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tags: debian git github installation packages simple ubuntu
Currently, Wikidot software is meant as just a wiki engine. "Just", because it used to be a complete wiki farm solution. Actually it's kind of both, but from start you get just a wiki, which makes it so easy to install.
After you get the dependencies and the Wikidot source, you need to prepare a database and populate it. Normally this means two make commands (one for postgres user and second for your regular user). The default configuration options are to provide you a simple single-wiki engine, that just works. This means, that however you connect to Wikidot (with any IP or DNS name), you get the single wiki that you created. Wikidot needs a full namespace of URLs (starting from /), so you can't simply put it along with other web applications. This is why by default we use port 8080 for serving Wikidot. Also as we rely on very custom Lighttpd configuration, we supply a config file for it (that is partially generated when doing make). But don't worry, we also have a script that let's you control it. ./wikidotctl start starts Wikidot's Lighttpd, ./wikidotctl stop stops it. Pretty straight-forward, isn't it?
But Wikidot software is also a full-featured wiki-farm solution. But you need a different database dump (that adds more wikis, like template wiki for each newly created wiki) and a different configuration. First of all, you need a full domain name namespace (for example *.mywikidot.mycompany.com). What's before .mywikidot.mycompany.com in the domain name is the name of wiki, so if you connect to abc.mywikidot.mycompany.com displayed is abc wiki. Also as this gets a bit complicated to deal with when having custom port, you need to run the Lighttpd on port 80 (the standard WWW port). This means, if you want to host a full wiki farm, you need to have a separate IP address just for Wikidot (any other web server can be run on a non-standard port only), and a root access to start Lighttpd (only root can bind to ports smaller than 1024).
Actually you need quite a lot knowledge to understand what the wiki-farm-mode Wikidot does and to configure it, but once you get it, it's quite easy. Anyway, all I want to say, is that we want to ease the simplest (and most common) installation of Wikidot. If you want to have a wiki, but want to host it yourself rather that on Wikidot.com, this is done just for you, just get the dependencies, Wikidot sources, prepare database, make and you're done. No need for painful configuration :).
If you decided to run your own wiki farm (in your company for example) start from getting single-wiki Wikidot running and then use older docs to figure out how to get it running as a wiki-farm. In case of problems, just ask on IRC channel. TIP: you need to set wiki_farm = true in [main] section in conf/wikidot.ini file.
I hope more wiki enthusiasts will get simple Wikidot running at their work and school rather than choosing other wiki engine. They used to do that, because they were simpler to install. Now this changes.
There is one more important note to make. We're going to polish the software, to make it run smoothly, so download (git clone) and test it as much as you can and please report bugs. You don't even have to be a registered Wikidot user to do that. Once we get all the quirks fixed, we want to release Debian/Ubuntu packages, that will enable you to just state aptitude install wikidot to get the Wikidot up and running in minutes without you touching the keyboard after that (well maybe to configure the Admin password). So if you can't wait for this to happen, please help us and test!
I ran through an install from scratch on my spare machine (the one I've wiped and installed Wikidot OS on at least 100 times!). Generally, things went well. I had a few issues that I was able to work through:
I want to run another test install and clearly document my steps as i go. Looking at the TODO list, it seems you are aware of a few things that could cause problems.
Overall, this wasn't too bad, but it's not ready to be called a "simple" install yet.
Nice work!
-Ed
Free Wikidot Applications · Your Shared Photo Gallery · Your Personal Blog
Hi,
I have followed all the steps to have a single wiki instance running on my local machine, following the guide in installation-guide
Now, I want to configure it as a wiki farm in a way that a registered user can go to the main page and create a new wiki on-demand (as in http://www.wikidot.com).
You mention that "start from getting single-wiki Wikidot running and then use older docs to figure out how to get it running as a wiki-farm" but I haven't found any old documents explaining how to configure wikidot to run as a wiki farm.
I tried to connect to IRC channel but it seems that no one is connected at this time.
Can you please help me and point me to the right documentation?
Thanks,
Rui
There are basically two options.
Install 463 revision from SVN (this is reported to be a stable revision).
Install from git (as you did) and set wiki_farm = true in config file in the [main] section. This also means, you need to configure other options as well: (see full-example-of-wikidot.ini to get a general overview, you need something like this to start working: http://svn.wikidot.org/svn/showfile.svn?path=%2Fwikidot1%2Ftrunk%2Fconf%2Fwikidot.ini&revision=463&name=wikidotorg).
Notice in this way, you need to run the service on port 80 (so start as a root, but edit user and group settings in lighttpd.conf to let it drop permissions after opening the port). Also you need to access the wiki by domain name, like http://www.YOURDOMAIN/. Anything else would give you "No such site" error.
You'll probably need template.YOURDOMAIN wiki. I think it's not included in the dump. We're going to finally make it working right even for wiki_farm (as TODO states), but this can take some time.
This is all quite complicated, this is why we decided to support single wikis as well, because it removes many of mentioned problems.
I'm available on IRC very often, I think talking via IRC would be nice, because you could do your work and ask about subsequent problems just as they appear :).
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
Hi,
Thanks for your quick answer.
