Collaborating with TWiki


Although Usenet is a useful interactive and collaboration tool, in some cases a web-based tool is better suited to your needs. TWiki (http://TWiki.org/) is a web-based interactive collaboration tool that can also be used as a bulletin board, knowledge base, bug tracker, and software archive.

Tip

You can examine the TWiki Success Stories on the company's home page for any encouragement you need to explore TWiki. You can also explore this Linux-related public TWiki site (http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Wikilearn/WebHome/).


TWiki is not available from Fedora, and you must download it from the TWiki website after completing a brief registration. You then receive email instructions explaining how to download a .zip file from the site. (You use unzip to extract the files.) The program is licensed under the GPL.

You might want to first read the installation instructions located at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiDocumentation. The documentation has been improved over the past year and now includes directions for installing TWiki as the non-root user. Many details are provided on file ownership and file permissions. There is also an automatic installerthe O'Wiki Installerreferenced at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiUnixInstaller. This might be a good approach to use if you are skilled at Apache configuration, but the install script does not set the appropriate file ownership and permissions for Fedora as mentioned later.

Here is a short list of advice for moving smoothly through the installation process on a Fedora system (this list assumes that you are performing an installation as the root user and are reading the TWiki installation instructions from the TWiki website):

  • You need to create the directory /home/httpd/twiki; unzip TWiki into this directory.

  • The installation instructions mention the file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. For Fedora, this file is found at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. You simply copy and paste the entries shown in the example supplied by the downloaded instructions.

  • The path to Perl for Fedora is /usr/bin/perl.

  • Fedora Core runs CGI scripts as the user apache, not the user nobody, as assumed in the default TWiki installation. You can browse to http://localhost/twiki/bin/testenv and read the warnings that are displayed onscreen. This is a special script run on your local machine to help you diagnose any problems with your installation. The messages should be specific to your installation, and any warning should be accompanied by a suggestion about how to fix the problem.

The TWiki installation directions suggest setting permissions and changing ownership. For Fedora, the permissions are set correctly, but the ownerships are wrong. To change the ownerships, implement the following steps (after each step, you should reload the http://localhost/twiki/bin/testenv page to check your progress):

1.

Change the group ownership of everything to apache, but change the group ownership of /httpd/twiki/templates back to root:

# chgrp -r apache /home/httpd # chgrp -r root /home/httpd/twiki/templates


2.

Remember to edit /home/httpd/twiki/lib/TWiki.cfg to reflect your own domain name instead of http://your.domain.com.

3.

Change the ownership of the RCS repository files to the user apache:

# cd /home/httpd/twiki/data # perl -pi -e 's/nobody:/apache:/' */*,v


After you complete the installation, you should have a "virgin" TWiki installation that you can view at http://localhost/twiki/bin/view. As with any application, you need to further configure this file so that it suits your needs. The TWiki documentation explains the many configuration options and processes available to you. This documentation is included in the TWiki installation you just completed.



Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed
Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed
ISBN: 067232847X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 362

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