Question

I have been successfully running TWiki on Mac OS X Tiger (Apache 1.3). Now I want to install TWiki on Leopard (Apache 2) and I'm getting odd errors.

TWiki is installed under cgi-bin. /cgi-bin/twiki is aliased to /twiki in httpd.conf.

The TWiki bin/configure script runs perfectly.

I can see the Main page. But the css isn't importing properly and none of the images are shown. I cannot view any of the required .gif or .css files via the browser (which I could on Tiger).

The Apache error log is full of

client denied by server configuration:...

A web search implies that this issues is related to "Deny/Allow from all" in the httpd.conf file. However, I have

<Directory    "/Library/WebServer/twiki/pub/">
    Options FollowSymLinks +Includes
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory    "/Library/WebServer/cgi-bin/twiki/pub/">
    Options FollowSymLinks +Includes
    AllowOverride All
    Allow from all
  </Directory>

which ought to allow access to all files under twiki/pub.

I've not used Apache2 before... is there some incantation I need that I'm missing? Has anyone run TWiki yet on Leopard? (Peter must surely have done so!)

Environment

-- VickiBrown - 09 Mar 2008

Answer

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it seems that with a little help from some friends, I should have a Leopard compatible TWiki installer this month

-- SvenDowideit - 10 Mar 2008

Sven - I don't understand... twiki is a tarball. I think I need shared experience re: TWiki under Apache 2.

-- VickiBrown - 10 Mar 2008

TWiki is not only a tarball. TWikiInstallers has rpm, osx (Tiger) and windows installers to make life easier for users.

-- SvenDowideit - 10 Mar 2008

Vicki, I have not installed TWiki natively on Leopard, just TWIKI.NET's VMware based distribution. In any case, you can install TWiki into existing htdocs and cgi-bin enabled directories if you do not want to change Apache config settings.

Example:

• htdocs: /Library/WebServer/Documents
• cgi-bin: /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables

Steps to install TWiki:

• Put TWiki into Users/myname/twiki
• Move twiki/bin to below CGI-Executables, renaming it to twikibin or the like
• Move twiki/pub to below Documents, renaming it to twikipub or the like
• Optionally create symlinks from twiki/bin to new twikibin, same for twiki/pub
• Configure TWiki, making it aware of the bin and pub directory locations

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Mar 2008

As Vicki writes, the typical reason for the error message is by having Apache evaluate a Deny from all for the effective directory of your pages. A possible cause is a change in Apache's default configuration which with Apache 2 not only has Deny from all for its root directory, but also Order allow,deny. Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to define Allow from all, you also need to reverse the evaluation order to Order deny,allow.

-- HaraldJoerg - 10 Mar 2008

Peter - I thought of the "Move twiki/pub to below Documents, renaming it to twikipub " trick this morning; it worked perfectly. Good to have it documented here!

Harald - I will test what you suggest. It's important for me to have a work around for the Apache side of the equation!

Sven - Yes, I understand. What I mean is, ... I'm a Unix techie/admin. I'm not the kind of user whose life is made easier by not knowing what's going on under the hood. For my purposes, TWiki will always be a tarball. :-)

-- VickiBrown - 10 Mar 2008