Installation Experience

This dates back to my first encounter with TWiki in 1999.

I dl'ed TWiki at first for curiosity, then as a tool to organize my own information web, then my enthusiasm for it burst out of my own domain to the result that I have now installed it for two other groups, and will be installing it for at least two more in the near future.

It is actually not that hard given the proper recipe. I have already got installation down to about 1/2 hr with this one:

1. start with a tar with the correct permissions already set
   • I did not manage to get ftp or samba to translate the DOS formats correctly, so I have attached a trivial little programDosToUnix that fixed that problem
   • also put up my starting TWikiTarred
2. put up the web under /home/httpd/twiki
3. chown and chgrp -R twiki so all the files have the owner you want to be able to edit the perl scripts and .tmpl files.
4. The scripts execute as nobody, so it is essential that the directories have mode 777 and the .txt files under twiki/bin/data/web are 666 otherwise page additions and edits will not happen.
5. add /home/httpd/twiki to /etc/httpd/conf/access.conf with only ExecCGI option
6. add /home/httpd/twiki/pub to /etc/httpd/conf/access.conf with normal access options (copy from /home/httpd/html)
7. now add Alias for /twiki/pub and ScriptAlias for /twiki to /etc/httpd/conf/srm-conf
8. do the edits to twiki/bin/wiki.pm from the TWikiDocumentation.
9. Restart Apache by /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S85httpd restart
10. point your browser at http://your.domain.com/twiki/bin/view and start wiki-ing away!

Other Customizations

• Copy your logo file over twiki/pub/TWiki.gif (OK to do this, Peter?) (might be nice to parameterize this in wiki.pm and over-ride with a twiki/bin/data/Main/logo.gif if it exists)
• my tarball has a customization that puts a copyright.inc for the copyright statement (bottom of every page) that is web specific. This was a bit of a pain, since all the presentation scripts duplicate the HTML for these features. Wouldn't it be nice to have the time to template that aspect too and put these changes into one place...
• another thing to change would be to %INCLUDE:"{web}/color.inc% (review this syntax!!!) instead of explicitly duplicating the colors in twiki/bin/data/wikiwebtable.inc ({web} means Main or Know etc, not the substition syntax, since all webs need to be referenced in this file)

-- DavidWarman - 03 Jun 1999

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In step 3, wouldn't that be "chown" instead of "chmod?" -- AldenWilner - 03 Jun 1999

oops -- DavidWarman - 04 Jun 1999

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I already implemented your ideas of copyright.inc and the color in data/wikiwebtable.inc, will be released soon. Thanks for the idea!

-- PeterThoeny - 03 Jun 1999

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-- DavidWarman - 2009-04-09