This page refers to VuFind 1.x; for similar notes related to later versions, see this page.

Sometimes, you may want to have multiple copies of VuFind running on the same system. This is a good way to test a new version of the code without breaking an existing installation, or you may wish to use the software for two unrelated applications at once.

This page contains details of how to configure your second copy to work in parallel with the first.

You can install your second copy in much the same way as the first copy, though most steps can be skipped since you already have Apache, MySQL and other prerequisites running.

Important notes:

• Be sure to install the second copy in a different directory than the first.
• You will probably want to give the second instance a different database name to work with so it has its own separate set of tables.
• Since the scripts to run VuFind rely on the VUFIND_HOME environment variable, you may run into problems if you have set this up as a global value. You can either set up each instance to run in a different user account with a different environment setting (probably best practice, but more complex to administer), or you can modify the relevant scripts (see notes below).

• In the [Site] section, you will need to change the path, url and local settings to reflect the new location of the code.
• In the [Index] section, change the local setting to reflect the new code location.
• In the [Database] section, you will have to edit the scheme_location and class_location values to reflect the different file paths.
• In the [Logging] section, if you have / want logging, change the file location

You will need to make some changes to the Apache configuration for the second instance.

• Change the Alias line at the top of the file to reflect the base URL you want to use and the file path where you installed the code.
• Change the Directory line right under Alias to reflect the new file path.
• Change the RewriteBase line further down in the file to reflect the new base URL.
• Change the AuthUserFile setting in the Administration section to reflect the new file path.
• Change the <Location ~ “/vufind/Admin/.+”> tag to reflect the appropriate path to your new instance.

• Change the solr.path and solrmarc.path settings to reflect your installation directory.

This file may not exist in all versions of VuFind

As noted above, best practice is probably to install each instance of VuFind in a different user account with different settings for the VUFIND_HOME environment variable.

However, if you chose to set up a global VUFIND_HOME value, you can override it by adding this line near the top of both vufind.sh and import-marc.sh (but under the “#!/bin/sh” line):

VUFIND_HOME="/your/new/vufind/path"

You will run into a similar problem with the JETTY_PID variable, which should be unique for each running instance of VuFind. You can configure this on an account by account basis, or you can add this line to vufind.sh:

JETTY_PID="your_filename.pid"

Note that in early versions of VuFind, import-marc.sh used to be called import.sh.

Under Windows, you will need to edit run_vufind.bat and import-marc.bat instead of vufind.sh and import-marc.sh; the lines you will add should be of the form:

set VUFIND_HOME=c:\vufind

See Using an Alternate MySQL Database name for details on this step.

Each instance of VuFind will need to access the Solr search back-end using a different port number. Instructions on changing the Solr port can be found on the Security page.