1. 1. Register yourself using the TWikiRegistration topic.
      

1. Download the TWiki distribution from http://TWiki.org/. (Example - download TWiki-6.0.1.tgz for Linux)
2. Copy the downloaded package into the directory where you want to install TWiki (Example: /home/httpd ). Unpack the distribution in it (Example: tar xvfz TWiki-6.0.1.tgz). The unpack will create a directory called twiki which contains the TWiki package. In the rest of this document we assume this directory is called twiki.

• • • In the twiki installation you find an example config file misc/twiki_httpd_conf.txt (nevertheless, it is better to use the generator).
  • In case you do not have root privileges on the server:

• • • In the TWiki misc directory you find pub-htaccess.txt which you can copy to pub/.htaccess, subdir-htaccess.txt which you can copy to all directories as .htaccess except bin and pub, and you find root-htaccess.txt which you can copy to .htaccess in the twiki root directory. But again only use .htaccess files if you do not have root privileges.

1. Run the configure script from your browser (enter http://yourdomain/do/configure into your browser address bar)

1. You absolutely must turn off any kind of PHP, Perl, Python, Server Side Includes etc in the pub directory. TWiki has some built-in protection which renames files with dangerous file names by appending .txt to the file name. But this is a secondary security measure. The essential action that you must take is to turn off any possible execution of any of the attached files.
   Most Linux distributions have a default Apache installation which has PHP and server side include (SSI) enabled.
2. Don't put the whole twiki distribution into an HTML document enabled directory. Apache needs to be aware of only two directories: The bin directory should be script enabled, and the pub directory should be HTML document enabled.
   For those who do not have access to the Apache config files, a sample misc/subdir-htaccess.txt file can be copied as .htaccess to the data, lib, locale, templates, tools and working directories.
3. Attachments are not secured by default to the access control setting of the topic. In other words, anyone can read them if they know the direct URL of the attachment, which includes name of the web, topic and attachment. You can configure TWiki to secure attachments.

• • Note: Don't worry if you are not able to put the twiki/lib directory at the same level as the twiki/bin directory (e.g. because CGI bin directories can't be under your home directory and you don't have root access). You can create this directory elsewhere and configure the twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg file (done in Step 2).

• • In addition, you should create a .htaccess file in the pub directory, using the template included in the distribution entitled misc/pub-htaccess.txt.

• • Note: TWiki does not allow spaces in directory names. Especially on Windows make sure to use a directory path without spaces.

• • If you mistakenly change the access rights in a way that makes TWiki stop working, simply run the script found at TWiki:TWiki.SettingFileAccessRightsLinuxUnix to set the access rights of the entire TWiki tree back to the defaults in the distribution.
  • It is possible to define tighter access rules than the ones given by default after the installation is complete. But how tight they should be depends on your distribution and local needs. Typically you may want to limit all access from world if the webserver machine has login access for other users than root and the web server administrator. For a dedicated web server made just for running TWiki with limited login access the default access rights are reasonable.

• • The file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg must contain a setting for $twikiLibPath, which must point to the absolute directory path of your twiki/lib e.g. /var/www/twiki/lib.

1. Choose best configuration method for your webserver. There are two ways to configure Apache: config file included from httpd.conf or .htaccess files.
   • Apache config file: The recommended method is using a config file. With a config file you can put the entire TWiki configuration in ONE file (typically named twiki.conf). Performance is much better with a config file, and makes setting up a correct and safe installation easier. However using a config file requires that you can restart Apache which again means that you need root or sudo access to stop and start Apache. The TWiki apache config file is included from the main Apache config file httpd.conf. Most distributions have a directory from which any file that ends with .conf gets included when you restart Apache (Example RedHat/Fedora/Centos: /etc/httpd/conf.d). If you use a virtual host setup in Apache you should include the twiki.conf file from inside the desired virtual host config in your Apache configuration.
   • .htaccess files: This option should only be used when you cannot use a config file. Performance is slowed down because Apache has to look through all directories in search of possible .htaccess files each time someone views a page in TWiki. Normally this is the only way to control Apache in a shared host environment where you have no root or sudo privileges.

• • • In the root of the twiki installation you find an example config file twiki_httpd_conf.txt (nevertheless, it is better to use the generator).
  • In case you do not have root priviledges on the server:
    • In the root of the twiki installation and in the twiki/bin directory you find example .htaccess files you can copy and modify. The files contains help text explaining how to set them up. In twiki/bin you find .htaccess.txt which can be copied to .htaccess and defined access to the CGI scripts.
    • In the root of TWiki you find pub-htaccess.txt which you can copy to pub/.htaccess, subdir-htaccess.txt which you can copy to all directories as .htaccess except bin and pub, and you find root-htaccess.txt which you can copy to .htaccess in the twiki root directory. But again only use .htaccess files if you do not have root priviledges.

1. As already described above, you should protect the configure script from general access. The configure script is designed for use by administrators only and should be restricted to invocation by them only, by using the basic Apache authentication. Because of this there has not been put much effort into hardening the script. The configure script cannot save any settings once the password has been saved the first time, but the script could still be vulnerable to specially crafted field values and the script reveals many details about the webserver that you should not display in public.

Enable Localization

Tailor New User Profile Topic

Custom Start Web and Homepage

When a user enters the domain name of your TWiki she expects to see the homepage. You can do that either with an Apache rewrite rule or an HTML meta redirect to redirect from / to /do/view/Intranet/WebHome. Here is an example index.html containing an HTML meta redirect you can use: Customize it and put it in your HTML document root on your TWiki sever:

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;/do/view/Intranet/WebHome" />
</head>
<body>
Redirecting to <a href="/do/view/Intranet/WebHome">Intranet home</a>...
</body>
</html>

2. Set the wiki logo URL

When a user clicks on the logo in the upper left or on the "Home" link in the top-bar she expects to navigate to the new homepage. You can do that by defining and customizing the following setting in Main.TWikiPreferences as described in the Set TWiki Preferences section:

URL of the logo:
   * Set WIKILOGOURL = %SCRIPTURLPATH{view}%/Intranet/WebHome

Customize the Look of Your TWiki!

