[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Ongoing conversion effort

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 08:17:01PM -0600, John Morris wrote:
> Ok, I have managed to get most of the way through importing data now and
> have some new questions.
> 
> Bib and holdings are in.  Circulation is hopefully in.  Think I
> understand enough to have billing records imported in the next day or
> so.
> 
> The big question now is what causes fines to be generated?  I have moved
> in circulation records and the system is up and running 24/7 yet no
> fines have been generated.  I can look at a patron's record and see
> overdue books but they don't owe anything.  I then checked in an overdue
> item and still no fine.
> 
> So is there some nightly process I should be starting or have I somehow
> imported the circulation in such a way it is silently failing somewhere?

Short answer, yes, you need to run scripts (at least nightly, and
possibly more often if you have some loan durations that last less than
a day). In the /openils/bin directory, see at least the following
scripts:

reshelving_complete.srfsh (for changing status from "reshelving" to "available")
clark-kent.pl (for generating reports - it's a reporter, get it?)
fine_generator.pl (for generating fines)
hold_targeter.pl (for finding copies to satisfy hold requests)
action_trigger_runner.pl (for email notices and potentially many other things)

http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/1.6/draft/html/cronjobs.html offers a
utility script that makes it somewhat easier to run these as cron jobs,
although I hadn't seen that script until searching the docs to see if
there was a nice, tidy answer for you; we run our cron jobs as separate
cron jobs, no wrapper script around it.  Note that the header says "Do
not run or schedule these jobs without understanding what they are
intended to do." - but I don't think we have docs yet anywhere else that
actually explain the purpose of each of the scripts. A bit of a TODO
there for an interested writer :)