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]]
+----
-> OK, thanks, I don't quite know what was happening before but it seems to be working right now.
-> --[[Chris]]
+# Upgrade steps
->> 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 upgrades from 1.40 to 2.6.1. I ran "ikiwiki --setup" using my existing ikiwiki.setup configuration.
+I had many errors like:
-* 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.
+ /home/bsdwiki/www/wiki/wikilink/index.html independently created, not overwriting with version from wikilink
+ BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 5) line 129.
-----
-# Excellent - how do I translate a TWiki site?
+and:
-I just discovered ikiwiki quite by chance, I was looking for a console/terminal
-menu system and found pdmenu. So pdmenu brought me to here and I've found ikiwiki!
-It looks as if it's just what I've been wanting for a long time. I wanted something
-to create mostly text web pages which, as far as possible, have source which is human
-readable or at least in a standard format. ikiwiki does this twice over by using
-markdown for the source and producing static HTML from it.
+ 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.
-I'm currently using TWiki and have a fair number of pages in that format, does
-anyone have any bright ideas for translating? I can knock up awk scripts fairly
-easily, perl is possible (but I'm not strong in perl).
+Probably about six errors like this. I worked around this by removing the files and directories it complained about.
+Finally it finished.
-> Let us know if you come up with something to transition from the other
-> format. Another option would be writing a ikiwiki plugin to support the
-> TWiki format. --[[Joey]]
+> As of version 2.0, ikiwiki enables usedirs by default. See
+> [[tips/switching_to_usedirs]] for details. --[[Joey]]
-> Jamey Sharp and I have a set of scripts in progress to convert other wikis to ikiwiki, including history, so that we can migrate a few of our wikis. We already have support for migrating MoinMoin wikis to ikiwiki, including conversion of the entire history to Git. We used this to convert the [XCB wiki](http://xcb.freedesktop.org/wiki/) to ikiwiki; until we finalize the conversion and put the new wiki in place of the old one, you can browse the converted result at <http://xcb.freedesktop.org/ikiwiki>. We already plan to add support for TWiki (including history, since you can just run parsecvs on the TWiki RCS files to get Git), so that we can convert the [Portland State Aerospace Society wiki](http://psas.pdx.edu) (currently in Moin, but with much of its history in TWiki, and with many of its pages still in TWiki format using Jamey's TWiki format for MoinMoin).
->
-> Our scripts convert by way of HTML, using portions of the source wiki's code to render as HTML (with some additional code to do things like translate MoinMoin's `\[[TableOfContents]]` to ikiwiki's `\[[toc ]]`), and then using a modified [[cpan HTML::WikiConverter]] to turn this into markdown and ikiwiki. This produces quite satisfactory results, apart from things that don't have any markdown equivalent and thus remain HTML, such as tables and definition lists. Conversion of the history occurs by first using another script we wrote to translate MoinMoin history to Git, then using our git-map script to map a transformation over the Git history.
->
-> We will post the scripts as soon as we have them complete enough to convert our wikis.
->
-> -- Josh Triplett
+>> 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
->> Thanks for an excellent Xmas present, I will appreciate the additional
->> users this will help switch to ikiwiki! --[[Joey]]
+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?
-# OpenID
+>> Where is the default documented? My config doesn't have it uncommented.
-I just figured I'd edit something on the page with my OpenID, since you've implemented it! --*[Kyle](http://kitenet.net/~kyle/)*=
+The third problem is that when editing my textbox is empty -- no content.
-> Kyle, If you like openid, I can switch your personal wiki over to use your openid. --[[Joey]]
+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).
-# ACL
+>> 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.
-> Moved to [[todo/ACL]] --[[Joey]]
+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.
-Some questions about the RecentChanges function. -- Ethan
+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).
-> (Moved to [[todo/recentchanges]] --[[Joey]])
+> 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).
-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
+>>> 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]]
-> That's already available in the BASEURL parameter. --[[Joey]]
+(I am posting this now, but will do some research and post some more.)
-----
+Is there any webpage with upgrade steps?
-# Canonical feed location?
+> Users are expected to read [[news]], which points out any incompatible
+> changes or cases where manual action is needed.
-Moved to [[todo/canonical_feed_location]] --[[Joey]]
+>> 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]]
-# asciidoc or txt2tags ?
+--JeremyReed
-Any plugins or support for using asciidoc or txt2tags as the wiki language and/or exporting to asciidoc or txt2tags?
+My followup: I used a new ikiwiki.setup based on the latest version. But no changes for me.
-> 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]]
+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.
-# LaTeX support?