As the farm configuration steps seem a bit complicated, before I move one I just want to ask you some questions to check if Wikidot farm capabilities fit into my requirements.
What I want is to have a internal wiki farm very similar to wikidot.com where:
- Users can register themselves
- Authenticated users can create new wikis (no administration process required)
By configuration my local instance of wikidot (currently as a single wiki) to be as a farm, do I have all the pages (the complete site structure) to support that (like on http://www.wikidot.com) or I need to go into the administration console (as admin) and create new wikis from there?
Regards,
Rui
Yes, you can do that (that's how we do that ;) ). Ed does that with SVN rev 436 (or similar).
You need to have a template wiki (which is just a normal wiki named templatesomething) and insert NewWiki module (or one with similar name, I don't remember exactly) on the "main"1 wiki. User registration is even enabled by default, but you need to have properly configured mail settings to let it work. (Side note, we need to disable it for installations with no mail settings).
Coming back to git (updated) vs SVN (stable) version problem. I would really love you to make try with git, as this would also mean someone testing it, and this will make bigger pressure on me on finalizing this task. This way we all benefit, you'll finally get better product than when sticking to SVN version (because we don't update the SVN anymore).
Hope that helps.
Sorry for me not being available on chat right now, but I have a strange internet connection (I'm not at work nor home right now).
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
I apologize that I have not had much time to do any testing recently. Our golf season is relatively short where I live (St Paul, Minnesota, USA) so my computer hobby takes a back seat to golf this time of year!
I will make an effort to determine which SVN version is stable. I'm currently running rev. 393 at my work. That is very stable, but is lacking in some of the features that have been implemented since then. I would recommend that you set up a virtual machine and load my ISO that I created for rev 393. You can read the guide I wrote here: Installable ISO and a Virtual Machine. There is also a link to download the ISO file. This would be an easy way to to get a base, fully configured system running that you could then update from the SVN repository. This is the method I will use to see which rev seems to work well.
I will also try to make time to run another test with the GIT repository and see if I can get the wiki farm capabilities working.
As Gabrys said, I wouldn't try to get a production server running with the GIT repository just yet. Did you find any issues that were not expected in the current installation-guide? If so, please let me know - I will probably give this a try sometime this weekend.
-Ed
Free Wikidot Applications · Your Shared Photo Gallery · Your Personal Blog
Right, 393 sounds familiar to me, so it may be one of the most stable out there.
That's great. Together, we'll make it even more stable than the 393 rev :).
Well, it depends, if you have (almost) no time to spent on this, probably you should stick with SVN version. However choosing git version you have open path to get all the upgrades. And if you have some time to spent on this, you'll contribute to make it even better and benefit from having the most up-to-date version (some of the features in git are not even available yet on the Wikidot.com service).
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
Hi,
This process seems a bit complex, considering that I don't have PHP knowledge and experience.
Right now, I would like to get the vmware image and test it locally and then when everything is ok, deploy into our company internal vmware infrastructure.
However, the links http://files2.wikidot.org/vm/wikidot-dev2-vm-20080220.tar.gz and http://files2.wikidot.org/vm/ are giving timeout. Is there any other place where I can get the vmware image of a full-functional Wikidot farm?
Thanks,
Rui
try this one:
http://174.129.131.216/mywikidot_backup_rev_393_20090123.iso
this is a copy of a file mentioned in HOWTO by Ed and created by him.
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
Hi,
Is this image for VirtualBox? Does it run with VMWare Player?
It would be easier for me to have a VMWare image, because that way I would be able to import it directly into VMWare Infrastructure Server.
Thanks,
Rui
Hi,
I was able to get Wikidot working with the wiki_farm=true (starting with the single wiki installed from GIT) and it now opens the default wiki site.
1. You said that now I need to create a wiki to serve as template (something like) templatename.
How can I create a new site starting from the main wiki? I created a new page and added the 'NewSite' module to that page, but I'm not able to create the new wiki as the 'Initial Template' dropdown is not filled with any template. I tried also to add the ManageSite module to my main wiki and tried to clone that site but it gives an error in the lighttpd error.log file:
2. Add NewWiki module to the main wiki
How can I activate the NewWiki module?
I tried to create a new page and as page content I defined '[[Module NewWiki]]' but it gives me the following error:
How can I proceed?
Thanks,
Rui
I created a bug for this
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
7 is fixed. It is a problem in database scheme, so the best way to get rid is just install update:
stop Wikidot:
remove the old database:
build Wikidot again:
and start it again:
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
use [[module NewSite]] instead of [[module NewWiki]]
There is some bug in the Duplicator, I'll check that!
Thanks for that!
You can use the ISO image from Ed in VMWare as well.
Piotr Gabryjeluk, Wikidot Inc.
visit my blog
As far as I know, if you can mount the ISO image, you should be able to install it into any VM. I have only used Virtual Box for this project, and have limited familiarity with VMWare Player, so I can't say for sure how it will work.
If you do get it to work, please add a How-To to my site!
Thanks,
Ed
Free Wikidot Applications · Your Shared Photo Gallery · Your Personal Blog