Customize Special Pages

Install Plugins

TWiki:Plugins.WebHome is an extensive library of plugins for TWiki, that enhance functionality in a huge number of ways. A few plugins are pre-installed in the TWiki distribution. For more information on these, see InstalledPlugins.

You activate installed plugin in the Plugins section of configure. In this section you also find a Find More Extensions button which opens an application which can install additional plugins from the TWiki.org website. If you are behind a firewall or your server has no access to the Internet it is also possible to install plugins manually. Manual installation instructions for the plugins can be found in the plugin topics on TWiki.org. Additional documentation on TWiki plugins can be found at TWiki:TWiki.TWikiPluginsSupplement.

Some plugins require that you define their settings in configure. You fill find these under the Extensions section of configure.

WYSIWYG And Raw Edit

1. Download the TWiki distribution from http://TWiki.org/. (Example - download TWiki-5.1.2.tgz for Linux)
2. Copy the downloaded package into the directory where you want to install TWiki (Example: /home/httpd ). Unpack the distribution in it (Example: tar xvfz TWiki-5.1.2.tgz). The unpack will create a directory called twiki which contains the TWiki package. In the rest of this document we assume this directory is called twiki.

Server Requirements

TWiki is written in Perl 5, uses a number of shell commands, and requires RCS (Revision Control System), a GNU Free Software package. TWiki is developed in a basic Linux/Apache environment. It also works with Microsoft Windows, and should have no problem on any other platform that meets the requirements.

Resource	Required Server Environment *
Perl	5.8.0 or higher (5.8.4 or higher is recommended)
RCS	5.7 or higher (including GNU diff) Optional, TWiki includes a pure Perl implementation of RCS that can be used instead (although it's slower)
GNU diff	GNU diff 2.7 or higher is required when not using the all-Perl RcsLite. Install on PATH if not included with RCS (check version with diff -v) Must be the version used by RCS, to avoid problems with binary attachments - RCS may have hard-coded path to diff
GNU df	Used by the site statistics to record disk usage statistics, optional. The df command is pre-installed on Linux and OS-X. On Windows install the CoreUtils for Windows.
GNU patch	For upgrades only: GNU patch is required when using the TWiki:Codev.UpgradeTWiki script
GNU fgrep, egrep	Modify command line parameters in configure if you use non-GNU grep programs
zip	Zip archive command line utility. Used by the BackupRestorePlugin to create and restore from backups.
Cron/scheduler	• Unix: cron • Windows: cron equivalents <-- SMELL: Macintosh version? -->
Web server	Apache is well supported; see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherWebServers for other servers

Required CPAN Modules

Most of the CPAN libraries listesd below are part of a standard Perl installation so you most likely have them all!

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

The following Perl CPAN modules are used by TWiki:

Optional CPAN Modules

The following Perl modules may be used by TWiki:

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

Most of them will probably already be available in your installation. You can check version numbers with the configure script, or if you're still trying to get to that point, check from the command line like this:

perl -e 'use FileHandle; print $FileHandle::VERSION."\n"'

<--
SMELL: perhaps put download link to TWiki:Plugins.CpanContrib? (which 
also includes prebuilt versions of all of the CPAN modules used by 
all of the plugins checked into SVN)
-->

Client Requirements

The TWiki standard installation has relatively low browser requirements:

• HTML 3.2 compliant
• Cookies, if persistent sessions are required

CSS and Javascript are used in most skins, although there is a low-fat skin (Classic skin) available that minimizes these requirements. Some skins will require more recent releases of browsers. The default skin (Pattern) is tested on IE 6, Safari, and Mozilla 5.0 based browsers (such as Firefox).

<--
SMELL: what are some actual known good version number requirements for these browsers (eg, FireFox 1.0, or 1.0.3, or 1.0.7, or ???), etc.
-->

You can easily select a balance of browser capability versus look and feel. Try the installed skins at TWikiSkinBrowser and more at TWiki:Plugins.SkinPackage.

Important note about TWiki Plugins

• Plugins can require just about anything - browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java applets, cookies, specific Perl modules,... - check the individual Plugin specs.

• Set EDITMETHOD = raw

1. As already described above you should protect the configure script from general access. The configure script is designed for use by administrators only and should be restricted to invocation by them only, by using the basic Apache authentication. Because of this there has not been put much effort into hardening the script. The configure script cannot save any settings once the password has been saved the first time, but the script could still be vulnerable to specially crafted field values and the script reveals many details about the webserver that you should not display in public.
2. You absolutely must turn off any kind of PHP, Perl, Python, Server Side Includes etc in the pub directory. TWiki has some built-in protection which renames files with dangerous filenames by appending .txt to the filename. But this is a secondary security measure. The essential action that you must take is to turn off any possible execution of any of the attached files.
   Most Linux distributions have a default Apache installation which has PHP and server side include (SSI) enabled.
3. Make sure that you deny access to all other twiki directories than the bin and pub directories. When you have access to the Apache config files the twiki_httpd_conf.txt file mentioned above also contains protection of these directories.
   

1. Attachments are not secured by default to the access control setting of the topic. In other words, anyone can read them if they know the direct URL of the attachment, which includes name of the web, topic and attachment. You can configure TWiki to secure attachments.