+> You need to figure out why ikiwiki is crashing. The webserver logs should
+> tell you.
-Any plugins or support for exporting to LaTeX?
-(If not could use asciidoc or txt2tags mentioned above to generated LaTeX.)
+I also set verbose => 1 and running ikiwiki --setup was verbose, but no changes in running CGI.
+I was hoping for some output.
-> It's already [[been_requested|todo/latex]], although perhaps not
-> working the way you're thinking of. Noone is currently working on it.
-> --[[Joey]]
+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.
->> 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
+> No, the rcs interface has not needed to change in a long time. Also,
+> nothing is done with the rcs for do=prefs.
->>> Have a look at [pandoc](http://code.google.com/p/pandoc/). It can make PDFs via pdflatex. --[[roktas]]
+>> Thanks. I also checked differences between 1.40 Rcs plugins and didn't notice anything significant.
-----
+--JeremyReed
-# Using with CVS?
+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:
-Any examples of using ikiwiki with cvs?
+ Can't exec "otl2html": No such file or directory at IkiWiki/Plugin/otl.pm line 66.
-> 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]]
+ 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
----
+# Excellent - how do I translate a TWiki site?
-# Show differences before saving page?
+I just discovered ikiwiki quite by chance, I was looking for a console/terminal
+menu system and found pdmenu. So pdmenu brought me to here and I've found ikiwiki!
+It looks as if it's just what I've been wanting for a long time. I wanted something
+to create mostly text web pages which, as far as possible, have source which is human
+readable or at least in a standard format. ikiwiki does this twice over by using
+markdown for the source and producing static HTML from it.
-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 currently using TWiki and have a fair number of pages in that format, does
+anyone have any bright ideas for translating? I can knock up awk scripts fairly
+easily, perl is possible (but I'm not strong in perl).
-> It's doable, it could even be done by a [[todo/plugin]], I think.
-> --[[Joey]]
+> Let us know if you come up with something to transition from the other
+> format. Another option would be writing a ikiwiki plugin to support the
+> TWiki format. --[[Joey]]
+
+> Jamey Sharp and I have a set of scripts in progress to convert other wikis to ikiwiki, including history, so that we can migrate a few of our wikis. We already have support for migrating MoinMoin wikis to ikiwiki, including conversion of the entire history to Git. We used this to convert the [XCB wiki](http://xcb.freedesktop.org/wiki/) to ikiwiki; until we finalize the conversion and put the new wiki in place of the old one, you can browse the converted result at <http://xcb.freedesktop.org/ikiwiki>. We already plan to add support for TWiki (including history, since you can just run parsecvs on the TWiki RCS files to get Git), so that we can convert the [Portland State Aerospace Society wiki](http://psas.pdx.edu) (currently in Moin, but with much of its history in TWiki, and with many of its pages still in TWiki format using Jamey's TWiki format for MoinMoin).
+>
+> Our scripts convert by way of HTML, using portions of the source wiki's code to render as HTML (with some additional code to do things like translate MoinMoin's `\[[TableOfContents]]` to ikiwiki's `\[[toc ]]`), and then using a modified [[cpan HTML::WikiConverter]] to turn this into markdown and ikiwiki. This produces quite satisfactory results, apart from things that don't have any markdown equivalent and thus remain HTML, such as tables and definition lists. Conversion of the history occurs by first using another script we wrote to translate MoinMoin history to Git, then using our git-map script to map a transformation over the Git history.
+>
+> We will post the scripts as soon as we have them complete enough to convert our wikis.
+>
+> -- [[JoshTriplett]]
+
+>> Thanks for an excellent Xmas present, I will appreciate the additional
+>> users this will help switch to ikiwiki! --[[Joey]]
----
-# Max submit size?
+# LaTeX support?
-Any setting for limiting how many kilobytes can be submitted via the "edit" form?
--- [[JeremyReed]]
+Moved to [[todo/latex]] --[[Joey]]
-> Not currently. Worried about abuse? --[[Joey]]
+----
->> I didn't want it abused accidently or with malice. I was thinking that Perl's CGI.pm would handle this, but I don't see that.
->> I read that textarea max bytes may be 500 lines or 28000 characters or 30000 characters or 64kB. It seems like it
->> varies and I didn't test myself, because I guess it may depend on different clients and different HTTP servers.
->> This could be checked using javascript on the client side (before submitting) and by checking size on server side (before saving). --[[JeremyReed]]
+# Using with CVS?
->>> The absolute limit varies by browser. If there are web servers that
->>> also limit it, I don't know of them. --[[Joey]]
+Moved to a [[todo_item|todo/CVS_backend]]. --[[JoshTriplett]]
----
-# Disable sub-discussion pages?
