TWiki Installation Guide

• Create directory /home/httpd/twiki and unzip the TWiki distribution into this directory.
• The twiki/bin directory of TWiki must be set as a cgi-bin directory. Add /home/httpd/twiki/bin to file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf with only ExecCGI option.

• Restart Apache by /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S85httpd restart .
• Test if the twiki/bin directory is cgi-enabled:
  • Enter the URL of that directory into your browser ( http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin ). It is not set correctly as cgi-bin in case you get something like "Index of /twiki/bin" . It is OK if you get a message like "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /twiki/bin/ on this server."
  • Execute the testenv script from your browser ( http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin/testenv ). It shows a table with all CGI environment variables and tests the settings in your twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm configuration file.

• Make sure Perl 5 and the Perl CGI library are installed on your system. Default location of Perl executable is /usr/bin/perl. In case Perl is installed in a different location, the first line of all Perl scripts in the twiki/bin directory must be changed (alternatively you can create a symbolic link from /usr/bin/perl ).
  • IMPORTANT: On most ISP virtual domain accounts, Perl CGI scripts require a .cgi extension to run. Some systems need .pl, the regular Perl extension. Change all twiki/bin scripts appropriately if necssary.

• Set the permission of the twiki/data directory and its subdirectories so that files in there are writable by user nobody. A simple way is to chmod them to drwxrwxrwx (777).
• Set the permission of the twiki/pub directory and all its subdirectories so that files in there are writable by user nobody. A simple way is to chmod them to drwxrwxrwx (777).

• Edit the file twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm and set the variables at the beginning of the file to your needs.
  • Set the file extension in the $scriptSuffix variable to cgi or pl if required.

• Enable email notification of topic changes, Notification of Changes has more.
• Add the TWiki:Main.PoweredByTWikiLogo to your Main topic.

• Point your Web browser at http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin/view and start TWiki-ing away!
• Edit the TWikiPreferences topic in the TWiki:TWiki web to set the WIKIWEBMASTER email address, the WEBCOPYRIGHT message and other preferences.

• To create a new web:
  • Use a name for the web consisting of characters A..Z , a..z but not in WikiNotation.

• • In case you want usage statistics for this web: Copy file WebStatistics.txt from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory. Edit topic WebStatistics in the new web and delete old usage entries.
  • Note that user home topics are only located in the TWiki.Main web, so don't try to move them or create them in other webs. From any web you can refer to users located in the TWiki.Main web like Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName.

• You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki it is recommended to do this customization in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm , not twiki/bin/wiki.pm .

• If you are on a non authenticated server (i.e. not using SSL) and you would like to authenticate users:
  • Rename file .htaccess.txt in the twiki/bin directory to .htaccess and change it to your needs. For details consult the HTTP server documentation (for Apache server: [1], [2]). In particular, the following red part needs to be configured correctly:
    

• • • Note: You can customize the registration form if needed, like deleting or adding input tags. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This will ensure that the fields are processed correctly.
  • A new line containing user name and encrypted password gets added to the data/.htpasswd file when a users registers. The file that comes with the TWiki installation contains a few user accounts of TWiki core team members (needed for testing). You can edit the file and delete those lines.

TWiki Installation Guide

Step 3: Enable Perl File Permissions

• • IMPORTANT: On most ISP virtual domain accounts, Perl CGI scripts require a .cgi extension to run. Some systems need .pl, the regular Perl extension. Change all twiki/bin scripts appropriately if necssary.
• To be able to edit the Perl scripts and .tmpl files it is necessary to chown and chgrp -R twiki so all the files have the owner you want.
• The scripts execute as nobody. Set the file permission of all Perl scripts in the twiki/bin directory as executable to -rwxr-xr-x (755).

TWiki Installation Guide

• Create directory /home/httpd/twiki and unzip the TWiki distribution into this directory.
• The twiki/bin directory of TWiki must be set as a cgi-bin directory. Add /home/httpd/twiki/bin to file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf with only ExecCGI option.
• The twiki/pub directory of TWiki must be set so that it is visible as a URL. Add /home/httpd/twiki to file httpd.conf with normal access options (copy from /home/httpd/html ).
• Now add ScriptAlias for /twiki/bin and Alias for /twiki to file httpd.conf .
  Note: The ScriptAlias must come before the Alias in Apache, otherwise it will fail to correctly set up /twiki/bin/ , due to the fact that it sees that as being just another subdirectory of the /twiki/ alias.
  