1. Download the TWiki distribution from http://TWiki.org/. (Example - download TWiki-5.0.0.tgz for Linux)
2. Copy the downloaded package into the directory where you want to install TWiki (Example: /home/httpd ). Unpack the distribution in it (Example: tar xvfz TWiki-5.0.0.tgz). The unpack will create a directory called twiki which contains the TWiki package. In the rest of this document we assume this directory is called twiki.
   • Note: TWiki does not allow spaces in the directory names. Especially on Windows make sure to use a directory path without spaces.

• • Warning: Do not just just run a chmod -R 770 twiki. The access rules have different meaning for files and directories. This is the most common mistake installers make.

• • There is a template for this file in twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt. Simply copy LocalLib.cfg.txt to LocalLib.cfg. Make sure the ownership and access rights of the copy are the same as LocalLib.cfg.txt

• • .htaccess file: This should only be used when you cannot use a config file. Performance is slowed down because Apache has to look through all directories in search for possible .htaccess files each time someone views a page in TWiki. Normally this is the only way to control Apache in a shared host environment where you have no root or sudo privileges.

• • Note: When you use config files you need to restart Apache each time you change a setting to make the new setting active.

• • Specify and reenter a password. This is your configure password, as well as the admin user password once TWiki is running.
    • Note: In case you forgot the password, you can reset it by deleting $TWiki::cfg{Password} from LocalSite.cfg file from {TWIKI_ROOT}/lib directory.
  • When you run configure for the first time, you can only edit the General Path Settings section. Save these settings, and then return to configure to continue configuration.

Failing that, please check TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki on TWiki.org, the supplemental documentation that help you install TWiki on different platforms, environments and web hosting sites. For example:

• For Unix or Linux, check TWiki:Codev.TWikiOnUnix and TWiki:Codev.TWikiOnLinux.
• For Windows, check the TWiki:Codev.WindowsInstallCookbook.

1. 1. Register yourself using the TWikiRegistration topic.
      

• Navigate to the Main.TWikiAdminGroup topic
• Follow carefully the steps TWikiAdminGroup of how to become an admin

• TWikiPreferences. Read through it and identify any additional settings or changes you think you might need. You can edit the settings in TWiki.TWikiPreferences but these will be overwritten when you later upgrade to a newer TWiki version. Instead copy any settings or variables that you want to customize from TWiki.TWikiPreferences and paste them into Main.TWikiPreferences. When you later upgrade TWiki simply avoid overwriting the data/Main/TWikiPreferences.txt file and all your settings will be kept. Settings in Main.TWikiPreferences overrides settings in both TWiki.TWikiPreferences and any settings defined in plugin topics. See notes at the top of TWiki.TWikiPreferences for more information.

1. Setup a cron job (or equivalent) to call the tools/mailnotify script as described in the MailerContrib topic.

• Localize the user topic.

• Add and remove fields defined in the UserForm

• ChangePassword
• ResetPassword
• ChangeEmailAddress

• Copy the setting WEBCOPYRIGHT from TWiki.TWikiPreferences to Main.TWikiPreferences and alter the copied text to your need.
• You can create a unique message for each web by adding the WEBCOPYRIGHT setting to WebPreferences in each web. E.g. adding a confidencial classification to a very restricted web.
• The WEBCOPYRIGHT in TWiki.WebPreferences covers the documentation that comes with TWiki and is covered by the original TWiki Copyright and GPL License. You will normally leave this unchanged.

• • The file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg must contain a setting for $twikiLibPath, which must point to the absolute file path of your twiki/lib e.g. /var/www/twiki/lib.

• • When you return to configure you now need to setup Mail and Proxies. Especially the {WebMasterEmail}, and {SMTP}{MAILHOST} must be defined to enable TWiki to send administrative emails, such as for registration and notification of topic changes. Many ISPs have introduced authentication when sending emails to fight spam so you may also have to set {SMTP}{Username} and {SMTP}{Password}. If you do not want to enable mailing or want to enable it later you can uncheck {EnableEmail}.
  • If you want administrative e-mails to be signed, see S/MIME setup instructions below.

Enable Signed Email Notification

TWiki administrative e-mails are an attractive target for SPAM generators and phishing attacks. One good way to protect against this possibility to enable S/MIME signatures on all administrative e-mails. To do this, you need an an X.509 certificate and private key for the the {WebMasterEmail} email account. Obtain these as you would for any other S/MIME e-mail user.

To enable TWiki to sign administrative e-mails:

1. Enable e-mail as described above
2. If necessary, convert your certificate and key files to PEM format ( openssl has all the necessary utilities)
3. Place the certificate anyplace convenient that the webserver can read. It should be protected against write. The conventional place under linux is /etc/pki/tls/certs
4. Place the key file in a secure location that only the webserver can read. It must not be readable by anyone else, and must not be served by the webserver.
5. Using the configure script, change the following settings under Mail and Proxies:
   1. Follow the directions under {MailProgram} to enable an external mail program such as sendmail. Net::SMTP is not supported.
   2. Enter the full path to the certificate file in the {SmimeCertificateFile} configuration variable
   3. Enter the full path to the private key file in the {SmimeKeyFile} configuration variable
   4. Save the configuration
6. Re-run the configure script an resolve any errors that it identifies

All out-going administrative e-mails will now be signed.

1. 1. Select TWiki::LoginManager::TemplateLogin for {LoginManager}.

TWiki Installation Guide

Both this document and the TWikiUpgradeGuide are also available in the root of the distribution as HTML files. For this reason links to pages inside your own TWiki are written like TWiki.WebHome and not like live web links.

If you are upgrading from an earlier major version of TWiki such as Cairo (TWiki 3) you will need the information found in TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeGuide. There is also a static HTML TWikiUpgradeGuide.html included in the root of your TWiki distribution.

• • Note! that TWiki does not allow spaces in the directory names. Especially on Windows make sure to use a directory path without spaces.

