• NOTE: This Installation Guide assumes the following:

• • User nobody is used for all files manipulated by the CGI scripts (executed by the Web server), and user twiki for all other files. Replace user nobody with another user if your Web server executes scripts under a different name (default for Debian is www-data). Also, you can substitute user twiki with your own username.

• • You have control over the Web server configuration files. In case you don't - you may be installing on an ISP-hosted server - follow the steps but use these directories instead:

Read TWiki:Codev/SourceForgeHowTo in case you want to install TWiki on SourceForge.

• • Execute the testenv script from your browser ( http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin/testenv ). It shows a table with all CGI environment variables. It also tests the settings in your twiki/lib/TWiki.cfg configuration file, which you will set later on.

• 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 necessary.
• 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 CGI scripts execute as nobody. Set the file permission of all Perl scripts in the twiki/bin directory as executable to -rwxr-xr-x (755).
• Set the permission of all files below twiki/data so that they are writable by user nobody. A simple way is to chmod them to -rw-rw-r-- (664) and to chown them to nobody.
• 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 drwxrwxr-x (775) and to chown them to nobody.
• 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 drwxrwxr-x (775) and to chown them to nobody.

• Edit the file twiki/lib/TWiki.cfg and set the variables to your needs.
  • Set the file extension in the $scriptSuffix variable to cgi or pl if required.

• 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
• Security issue: Directories twiki/data , twiki/templates and all its subdirectories should be set so that they are not visible as a URL. (Alternatively, move the directories to a place where they are not visible, and change the variables in twiki/lib/TWiki.cfg accordingly)

• 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.
• Edit the WebNotify topic in all webs and set the users you want to notify.

Creating a New Web

• To create a new web:

• • • Hint: You can set permissions of .txt and .txt,v files to -rw-rw-rw- (666) and then edit the topic using your browser; RCS will restore the file permissions correctly when saving the topic.

• That's it for a basic new web set-up. You can also further customize the web:
  • Create customized templates in the new templates directory (otherwise, templates are inherited from twiki/templates).
    • NOTE: For web-specific templates in a templates subdirectory, ex: twiki/templates/someweb.
  • Create TWikiForms to add form-based page input that's stored separately from the main free-form topic text.

• NOTE: User home topics are located in the TWiki.Main web - 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 with Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName - using the %MAINWEB% variable is preferable, particularly if you might change the Main web name.

Adding Variables & Rendering Rules

• You can add new %VARIABLES%. Define site-level variables in the TWikiPreferences topic. See also TWikiVariables.
• You can add new rendering rules or add new functionality to TWiki. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki, it is recommended to do this sort of customization with TWikiPlugins and the Plugins API.

• If you are on a non-authenticated server - not using SSL - and you would like to authenticate users:

• • • 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.

• • You have control over the Web server configuraton files. In case you don't - you may be installing on an ISP-hosted server - follow the steps but use these directories instead:

• Test if the twiki/bin directory is cgi-enabled:

• • 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.

• Security issue: Directories twiki/data , twiki/templates and all its subdirectories should be set so that they are not visible as a URL. (Alternatively, move the directries to a place where they are not visible, and change the variables in twiki/lib/TWiki.cfg accordingly)

• • User nobody= is used for all files manipulated by the CGI scripts (executed by the Web server), and user =twiki for all other files. Replace user nobody with another user if your Web server executes scripts under a different name (default for Debian is www-data). Also, you can substitute user twiki with your own username.

• • 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.

• 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).
• Set the permission of all files below twiki/data so that they are writable by user nobody. A simple way is to chmod them to -rw-rw-rw- (666).
• 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.

• • 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
• Security issue: Directories twiki/data , twiki/templates and all its subdirectories should be set so that they are not visible as a URL. (Alternatively, move the directries to a place where they are not visible, and change the variables in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm accordingly)
• Enable email notification of topic changes, Notification of Changes has more.
• Add the TWiki:Main.PoweredByTWikiLogo to your Main topic.

• If you use .htaccess, edit the file and add the file extension to edit, view, preview, etc.

• • Create Form Templates to add form-based page input that's stored separately from the main free-form topic text.

• You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki, it is recommended to do this sort of customization with TWiki Plugins and the Plugins API.

Extra Server-Level Options

• • Use a name for the web consisting of characters A..Z , a..z but not in WikiNotation.
  • Create a new template directory under twiki/templates .
  • Create a new data directory under twiki/data and check the file permission of the directory.
  • Copy the Web*.txt files from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory, preserving the original files' owner, group and permissions ( on Unix use cp -p ). The data files must be writable by the owner the CGI scripts are running on ( usually nobody ). Hint: You can set permissions of .txt and .txt,v files to -rw-rw-rw- and then edit the topic using your browser, RCS will restore the file permission correctly when saving the topic.
  • Add the new web to the web list (visible in the upper right corner of each topic) by editing the site-level preferences TWikiPreferences:

• • Add the new web to the web table (at the bottom of each WebHome topic) by editing the TWikiWebsTable topic.
  • Change the web preferences by editing the WebPreferences topic of the new web:
    • Set the WEBBGCOLOR variable to a color of your taste. The number represents the unique color for the web (consult an HTML book for colors.)
    • Customize the %WEBTOPICLIST% variable to contain the web specific links you prefer.
    • Optional: Set the %WEBCOPYRIGHT% variable to have a web-specific copyright text (at the bottom of each topic).
  • If needed, create customized templates in the new templates directory. (Non existing templates are inherited from twiki/templates )
  • If you want to use Form Templates - see TWiki Form Template
  • 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: The browser should ask for login name and password when you click on the Edit link. In case .htaccess does not have the desired effect you need to enable it: Add "AllowOverride All" to the Directory section of access.conf for your twiki/bin directory.
  • Copy the TWikiRegistrationPub? topic to TWikiRegistration. Do that by either editing the topics in theTWiki web, or by renaming the .txt and .txt,v files in the twiki/data/TWiki directory.
    • 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 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 file listing by directory? , with individual file descriptions, for the current TWiki release.

drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:34 .
drwxrwxr-x	3 twiki twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:34 ..
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 650 Feb 10  2000 .htaccess
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	4322 Mar 12 00:31 attach
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	1426 Jun 20 19:52 delete
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	9001 Jul 28 11:03 edit
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	1811 Mar 11 02:27 geturl
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	5006 Mar 11 02:41 mailnotify
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	1769 Mar 11 03:07 oops
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	6890 Jun 21 19:58 preview
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	7606 Mar 31 18:30 rdiff
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	8349 Jun 21 18:12 register
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	2693 Jul  5 14:32 save
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	3831 Jul 20 12:13 search
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	9835 Jun 20 19:03 statistics
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	 509 Feb  7  2000 testenv
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki  14543 Jul 20 18:46 upload
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	4755 May 22 18:11 view
-rwxrwxr-x	1 twiki twiki	1689 Jun 20 20:10 viewfile

Directory twiki/templates/ :

drwxrwxr-x	4 twiki twiki	4096 Aug  3 01:17 .
drwxrwxr-x	4 twiki twiki	4096 Aug 19 18:38 ..
drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:35 Know
drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki twiki	4096 May  1 01:24 Main
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	2688 Aug 15 18:15 attach.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1283 Jul 20 15:56 attachtable.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1907 Jul 28 16:41 changes.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	2265 Aug 15 17:57 edit.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 965 Feb  8  2000 mailnotify.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	  30 Jan 13  1999 notedited.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 940 Jul 20 15:59 notext.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 907 Jul 20 16:01 notwiki.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 341 Mar  8 11:39 noweb.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1000 Mar  8 11:40 oops.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1043 Oct 23 19:17 oopsaccesschange.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1036 Oct 23 19:17 oopsaccessview.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 914 Mar  8 11:40 oopsdel.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1423 May 29 01:23 oopslocked.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	1067 Mar  8 11:41 oopsregexist.tmpl
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki twiki	 955 Mar  8 11:41 oopsregpasswd.tmpl

Directory twiki/data/ :

drwxrwxrwx	6 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:09 .
drwxrwxr-x	4 twiki	twiki	4096 Aug 19 18:38 ..
-rw-rw-r--	1 nobody  nobody	 51 Apr 21 16:48 .htpasswd
drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug 20 17:18 Know
drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug 19 04:15 Main
drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug 20 17:56 TWiki
-rw-rw-rw-	1 twiki	twiki		1 Mar 11 04:19 debug.txt
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody  1516 Aug 20 17:56 log200008.txt

Partial file list for twiki/data/Main :

drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug 19 04:15 .
drwxrwxrwx	6 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:09 ..
-rw-rw-rw-	1 twiki twiki	  3716 Aug 19 02:19 .changes
-rw-rw-rw-	1 twiki twiki		  9 Aug 19 02:45 .mailnotify
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	358 Aug 18 17:22 OfficeLocations.txt
-r--r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	878 Aug 18 17:22 OfficeLocations.txt,v
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	680 Aug 18 17:36 TWikiGuest.txt
-r--r--r--	1 nobody  nobody  1989 Aug 18 17:36 TWikiGuest.txt,v
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	459 Aug 18 17:19 TWikiUsers.txt
-r--r--r--	1 nobody  nobody  3840 Aug 18 17:19 TWikiUsers.txt,v
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	 95 Aug 19 03:06 WebChanges.txt
-r--r--r--	1 nobody  nobody	284 Aug 19 03:06 WebChanges.txt,v
-rw-r--r--	1 nobody  nobody  1853 Aug 18 18:08 WebHome.txt
-r--r--r--	1 nobody  nobody  6523 Aug 18 18:08 WebHome.txt,v

Directory twiki/pub/ :

drwxrwxrwx	6 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:21 .
drwxrwxr-x	3 twiki	twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:35 ..
drwxrwxrwx	3 nobody  nobody  4096 Jun 17 16:35 Know
drwxrwxrwx	2 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:21 Main
drwxrwxrwx	3 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:21 TWiki
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	1078 Jan 14  2000 favicon.ico
drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki	twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:35 icn
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	3016 Oct  5  1999 twikilogo.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	5320 Oct  5  1999 twikilogo1.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	6125 Oct  5  1999 twikilogo2.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	7218 Oct  5  1999 twikilogo3.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	6710 Oct  5  1999 twikilogo4.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	2877 Jun  7  1999 wikiHome.gif

Partial file list for twiki/pub/icn/ :

drwxrwxr-x	2 twiki	twiki	4096 Jun 17 16:35 .
drwxrwxrwx	6 nobody  nobody  4096 Aug  3 01:21 ..
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 801 Mar 26  1999 _filetypes.txt
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 143 Mar  9  1999 bat.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 926 Mar  9  1999 bmp.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 141 Mar 25  1999 c.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 144 Mar  9  1999 dll.gif
-rw-rw-r--	1 twiki	twiki	 152 Mar  9  1999 doc.gif

• • • Add the new web to the WIKIWEBLIST variable.

• • • Customize the WEBTOPICLIST variable to contain the web specific links you prefer.
    • Optional: Set the WEBCOPYRIGHT variable to have a web-specific copyright text (at the bottom of each topic).

• • If you want to use form templates - see FormTemplateSystem?

• 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 .