USTLG Summer 2006 Meeting – Liverpool

I’m just putting the finishing touches to a presentation about Library 2.0 I’m giving tomorrow at the University Science and Technology Librarians Group Summer 2006 meeting.
I’m even beginning to have second thoughts — trying to sum up the last 2 or 3 years worth of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 “stuff” in under 45 minutes (when I could happily talk about any single aspect of it for an hour) is proving a real challenge!
Anyway, once I get back from the event, I’ll update this post with a copy of the presentation.
Continue reading “USTLG Summer 2006 Meeting – Liverpool”

Getting HIP updates & add-ons via a HTTP proxy

A couple of years ago we wanted to try out the optional ADA Profile for HIP 3 but, try as I might, I could not get the add-on to download using the HIP admin pages.
After much pondering, I realised that it’s because our external firewall was blocking HIP from being able to connect to the SirsiDynix server to fetch the download. Even the servers in our DMZ need to be configured to use the university’s Squid HTTP proxy servers before they can get external web access.
Google soon came up with the answer on one of the JBoss discussion sites and here’s what you need to do for a Windows HIP 3 server (it should be a similar process for a Unix/Linux HIP 3 server):
1) locate the batch file that starts JBoss — firstly, find the directory you installed the Application Server into, then open the “jboss” folder, then the “bin” folder, and you should find a Windows Batch File named “run.bat”
2) make a safe backup of the “run.bat” file before you make any changes
3) right-click on the “run.bat” file and select the “edit” option — this should open the file for editing in Notepad
4) if you search through the file, you’ll find several lines that start with set JAVA_OPTS=
5) find the very last occurance, and insert the following two new line of text after it:

set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dhttp.proxyHost=12.34.56.78
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dhttp.proxyPort=3128

…where “12.34.56.78” is the IP address of your HTTP proxy and “3128” is the port number.
For example, on our HIP 3.04 UK server that section of the file now looks like this:

rem Standard options
set JAVA_OPTS=-server -Xms384m -Xmx512m -DISO_8859_1=UTF-8 %JAVA_OPTS%
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dhttp.proxyHost=161.112.231.22
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dhttp.proxyPort=3128

Once you’ve added the settings for the proxy server, save the file and restart JBoss.
If all has gone well, then you should be able to fetch updates and add-ons using the HIP admin interface!
Or, if all has gone pear-shaped, then simply restore that safe backup of the file you made earlier!
It should be a similar process for Linux/Unix users — locate the script that starts JBoss, open it in Vi, and add the extra two lines to the script.