Having trouble installing Koha? Trouble yourself no more: the Koha Live CD is here! Install Koha easily the same way you install Ubuntu into any PC – Koha installs itself along with it. The installed Koha is fully functional as a production system. Alternatively, you can preview Koha right from the CD. It works from RAM – great for demonstrating Koha to your clients!
Latest Version
Release 5 – blog post
- Koha 3.0.6 Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (x86)
- Switched to Ubuntu Server edition. (Still has GUI.)
- Included Koha wallpaper.
- Included readme file on the desktop.
- Fixed USB auto-mount issue.
Download from SourceForge.
View readme for instructions.
Older releases
Release 4 - blog post
- Koha 3.0.5 Ubuntu 9.10 (x86)
- Koha LiveCD now uses Zebra! No configuration needed.
- Updated Koha to 3.0.5
- Easier-to-read instructions.
Download from SourceForge.
View readme for instructions.
Starting with release 4, no BitTorrent is available. Please download from SourceForge.
Release 3
- Koha 3.0.4 Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop x86
- Koha web installer no longer complains about database privileges.
- There are some known issues. Please check readme.txt before installing!
Download .torrent for Release 3 (12 KB, torrent size 638 MB)
MD5: 7588ca461d9be666a22bbae1dc0ef34b
View readme for release 3.
If you need a BitTorrent client, check out uTorrent (windows), Transmission or Vuze (Linux, Mac).
Also available on SourceForge
Release 2
- Koha 3.0.3 Ubuntu 9.04
- Trimmed certain packages to fit a CD.
Download .torrent for Release 2 (14 KB, torrent size 694 MB)
MD5: c236737b83d838c9fd3bcad6ebb04648
Release 1
- Koha 3.0.3 Ubuntu 9.04
- Compatibility release with full cache intact.
Download .torrent for Release 1 (12 KB, torrent size 1,195 MB)
MD5: 0dee419e4808bdbe1140585499bd6e4b
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mizst A., butch. butch said: Koha LiveCD | Mizstik Projects: http://mizstik.com/projects/koha-livecd/ via @addthis [...]
We are a public K-12 school district in the US. Just thought I’d take a moment and leave you a note. I wanted to tell you that your Ubuntu/Koha Live CD is absolutely fantastic! Thank you! Well done!
Hi ! I too an open source educator and I thank you for you efforts it’s a good spirit and excellent help to open source community. I thank you from all our community.
Hi ! could you please tell us how you do all that, it’s really helpful for us if you can share your story.
Thanks guys. That’s encouraging to hear. :-)
Surender Singh: actually if you use Remastersys it’s very easy to make Live CDs. Just 4-5 mouse clicks. I heard it’s now working with Ubuntu 9.10 too.
Thanks dear, if you can share or give any link about koha installation on ubuntu.
It’s really easy if you directly host .iso on some ftp or http rather then torrent it’s speed effective.
Koha installation on Ubuntu has gotten a lot easier in 3.0.4 because there’s now a package list for ubuntu in /install_misc, although it’s still missing a few (at least in my case). Just follow the instructions in INSTALL.ubuntu and watch for dependency errors when you do perl Makefile.pl which is the only thing that’s not in the documentation.
I might write up a how-to one of these days but I got my work cut out for me at the moment so it’ll be a while.
As for direct download … stats says people downloaded more than 25 copies of release 3 alone in less than a week, which is 17.5 GB and that’s not even counting the still-downloaded release 1 & 2. If I served that much out of my shared hosting I’ll definitely be kicked out.
If anyone’s interested in hosting a DDL mirror I’ll be glad to hear about it.
[...] Mizstik has put together a live CD with Ubuntu server and an installation of the Koha ILS, calling it Koha LiveCD. [...]
Dear Mizstik,
I just installed your Koha Live CD.
Very nice work.
I plan to use the Live CD for Koha training workshop.
I uploaded some marc and tried search.
It seems that, it does not shows result.
I enabled zebra while web installation.
I think Zebra makes problem. I need to configure zebra?
Whats the things to do enable zebra.
May I know the root MySQL password with the live cd?
With thanks
Hi Vimal Kumar,
Thanks for your feedback. Currently the Live CD only works in no-zebra mode. I plan to make a zebra version although it’ll probably be a while.
