Note that for more formal bug reports or todo items, you can also edit the
[[bugs]] and [[todo]] pages.
+[[toc ]]
+
# Installation/Setup questions
-I have just installed ikiwiki and it works - at least I have the example index.mdwn page
-compiled and visible. However I have a few issues/problems:-
+Ikiwiki creates a .ikiwiki directory in my wikiwc working directory. Should I
+"svn add .ikiwiki" or add it to svn:ignore?
-* A couple of the 'optional' Perl modules aren't optional, you can't install ikiwiki without them,
-these are HTML::Template and HTML::Scrubber (at least I think it was these two, it's a bit messy
-to go back and find out).
+> `.ikiwiki` is used by ikiwiki to store internal state. You can add it to
+> svn:ignore. --[[Joey]]
+> > Thanks a lot.
-> You're right, HTML::Template is required. HTML::Scrubber is only required
-> in the default configuration, and is optional if the htmlscrubber plugin
-> is disabled. --[[Joey]]
+Is there an easy way to log via e-mail to some webmaster address, instead
+of via syslog?
-* I don't seem to have got an ikiwiki man page created.
+> Not sure why you'd want to do that, but couldn't you use a tool like
+> logwatch to mail selected lines from the syslog? --[[Joey]]
-> It should be installed in /usr/share/man, or a similar directory
-> depending on how your perl is set up and how you did the install.
-> --[[Joey]]
+> > The reason is that I'm not logged in on the web server regularly to
+> > check the log files. I'll see whether I can install a logwatch instance.
-> Found it, in /usr/local/share/man, since no other man pages are in either /usr/share/man or in /usr/local/share/man the ikiwiki
-> man page is a bit lonely, and more to the point not on my MANPATH. Still I have found it now, I'll just move it to somewhere
-> more sensible. [[Chris]]
-
-* Running "ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup" doesn't do anything. I have edited ikiwiki.setup to
-my local settings. There are no errors but neither does anything get compiled. An ikiwiki
-command to explicitly do the compile works fine. Am I misunderstanding something here?
-
-> Further tests indicate that ikiwiki isn't seeing changed files so doesn't always rebuild.
-> How does ikiwiki decide when to rebuild? I tried a full command line like "ikiwiki --verbose ikiwiki ~/public_html/ikiwiki --url=http://www.isbd.ltd.uk/~chris/ikiwiki/" and that doesn't do anything
-either though it was the command line I originally used to compile. After a long interval I 'touch'ed
-the files and then it *did* compile but 'touch'ing the files after a few minutes only doesn't seem to force a recompile. I'm even more confused!
-
-> ikiwiki only compiles files whose modification times have changed. It
-> should see any change made as close as a second after the last compile.
-> When run with --setup, ikiwiki always rebuilds every file in the wiki. If
-> --setup is not working, you must have it pointed at the wrong path or
-> something; you can pass -v to see what it's doing. I don't know why it
-> would not see recently changed files; you could try stracing it.
-> --[[Joey]]
+----
+
+# Installation of selected docs (html)
+
+The latest release has around 560 files (over 2MB) in html.
+
+Any suggestions or ideas on limiting what html is installed?
+
+For example, I don't see value in every ikiwiki install out there to also install personal "users" ikiwiki pages.
-> OK, thanks, I don't quite know what was happening before but it seems to be working right now.
-> --[[Chris]]
+For now I copy ikiwiki.setup. And then use pax with -L switch to copy the targets of the symlinks of the basewiki.
->> Weird. I wish I knew what happened, but as it's working now, I'm
->> guessing some kind of user error was involved. --[[Joey]]
+I was thinking of making a list of desired documents from the html directory to install.
-* I wish there was a mailing list, much easier for this sort of stuff than this, apart from
-anything else I get to use a decent editor.
+--JeremyReed
+
+> You don't need any of them, unless you want to read ikiwiki's docs locally.
+>
+> I don't understand why you're installing the basewiki files manually;
+> ikiwiki has a Makefile that will do this for you. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> The Makefile's install doesn't do what I want so I use different installer for it.
+>> It assumes wrong location for man pages for me. (And it should consider using INSTALLVENDORMAN1DIR and
+>> MAN1EXT but I don't know about section 8 since I don't know of perl value for that.)
