OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold 20050825 available

At 322MB, OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold (available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/worldvista) is the smallest, lightest, live CD ever made of VistA.

It a remastered version of Damn Small Linux (DSL – http://damnsmalllinux.org) version 2.0RC1 upgraded to current versions of packages, Debian package management enabled, and wine (http://winehq.org) – & Xdialog (http://xdialog.dyns.net) installed. DSL is the most compact Linux live CD, with with the VistA release dated August 25, 2005 as released by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA – http://www.va.gov) ) under the Freedom of Information Act on GT.M (V5.0-000, as released under the terms of the GNU General Public License – http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt – at Source Forge – http://sourceforge.net/projects/sanchez-gtm).

To run VistA, you will need one of (a) a USB flash drive (also known as a zip drive or thumb drive); (b) a hard disk partition with a FAT file system, or (c) a Linux file system; or a hard disk partition which can be partitioned with a FAT or Linux file system. A minimum of 300MB of available space is required; more if sample health records are to be stored in the database.

There is an initial zipped database on the CD-ROM; it must be “installed” to a read/write storage medium in order to use VistA. Mount the partition read-write storage device (e.g., /mnt/sda1, /mnt/hda2, etc. – DSL provides a tool on the lower right part of the screen to mount and unmount file systems). First, click on the arrow keys to choose the file system and then click on the small mount button to mount it). Once the database is installed, on subsequent occasions, it does not need to be installed. The read/write device, however, must be mounted on each boot-up.

It is recommended that a symbolic link /home/dsl/myVistA be created pointing to the location of the read/write storage, e.g., ln -sf /mnt/hda2/VistA /home/dsl/myVistA. The CPRS GUI requires that /home/dsl/myVistA be a directory, or point to a directory, with read/write permissions for user dsl, and an installed VistA environment therein. This symbolic link must be established on each boot-up after mounting the read-write file system.

To install the initial database, start a shell, and execute the command /usr/local/OpenVistA/vista –install where is the installation directory without a trailing slash (/), e.g., /usr/local/OpenVistA/vista –install /home/dsl/myVistA.

To subsequently run VistA, in a shell, execute /usr/local/OpenVistA/vista –run .

If the directory, or the directory and the command (–install or –run) are omitted, you will be prompted.

OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold 20050825 is configured to allow the new “direct connect” CPRS GUI to connect to VistA at TCP port 9297. This configuration does not need Taskman or the RPC Broker to be started. cprs-gui is defined as a service in /etc/services, and /etc/inetd.conf is setup to start the shell script /usr/local/OpenVistA/cprs_direct to receive the connection request. cprs_direct sets up environment variables to look for a VistA installation in /home/dsl/myVistA and executes mumps -run GTMLNX^XWBTCPM to communicate with the client. Note that old style connections continue to be handled, but you will need to start Taskman and the RPC Broker – remember to shut them down cleanly before shutting down the PC.

The CPRS GUI executable is /usr/local/OpenVistA/CPRS/CPRSChart.exe. Copy it to a Windows PC of your choice, or make it available via Samba. An icon to attempt to run the GUI under wine is on the desktop. You may or may not be successful with it. Good luck – and please let the VistA community know of your success when you try it. Please note that the first time you try running it under wine on boot up, it will be slow to start up.

VistA as provided on this CD is as released by the VA with two small changes to XWBTCPM.m and _ZOSV.m to permit the new “direct connect” CPRS GUI client to connect. Routine ZTMGRSET was run to configure VistA for GT.M. Finally, the two extraneous NULL devices in the database were renamed.

The GT.M documentation is provided under /usr/share/doc/gtm. Please be aware that the exercises on the Acculturation live CD use a home directory of /home/morph; on the OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold 20050825 live CD, you will need to use /home/dsl instead. Also, some of the sample outputs may have small (inconsequential) changes in them because the GT.M Acculturation live CD uses GT.M V4.4-004, whereas this live CD uses GT.M V5.0-000.

Except as described above, DSL 2.0RC1 is used unchanged. You can use OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold in lieu of DSL 2.0RC1 for all applications. It is also possible to install Linux, GT.M and VistA to the hard drive or a USB flash drive with this CD – refer to the DSL Wiki for non VistA/GT.M use of this CD.

The three VistA functions – installing an initial copy of the database, running an installed database, and the CPRS GUI are all accessible from a right mouse button click on the desktop background.

Like all Linux live CDs that I have released with VistA and GT.M, OpenVistA VivitA FOIA Gold 0.2 can be used unaltered to demonstrate your GT.M based application. On a USB flash drive, create a directory, e.g., myApp with subdirectories myApp/g, myApp/r and myApp/o. Copy the database to myApp/g/mumps.dat and put the routines in myApp/r. Then, assuming that the USB flash drive is mounted as /mnt/sda1, to run the application, start a shell, and execute the command /usr/local/OpenVistA/vista –run /mnt/sda1/myApp LAB^ROUTINE where LAB^ROUTINE is the initial entry point for your application.

OpenVistA VivitA releases are intended to be used purely for illustration / demonstration purposes, and come with no warranty whatsoever. They are neither tested nor certified for use in production. You take full responsibility for their use.

— Bhaskar

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *