Release Name: 2.87

Release Date: Not yet released.

Released:

Release Candidate History

• Greenstone v2.87rc1: Release Candidate 1. 25 September 2017
  Binaries for Windows, GNU/Linux 32 and 64 bit, Mac El Capitan (10.11) and Mountain Lion (10.8). The 32 bit Linux and the Mac Mountain Lion binaries have only been spot tested.
  svn tag page trac tag page. Tag revision: 31996. Actual binary release revision: 31990.

There's a choice between:

• installing binaries, which are precompiled. Choose the one for your Operating System:
  • Windows 32 bit binary, which is for both 32 and 64 bit Windows machines
  • Linux 32 bit binary for 32 bit Linux architectures
  • Linux 64 bit binary for 64 bit Linux architectures
  • MacOS binary for Mountain Lions (10.8) will probably work on Lions (10.7) as well
  • MacOS El Capitan (10.11) binary. You could try this on the older Yosemite and Maverick MacOS, though we have not tested the El Capitan binary on those.

Upon downloading the installer, run the executable: On Windows and Mac you need to double-click it to launch the installation dialog, on Linux you first need to set the downloaded executable's permissions to executable before you can run it from the terminal.

It may take some time for the Greenstone installation dialog to appear. Once the installation dialog displays, you generally need to keep pressing the Next button until it is finished. However, when it asks for the location to install Greenstone in, make sure to choose a location on your file system for which you have access privileges. If you want to install Greenstone into C:\Program Files on Windows 7 or Windows Vista you will need to run the installer with administrator permissions (this can be achieved by right clicking on the installer and choosing "Run as administrator"). And if you wish to use the Greenstone Administration pages (which will be needed if you want to create user accounts for a Remote Greenstone server), then now is a good time to set a sensible password for that. It has to be between 3 and 8 characters long.

• The installer initially unpacks into a temporary directory (/tmp on linux). Set the TMPDIR environment variable to change this.
• The windows version can be installed anywhere, including paths with spaces and brackets (these caused a problem in releases prior to 2.85).
• The Linux and Mac versions must be installed into a path with *no* spaces.

When the installation process is finished, you can run the Greenstone Server or the Greenstone Librarian Interface (GLI):

1. On Windows, the included Greenstone Server can be launched from the shortcut in the Start menu. On Mac and Linux, use a terminal (in Macs this is found under Applications > Utilities > Terminal) to go into the Greenstone installation directory and run

./gs2-server.sh

The small Greenstone Server Interface (GSI) dialog will display. Pressing its Enter Library button will open a browser onto your Greenstone Digital Library home page.(*)

By default, the web servers restrict access to Greenstone pages to the local machine. To change this, go to File > Settings in the Greenstone Server Interface dialog, and tick "Allow external connections". Click OK to save the settings, then press the Restart Library button. (**)

Note: The Windows version of Greenstone includes two server applications: server.exe and an apache web server. (Linux and Mac versions of Greenstone include only the apache web server). By default, the server.exe application is launched when you use the Windows Start menu shortcut to launch the server. To use the apache web server included with the Windows version of Greenstone, do one of the following:

• Rename the server.exe executable found in your Greenstone installation folder. Then the Start menu shortcut will run the Apache web server instead of server.exe. If you are using GLI, GLI will then also start up Apache instead of server.exe. Alternatively you can start the web server by running gs2-server.bat (located in your Greenstone installation folder).
• Run gs2-web-server.bat - this will start the Apache web server, but won't affect the Start menu shortcut, or GLI's behaviour.

To change the language in which you view your Greenstone digital library pages, click on the Preferences link at the top left of your Greenstone digital library home page. On the Preferences page, select the interface language in the drop down box.

2. The Greenstone Librarian Interface (GLI) can be run from the Windows Start menu. On Mac and Linux, use a terminal to go into the Greenstone installation directory and run

./gli/gli.sh

First, as in (1) above, the Greenstone Server Interface (GSI) dialog will appear. Eventually the Greenstone Librarian Interface (GLI) dialog will appear. Refer to the Greenstone tutorials for examples of using the GLI to create collections of documents. Once you have finished creating a collection, you can preview it by pressing the Preview button from GLI's Create tab. It will open your Greenstone collection in the web browser.(*) (**)

(*) If the web page displays a "Forbidden" message instead, go back to the GSI dialog, and use its File > Settings menu to change the Address Resolution method to one of the other options there. Then press the Restart Library Button in the main GSI dialog and see whether the browser page it opens now is the Greenstone home page. Otherwise try another Address Resolution option from the GSI dialog's Settings menu and see whether the pages are visible now.

