error:

# ./z3950-daemon-launch.sh
# This account is currently not available.

CAUSE: OpenBSD's default Apache configuration is more secure than most. By default the www user has no login shell and normally apache is chrooted to /var/www after it starts. Most cgi scripts require some modification to run in the chroot. I may eventually work on getting Koha running in the chrooted Apache but until then I've just disabled it.

SOLUTION: Since the www user has no shell and therefore can't run the z3950 I've created a z3950 user and modified z3950-daemon-options to reflect this.
# cat z3950-daemon-options
#20060806 - changed RunAsUser from www to z3950
RunAsUser=z3950
KohaZ3950Dir=/var/www/koha/intranet/scripts/z3950daemon
KohaModuleDir=/var/www/koha/intranet/modules
LogDir=/var/www/koha/log
KohaConf=/etc/koha.conf

error:

# ./z3950-daemon-launch.sh
# su: no such login class: /var/www/koha/intranet/scripts/z3950daemon/z3950-daemon-shell.sh

CAUSE: The syntax for the su command in /koha/intranet/scripts/z3950daemon/z3950-daemon-launch.sh is invalid for OpenBSD and FreeBSD and quite likely NetBSD.

For OpenBSD (FreeBSD and NetBSD are similar) the command syntax is: su [-fKLlm] [-a auth-type] [-c login-class] [login [shell arguments]] also the '-' switch has been deprecated in favour of -l

SOLUTION: Change the su command in z3950-daemon-launch.sh. So instead of
su -c $KohaZ3950Shell - $RunAsUser &

change it to the following
su -l $RunAsUser -c $KohaZ3950Shell &

1) When using the NPL template Z3950 search results from certain servers may not be present in the pop-up “Z3950 Search Results” even though the log indicates that records were found and retrieved from that server. I specifically had this problem when searching AMICUS.

2) You may get error messages in the z3950 log file like the following:
Can't call method “size” on an undefined value at /var/www/koha/intranet/scripts/z3950daemon/processz3950queue line 271.

I would get that error when trying to query the Library of Congress server. You will also notice that log file will be missing entries that normally appear. The following lines marked in bold should normally appear but don't.
24369/32 : Processing isbn=0672305410 at LIBRARY OF CONGRESS z3950.loc.gov:7090 Voyager MARC21 (8 forks)
24369/32 : 2 »
24369/32 : creating and 24369/32 : working on results entry 69
24369/32 : connected to LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
24369/32 : LIBRARY OF CONGRESS : 1 records found, retrieving them (max 80)
24369/32 : z3950.loc.gov:7090 search done.

3) If you are accessing multiple Z3950 servers you may notice in the pop- up “Z3950 Search Results” that one or more seem not to respond. The page will infinitely display “Still 1 requests to go” or whatever number of servers are not responding. If you notice this, it's most likely related to the #2 symptom above.

The following threads also discuss similar symptoms:

20060306 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5696/focus=5696

20051129 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5315/focus=5316

20051028 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5211/focus=5219

20051026 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5201/focus=5201

20051006 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5101/focus=5101

20050905 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/4978/focus=4978

20050103 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/4152/focus=4152

CAUSE: This is a symptom of bug #1051 http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1051

Basically the MARC flavour option was changed from USMARC to MARC21 but the NPL template wasn't updated. The result is that the remote server isn't informed of your MARC flavour preference. The offending snippets of code are listed below.

NPL version of z3950servers.tmpl:

<select name="syntax">
       <option value="USMARC">USMARC</option>
       <option value="UNIMARC">UNIMARC</option>
</select>

DEFAULT version of z3950servers.tmpl:

<select name="syntax">
       <option value="MARC21">MARC21</option>
       <option value="UNIMARC">UNIMARC</option>
</select>

processz3950queue:

eval { $conn->option(preferredRecordSyntax =>
       Net::Z3950::RecordSyntax::USMARC);} if ($globalsyntax eq "MARC21");
eval { $conn->option(preferredRecordSyntax =>
       Net::Z3950::RecordSyntax::UNIMARC);} if ($globalsyntax eq "UNIMARC");

Looking at CVS it appears this bug was introduced into processz3950queue on Mar 30 2005. As of Jun 11 2006 MARC21 was switched back to USMARC.

SOLUTION: Since the NPL version of z3950servers.tmpl is the odd one out, the easiest thing to do is modify it to be the same as the default version (see code snippets above). It appears the latest code has reverted back to USMARC and you *SHOULD* also be able to change the default template and processz3950queue to mirror those changes. Alternatively, the next time you upgrade to 2.2.6 or later this problem should be resolved (or at least this specific cause will be).

20060405 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5798/match=z3950

20051026 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5201/match=z3950

20050818 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/4935/match=z3950 my own question on this problem last year :)

SOLUTION: Thomas D. has posted a fix a number of times (thanks again)

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/5316/match=z3950

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/4925/focus=4935