+# Show differences before saving page?
-Moved to [[bugs]] -- [[Joey]]
+Moved to the existing [[todo_item|todo/preview_changes]]. --[[JoshTriplett]]
+
+----
+
+# Max submit size?
+
+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]]
----
--[Mazirian](http://mazirian.com)
> Maybe, although it would need to take the critisism at
-> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html into account.
+> <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
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)
-> I don't support editing it, but if/when ikiwiki gets file upload support,
+> 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
----
-# Disable build/install requirement on PerlMagick
+# 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".
+
+> I belive that currently it does a redirect to the new static web page.
+> At least that's the intent of the code. --[[Joey]]
-Some installs of PerlMagick require X11. I tried to first disable using "img" by using "--disable-plugin img"
-in the Makefile. But still failed. My workaround was to remove "img" from the bundle in IkiWiki/Plugin/goodstuff.pm
-before building. What is the recommended way to install ikiwiki without "img" support? --[[JeremyReed]]
+>> 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
-> I've fixed this in svn so plugins in goodstuff can be disabled. --[[Joey]]
+>>> 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]]
----
-# Documentation for banning users?
+# User database tools?
-The [[todo]] page says admins can ban users. Where is this documented? I search the source and found
-set\_banned\_users() which led me to the CGI "preferences" form for the admin. Now logged in as an admin (as defined in my setup configuration),
-I see the field for this. But no details on how to use it. From the source it appears to be a space-delimited list of usernames. (I didn't test yet.)
+Any tool to view user database?
-Can you please provide a [[/banned_users]] documentation about "banning" users function linked from the [[Features]] page and maybe [[security]] page and linked from the "preferences" for the admin?
-(I don't do this myself as I am unsure about this and still reading the code about banning users.)
+Any tool to edit the user database?
-----
+> 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
-# Documentation for locking pages?
+> To list each user's email address:
-The [[features]] page, the [[todo]] page and the [[usage]] manual page say pages can be locked and only the admin can edit locked pages.
-Where is locking pages documented? ... A moment later, from searching source I found this is configured via the preferences for the admin
-and that links to [[pagespec]].
+ joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki>perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); print $userinfo->{$_}->{email} foreach keys %$userinfo'
+
+ joey@kitenet.net
-Can you please provide a [[/page_locking]] doc about locking pages linked from the [[features]] page and elsewhere? And have that link to [[pagespec]]?
-(I don't do this myself as I am unsure about this and still reading the code about locking pages.)
+> 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]]
----
-# RecentChanges should show path to wiki sub-pages?
+# Spaces in WikiLinks?
+
+Hello 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?
-The RecentChanges only shows the final file name for the recently changes file,
-for example "discussion". It would be more useful to see "index/discussion"
-or the path to the sub-page. I think this is handled by the htmllink() routine.
+My best regards,
->> IMHO it's a good idea and I like it. Often I can see changes in
->> any discussion page, but I don't know without clicking the link
->> what discussion was changed.
+--[[Paweł|ptecza]]
->> However, I can see one problem here. You can commit via command line
->> changes in many pages. It will be displayed ugly then, because probably
->> a width of the RecentChanges page will be greater then a width of
->> user's browser. I hate these pages. So I propose to display a list of
->> changed pages in a column, not in a row. --Pawel
+> See [[bugs/Spaces_in_link_text_for_ikiwiki_links]]
----
-# Should not create an existing page
+# Build in OpenSolaris?
-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".
+Moved to [[bugs/build_in_opensolaris]] --[[Joey]]
----
-# Refreshing RecentChanges page
+# Various ways to use Subversion with ikiwiki
-What do you think about refreshing RecentChanges page (via Meta Refresh Tag)?
-It can be useful for users like me which rather prefer watching the last changes
-in WWW browser tab than subscribing to page. --Pawel
+I'm playing around with various ways that I can use subversion with ikiwiki.
-----
+* 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.
+
+* 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.
-# Fall back for templatedir
+--[[AdamShand]]
-It would be nice if you didn't have to copy all templates to your custom _templatedir_
-so you only have your customizations there.
-And then have it fall back to the location as configured at build time (like /usr/share/ikiwiki/templates/).
-This would be similar to _underlaydir_. I don't think any extra configuration directive is needed.
-As it is now, RecentChanges will have Perl CGI error and Preferences will be an empty page, if you don't have corresponding templates.
-I can quickly make a patch and submit to the patch queue. Any comments?
\ No newline at end of file
+> 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.