1. Setup access file and directory rights to enable the webserver user (the user Apache runs the CGI scripts as) to read and write inside the twiki directory.
   • Warning! Do not just just run a chmod -R 770 twiki. The access rules have different meaning for files and directories. This is the most common mistake installers make.
   • The distribution tgz has the file and directory access rights setup to work with a reasonable security level that will work for all types of installations including shared hosting.
   • The ownership of the twiki directory tree is normally set to the user that unpacked the tgz and will have to be changed to the webserver user using the command chown -R user:group /path/to/twiki. The webserver username varies from Distributions. Examples for some major distributions:
     • RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo, Mandriva : chown -R apache:apache /path/to/twiki
     • debian/Ubuntu/Kubunto : chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/twiki
     • Suse : chown -R wwwrun:www /path/to/twiki
   • If you mistakenly change the access rights in a way that makes TWiki stop working, simply run the script found at TWiki:TWiki.SettingFileAccessRightsLinuxUnix to set the access right of the entire TWiki tree back to the distributed defaults.
   • It is possible to define tighter access rules than the ones given by default after the installation is complete. But how tight they should be depends on your distribution and local needs. Typically you may want to limit all access from world if the webserver machine has login access for other users than root and the web server administrator. For a dedicated web server made just for running TWiki with limited login access the default access rights have a good safety level.
2. Check the Perl installation. Ensure that Perl 5 and the Perl CGI library are installed on your system.
   • The default location of Perl is /usr/bin/perl. If it's somewhere else, change the path to Perl in the first line of each script in the twiki/bin directory.
   • Some systems require a special extension on perl scripts (e.g. .cgi or .pl). This is normally only needed under Windows and only where perl scripts are only recognized by file extension. Linux and Unix users should normally never need to do this. If necessary, rename all files in twiki/bin (i.e. rename view to view.pl etc). If you do this, make sure you set the ScriptSuffix option in configure (Step 6).
3. Create the file LocalLib.cfg located as twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg
   • There is a template for this file in twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt. Simply copy LocalLib.cfg.txt to LocalLib.cfg. Make sure the ownership and access rights of the copy are the same as LocalLib.cfg.txt
   • The file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg must contain a setting for $twikiLibPath, which must point to the absolute file path of your twiki/lib e.g. /var/www/twiki/lib.
     
   • If you need to install additional CPAN modules, but can't update the main Perl installation files on the server, you can set $CPANBASE to point to your personal CPAN install. Don't forget that the webserver user has to be able to read those files as well.
4. Choose best configuration method for your webserver. There are two ways to configure Apache: config file included from httpd.conf or .htaccess files
   • Apache config file: The recommended method is using a config file. With a config file you can put the entire TWiki configuration in ONE file (typically named twiki.conf). Performance is much better with a config file, and one file gives the best overview and ensures that you get a safe installation . However using a config file requires that you can restart Apache which again means that you need root or sudo access to stop and start Apache. The TWiki apache config file is included from the main Apache config file http.conf. Most distributions have a directory from which any file that ends with .conf gets included when you restart Apache (Example RedHat/Fedora/Centos: /etc/httpd/conf.d). If you use a virtual host setup in Apache you should include the twiki.conf file from inside the desired virtual host config in your Apache configuration.
   • .htaccess file: This should only be used when you cannot use a config file. Performance is slowed down because Apache has to look through all directories in search for possible .htaccess files each time someone views a page in TWiki. Normally this is the only way to control Apache in a shared host environment where you have no root or sudo priviledges.
5. Configure the webserver
   • Unless you are an Apache expert setting up the webserver can be quite difficult. But TWiki has three resources that make setting up Apache easier.
     • The best and easiest way is to use webpage TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator which contains a tool that can generate a safe and working config file for TWiki on Apache.
     • In the root of the twiki installation you find an example config file twiki_httpd_conf.txt
     • In the root of the twiki installation and in the twiki/bin directory you find example .htaccess files you can copy and modify. The files contains help text explaining how to set them up. In twiki/bin you find .htaccess.txt which can be copied to .htaccess and defined access to the CGI scripts. In the root of TWiki you find pub-htaccess.txt which you can copy to pub/.htaccess, subdir-htaccess.txt which you can copy to all directories as .htaccess except bin and pub, and you find root-htaccess.txt which you can copy to .htaccess in the twiki root directory. But again only use .htaccess files if you do not have root priviledges.
   • If you are unsure about how to do this on your system, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherPlatforms for links to information about various server setups.
   • Note! When you use config files you need to restart Apache each time you change a setting to make the new setting active.
6. Protect the configure script
   • You should never leave the configure script open to the public. Limit access to the twiki/bin/configure script to either localhost, an IP address or a specific user using basic Apache authentication. The TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator lets you setup who has access to the configure script. Also the example twiki-httpd-conf.txt and bin/.htaccess.txt files includes the needed setting to protect the configure script.
   • If you limit the access to a particular user then you need to setup a .htpasswd file that contains the user name and password that Apache will authenticate against. Per default both TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator and the example config files and .htaccess files uses twiki/data/.htpasswd but this file does not exist until you have TWiki running and have registered the first user. You therefore have two options. Either limit the access to localhost or an IP address, or make a .htpasswd file. To make a .htpasswd file change directory to twiki/data and issue the command htpasswd -c .htpasswd username and enter your password when asked. The username must match the Require user username directive in the Apache config file or .htaccess file. Do not use a username you will later use to register in TWiki because TWiki will then claim that you are already registered.
7. Run the configure script from your browser (enter http://yourdomain/twiki/bin/configure into your browser address bar)
   • Resolve any errors or warnings it tells you about.
   • Note! When you run configure for the first time, you can only edit the section General Path Settings. Save these settings, and then return to configure to continue configuration.
   • If your webserver can be accessed by more than one domain name make sure to add the additional alternative URLs to {PermittedRedirectHostUrls}
   • When you return to configure you now need to setup Mail and Proxies. Especially the {WebMasterEmail}, and {SMTP}{MAILHOST} must be defined to enable TWiki to send registration emails. Many ISPs have introduced authentication when sending emails to fight spam so you may also have to set {SMTP}{Username} and {SMTP}{Password}. If you do not want to enable mailing or want to enable it later you can uncheck {EnableEmail}.

