.koha-community.org/koha stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/koha.list

If you want to track a specific version replace stable with the version number in the above command. As of writing this, 21.11 is the latest stable version.

After adding the repositories install Koha:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install koha-common

You can either configure Koha to listen on different ports, or different domains. For more information see https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_domain_name_for_Koha and https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_ubuntu_-_packages#Appendix_A:_Named-based_vs._IP-based_installations. In this guide I will use a port-based installation.

First, edit the /etc/koha/koha-sites.conf file using your favourite editor. Edit the options to change the domain and/or the ports. In the example below the staff interface is at port 80, while the OPAC is at port 81.

INTRAPORT="80"
INTRAPREFIX=""
INTRASUFFIX=""
OPACPORT="81"
OPACPREFIX=""
OPACSUFFIX=""

Additionally, you can change the ZEBRA_MARC_FORMAT and ZEBRA_LANGUAGE options.

Enable the necessary apache modules:

sudo a2enmod rewrite cgi
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Add any additional ports you configured above to the /etc/apache2/ports.conf file. For the example:

Listen 80
Listen 81

If you use port 80 make sure to delete the default apache site: sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

Restart apache: sudo systemctl restart apache2

If you are running the database on the same machine as Koha you can run sudo koha-create --create-db libraryname and skip this section.

If you are running the database on a separate machine:

Make sure you have enabled remote connections to your database server by changing the bind-address option of the /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf file. For better security, configure a firewall to control access to the port.

Create a new Koha instance by running:

sudo koha-create --dbhost <db-server-hostname-or-ip> --request-db libraryname. Then read the libraryname-db-request.txt file.

$ cat libraryname-db-request.txt
Please create a MySQL database and user on <database-host> as follows:

database name: koha_libraryname
database user: koha_libraryname
     password: random

Connect to the database server and create the database and user with the information in the libraryname-db-request.txt file.

ssh db
user@db:~$ sudo mysql -uroot -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 32
Server version: 10.5.12-MariaDB-0+deb11u1 Debian 11

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE koha_libraryname;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON koha_libraryname.* to 'koha_libraryname'@'<koha-server-hostname-or-ip>' IDENTIFIED BY 'random';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.006 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.001 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> ^DBye

Delete the /etc/mysql/koha-common.cnf file: sudo rm /etc/mysql/koha-common.cnf

Create a new /etc/mysql/koha-common.cnf file containing the connection information for your database server. For example:

[client]
host=db.example.org
user=koha_libraryname
password=random

Then run sudo koha-create --populate-db libraryname to initialize the database.

Plack can increase the performance of Koha.

sudo a2enmod headers proxy_http
sudo koha-plack --enable libraryname
sudo koha-plack --start libraryname
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Enable the Web interface: sudo koha-enable libraryname

Access the staff web interface at the port/domain you specified above. For example: http://192.168.1.76:80.

You should come accross the following screen:

The default username is koha_libraryname and to get the password run sudo koha-passwd libraryname.

Walk through the installer, adjusting the options as you need. For help refer to the documentation.

After completing the onboarding guide, login with the credentials you provided. Koha should be up and running.

Connect to the server running Vufind. We will install vufind using the .deb package provided by the project. The latest version available as of this guide is 8.0.3. If a newer version is available change the url and filename below. To download and install Vufind run:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/vufind-org/vufind/releases/download/v8.0.3/vufind_8.0.3.deb
sudo apt install ./vufind_8.0.3.deb

Create a new user to run solr:

sudo useradd -r -s /usr/sbin/nologin -U vufind

When installing the Vufind package most files will be owned by the user you are currently logged in as. To transfer ownership to the vufind user run:

sudo find . -user $(whoami) -type f -exec chown vufind:vufind {} \+
sudo find . -user $(whoami) -type d -exec chown vufind:vufind {} \+

Increase the process limits, as they can negatively affect performance. Add the following to /etc/security/limits.conf

vufind         soft    nproc           65000
vufind         soft    nofile          65000
vufind         hard    nproc           65000
vufind         hard    nofile          65000

Start the indexing process:

cd /usr/local/vufind/
sudo -u vufind ./solr.sh start

You can now start the Vufind setup. Go to http://<hostname-or-ip/vufind/Install/Home

You should be presented with the auto configure screen.

Press Fix next to Basic Configuration and then go back to go to the initial auto configure screen.

Press Fix next to Database. Fill out all fields except MySQL Root User and MySQL Root Password. Root remote login is dangerous and should be disabled. After filling the form, press the skip button at the bottom. Copy the SQL in the text box and save it into a file in the database server, for example vufind.sql. To write the changes to the database run:

sudo mysql -uroot -p < vufind.sql

Find the [Database] section in /usr/local/vufind/local/config/vufind/config.ini and fill out the database field with the information you typed in the form above. Change the permissions of config.ini so that it is not world-readable.

sudo chmod 600 /usr/local/vufind/local/config/vufind/config.ini

Back in the auto configure page, the Database entry should be OK. Press the Fix button next to Security. Finally Fix the ILS and from the dropdown choose the KohaRest driver. Press Submit. You will be presented with an error screen. Do not worry, this is normal. We will come back to this later.