+>> I don't want w3m cgi installed; it is optional for my package.
+>> I will just patch for that instead of using my own installer.
+>> Note: I am working on the pkgsrc package build specification for this. This is for creating
+>> packages for NetBSD, DragonFly and other systems that use pkgsrc package system.
+>> --JeremyReed
+
+# Installation as non-root user
+
+I'd like to install ikiwiki as a non-root user. I can plow through getting all the
+perl dependencies installed because that's well documented in the perl world,
+but I don't know how to tell ikiwiki to install somewhere other than / --BrianWilson
+
+> Checkout the tips section for [SharedHosting](tips/SharedHosting). It should do the trick. --MattReynolds
+
+----
+
+# Upgrade steps
+
+I upgrades from 1.40 to 2.6.1. I ran "ikiwiki --setup" using my existing ikiwiki.setup configuration.
+I had many errors like:
+
+ /home/bsdwiki/www/wiki/wikilink/index.html independently created, not overwriting with version from wikilink
+ BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 5) line 129.
+
+and:
+
+ failed renaming /home/bsdwiki/www/wiki/smileys.ikiwiki-new to /home/bsdwiki/www/wiki/smileys: Is a directory
+ BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 5) line 129.
+
+Probably about six errors like this. I worked around this by removing the files and directories it complained about.
+Finally it finished.
+
+> As of version 2.0, ikiwiki enables usedirs by default. See
+> [[tips/switching_to_usedirs]] for details. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> I read the config wrong. I was thinking that it showed the defaults even though commented out
+>> (like ssh configs do). I fixed that part. --JeremyReed
+
+My next problem was that ikiwiki start letting me edit without any password authentication. It used to prompt
+me for a password but now just goes right into the "editing" mode.
+The release notes for 2.0 say password auth is still on by default.
+
+> It sounds like you have the anonok plugin enabled?
+
+>> Where is the default documented? My config doesn't have it uncommented.
+
+The third problem is that when editing my textbox is empty -- no content.
+
+This is using my custom rcs.pm which has been used thousands of times.
+
+> Have you rebuilt the cgi wrapper since you upgraded ikiwiki? AFAIK I
+> fixed a bug that could result in the edit box always being empty back in
+> version 2.3. The only other way it could happen is if ikiwiki does not
+> have saved state about the page that it's editing (in .ikiwiki/index).
+
+>> Rebuilt it several times. Now that I think of it, I think my early problem of having
+>> no content in the textbox was before I rebuilt the cgi. And after I rebuilt the whole webpage was empty.
+
+Now I regenerated my ikiwiki.cgi again (no change to my configuration,
+and I just get an empty HTML page when attempting editing or "create".
+
+> If the page is completly empty then ikiwiki is crashing before it can
+> output anything, though this seems unlikely. Check the webserver logs.
+
+Now I see it created directories for my data. I fixed that by setting
+usedirs (I see that is in the release notes for 2.0) and rerunning ikiwiki --setup
+but I still have empty pages for editing (no textbox no html at all).
+
+> Is IkiWiki crashing? If so, it would probably leave error text in the apache logs. --[[TaylorKillian]]
+
+>> Not using apache. Nothing useful in logs other thn the HTTP return codes are "0" and bytes is "-"
+>> on the empty ikiwiki.cgi output (should say " 200 " followed by bytes).
+
+>>> You need to either figure out what your web server does with stderr
+>>> from cgi programs, or run ikiwiki.cgi at the command line with an
+>>> appropriate environment so it thinks it's being called from a web
+>>> server, so you can see how it's failing. --[[Joey]]
+
+(I am posting this now, but will do some research and post some more.)
+
+Is there any webpage with upgrade steps?
+
+> Users are expected to read [[news]], which points out any incompatible
+> changes or cases where manual action is needed.
+
+>> I read it but read the usedirs option wrong :(.
+>> Also it appears to be missing the news from between 1.40 to 2.0 unless they dont' exist.
+>> If they do exist maybe they have release notes I need?
+
+>>> All the old ones are in the NEWS file. --[[Joey]]
+
+--JeremyReed
+
+My followup: I used a new ikiwiki.setup based on the latest version. But no changes for me.