• As already described above you should protect the configure script from general access. The configure script is designed for use by administrators only and should be restricted to invocation by them only, by using the basic Apache authentication. Because of this there has not been put much effort into hardening the script. The configure script cannot save any settings once the password has been saved the first time, but the script could still be vulnerable to specially crafted field values and the script reveals many details about the webserver that you should not display in public.
• You absolutely must turn off any kind of PHP, Perl, Python, Server Side Includes etc in the pub directory. TWiki has some built-in protection which renames files with dangerous filenames by appending .txt to the filename. But this is a secondary security measure. The essential action that you must take is to turn off any possible execution of any of the attached files.
  Most Linux distributions have a default Apache installation which has PHP and server side include (SSI) enabled.

<FilesMatch "(attach|edit|manage|rename|save|upload|mail|logon|rest|.*auth).*">
   require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

The TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator includes this section when you choose ApacheLogin. In the example twiki_httpd_conf.txt and bin/.htaccess.txt files this section is commented out with #. Uncomment the section when you use ApacheLogin. It is important that this section is commented out or removed when you use TemplateLogin.

Define the Administrator User(s)

Administrators have read and write access to any topic in TWiki, irrespectively of TWiki access controls. When you install TWiki one of the first things you will want to do is define yourself as an administrator. You become an administrator simply by adding yourself to the TWikiAdminGroup. It is the WikiName and not the login name you add to the group. Editing the Main.TWikiAdminGroup topic requires that you are an administrator. So to add the first administrator you need to login using the internal TWiki admin user login and the password you defined in configure.

• Navigate to the Main.TWikiAdminGroup topic
• Follow carefully the steps Main.TWikiAdminGroup of how to become an admin
• Note that if you use ApacheLogin you have to be registered and logged in before you use the internal admin login

• TWiki.TWikiPreferences. Read through it and identify any additional settings or changes you think you might need. You can edit the settings in TWiki.TWikiPreferences but these will be overwritten when you later upgrade to a newer TWiki version. Instead copy any settings or variables that you want to customize from TWiki.TWikiPreferences and paste them into Main.TWikiPreferences. When you later upgrade TWiki simply avoid overwriting the data/Main/TWikiPreferences.txt file and all your settings will be kept. Settings in Main.TWikiPreferences overrides settings in both TWiki.TWikiPreferences and any settings defined in Plugin topics. See notes at top of TWiki.TWikiPreferences for more information.

1. Setup a cron job (or equivalent) to call the tools/mailnotify script as described in the TWiki.MailerContrib topic.

• Add a default ALLOWTOPICCHANGE so only the user can edit their own home topic. We do not encourage this for Intranet sites as it sends a wrong signal to new users, but it can be necessary on a public TWiki to prevent spam.
• Add and remove fields defined in the TWiki.UserForm

If you choose to tailor anything you are strongly adviced to copy NewUserTemplate and UserForm to the Main web and tailor the Main web copies. TWiki will look for the NewUserTemplate in the Main web first and if it does not exist it uses the default from the TWiki web. By creating a Main.NewUserTemplate and its Main.UserForm you will not loose your tailorings next time you upgrade TWiki.

If you added or removed fields from the user form you may also need to tailor TWiki.TWikiRegistration.

Customize Your TWiki!

The real power of TWiki lies in it's flexibility to be customized to meet your needs. You can with small means change the looks of the default skin (called PatternSkin) by reading the TWiki.PatternSkinCustomization

At the official TWiki website you can find more resources. A good place to start for exploring what's possible is TWiki:TWiki.TWikiAdminCookBook which offers tips and tricks for customizing your TWiki site. Many of these are appropriate to implement immediately after installing TWiki and before adding content so now's a good time to look at these.

Customization of Special Pages

Some pages are meant to be customized after choice of authentication. If you do not use the internal TWiki password manager the topics that contains the features for changing and resetting passwords and changing the email address should be changed to a note describing how to perform these tasks in your organization. The topics are:

• TWiki.ChangePassword
• TWiki.ResetPassword
• TWiki.ChangeEmailAddress

WYSIWYG vs Raw Edit

From TWiki release 4.2.0 the WYSIWYG editor has been replaced by a much better and more powerful editor and it was decided that WYSIWYG would be the default edit mode. An Edit Raw link is available for those that have a need or preference for this mode.

However you may prefer to have the same user interface as in TWiki 4.1 where Edit was the raw text editor and you had a WYSIWYG button. You can modify the templates that define the buttons by following the description on TWiki:Codev.TWikiRawEditDefault04x02.

Copyright, License and Classification Statements

In the bottom of each topic you will find a default copyright messages saying "Copyright &© by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors." It is a setting WEBCOPYRIGHT that defines this. This is often not adequate.

• If your TWiki is used in a commercial application without public access you should replace this by your normal copyright notice. You should also consider adding classifications (e.g. For Internal Use Only) so people do not have to add this manually to every new topic.
• If your TWiki is public with public access you need to decide which copyright and license the contributions should be covered by. For open source type applications licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License, FreeBSD Documentation License, and Creative Commons license are possible licenses to consider. Remember that once people have started contributing it is difficult and not correct to change or impose licenses on existing contributions.