Copy the contents into /etc/systemd/system/vufind.service

[Unit]
Description=VuFind Starter
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/bin/sh -l -c '/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh start' -x
PIDFile=/usr/local/vufind/solr/vendor/bin/solr-8983.pid
User=vufind
ExecStop=/bin/sh -l -c "/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh stop" -x
SuccessExitStatus=0
LimitNOFILE=65000
LimitNPROC=65000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To automatically start Vufind at boot run: sudo systemctl enable vufind.service

We are going to be using the OAI-PMH protocol to make importing records from Koha into Vufind easier.

Create a configuration file for OAI-PMH, for example at/etc/koha/koha-oai.conf, and enter:

format:
  vs:
    metadataPrefix: vs
    metadataNamespace: http://veryspecial.tamil.fr/vs/format-pivot/1.1/vs
    schema: http://veryspecial.tamil.fr/vs/format-pivot/1.1/vs.xsd
    xsl_file: /home/koha/Koha/xslt/vs.xsl
  marc21:
    metadataPrefix: marc21
    metadataNamespace: http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/schema/MARC21slim
    schema: http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/schema/MARC21slim.xsd
    include_items: 1
  marcxml:
    metadataPrefix: marxml
    metadataNamespace: http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/schema/MARC21slim
    schema: http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/schema/MARC21slim.xsd
    include_items: 1
  oai_dc:
    metadataPrefix: oai_dc
    metadataNamespace: http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/
    schema: http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd
    xsl_file: /home/koha/Koha/koha-tmpl/intranet-tmpl/prog/en/xslt/UNIMARCslim2OAIDC.xsl

In the Koha staff interface go to: Home -> Koha administration -> Global system preferences -> Web services and find the OAI-PMH section. Modify the following settings:

• OAI-PMH: Enabled

• OAI-PMH:ConfFile: Enter the location of the file you created previously. In this example /etc/koha/koha-oai.conf

• OAI-PMH:MaxCount: 500

To verify that the server is working go to http://<OPAC-ip-or-hostname>/cgi-bin/koha/oai.pl?verb=Identify

First you have to set up the field mappings, so that Vufind knows how to get library, section and other information from Koha.

Copy marc_local.properties to the Vufind local directory:

sudo cp /usr/local/vufind/import/marc_local.properties /usr/local/vufind/local/import/

Edit the /usr/local/vufind/local/import/marc_local.properties file and add:

collection = 9528
institution = 952b
building = 952c
id = 999c, first

This allows Vufind to map the information from the Koha item records (for more configuration options check out https://vufind.org/wiki/indexing:koha#vufind_indexing_configuration). Additionally, you need to configure the OAI-PMH source for Koha.

Copy the sample oai.ini file into the vufind/local directory:

sudo cp /usr/local/vufind/harvest/oai.ini /usr/local/vufind/local/harvest/

Edit the file and add the settings for your Koha server:

[Koha]
url=http://<opac-ip-or-hostname>:<opac-port>/cgi-bin/koha/oai.pl
metadataPrefix=marc21
idSearch[]="/^oai:<opac-ip-or-hostname>:<opac-port>:/"
idReplace[]="koha-"
idSearch[]="/\//"
idReplace[]="-"
injectDate="datestamp"
injectId="indentifier"
dateGranularity=auto
combineRecords=true

Every time you update the records or items in the Koha catalog you have to import the data into Vufind using the following steps.

Run the harvester:

cd /usr/local/vufind/local/harvest
sudo -E php /usr/local/vufind/harvest/harvest_oai.php

Remove records that have been deleted:

cd /usr/local/vufind/local/harvest
sudo -E /usr/local/vufind/harvest/batch-delete.sh Koha

Import new records:

cd /usr/local/vufind/local/harvest
sudo -E /usr/local/vufind/harvest/batch-import-marc.sh Koha

From the documentation: After all deleted and new records have been processed, the records retrieved from the OAI-PMH server will have been moved to a “processed” subdirectory of their containing directory. You can periodically clear out this directory if you no longer feel you need to retain records. However, it may be useful to keep them, since you can always move them back up a directory level and re-run the batch processing scripts in order to reindex everything.

You can automate the following process by creating a shell script and using cron to run it overnight.

We have shown how to get item data from Koha into Vufind. In this section we will show how to connect Vufind show it can show live data from Koha (item location, lending status, holds etc.).

To use the Koha REST API you first have to install a plugin.

