Ubuntu - Third time's a charm, right?

Back to the drawing board - I was still trying to solve the same problem, that of installing Koha. Debian Squeeze had had issues with my user name, and Amazon Linux didn't have the ability to install Koha from a Debian package.

So what next? I still needed a Linux based AMI. Other than Debian Squeeze, Koha community also had instructions for installing on Ubuntu. Some quick double-checking on Google told me that Ubuntu was Debian-based, and there was an Amazon-supported Ubuntu AMI. I also knew that "ubuntu" was the user name. Why wasn't this my second choice?

It was 11:30PM, and I thought "Why not? I'll give this one more try. Third time's a charm, right?" I installed the Unbutu AMI and logged in via PuTTY. I was now an expert at doing this from my previous two attempts, and didn't even need the Koha in 11 Minutes video.

I then followed the instructions and commands to enter on the Ubuntu instructions from Koha community up to (but not including) Pre-Web install set-up. Everything worked exactly as planned, exactly as written in the instructions, and I now had Koha downloaded and installed. At 12PM. And I needed to get up in just over 5 hours.

Koha Installed

What I learned - That, while sometimes all you need to do is just follow the instructions to get a good result, it is important to make sure that the instructions actually apply to your exact situation. Once I got a Linux platform I could actually work with, I found this was remarkably simple. I originally thought entering the code into the command line would be my biggest challenge, but this proved remarkably simple and easy for me to grasp compared to bizarrely abstract problems like the differences between two versions of Linux, or what somebody has decided to make the default username.

I also learned a lot from my two failed attempts. I found that setting a server up on AWS and logging in via PuTTY was actually pretty simple, whereas at first I had found it difficult. This could be due to the fact that practice makes perfect, but also, through my failures, I learned what I was actually doing, rather than just following some instructions. Most importantly, I understood what I was trying to do when performing those actions. This increased my ability to problem solve, and I think this will be especially useful if I attempt to do this again.