Greenstone tutorial exercise

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Prerequisite: Installing Greenstone
Devised for Greenstone version: 2.60
Modified for Greenstone version: 2.87

Updating a Greenstone installation

These tutorial exercises assume that you are using Greenstone 2.60 or above.

Before updating to a new version of Greenstone, ensure that the computer is not running the Greenstone Librarian Interface or the Greenstone local library server. Normally, quitting your web browser, or quitting the Librarian Interface, also quits the server.

Removing Greenstone from a Windows system

Completely remove the existing version before you install a new version of Greenstone.

  1. Ensure that you are not running Greenstone.

  1. If the installed Greenstone version is 2.81 and above, to remove the old version, go to the Greenstone home directory (eg. C:\Users\<username>\Greenstone2 by default, where <username> is your user name) and click Uninstall.bat. Otherwise, if the version is lower than 2.81, remove the old version by going to the Windows Control Panel (from the Settings item on the Start menu). Click Add or Remove Programs, select Greenstone Digital Library Software, and Remove it. (To do this you may need Windows "Administrator" privileges.)

  1. For version 2.81 and above, the uninstaller has an option for keeping all your Greenstone collections, leave it at default as selected. For versions lower than 2.81, at the end of the uninstallation procedure you will be asked whether you would like all your Greenstone collections to be removed: you should probably say No if you wish to preserve your work.

Occasionally, problems are encountered if older Greenstone installations are not fully removed. To clean up your system, move your Greenstone collect folder, which contains all your collections, to the desktop. Then check for the folder C:\Program Files\gsdl or C:\Program Files\Greenstone or C:\Users\<username>\Greenstone2 for version 2.81 and above, which is where Greenstone is usually installed, and remove it completely if it exists.

Reinstalling Greenstone on a Windows system

  1. The reinstallation procedure is exactly the same as the original installation procedure, described in Installing Greenstone. If you already have ImageMagick, you do not need to install it again.

There have been some superficial changes to the installation procedure in moving to Greenstone Version 2.60, because it uses a different installer program.

There is another important difference that you should be aware of: Versions 2.60 and above are installed in the folder Program Files\Greenstone, whereas prior versions were placed in the folder Program Files\gsdl (these are both default locations that you could have changed during installation.) When upgrading to Version 2.60, if you want to save existing collections you must explicitly move the contents of your collect folder from the old place to the new one. Future Greenstone versions will be installed in the new place, Program Files\Greenstone, so this problem will not happen again.

Amalgamating different Greenstone collections

  1. If you have previously installed the Greenstone Digital Library software in a non-standard place, you should amalgamate your collections by moving them from the collect folder in the old place into the folder Program Files\Greenstone\collect.

  1. If you have installed collections from pre-packaged Greenstone CD-ROMs, they reside in a different place: C:\GSDL\collect. To amalgamate these with your main Greenstone installation, move them into the folder Program Files\Greenstone\collect. The mini version of Greenstone that is associated with the pre-packaged collections is no longer necessary. To uninstall it, select Uninstall on the Greenstone menu of the Windows Start menu.


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