+
+Also I forgot to mention that do=recentchanges works good for me. It uses my
+rcs_recentchanges in my rcs perl module.
+
+The do=prefs does nothing though -- just a blank webpage.
+
+> You need to figure out why ikiwiki is crashing. The webserver logs should
+> tell you.
+
+I also set verbose => 1 and running ikiwiki --setup was verbose, but no changes in running CGI.
+I was hoping for some output.
+
+I am guessing that my rcs perl module stopped working on the upgrade. I didn't notice any release notes
+on changes to revision control modules. Has something changed? I will also look.
+
+> No, the rcs interface has not needed to change in a long time. Also,
+> nothing is done with the rcs for do=prefs.
+
+>> Thanks. I also checked differences between 1.40 Rcs plugins and didn't notice anything significant.
+
+--JeremyReed
+
+Another Followup: I created a new ikiwiki configuration and did the --setup to
+create an entirely different website. I have same problem there. No prompt for password
+and empty webpage when using the cgi.
+I never upgraded any perl modules so maybe a new perl module is required but I don't see any errors so I don't know.
+
+The only errors I see when building and installing ikiwiki are:
+
+ Can't exec "otl2html": No such file or directory at IkiWiki/Plugin/otl.pm line 66.
+
+ gettext 0.14 too old, not updating the pot file
+
+I don't use GNU gettext on here.
+
+I may need to revert back to my old ikiwiki install which has been used to thousands of times (with around
+1000 rcs commits via ikiwiki).
+
+--JeremyReed
+
+I downgraded to version 1.40 (that was what I had before I wrote wrong above).
+Now ikiwiki is working for me again (but using 1.40). I shouldn't have tested on production system :)
+
+--JeremyReed
+
+I am back. On a different system, I installed ikiwiki 2.6.1. Same problem -- blank CGI webpage.
+
+So I manually ran with:
+
+ REQUEST_METHOD=GET QUERY_STRING='do=create&page=jcr' kiwiki.cgi
+
+And clearly saw the error:
+
+ [IkiWiki::main] Fatal: Bad template engine CGI::FormBuilder::Template::div: Can't locate CGI/FormBuilder/Template/div.pm
+
+So I found my version was too old and 3.05 is the first to provide "Div" support. I upgraded my p5-CGI-FormBuilder to 3.0501.
+And ikiwiki CGI started working for me.
+
+The Ikiwiki docs about this requirement got removed in Revision 4367. There should be a page that lists the requirements.
+(I guess I could have used the debian/control file.)
+
+> There is a page, [[install]] documents that 3.05 is needed.
+
+>> Sorry, I missed that. With hundreds of wikipages it is hard to read all of them.
+>> I am updating the download page now to link to it.
+
+I am now using ikiwiki 2.6.1 on my testing system.
+
+--JeremyReed
----
# Excellent - how do I translate a TWiki site?
>
> We will post the scripts as soon as we have them complete enough to convert our wikis.
>
-> -- Josh Triplett
+> -- [[JoshTriplett]]
>> Thanks for an excellent Xmas present, I will appreciate the additional
>> users this will help switch to ikiwiki! --[[Joey]]
-----
-# OpenID
+>> Sounds great indeed. Learning from [here](http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/AboutTheTWikiToIkiwikiConversion/) that HTML::WikiConverter needed for your conversion was not up-to-date on Debian I have now done an unofficial package, including your proposed Markdown patches, apt-get'able at <pre>deb http://debian.jones.dk/ sid wikitools</pre>
+>> -- [[JonasSmedegaard]]
+
+
+>>I see the "We will post the scripts ...." was committed about a year ago. A current site search for "Moin" does not turn them up. Any chance of an appearance in the near (end of year) future?
+>>
+>> -- [[MichaelRasmussen]]
-I just figured I'd edit something on the page with my OpenID, since you've implemented it! --*[Kyle](http://kitenet.net/~kyle/)*=
+----
-> Kyle, If you like openid, I can switch your personal wiki over to use your openid. --[[Joey]]
+# LaTeX support?
