====== Staff Client Distribution Methods ======
These are a few different ways Evergreen administrators are distributing and managing the staff clients.

===== Client on a stick (pine cones) MVLC =====
**Note:** This is method relies on revisions not available in 1.6.* releases and will probably be useful out of the box once Evergreen reaches version 2.1

The "Client on a stick" method is useful for several things (that have been thought of so far, anyway).

The first, MVLC's initial purpose, is a simple to use client that requires no setup, you can just run it off of the USB stick.

The second is for a portable client for use away from internet connectivity, such as in a bookmobile. Because everything is stored on the USB stick the offline client can be used in the bookmobile, then the USB stick (rather than an entire computer) can be brought to a computer with internet connectivity to do the upload.

The third is for an "emergency" client. Provided it is kept up to date the USB stick can be used with a computer that is not normally a staff workstation in the event of the normal workstation failing. Alternatively, it can be used as a "we need a staff client right here for a few hours" type of thing, where the USB stick becomes a "roaming" staff client that can be used on normally public or non-library computers (such as staff laptops).

Building the USB stick staff client is simple. With the staff client build enhancements (as of this writing, only in trunk) a 'make win-xulrunner' will build the base client itself in the "client" folder. This can then be copied onto a usb stick, recommended into a folder like "egstaffclient". A second folder can then be made, we used openils, for the profile. ("Profile" may be another option in this case)

For the "demo" sticks MVLC made an installer was included (based on trunk's windows installer functionality), and the "open-ils.write_in_user_chrome_directory" preference was defaulted to false. This meant that we could set last_ws_server for the installer and that workstations would be registered on a computer level instead of an individual user level when using the installer. With that set to false our ws_info and last_ws_server files on the USB sticks lived in "egstaffclient/chrome/open_ils_staff_client/content/conf/". With that preference set to true (the normal default) we would have used "openils/chrome/", assuming our "fixed profile" folder was openils.

We needed a launcher to set the forced profile. We ended up with a batch file (.bat) containing the following:

<code>egstaffclient\evergreen.exe -profile openils</code>

Note that "openils" is in the root of the USB stick in our case and was where the forced profile would end up living.

We then used a Bat to Exe converter from http://www.f2ko.de ([[http://www.f2ko.de/programs.php?lang=en&pid=b2e|This specifically]]) to turn that .bat into a .exe with an icon. We used the "invisible application, current directory, delete at exit" options and specified the icon in the versioninformations section.

An autorun.inf file was also included, although behaviour will differ from windows version to windows version with it on a USB stick.

<code>
[AutoRun]
ICON=startevergreen.exe
LABEL=MVLC Evergreen Demo
OPEN=startevergreen.exe
ACTION=Start Evergreen Demo Client
</code>

To populate the USB sticks we used a bash script on a linux box (it does two at a time, and takes the shortname the stick should be for as an argument):

<code>
#!/bin/bash

echo Mounting...
mkdir /media/usb0
mkdir /media/usb1
mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb0
mount /dev/sdd1 /media/usb1
echo Starting Copy, USB1
cp -R build/* /media/usb0 > /dev/null
echo Starting Copy, USB2
cp -R build/* /media/usb1 > /dev/null
if [ "$1" ]; then
    echo Pre-reg USB Sticks with library $1
    libnum=`grep $1 libs.csv | cut -d , -f 2`
    sed -e s/SHORT/$1/g -e s/ID/$libnum/ -e s/NUM/0/ ws_info.tmpl > /media/usb0/egstaffclient/chrome/open_ils_staff_client/content/conf/ws_info
    sed -e s/SHORT/$1/g -e s/ID/$libnum/ -e s/NUM/1/ ws_info.tmpl > /media/usb1/egstaffclient/chrome/open_ils_staff_client/content/conf/ws_info
    echo Add passwords to USB sticks
    for DRIVE in {usb0,usb1}; do
        grep \"$1\" generic.csv | sed -e 's/ /\ /' | sed -e 's/^[0-9]*,"\([^"]*\)","\([^"]*\)",.*,"\([^"]*\)"$/<tr><td>\1<\/td><td>\2<\/td><td>\3<\/td><\/tr>/' | while read PASSWORD ; do
            sed -i "/<passwords\/>/i\
$PASSWORD
" /media/$DRIVE/README.html
        done
        sed -i "/<passwords\/>/d" /media/$DRIVE/README.html
    done
fi
echo Unmounting Drives
umount /media/usb0
umount /media/usb1
rmdir /media/usb0
rmdir /media/usb1
echo Done
</code>

Take note that this pulled information from ws_info.tmpl, generic.csv, and libs.csv. generic.csv was a list of our accounts for the sticks, libs.csv was a simple "SHORTNAME,ID" list. It also refers to a README.html file we made (with screenshots) for our members, where it puts username/password information in place of a &lt;passwords/&gt; element.

ws_info.tmpl ended up being this:
<code>{"SERVER":{"name":"SHORT-pineconeNUM","owning_lib":"ID","lib_shortname":"SHORT"}}</code>

The most annoying part ends up being loading and properly labeling the USB sticks.

As for the server-side registration, we used the following SQL:

<code>INSERT INTO actor.workstation(name,owning_lib) SELECT shortname || '-pinecone' || num AS name, id AS owning_lib FROM actor.org_unit, (SELECT unnest(ARRAY[0,1]) AS num) AS n WHERE ou_type = 3 AND shortname IN ('list','of','shortnames') ORDER BY id, num;</code>

The "ou_type = 3" part wasn't really needed, originally I wasn't limiting the shortnames to the branches we were building the sticks for.

===== Client management using WPKG TADL =====

Jeff Godin uses WPKG to install and manage staff clients.