How do we fix Kolibri Channel Import failures with http://box/kolibri configured by KOLIBRI_URL_PATH_PREFIX=/kolibri ?

Thanks to @shanti-bhardwa who helped spell out this longstanding issue, and also @jvonau, @tim-moody who both reconfirmed!

The solution might not be simple (?) but let’s try to find a way forward here together — as there are a quickly growing number of Internet-in-a-Box communities around the world using Kolibri:

PROBLEM SUMMARY: If you try to import a Kolibri channel using Kolibri > Channels > Import > Select a source > “Local network or internet”, it will fail as the other Kolibri machine’s KOLIBRI_URL_PATH_PREFIX=/kolibri is somehow being ignored:

• The problem occurs when The Other Kolibri Machine has the form http://box/kolibri
• Whereas if The Other Kolibri Machine is manually hacked to instead run Kolibri on http://box:8009, the channel import then works.

BACKGROUND: KOLIBRI_URL_PATH_PREFIX=/kolibri is installed within /etc/systemd/system/kolibri.service whenever you install Internet-in-a-Box, as seen on Line 10 below.

[Unit]
Description=Kolibri

[Service]
Type=forking
RemainAfterExit=yes
Environment=KOLIBRI_USER=kolibri
Environment=KOLIBRI_HOME=/library/kolibri
Environment=KOLIBRI_HTTP_PORT=8009
Environment=KOLIBRI_URL_PATH_PREFIX=/kolibri
User=kolibri
Group=www-data
# 2020-10-03: Kolibri was timing out on RaspiOS & Ubuntu 20 NUC: iiab/iiab#2555
TimeoutStartSec=1200
# The following is the systemd default, which is too much for most teachers in
# low-electricity environments (30-60 sec is about all they can handle before
# pulling the power cord, typically every hour at the end of class).  But since
# 90 seconds is the Linux / systemd default, it's prob good enough for now:
# TimeoutStopSec=90
# 2020-04-18 @jvonau: comment out both timeouts for now, in favor of 90 seconds
# or whatever systemd / Kolibri favor? https://github.com/iiab/iiab/issues/2318
# TimeoutStartSec=infinity
# TimeoutStopSec=10
ExecStart=/usr/bin/kolibri start
ExecStop=/usr/bin/kolibri stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

GENERAL KOLIBRI QUESTION (PERHAPS UNRELATED?) /etc/kolibri/daemon.conf currently always contains the single line KOLIBRI_HOME="/library/kolibri" on Internet-in-a-Box machines, so a suggestion was made — should this really contain all 4 variables above including KOLIBRI_URL_PATH_PREFIX=/kolibri ? As background, here’s the current /etc/kolibri configuration of all Internet-in-a-Box machines:

root@box:/etc/kolibri# ls
conf.d  daemon.conf  README  username

root@box:/etc/kolibri# ls conf.d

root@box:/etc/kolibri# more username
kolibri

root@box:/etc/kolibri# more daemon.conf
KOLIBRI_HOME="/library/kolibri"

CONTEXT: Internet-in-a-Box installs Kolibri’s latest .deb (https://learningequality.org/r/kolibri-deb-latest) according to the instructions provided by many helpful Learning Equality staff over the years (e.g. Benjamin Bach and others!) Then it runs…

export KOLIBRI_HOME=/library/kolibri &&
/usr/bin/kolibri manage provisiondevice \
--facility Kolibri-in-a-Box \
--superusername Admin \
--superuserpassword changeme \
--preset formal \
--language_id en

…according to https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/b1ce429f500cbac544a6f6f5f66eb2542d616039/roles/kolibri/tasks/install.yml#L70-L80

DOC: https://kolibri.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manage/resources.html#import-from-a-local-network-or-internet

Tangentially related:

• learningequality/kolibri#5414
  • PR learningequality/kolibri#5415
• PR learningequality/kolibri#8164
• PR learningequality/kolibri#8366
• iiab/iiab#3227

[rtibbles]

This has now been fixed in #9533 - this update will be released by July 20th in 0.15.6.

[marcellamaki]

Hi @holta - yes. As Richard mentioned in May, this issue is part of our planned/themed patch release schedule, which are released on a 6 week cadence. This is still our timeline - Planned Patch 4 for is scheduled for mid-July as Richard noted then, with the planned release date being July 20th, as indicated on the milestone. The PR associated with this issue will be part of that release.