-----
+Moved to [[todo/latex]] --[[Joey]]
-# ACL
+----
-How about adding ACL? So that you can control which users are allowed
-to read, write certain pages. The moinmoin wiki has that, and it is
-something, that I think is very valuable.
+# Using with CVS?
-> ikiwiki currently has only the most rudimentary access controls: pages
-> can be locked, or unlocked and only the admin can edit locked pages. That
-> could certianly be expanded on, although it's not an area that I have an
-> overwhelming desire to work on myself right now. Patches appreciated and
-> I'll be happy to point you in the right directions.. --[[Joey]]
+Moved to a [[todo_item|todo/CVS_backend]]. --[[JoshTriplett]]
->> I'm really curious how you'd suggest implementing ACLs on reading a page.
->> It seems to me the only way you could do it is .htaccess DenyAll or something,
->> and then route all page views through ikiwiki.cgi. Am I missing something?
->> --[[Ethan]]
+----
->>> Or you could just use apache or whatever and set up the access controls
->>> there. Of course, that wouldn't integrate very well with the wiki,
->>> unless perhaps you decided to use http basic authentication and the
->>> httpauth plugin for ikiwiki that integrates with that.. --[[Joey]]
+# Show differences before saving page?
->>>> Which would rule out openid, or other fun forms of auth. And routing all access
->>>> through the CGI sort of defeats the purpose of ikiwiki. --[[Ethan]]
+Moved to the existing [[todo_item|todo/preview_changes]]. --[[JoshTriplett]]
----
-Some questions about the RecentChanges function. -- Ethan
+# Max submit size?
-> (Moved to [[todo/recentchanges]] --[[Joey]])
+Any setting for limiting how many kilobytes can be submitted via the "edit" form?
+-- [[JeremyReed]]
+
+>>> See [[todo/fileupload]] for an idea on limiting page size. --[[Joey]]
----
-Also, I'd like to request another template parameter which is just
-$config{url}. That way you won't have to hard-code the URL of the wiki into
-the template. -- Ethan
+# Access Keys
+
+Would anyone else find this a valuable addition. In oddmuse and instiki (the only other
+wiki engines I am currently using, the edit, home, and submit link tags have an
+accesskey attribute. I find it nice not to have to resort to the mouse for those
+actions. However, it may not be something everyone appreciates. Any thoughts?
+--[Mazirian](http://mazirian.com)
-> That's already available in the BASEURL parameter. --[[Joey]]
+> Maybe, although it would need to take the critisism at
+> <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html> into account.
+
+>> Thank you for that link. Given that the edit link is the first thing you tab to
+>> in the current layout, I guess it isn't all that necessary. I have had a
+>> a user complaint recently that Alt-e in oddmuse was overriding his access
+>> to the browser menu.
----
-# Canonical feed location?
+# Editing the style sheet.
-Any way to use `inline` but point the feed links to a different feed on the
-same site? I have news in news/*, a news archive in news.mdwn, and the
-first few news items on index.mdwn, but I don't really want two separate
-feeds, one with all news and one with the latest few articles; I'd rather
-point the RSS feed links of both to the same feed. (Which one, the one
-with all news or the one with the latest news only, I don't know yet.)
+It would be nice to be able to edit the stylesheet by means of the cgi. Or is this possible? I wasn't able to achieve it.
+Ok, that's my last 2 cents for a while. --[Mazirian](http://mazirian.com)
-> Not currently. It could be implemented, or you could just turn off the
-> rss feed for the index page, and manually put in a wikilink to the news
-> page and rss feed. --[[Joey]]
+> I don't support editing it, but if/when ikiwiki gets [[todo/fileupload]] support,
+> it'll be possible to upload a style sheet. (If .css is in the allowed
+> extensions list.. no idea how safe that would be, a style sheet is
+> probably a great place to put XSS attacks and evil javascript that would
+> be filtered out of any regular page in ikiwiki). --[[Joey]]
->> That wouldn't use the same style for the RSS and Atom links, and it
->> wouldn't embed the feed link into `<head>` so that browsers can automatically
->> find it.