To enable plugins on your Koha installation change <enable_plugins>0<enable_plugins> to <enable_plugins>1</enable_plugins> in your /etc/koha/sites/<libraryname>/koha-conf.xml file and restart apache and Koha by running: sudo systemctl restart apache2 koha-common.

Download the latest version of the plugin from https://github.com/NatLibFi/koha-plugin-rest-di/releases .

To install the plugin go to Home -> Koha administration -> Manage plugins, click the "Upload Plugin" button and select the .kpz file you have downloaded. After the install is complete, to enable the plugin, click the "Actions" button on the right and select "Enable".

Go to Home -> Koha administration -> Global system preferences -> Web services. Set the RESTOAuth2ClientCredentials option to "Enabled". To verify the API is working go to http://<staff-or-opac-ip-or-hostname>/api/v1/.html.

We will create a new Koha patron that will be exclusively used by Vufind to access our Koha server. Go to the Koha "Patrons" screen and add a new Patron. Fill out the required fields (may vary depending on your configuration). You can give this patron a descriptive name. I have chosen InternalVufind as the surname of the patron.

After pressing "Save" you will be tranfered to the patron information screen. Press More -> Set permissions. Grant the following permissions to the user:

circulate_remaining_permissions
catalogue
borrowers
    edit_borrowers
    view_borrower_infos_from_any_libraries
reserveforothers
    modify_holds_priority
    place_holds
updatecharges
    payout
    remaining_permissions

After granting the permissions, press "Save". You will be tranfered to the patron information screen.

Press More -> Manage API keys and then Generate a new client id/secret pair and give a description for the key (e.g. Vufind). The Client ID and secret will be shown. Copy them now to a safe location.

The only thing left is to insert this information to Vufind, so it connects to our Koha server.

To do that edit the /usr/local/vufind/local/config/vufind/KohaRest.ini file. Fill out the host, clientId and clientSecret fields. The comments in the file are pretty explanatory, in case you want to, you can adjust more options. After that, checked out status and information from Koha should show up in the Vufind web interface. (If all books show up as checked out in the vufind web interface, check out and check in a book in Koha. That fixed it for me.)

While testing I encountered a strange error. Whenever I queried some API routes added by the plugin I was getting a 501 Not Implemented reply. After digging in the logs, I found that I needed to install the Email::Valid Perl module. To install it run:

sudo apt install libemail-valid-perl

So after following this guide the basic functionality of Vufind and Koha should be working.

Recommended actions:

• Check out the Koha Implementation checklist to make your library fully functional.
• Review /usr/local/vufind/local/config/vufind/config.ini and change any options you want. The file is huge and has many options, however you should at least change email and title.
• Configure an SMTP server for Koha, so your patrons can get email notifications.
• If you want patrons to exclusively use Vufind for managing lendings, holds etc. set the PublicOPAC option in Koha to disabled. You might not expose it to the internet, but keep it accessible internally as it is required for OAI-PMH to work.

By default, email is turned off. This is to let you get everything set up before you risk sending unwanted notices to people. To turn email on:

sudo koha-email-enable libraryname

The default configuration of Vufind has a separate accounts system. A patron needs to create an account in Vufind and then link it to their Koha library account. To allow patrons to log in using their Koha credentials, in the config.ini file under the [Authentication] section comment out method = Database and uncomment method = ILS.

By default, Vufind shows holds for all available items. The KohaRest driver supports dynamically fetching wether a hold is allowed to be placed on an item or a record. In config.ini under [Catalog] set:

holds_mode = "driver"
[...]
title_level_holds_mode = "driver"

Try checking in and then checking out a book in the Koha staff interface. That worked for me.

See Making authentication work

Koha stores all log files in /var/log/koha.

• Uncomment SetEnv VUFIND_ENV developmentin /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/vufind.conf. This will display Vufind errors in the web interface.
• Enable debug = true in config.ini. This will display detailed information about ILS driver calls in the web interface.
• Enable logging with the file option, under the [Logging] section of the config.ini. The file entered must be created first and must be writeable by the user apache is running as.

If you want to install Koha on Rocky Linux or another distro in general, take a look at Appendix A. Additionally an Ansible playbook is provided (install-koha.yaml), that installs Koha on Rocky Linux (and other RHEL clones) or openSUSE.

If you want to run Koha in a container check out my koha-docker repository.

https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_Debian

https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Install_Koha_3.6_on_Debian_squeeze_using_a_separate_MySQL_server

https://vufind.org/wiki/installation:ubuntu

https://vufind.org/wiki/administration:starting_and_stopping_solr

http://www.digital.lib.esn.ac.lk/bitstream/handle/1234/14429/VuFind%20integration%20with%20Koha%20Multiple%20Instances%20Special%20reference%20to%20ILS-DI%20and%20RestAPI.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

https://tiketti.koha-suomi.fi/projects/koha-suomen-dokumentaatio/wiki/OAI-PMH-configuration

https://github.com/NatLibFi/koha-plugin-rest-di