-[[meta title="inside .ikiwiki"]]
+[[!meta title="inside .ikiwiki"]]
The `.ikiwiki` directory contains ikiwiki's internal state. Normally,
you don't need to look in it, but here's some tips for how to do so if
## the index
-`.ikiwiki/indexdb` contains a cache of information about pages, as well
-as all persisitant state about pages. It used to be a (semi) human-readable
-text file, but is not anymore.
+`.ikiwiki/indexdb` contains a cache of information about pages.
+This information can always be recalculated by rebuilding the wiki.
+(So the file is safe to delete and need not be backed up.)
+It used to be a (semi) human-readable text file, but is not anymore.
To dump the contents of the file, enter a perl command like this.
'email' => 'joey@kitenet.net',
[...]
-Editing values is simply a matter of changing values and calling Storable::nstore().
-So to change a user's password:
+Editing values is simply a matter of changing values and calling `Storable::nstore()`.
+So to change a user's email address:
- joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki> perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); $userinfo->{"foo"}->{email}=q{foo@bar}; Storable::lock_nstore($userinfo, "underdb")'
+ joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki> perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); $userinfo->{"foo"}->{email}=q{foo@bar}; Storable::lock_nstore($userinfo, "userdb")'
To remove that user:
- joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki> perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); delete $userinfo->{"foo"}; Storable::lock_nstore($userinfo, "underdb")'
+ joey@kodama:~/src/joeywiki/.ikiwiki> perl -le 'use Storable; my $userinfo=Storable::retrieve("userdb"); delete $userinfo->{"foo"}; Storable::lock_nstore($userinfo, "userdb")'
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]]
+
+## the session database
+
+`.ikiwiki/sessions.db` is the session database. See the [[!cpan CGI::Session]]
+documentation for more details.
+
+## lockfiles
+
+In case you're curious, here's what the various lock files do.
+
+* `.ikiwiki/lockfile` is the master ikiwiki lock file. Ikiwiki takes this
+ lock before reading/writing state.
+* `.ikiwiki/commitlock` is locked as a semophore, to disable the commit hook
+ from doing anything.
+* `.ikiwiki/cgilock` is locked by the cgi wrapper, to ensure that only
+ one ikiwiki process is run at a time to handle cgi requests.
+
+## plugin state files
+
+Some plugins create other files to store their state.
+
+* `.ikiwiki/aggregate` is a plain text database used by the aggregate plugin
+ to record feeds and known posts.
+* `.ikiwiki/xapian/` is created by the search plugin, and contains xapian-omega
+ configuration and the xapian database.