The root password is mqr. I guess I forgot to mention that, sorry.
Dear Mizst,
I installed the Koha live cd in two machines.
But Ubuntu was dead slow in two machines.
Very difficult to work with Ubuntu and Koha.
I tried both in a low end machine (256 MB RAM) and new machine (2 GB RAM).
The result was same.
How can we improve the speed?
Where I get Release 2 of Koha live cd (Ubuntu 9.04+Koha 3.03)?
Hi Vimal,
As far as I tested, I think the performance is more or less the same as a manual install of Koha on Ubuntu desktop. However, I don’t have a large test database and also I don’t know how much a no-zebra installation can actually scale in real life since I’ve never hit a poor performance limit myself.
You can try ubuntu server edition instead of desktop to improve performance, but I don’t know how to make a live cd out of that so you’ll have to install it on your own. Getting a better computer is always an option.
Also, check your network. In my experience, that tends to be where the problem is more than half the time with any server application and people don’t realize it.
The torrent link for release 2 is on this very same page. No direct download for that yet.
Dear Mizstik,
I tested your live cd to use in a Koha workshop in last week of this month.
A wish to get a live CD and it make my work easy.
I posted about your live cd performance in Koha discussion forum. Please see the reply by Chris from KOHA,
“The live cd does not use zebra, so will be much slower to search than
one set up to use zebra.
Also im not sure it does any optimisation of mysql configs either.
Ubuntu and Koha is fine, but like any web application you need to
configure mysql and apache to work best in your environment for
optimum results.”
In my experience, Ubuntu and Koha are very slow.
And waiting others experience with the same CD.
I hope that, you can improve the Live cd from the feed back of other users.
With thanks,
Dear Vimal,
Chris’s reply is correct. To run a large database in production environment, you will need to do a full install and optimize both the OS and the database+web engine beyond what the Live CD provides. In a truly large database, I would actually recommend doing a manual install on Ubuntu Server edition as opposed to the desktop version, and of course enable Zebra.
However, as you mentioned that yours was a workshop environment where the database should not be large, I highly suspect the network as the primary cause of the apparent slowness when clients access your test Koha server.
Still, as I have not been provided with the particular technical details of what’s causing the slowness that you’re experiencing, I would not know what to fix even if I were to provide one.
Regards,
Mizstik
Hi,
I just installed your Koha LiveCD. It went through fine. Is there a clean way to change the default login/pasword ? Docs on koha.org are not clear on this.
Thanks,
Mohan.
I’m afraid there is no “clean” way to change the admin password. You need to manually change the mysql password and the one in koha-conf.xml and they both must be the same.
Reference:
http://koha.org/documentation/faq/how-to-change-koha-default-user-name-and-password
and here (the important bit):
http://blog.chadwollenberg.com/2009/01/26/change-kohan-3-admin-password/
wow!!!! Thanks, installing Koha is challenging for a newbie, and could learn a lot from your cd. Two things that would be helpful is a detailed installation tutorial -not for the cd- but for installing koha in ubuntu that works! The ones that are in other blogs fails miserably!. And please zebra!!!!
Thanks again!
You’re welcome. I’m actually working on an installation tutorial, but that’s waiting for my own study of putting koha+zebra on the LiveCD so I don’t have to write it twice. Unfortunately it hasn’t progressed lately due to recently increased workload on my day job, but I’m still on it.
Hi,
Tried out the livecd. Works fine on a laptop with 256MB ram and Intel 915 based graphics cards with a few tweaks. Originally, there was no window decoration and moving the mouse itself was slow. Once I did a metacity –replace the whole interface became snappy. On installing to the hard disk, I removed compiz and the interface was responsive all the time. The combination of KMS and the old card did not work well.
I thought I already removed compiz though … it wouldn’t have fit the CD if I hadn’t removed it. However, if you left the machine connected to the internet while installing, it will download all the removed packages back which includes compiz. (some 200-300 MB’s worth)
If you’re low on RAM you might consider using XFCE instead?
I want to ask questions about Ubuntu 9.10. If i download this live cd and make an installiation, will all of koha components work properley and will it be fast? Because i read that, some of components dont work properly and searhing is very slow ):
And another qustion, (i am a newbei about ubuntu) I think ubuntu 9.10 is for client dist. and Ubuntu server is for serving services. Is this dist. for demostration for all newbies or a server system for making services. If aim is service why dont you use server editon?
