Bug 26877

Summary: Add ability for libraries to be able to restart the SIP server
Product: Koha Reporter: Barbara Johnson <barbara.johnson>
Component: System AdministrationAssignee: Bugs List <koha-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: Testopia <testopia>
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: dcook, gmcharlt, jgaine, magnus
Version: 19.11   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
See Also: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=23640
https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=26871
Change sponsored?: --- Patch complexity: ---
Documentation contact: Documentation submission:
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Description Barbara Johnson 2020-10-30 16:26:55 UTC
I don't know if this is even possible but when we were on another ILS we could restart the SIP server when we needed to.  We have an AMH and third-party self-checks so it would be nice to be able to restart SIP on our own rather than having to ask our support vendor to do it.
Comment 1 David Cook 2020-11-11 02:03:43 UTC
(In reply to Barbara Johnson from comment #0)
> I don't know if this is even possible but when we were on another ILS we
> could restart the SIP server when we needed to.  

It's a complex request, since the SIP server and the Koha website are two different things.

In theory, the Koha website should *not* be able to restart the SIP server. In practice, it might be possible, depending on how your Koha has been implemented.

I would argue strongly against a community supported solution, but you could ask your support vendor to create a custom solution to enable this.

In the end though, I'd ask why you want to restart the SIP server. Are you having issues with the SIP server? If so, it might be better to look at fixing those issues, rather than looking for a workaround. There have been a few SIP server issues regarding excessive caching and fork safety noted over time, so my guess is that those are probably what you are running into.
Comment 2 Barbara Johnson 2020-11-11 16:59:47 UTC
Thanks for explaining about how the SIP server works with Koha.  We have an AMH, self-checks, PC reservation/printing, third-party payment vendor, digital resources and databases.  We're not having routine problems with SIP but we do run into issues sometimes where we need to have SIP restarted.  Sometimes it needs a couple of restarts. So this idea was mostly for convenience.
Comment 3 David Cook 2020-11-11 22:16:54 UTC
(In reply to Barbara Johnson from comment #2)
> We're not having routine problems with SIP
> but we do run into issues sometimes where we need to have SIP restarted. 
> Sometimes it needs a couple of restarts. 

Could you speak more to that? What are the issues that require a SIP restart?

In theory, you should not need to restart the SIP server. However, as I noted above, in practice there are times where you do need to restart the SIP server because of caching issues. See Bug 23640 and Bug 26871. We have created a fix for the former but not the latter - yet.

It sounds like your library might actually be well placed to help resolve Bug 26871 due to the high number of systems you have integrating with your SIP server.
Comment 4 David Cook 2020-11-11 22:18:48 UTC
Another suggestion is asking your vendor to schedule a nightly restart of your SIP server. Historically, the vendor I work for has done this to avoid SIP server issues like excessive caching for our libraries.
Comment 5 Katrin Fischer 2023-12-09 13:35:16 UTC
I believe that we have resolved all known caching issues with the SIP server now. We also do a nightly restart, but we haven't had issues reported in a while. Barbara, do you think this could be closed?
Comment 6 Barbara Johnson 2023-12-11 16:12:23 UTC
We haven't been encountering the issues where we need to restart SIP like we used to.  Yes, I do think we can close this one.
Comment 7 Katrin Fischer 2023-12-11 16:45:33 UTC
(In reply to Barbara Johnson from comment #6)
> We haven't been encountering the issues where we need to restart SIP like we
> used to.  Yes, I do think we can close this one.

Thanks for the feedback!