You change the copy right statement globally by taking these steps.

• Copy the setting WEBCOPYRIGHT from TWiki.TWikiPreferences to Main.TWikiPreferences and alter the copied text to your need.
• You can create a unique message for each web by adding the WEBCOPYRIGHT setting to WebPreferences in each web. E.g. adding a confidencial classification to a very restricted web.
• The WEBCOPYRIGHT in TWiki.WebPreferences covers the documentation that comes with TWiki and is covered by the original TWiki Copyright and GPL License. You will normally leave this unchanged.

Appendices

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

TWiki Installation Guide

The following is installation instructions for the TWiki 4.1 production release on an Apache web server on Linux. Visit TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki for the latest updates to this guide and supplemental information for installing or upgrading TWiki, including notes on installing TWiki on different platforms, environments and web hosting sites.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of TWiki, you probably want to read TWikiUpgradeGuide instead (both this document and the TWikiUpgradeGuide are also available in the root of the distribution as HTML files)

Preparing to install TWiki

If you are upgrading from an earlier major version of TWiki such a Cairo (TWiki 3) you will need the information found in TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUpgradeGuide which includes a description of both an automated and a manual procedure. The manual procedure is probably the safest to follow but takes more time. The upgrade guide describes essential steps needed to avoid problems with locked topics.

Upgrading from a recent TWiki4 release is much simpler. Upgraders from earlier TWiki4 versions can with advantage follow the steps described in TWiki:TWiki.UpgradingTWiki04x00PatchReleases to ensure a safe upgrade without accidently overwriting customizations.

If you need help, ask a question in the TWiki:Support web or on TWiki:Codev.TWikiIRC (irc.freenode.net, channel #twiki)

1. Make a directory for the installation and unpack the distribution in it. In the rest of this document we assume this directory is called twiki.
2. Make sure the user that runs CGI scripts on your system can read and write all files in the distribution.
   Detailed instructions on file permissions are beyond the scope of this guide, and the best and safest set of file and directory permissions depend on the actual server environment. For Unix/Linux see TWiki:TWiki.SettingFileAccessRightsLinuxUnix which contains scripts to setup the right file and directory access rights.
   The general rules for access rights are:
   • During installation and configuration, the CGI user needs to be able to read and write everything in the distribution.
   • Once installation and configuration is complete, the CGI user needs write access to everything under the data and pub directories and to twiki/lib/LocalSite.cfg. Everything else should be read-only.

1. Make sure Perl 5 and the Perl CGI library are installed on your system.
   The default location of Perl is /usr/bin/perl. If it's somewhere else, change the path to Perl in the first line of each script in the twiki/bin directory.
   Some systems require a special extension on perl scripts (e.g. .cgi or .pl). If necessary, rename all files in twiki/bin (i.e. rename view to view.pl etc). If you do this, make sure you set the ScriptSuffix option in configure (Step 6).
2. Create the file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.
   There is a template for this file in twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt.
   The file twiki/bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt must contain a setting for $twikiLibPath, which must point to the absolute file path of your twiki/lib e.g. /home/httpd/twiki/lib.
   If you need to install additional CPAN modules, but can't update the main Perl installation files on the server, you can set $CPANBASE to point to your personal CPAN install. Don't forget that the webserver user has to be able to read those files as well.
3. Configure the webserver so you can execute the bin/configure script from your browser. But limit the access to either localhost, an IP address or a specific user using basic Apache authentication. You should never leave the configure script open to the public. See TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator which contains a tool that can generate a safe and working config file for TWiki on Apache.
   • If you are unsure about how to do this on your system, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherPlatforms for links to information about various server setups. There is an example Apache httpd.conf file in twiki_httpd_conf.txt at the root of the package. This file also contains advice on securing your installation. There's also a script called tools/rewriteshebang.pl to help you in fixing up the shebang lines in your CGI scripts.
4. Run the configure script from your browser (i.e. enter http://yourdomain/twiki/bin/configure into your browser address bar) and resolve any errors or warnings it tells you about.
   When you run configure for the first time, you can only edit the section General Path Settings. Save these settings, and then return to configure to continue configuration.
   When you return to configure you now need to setup Mail and Proxies. Especially the {WebMasterEmail}, and {SMTP}{MAILHOST} must be defined to enable TWiki to send registration emails. Many ISPs have introduced authentication when sending emails to fight spam so you may also have to set {SMTP}{Username} and {SMTP}{Password}.

Important Server Security Settings

• You should protect the configure script from general access. The configure script the tool is designed for use by administrators only and should be restricted to invocation by them only, by using the basic Apache authentication. Because of this there has not been put much effort into hardening the script. The configure script cannot save any settings once the password has been saved the first time, but the script could still be vulnerable to specially crafted field values and the script reveals many details about the webserver that you should not display in public.
• You absolutely must turn off any kind of PHP, Perl, Python, Server Side Includes etc in the pub directory. TWiki has some builtin protection which renames files with dangerous filenames by appending .txt to the filename. But this is a secondary security measure. The essential action that you must take is to turn off any possible execution of any of the attached files.
  Most Linux distributions have a default Apache installation which has PHP and server side include (SSI) enabled. The twiki_httpd_conf.txt file provided in the root of the twiki directory is an example of an Apache config file which you would normally include from httpd.conf. In many distributions this happens automatically if the file is copied to a specific directory (Example RedHat/Fedora/Centos: /etc/httpd/conf.d) and has suffix .conf. This example file shows how to protect the pub directory from executing both PHP scripts and server side includes.
  If you do not have access to the apache config files you can normally control control access by placing a file called .htaccess in the directory you want to protect. The pub-htaccess.txt file provided in the root of the twiki directory is an example of an Apache .htaccess file which protects against execusion of PHP and SSI scripts.
• Make sure that you deny access to all other twiki directories than the bin and pub directories. When you have access to the Apache config files the twiki_httpd_conf.txt file mentioned above also contains protection of these directories.
  For those that do not have access to the Apache config files a sample subdir-htaccess.txt file can be copied as .htaccess to the data, lib, locale, templates and tools directories.

