[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] gaining under the hood experience with Evergreen

[Jason Etheridge]

> Could you please suggest a couple sources/resources that would help me learn more about the server side of Evergreen. I have mostly Windows and DOS experience,and of course the client side of EG, but have worked a bit way back on linux, and programming.
> I'd like to develop more knowledge of the install and running of EG.

Hey!  I'm going to post this to OPEN-ILS-GENERAL and anonymize/BCC
you, and ignore your existing experience a little, since this would be
useful for everyone.  Folks, this is a good strategy for most
communication with developers and other community members, do it in
the open rather than privately, so that others can benefit (and
participate and help out).

First you should look to your Linux environment.  For Windows users,
it may be convenient to download VMWare or Virtualbox, and a
ready-made virtual image of Ubuntu Linux.  This will let you run Linux
from within Windows, and while it may be a little slower than running
on bare metal, you have an advantage with being able to take memory
snapshots of the running image at any time, so that you can jump back
and undo any mistakes you make.  Installing Linux from scratch (for
example, by pointing the virtual cd drive to an ISO image for the
linux distribution) instead of using a ready-made virtual image may
also be a good experience for becoming more familiar with the type of
environment Evergreen servers live in.

Anyone have references or pointers for these steps?

Other useful things to know/learn by this point:

* What a computer process is, and command-line tools for listing them,
killing them, etc.
* How to navigate a file system through the command-line
* How different user accounts affect the first two bullets

Anyone have useful references for these?

After you have a linux instance (I recommend Ubuntu Karmic or Debian
Lenny) and have familiarized yourself with it, then jump to this page
and work your way through each step:

    http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=server:1.6.0:install

If something is unclear, or you have suggestions for improvement of
the document, ask the OPEN-ILS-GENERAL mailing, or jump onto the IRC
Chat (http://evergreen-ils.org/irc.php) and see if anyone is around
who could help you.

After you have a running instance of Evergreen, there are several
paths you can take from here, separately or concurrently:

* system administration
* database administration
* development (which has lots of branches of its own--client,
database, middle layer)

A lot of system administrators cut their teeth on maintaining their
own boxes, tinkering under the hood, etc.  Learn how to make backups,
do upgrades, compile a Linux kernel, come up with a process for
security, etc.

For database administration (and development), read the PostgreSQL
document (which is excellent), learn how to make backups, how to use
SQL, explore the schemas and tables used in Evergreen.  Try your hand
at performance tuning, etc.

For development, start off with learning some programming using
high-level (read: easier) languages like Javascript, Perl, Ruby, and
Python, just to get the basic concepts (variables, expressions, loops,
if/then statements).  Learn XML, which is a lingua franca for moving
data around.  A smart organized person may be surprised at what they
can pick up in just a few days.  Then take a look at Dan's
introduction for developers:

    http://evergreen-ils.org/~denials/workshop.html

Any other resources we should include?  Anyone want to maintain a wiki
page for this? :)

I hope this helps!

--
Jason Etheridge
| VP, Tactical Development
| Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
| phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| email:  jason at esilibrary.com
| web:  http://www.esilibrary.com

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