Thanks your time and consideration
As far as I know, it “works properly” but if you found specific features that don’t work please inform me and I’ll examine it. Please do note that I’m not actually a Koha dev, only a packager – but I’ll try what I can do.
The reason I chose Ubuntu Desktop is because you need a graphical web browser to setup and use Koha. If I used Ubuntu Server, you would need another PC with GUI to connect to it, and this task (and the networking) can be quite difficult to set up for newbies especially when something goes wrong. One of the primary uses of live cd is to set up a demo system, so having everything workable on one PC is important.
As for speed, personally I found the live cd to perform adequately but I understand that in less optimal conditions it can be quite slow because zebra is disabled. (large database, old hardware, etc.) Again, I did this mainly to ensure a working system with minimal configuration by end user. If you intend to deploy Koha in production environment, you will have to study about how to optimize the system further.
This is a good work. So, thank you very much.
If you prepare zebra enabled DVD vers. will be perfect!
In theory this would be great…but…I have tried it three times now. Installs great, setup for mrc file import, and when I run bulkmarcimport.pl the thing blows up! To be more technical, the system says mysql is missing halfway through the import, and then if I try to reboot the boot sector is bad and ubuntu won’t start. It is not the drive (I though to test that first and even tried a new drive when it passed) and it doesn’t happen when I use the Ubuntu 9.10 DVD and do it all manually.
I tried this method after I keep having problems with my attempts doing it all with Zebra manually.
Thanks for reporting in about the problem. I’ll try to reproduce it and see if I can figure it out, although it seems very odd that importing MARC file would be able to corrupt the boot sector.
Brian,
I used a 2MB .mrc file with bulkmarcimport.pl without any problem whatsoever. How large is your marc file? Anything else of note that you could tell me about your setup?
I also used “Tools -> Stage MARC Records for Import” without any problem as well. You might want to try that next time (when you have a chance to).
sir,
great day
how about reinstalling again and going back to the web installer again, any steps to accomplish these :)
sorry i’m a little newbie here in KOHA, :)
thnks and more power,,
elpid,
I’m not sure what you’re trying to do. If you want to reinstall Koha again simply boot from the CD again and start over. For newbies, that would be the easiest way.
Mizst
sir,
i’ve already installed the live cd to my PC and i want to start over again, but not to reinstall again the whole system, is there a way to start again to the web installer, so much so that i can reinstall the koha only.. thnks, more power…
I believe you can simply delete the mysql database of koha and then the web installer will start over. I remember doing that but can’t remember if I also did something else.
sir,
i’ve tried your live cd and it’s awesome..
i installed the release 2 live cd but i think the Zebra does’nt work, if not, may i know the steps in configuring zebra,, thanks sir.
eddy,
Sorry, I had compiled Koha without zebra support in order to minimize deployment problems since this is aimed at newbies. It’s a popular demand though, so I’ll work
on putting the zebra server onto the same livecd in the next release.
Mizst
Dear mizst
I appreciate your efforts towards opensource community to make things easier. I just installed Koha live CD. As Vimalkumar said, Ubuntu is little bit slow in processing. When try to activate any program, it works slow.
Athur Mohanan,
Could you tell me the specs (Brand/Model, CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.) of the server that Koha’s running on?
Dear Mizst
First I run live CD in a laptop with Intel Centrino processer, 80 GB HDD, and 1GB RAM,
Then I Installed Live CD in a desktop with Intel Core2Duo processor with 2GBRAM and 160GB HDD. the result was the same.
One issue I can imagine now is that you left the machine connected to the internet when you installed Koha. (see readme.txt for more info) If you did, try removing/disabling compiz, which should make it a lot faster.
You can also try accessing Koha from another machine over the network and see if it’s faster. If it is, then the fault is in the GUI elements (e.g. non-supported video cards, or requiring activation of “proprietary drivers”) so you can work on remedying that.
Note that you really shouldn’t be running any program on the Koha machine anyway. Koha is designed to be accessed remotely via the web interface.