The TWIki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator will help you address all 3 security elements.

TWiki Release 4.1

Enable Authentication of Users

This step provides for site access control and user activity tracking on your TWiki site. This is particularly important for sites that are publicly accessible on the web. This guide describes only the most common of several possible authentication setups for TWiki and is suitable for public web sites. For information about other setups, see TWiki.TWikiUserAuthentication, and TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUserAuthenticationSupplement.

These are the steps for enabling "Template Login" which asks for a username and password in a web page, and processes them using the Apache 'htpasswd' password manager. Users can log in and log out.

1. Under the Security Settings pane of configure :
   1. Select TWiki::Client::TemplateLogin for {LoginManager}.
   2. Select TWiki::Users::HtPasswdUser for {PasswordManager}.
   3. Save your configure settings.
   4. Register yourself using the TWiki.TWikiRegistration topic.
      Check that the password manager recognizes the new user. Check that a new line with the username and encrypted password is added to the data/.htpasswd file. If not, you probably got a path wrong, or the permissions may not allow the webserver user to write to that file.
2. Edit a topic (by clicking on the Edit link at beginning or end of topic) to check if authentication works.
3. Edit the Main/TWikiAdminGroup topic to include users with system administrator status. Additional instructions are provided in that topic.
   This is a very important step, as users in this group can access all topics, independent of TWiki access controls.
4. Clear admin notes: Some pages are meant to be customized after choice of authentication - check and update these topics (remove notice): Main.TWikiAdminGroup, TWiki.ChangePassword, TWiki.ResetPassword, and TWiki.ChangeEmailAddress.

You are strongly encouraged to read TWiki.TWikiUserAuthentication, TWiki:TWiki.TWikiUserAuthenticationSupplement, and TWiki:TWiki.SecuringTWikiSite for further information about managing users and security of your TWiki site.

Set TWiki Preferences

Preferences for customizing many aspects of TWiki are set simply by editing a special topic with TWiki.

• Edit TWiki.TWikiPreferences. Read through it and set any additional settings you think you might need. (You can click the 'Edit' button near the top to edit the settings in place).
• Alternately, you can copy any settings or variables that you want to customize from TWiki.TWikiPreferences and paste them into Main.TWikiPreferences. This will protect your local customizations from being overwritten in later upgrades. See notes at top of TWiki.TWikiPreferences for more information.

Enable Email Notification

Each TWiki web has an automatic email notification service that sends you an email with links to all of the topics modified since the last alert. To enable this service:

1. Confirm the Mail and Proxies settings in the Configure interface.
2. Setup a cron job (or equivalent) to call the bin/mailnotify script as described in the TWiki.MailerContrib topic.

Enable WebStatistics

You can generate a listing manually, or on an automated schedule, of visits to individual pages, on a per web basis. For information on setting up this feature, see the TWiki.TWikiSiteTools topic.

Automate removal of expired sessions and lease files

Per default TWiki cleans out expired session and lease files each time any topic is viewed. This however cost performance. It is an advantage to define a negative value in configure for {Sessions}{ExpireAfter} and install let cron run the tools/tick_twiki.pl script. Read The topic TWikiScripts#tick_twiki_pl for details how to do this.

Enable Localisation

TWiki now supports displaying of national (non-ascii) characters and presentation of basic interface elements in different languages. To enable these features, see the Localisation section of configure. For more information about these features, see TWiki:TWiki.InternationalizationSupplement.

Tailor New Users Home Topic

When a new users registers on your TWiki a home topic is created for him based on the TWiki/NewUserTemplate template topic. This can be tailored. It contains additional resources you can use to:

• Localise the user topic.
• Add a default ALLOWTOPICCHANGE so only the user can edit his own home topic. We do not encourage this for Intranet sites as it sends a wrong signal to new users, but it can be necessary on a public TWiki to avoid that the user topics get spammed.

Install Plugins

TWiki:Plugins

You activate installed plugin in the Plugins section of configure. In this section you also find a Find More Extensions button which opens an application which can install additional plugins from the TWiki.org website. If you are behind a firewall or your server has no access to the Internet it is also possible to install plugins manually. Manual installation instructions for the plugins can be found in the plugin topics on TWiki.org. Additional documenation on TWiki plugins can be found at TWiki:TWiki.TWikiPluginsSupplement.

Some plugins require that you define their settings in configure. You fill find these under the Extensions section of configure.

Customize your TWiki!

The real power of TWiki lies in it's flexibility to be customized to meet your needs. A good place to start for exploring what's possible is TWiki:TWiki.TWikiAdminCookBook which offers tips and tricks for customizing your TWiki site. Many of these are appropriate to implement immediately after installing TWiki and before adding content so now's a good time to look at these. If you would like to customize the look of your TWiki, see TWiki:TWiki.TWikiSkinsSupplement.

Failing that, please check TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki on TWiki.org, the supplemental documentation that help you install TWiki on different platforms, environments and web hosting sites. For example:

• For Unix or Linux, check TWiki:Codev.TWikiOnUnix and TWiki:Codev.TWikiOnLinux.
• For Windows, check the TWiki:Codev.WindowsInstallCookbook.
• For MacOS X, check TWiki:Codev.TWikiOnMacOSX.

It is also advisable to review TWiki:Codev.KnownIssuesOfTWiki04x01.