(**) If you have your own external web server that you wish to use, then in your Greenstone installation directory, rename the folder apache-httpd to something else. Alternatively, you can rename the file gs2-server.sh (if on Linux/Mac) or gs2-server.bat (if on Windows) to something else.

To change the GLI interface language, run GLI, go to the File > Preferences menu. Then in the General tab, set the Interface Language. If your script is not covered by the Latin 1 charset, then you may also need to set the Font to something that supports your script. In such a case, try setting the value for the Font field to Arial Unicode MS, BOLD, 12.

3. The Client-GLI is the version of the Greenstone Librarian Interface that can be run on a machine different to the one that is running the Greenstone server. To be able to run the Client-GLI application, you will need Sun Java 1.5.0 or greater installed and you will need to have:

• Java's bin folder on your PATH
• JAVA_HOME set to point to your Java installation folder

If you follow Java's installation instructions, they will direct you on how to add the Java installation's bin folder to your system's PATH environment variable and how to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

If on Windows, you can run client-GLI from its shortcut in the Start Menu. On Linux and Mac systems, you would use a terminal to go into your Greenstone installation folder and then run

./gli/client-gli.sh

When the client-GLI starts up, a small dialog appears asking you to enter the URL of the remote Greenstone server's gliserver.pl file. This URL generally has the form: http://<host>:<port>/greenstone/cgi-bin/gliserver.pl, where you have to fill in the host and port values for the remote Greenstone server. After clicking OK, the client-GLI application window will appear. Client-GLI looks and works just like the GLI, except that most of the document processing takes place on the remote machine where the Greenstone server is running.

• If you wish to work with password protected collections, here's a workaround to the bug of constantly requiring to authenticate yourself.
• To get your Greenstone installation set up as a remote server so that other GLI clients can connect to it, refer to the section Working with Remote Greenstone and the GLI-Client.

* Refer to Running the installer in text-only mode.

If you've installed Greenstone and are running GLI (the Greenstone Librarian Interface application) for the first time, and have just finished builing your first collection with it, GLI may not know what to do when you press the Preview Button. If it complains or does nothing when you press the Preview Button, you will need to tell it how to launch your default browser (and tell it to open on the collection page) upon pressing Preview.

The following specifies the commands you are likely to need. Paste the applicable one into GLI's File > Preferences menu > Connection tab > Preview Command field.

• On Windows:

cmd.exe /c start "" "%1"

• On Mac:

open %1

Put %1 in quotes if your Greenstone installation path contains spaces.

• On Linux systems:

firefox %1

If you work with another browser, then type the command you'd use to launch that from the terminal, suffixed with %1 once again. (Embed %1 in quotes if you've installed Greenstone in a path containing spaces.) NOTE: If GLI's Preview Button does not succeed in launching the browser with the collection URL, consult this page for a suggested solution.

On Windows, the uninstaller is accessible from the Start menu.

For most people under Linux systems, a Greenstone installation can be removed with the usual rm command. However, by using this method, any collections you've created will also be deleted. If you're on Linux or Mac and wish to uninstall Greenstone, the recommended way to do so is by using the Uninstaller, as this will give you the option to retain your collections. To launch the Uninstaller, you can either run "bash uninstall.sh" from the uninstall folder, or will first need to give execute permissions to the uninstall/Uninstall.sh file in your Greenstone installation before you can run it:

cd uninstall
chmod u+rx Uninstall.sh
./Uninstall.sh

• After the GS2.86 release, GS2 was made more secure against Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities thanks to notifications on the mailing list. These improvements are now available in Greenstone 2 from GS2.87 release candidate 1 onwards.
• GS2 now implements the OAI deletion policy. The Deletion Record Policy support is of the persistent kind.
• Downloading support for HTTPS URLs
• Fixes to Downloading: improved termination of wget processes on cancelling downloads
• Better handling of internal processes launched by GLI, including improved support for cancelling actions so that they are properly terminated

Refer to the Greenstone 2 tab of our RSS page.

Refer to the Greenstone 2 tab of Enabling user comments.

Thanks to the following people for new and updated translations since 2.86:

• Yamaguchi Gaku for Japanese language translations
• Diego Spano for Spanish language translations
• Lavji Zala for Gujarati language translations
• Yvan Arnaud, John Rose and all others in John Rose's team of French language translators (please contact us if you wish your names to be enumerated here)
• Kalima Tuenbaeva and Sergey Karpov for Russian and Kazhakh translations
• Tigran Zargaryan for Armenian language translations
• Kamal Salih Mustafa Khalafala for Arabic language translations
• Reza Monajjemi for Farsi language translations
• Maciej Jaros for Polish language translations
• Tomáš Fiala for Slovakian language translations
• Gerhard Riesthuis for Dutch language translations
• Eduardo del Valle Perez for Catalan language translations