+>> I hadn't thought of that at all. It's a common feature and one I've
+>> relied on safely, because the wikis I am maintaining at the moment
+>> are all private and restricted to trusted users. Given that the whole
+>> point of ikiwiki is to be able to access and edit via the shell as
+>> well as the web, I suppose the features doesn't add a lot. By the
+>> way, the w3m mode is brilliant. I haven't tried it yet, but the idea
+>> is great.
----
-# asciidoc or txt2tags ?
+# Should not create an existing page
+
+This might be a bug, but will discuss it here first.
+Clicking on an old "?" or going to a create link but new Markdown content exists, should not go into "create" mode, but should do a regular "edit".
-Any plugins or support for using asciidoc or txt2tags as the wiki language and/or exporting to asciidoc or txt2tags?
+> I belive that currently it does a redirect to the new static web page.
+> At least that's the intent of the code. --[[Joey]]
-> No, but it should be quite easy to write such a plugin. The otl plugin
-> is a good example of writing a formatting plugin that uses an external
-> conversion program, like asciidoc or txt2tags. --[[Joey]]
+>> Try at your site: `?page=discussion&from=index&do=create`
+>> It brings up an empty textarea to start a new webpage -- even though it already exists here. --reed
+
+>>> Ah, right. Notice that the resulting form allows saving the page as
+>>> discussion, or users/discussion, but not index/discussion, since this
+>>> page already exists. If all the pages existed, it would do the redirect
+>>> thing. --[[Joey]]
----
-# LaTeX support?
+# User database tools?
+
+Any tool to view user database?
-Any plugins or support for exporting to LaTeX?
-(If not could use asciidoc or txt2tags mentioned above to generated LaTeX.)
+Any tool to edit the user database?
-> It's already [[been_requested|todo/latex]], although perhaps not
-> working the way you're thinking of. Noone is currently working on it.
+> No, but it's fairly easy to write such tools in perl. For example, to
+> list all users in the user database:
+
+ joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki>perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); print $_ foreach keys %$userinfo'
+ http://joey.kitenet.net/
+ foo
+
+> To list each user's email address:
+
+ joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki>perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); print $userinfo->{$_}->{email} foreach keys %$userinfo'
+
+ joey@kitenet.net
+
+> Editing is simply a matter of changing values and calling Storable::store().
+> I've not written actual utilities to do this yet because I've only needed
+> to do it rarely, and the data I've wanted has been different each time.
> --[[Joey]]
->> I did some tests with using Markdown and a customized HTML::Latex and html2latex
->> and it appears it will work for me now. (I hope to use ikiwiki for many
->> to collaborate on a printed book that will be generated at least once per day in PDF format.)
->>
->> --JeremyReed
+>> Thanks for these examples -- I have been using them. I don't know the
+>> Storable yet. Can someone share an example of removing a user? (I now
+>> setup account\_creation\_password and I have some spammer with different
+>> login names that I have banned that I might as well remove from the
+>> userdb.)
+
+>>> Let's see, you could do something like this:
+>>> perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); delete $$userinfo{"joey"}; Storable::lock_store($userinfo, "userdb")'
+>>> I suppose I should stop being lame and create a command line tool wrapping up these operations.. --[[Joey]]
----
-# Using with RCS?
+# Spaces in WikiLinks?
-Any examples of using co(1), ci(1) and other RCS related tools with ikiwiki?
+Hello Joey,
-> I don't belive that RCS offers enough SCM features to be useable as a
-> fullfledged backend to ikiwiki. For one thing, there's no way to have
-> hook scripts run when changes are ci'd, is there? So you'd have to ci and
-> then manually run ikiwiki. It should be possible to do an RCS backend
-> that supports web commits with ci, and history (parsing the rcs files by
-> hand?). If you're a masochist. :-) --[[Joey]]
+I've just switched from ikiwiki 2.0 to ikiwiki 2.2 and I'm really surprised
+that I can't use the spaces in WikiLinks. Could you please tell me why the spaces
+aren't allowed in WikiLinks now?
->> It does have history using rlog(1) which is similar format to "cvs log".
->> I don't think it has any possible hooks. What would happen if I call
->> ikiwiki directly from rcs_commit? (I didn't try yet.) On that note,
->> I don't see any way for ikiwiki to generate a single file, but I guess
->> that doesn't matter as --refresh should be fast enough.