 ScriptAlias /twiki/bin/ "/home/httpd/twiki/bin/"
 Alias /twiki/ "/home/httpd/twiki/"
 <Directory "/home/httpd/twiki/bin">

• Restart Apache by /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S85httpd restart .
• Test if the twiki/bin directory is cgi-enabled:
  • Enter the URL of that directory into your browser ( http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin ). It is not set correctly as cgi-bin in case you get something like "Index of /twiki/bin" . It is OK if you get a message like "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /twiki/bin/ on this server."

• Make sure RCS is installed. Set $rcsDir in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm to mach the location of your RCS binaries.

• Note in case the cgi scripts are not running as user nobody: The *,v RCS repository files delivered with the installation package are locked by user nobody . In case the user is different (e.g. www-data ), it is not possible to check in files, this has the effect that the topic version number does not increase when saving a topic. In this case you need to unlock all repository files and lock them as user www-data (check the rcs man pages), or simply delete all the repository files. A simple way to switch the locker of the RCS files is to use sed:
  for f in *,v; do sed 's/nobody\:/www-data\:/' $f > x; mv x $f; done

• Add the TWiki:Main.PoweredByTWikiLogo to your Main topic.

• To create a new web:
  • Use a name for the web consisting of characters A..Z , a..z but not in WikiNotation.

• • In case you want usage statistics for this web: Copy file WebStatistics.txt from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory. Edit topic WebStatistics in the new web and delete old usage entries.
  • Note that user home topics are only located in the TWiki.Main web, so don't try to move them or create them in other webs. From any web you can refer to users located in the TWiki.Main web like Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName.

TWiki File System Snapshot

Here are partial directory listings showing typical file permissions and ownership. This is provided for general debugging use only and isn't an exact representation of the current distribution. There is also a complete file listing by directory? , with individual file descriptions, for the current TWiki release.

TWiki Installation Guide

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Mar 2001

• Enable email notification of topic changes, Notification of Changes has more. Using your browser, edit also the WebNotify topic in all webs and set the users you want to notify.
• Add the TWiki:Main.PoweredByTWikiLogo to your Main topic.

• Optional: You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki it is recommended to do this customization in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm , not twiki/bin/wiki.pm .

• Optional: If you are on a non authenticated server (i.e. not using SSL) and you would like to authenticate users:
  • Rename file .htaccess.txt in the twiki/bin directory to .htaccess and change it to your needs. For details consult the HTTP server documentation (for Apache server: [1], [2]). In particular, the following red part needs to be configured correctly:
    

• • • Note: You can customize the registration form if needed, like deleting or adding input tags. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This will ensure that the fields are processed correctly.
  • A new line containing user name and encrypted password gets added to the data/.htpasswd file when a users registers. The file that comes with the TWiki installation contains a few user accounts of TWiki core team members (needed for testing). You can edit the file and delete those lines.

• Optional: You can automatically generate usage statistics for all webs. To enable this:
  • Make sure variable $doLogTopicView, $doLogTopicSave and $doLogTopicUpload in wikicfg.pm are set. This will generate log entries in file twiki/data/log<date>.txt .

• • • Update January 2000 for Main web:
      http://mydomain.com/twiki/bin/statistics/Main?logdate=200001

• To create a new web:
  • Use a name for the web consisting of characters A..Z , a..z but not in WikiNotation.

• • In case you want usage statistics for this web: Copy file WebStatistics.txt from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory. Edit topic WebStatistics in the new web and delete old usage entries.
  • Note that user home topics are only located in the TWiki.Main web, so don't try to move them or create them in other webs. From any web you can refer to users located in the TWiki.Main web like Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName.

drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug 19 04:15 .

drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki	twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:35 .

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Mar 2001