If you need help, ask a question in the TWiki:Support web or on TWiki:Codev/TWikiIRC (irc.freenode.net, channel #twiki)

Appendixes

TWiki System Requirements

Low client and server base requirements are core features that keep TWiki widely deployable, particularly across a range of browser platforms and versions.

Server Requirements

TWiki is written in Perl 5, uses a number of shell commands, and requires RCS (Revision Control System), a GNU Free Software package. TWiki is developed in a basic Linux/Apache environment. It also works with Microsoft Windows, and should have no problem on any other platform that meets the requirements.

<-- SMELL: Macintosh version? -->

Required CPAN Modules

The following Perl CPAN modules are used by TWiki:

Optional CPAN Modules

The following Perl modules may be used by TWiki:

Most of them will probably already be available in your installation. You can check version numbers with the configure script, or if you're still trying to get to that point, check from the command line like this:

perl -e 'use FileHandle; print $FileHandle::VERSION."\n"'

Client Requirements

The TWiki standard installation has relatively low browser requirements:

• HTML 3.2 compliant
• Cookies, if persistent sessions are required

CSS and Javascript are used in most skins, although there is a low-fat skin (Classic skin) available that minimises these requirements. Some skins will require more recent releases of browsers. The default skin (Pattern) is tested on IE 6, Safari, and Mozilla 5.0 based browsers (such as Firefox).

You can easily select a balance of browser capability versus look and feel. Try the installed skins at TWiki/TWikiSkinBrowser and more at TWiki:Plugins.SkinPackage.

Important note about TWiki Plugins

• Plugins can require just about anything - browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java applets, cookies, specific Perl modules,... - check the individual Plugin specs.
  • Note: Plugins included in the TWiki distribution do not add requirements, except for the CommentPlugin which requires Perl 5.6.1.

Notes on Installing TWiki on Non-Root Account

The following supplemental notes to the Basic Installation instructions apply to installing TWiki on a system where you don't have Unix/Linux root (administrator) privileges, for example, on a hosted Web account or an intranet server administered by someone else.

Referring to the Basic Installation steps presented above:

• Step 2: If you cannot unpack the TWiki distribution directly in your installation directory, you can unpack the distribution on your local PC and then manually create the directory structure on your host server and upload the files as follows:
  • Using the table below, create a directory structure on your host server
  • Upload the TWiki files by FTP (transfer as text except for the image files in pub directory.)
  • Note: Don't worry if you are not able to put the twiki/lib directory at the same level as the twiki/bin directory (e.g. because CGI bin directories can't be under your home directory and you don't have root access). You can create this directory elsewhere and configure the twiki/bin/setlib.cfg file (done in Step 2).

TWiki dir:	What it is:	Where to copy:	Example:
twiki	start-up pages	root TWiki dir	/home/smith/twiki/
twiki/bin	CGI bin	CGI-enabled dir	/home/smith/twiki/bin
twiki/lib	library files	same level as twiki/bin	/home/smith/twiki/lib
twiki/locale	language files	dir secure from public access	/home/smith/twiki/locale
twiki/pub	public files	htdoc enabled dir	/home/smith/twiki/pub
twiki/data	topic data	dir secure from public access	/home/smith/twiki/data
twiki/templates	web templates	dir secure from public access	/home/smith/twiki/templates
twiki/tools	TWiki utlilities	dir secure from public access	/home/smith/twiki/tools

• Step 3: Files in the pub directory must be readable as a url. This means that directory permissions should be set to 755 (or 775 ) and file permissions should be set to 644 (or 664). If you can run a chmod command, you can accomplish this in two quick steps by running these commands from the root direct:
  • chmod -R 755 pub
  • chmod 644 `find pub -type f -print`
  • In addition, you should create a .htaccess file in the pub directory, using the template included in the root level of the distribution entitled pub-htaccess.txt.
  • Note: This setup does not provide for absolute security for TWiki attachments. For more information, see TWiki:Codev.SecuringYourTWiki.

• Step 6: In order to run the configure script, create a file called .htaccess in the bin directory that includes the following single line: SetHandler cgi-script . This informs the server to treat all the perl scripts in the bin directory as scripts.

For additional information about installing TWiki on a hosted accounts, see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#WebHostingSites

Installing Manually Without Configure

It is highly recommended to use run configure from the browser when setting up TWiki. Configure does a lot of the hard work for you.

But there may be instances where you do not want to use configure or where configure simply won't run because of a missing dependency.

The manual steps you have to take are:

• Copy the file lib/TWiki.spec to lib/LocalSite.cfg
• Remove the comment # in front of $TWiki::cfg{DefaultUrlHost}, $TWiki::cfg{ScriptUrlPath}, $TWiki::cfg{PubUrlPath}, $TWiki::cfg{PubDir}, $TWiki::cfg{TemplateDir}, $TWiki::cfg{DataDir}, $TWiki::cfg{LocalesDir}, and $TWiki::cfg{OS} and make sure these settings have the correct values.
• Make sure to define at least these settings: $TWiki::cfg{LoginManager}, $TWiki::cfg{WebMasterEmail}, $TWiki::cfg{SMTP}{MAILHOST}, $TWiki::cfg{SMTP}{SENDERHOST}.

• Enable internationalization if needed - read TWiki:TWiki/InstallationWithI18N (supplemental documentation on TWiki.org)

• Review known issues - visit TWiki:Codev.KnownIssuesOfTWiki04x01 and fix issues that apply to you.

• • Explicit instructions for doing this are beyond the scope of this document, though there is a lot of advice on TWiki.org covering different configurations of webserver. To help you out, there's an example Apache httpd.conf file in twiki_httpd_conf.txt at the root of the package. This file also contains advice on securing your installation. Additionally, see TWiki:TWiki.ApacheConfigGenerator. There's also a script called tools/rewriteshebang.pl to help you in fixing up the shebang lines in your CGI scripts.