If you did all those and still found it to be slow … well, I really have no further tricks. Personally, I’ve tried on an Intel E5200 with 1 GB RAM and a 5400 RPM 160 GB HDD and it works fine as a production server. (The MB was workstation-grade Asus P5KPL-AM, for the record.) I’ve mostly used the live cd for client demo using a laptop with Intel E2100 which works quite fine. Not blazing fast of course, but works well for a demo. I’ve also experimented on my Fujitsu U1010 ultraportable which has a lowly A110 processor and it was actually tolerable.
Another note is that while the livecd was designed to work out of the box, it was _not_ designed to be efficient out of the box. You will need to tweak your system. (especially apache/mysql) In other words, the primary goal was compatibility and ease of installation.
There’s also another often-forgotten option – simply use more powerful hardware.
Hi mizst,
Great effort. I have tried your live CD and installed it on production server using Proxmox virtualization (KVM mode). At first, it is a bit slow, and the web keep getting disconnected.
However, after I allocate 2GB ram instead of 1GB, it works fantastic. In the past, I have a bit experience on converting Ubuntu Desktop to a close server environment (by removing GUI) which I believe it will improve the performance tremendously.
Currently, I have been running serveral Koha 2.2.9 on a single machine (allocated 512MB) under virtual environment using Ubuntu server 8.04.3, and it works steadily. I try to work on your live CD, and do some documentation to share among us. If succeed, I hope it can address the performance problem and library can use for production.
Thanks for your input. Removing all GUI will probably improve performance significantly, but as a Live CD I have to prioritize the out-of-box experience, which means having a web browser on-machine for the initial configuration.
Another problem is that I don’t know how to make an Ubuntu Server CD that also keeps an image of the configuration. I can only make it install the packages but all configuration and data is lost (including settings to apache and databases/users of mysql).
However, performance seems to be the major complaint I’m seeing (even if it’s caused by under-spec it’s still a reality the users are experiencing) so I have a few ideas on this topic. One is including a script to remove GUI and putting it on the desktop, which can be run once the server is steady. It’s a little dangerous to do though.
Another idea I’m also considering is building a minimal system from the ground up, instead of starting with the full Ubuntu Desktop and removing packages down.
If you would like to contribute your findings of optimizations that work well with Koha Live CD, I’ll be very happy to incorporate them into the releases so that all users can benefit from them.
This is auusum & gr88888 workk ….
Thanks a lot !!!
Congratulations great work, we are testing koha for our library and actually we are using a unbuntu 9.10 on a machine loaded with lampp.
My question: is possible to only install koha from the LiveCd?.
Regards
Re: Luis
The Live CD will delete & format the partition it’s installed on so it’s not possible to install just Koha to an existing system. It will install everything including ubuntu and lamp, but will be pre-configured to work out of the box.
Dear Mizstik,
I installed Koha Live CD. But, USB stick does not detect by Ubuntu.
Two other friends got the same problem.
Whats the solution?
They cant back up the database in USB memory now.
Dear vimal,
I’ll try to see if I can reproduce the problem, but I usually test them in virtual machines so it might not run into the problem the same way it would on real hardware.
In the meantime, please backup the database into network drive or tar/gzip and email them.
Dear vimal,
From tests in VMs, it would seem that Koha Live CD fails to automatically mount USB drives in nautilus, but still recognizes the drive as a device.
You can still manually mount a USB drive with this command: (example)
sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt
I found that the drive will mount successfully when done manually from the terminal, at least in my test VM.
This is probably caused by removed nautilus components, which unfortunately I don’t know which one so I don’t know where to fix this (yet). Please use the command line for the time being. I’ll try to find out more but it’ll take time.
P.S. You can see your USB drive’s device name with “fdisk -l”.
Thank u for the quick response.
I hope that USB mount problem solve with next release of Koha Live CD.
We are waiting for the release of live CD based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
We appreciate again for the contributions to Koha community.
Do I need to install ubuntu before the LiveCD installation. Or the Live cd does not require ubuntu installation. Is Ubuntu is with KOha CD altogether?
When I install in Ubuntu it loaded the second time ubuntu installation.
Regards
Noman
Re: Noman
The Live CD does not require an existing Ubuntu installation. In fact, it will erase the existing installation if it finds one.
The CD will install a new Ubuntu system plus Koha. Everything is on the same disc. You do not need to install Ubuntu before running the Live CD.
Dear Mizst,
Ubuntu 10.04 is now out.
We hope that you have started the work of Koha Live CD on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
Regards,
Vimal