->> I made a Rcs/rcs.pm plugin from Stub. I have been testing it some.
->>
->> --JeremyReed
+My best regards,
-----
+--[[Paweł|ptecza]]
-# Using with CVS?
+> See [[bugs/Spaces_in_link_text_for_ikiwiki_links]]
-Any examples of using ikiwiki with cvs?
+----
-> No, although the existing svn backend could fairly esily be modified into
-> a CVS backend, by someone who doesn't mind working with CVS. --[[Joey]]
+# Build in OpenSolaris?
+
+Moved to [[bugs/build_in_opensolaris]] --[[Joey]]
----
-# Show differences before saving page?
+# Various ways to use Subversion with ikiwiki
-It would be nice to be able to have a button to show "Differences" (or "Show Diff") when
-editing a page. Is that an option that can be enabled?
+I'm playing around with various ways that I can use subversion with ikiwiki.
-> It's doable, it could even be done by a [[todo/plugin]], I think.
-> --[[Joey]]
+* Is it possible to have ikiwiki point to a subversion repository which is on a different server? The basic checkin/checkout functionality seems to work but there doesn't seem to be any way to make the post-commit hook work for a non-local server?
+
+> This is difficult to do since ikiwiki's post-commit wrapper expects to
+> run on a machine that contains both the svn repository and the .ikiwiki
+> state directory. However, with recent versions of ikiwiki, you can get
+> away without running the post-commit wrapper on commit, and all you lose
+> is the ability to send commit notification emails.
+
+> (And now that [[recentchanges]] includes rss, you can just subscribe to
+> that, no need to worry about commit notification emails anymore.)
+
+* Is it possible / sensible to have ikiwiki share a subversion repository with other data (either completely unrelated files or another ikiwiki instance)? This works in part but again the post-commit hook seems problematic.
+
+--[[AdamShand]]
+
+> Sure, see ikiwiki's subversion repository for example of non-wiki files
+> in the same repo. If you have two wikis in one repository, you will need
+> to write a post-commit script that calls the post-commit wrappers for each
+> wiki.
----
-# Max submit size?
+# Regex for Valid Characters in Filenames
-Any setting for limiting how many kilobytes can be submitted via the "edit" form?
--- [[JeremyReed]]
\ No newline at end of file
+I'm sure that this is documented somewhere but I've ransacked the wiki and I can't find it. :-( What are the allowed characters in an ikiwiki page name? I'm writing a simple script to make updating my blog easier and need to filter invalid characters (so far I've found that # and , aren't allowed ;-)). Thanks for any pointers. -- [[AdamShand]]
+
+> The default `wiki_file_regexp` matches filenames containing only
+> `[-[:alnum:]_.:/+]`
+>
+> The IkiWiki::titlepage() function will convert freeform text to a valid
+> page name. See [[todo/should_use_a_standard_encoding_for_utf_chars_in_filenames]]
+> for an example. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> Perfect, thanks!
+>>
+>> In the end I decided that I didn't need any special characters in filenames and replaced everything but alphanumeric characters with underscores. In addition to replacing bad characters I also collapse multiple underscores into a single one, and strip off trailing and leading underscores to make tidy filenames. If it's useful to anybody else here's a sed example:
+>>
+>> # echo "++ Bad: ~@#$%^&*()_=}{[];,? Iki: +_-:./ Num: 65.5 ++" | sed -e 's/[^A-Za-z0-9_]/_/g' -e 's/__*/_/g' -e 's/^_//g' -e 's/_$//g'
+>> Bad_Iki_Num_65_5
+>>
+>>--[[AdamShand]]
+
+# Upgrade steps from RecentChanges CGI to static page?
+
+Where are the upgrade steps for RecentChanges change from CGI to static feed?
+I run multiple ikiwiki-powered sites on multiple servers, but today I just upgraded one to 2.32.3.
+Please have a look at
+<http://bsdwiki.reedmedia.net/wiki/recentchanges.html>
+Any suggestions?
+
+> There are no upgrade steps required. It does look like you need to enable
+> the meta plugin to get a good recentchanges page though.. --[[Joey]]