Dobrica Pavlinušić's random unstructured stuff
SocialText Open Wiki Install: Revision 40
Here are some quick notes about installation on clean Debian etch machine

This page is aimed towards system administrators, if you want information how to customize design of page take a look at [SocialText CSS design] (which is included on bottom of this page).

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^ Helper packages

.pre
sudo apt-get install wv xpdf-utils unrtf unzip links
sudo cpan MP3::Tag
.pre

^ Install source

.pre
svn co https://repo.socialtext.net:8999/svn/socialtext/trunk socialtext
cd socialtext/nlw
./configure --socialtext-open 1 --apache-proxy 0 --force-ssl-login 1
make
sudo bash
make install
update-rc.d -f apache-perl remove
update-rc.d st-apache defaults
update-rc.d ceqlotron defaults
/etc/init.d/st-apache start
/etc/init.d/ceqlotron start
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^ Update existing checkout

.pre
cd socaialtext
svn update
cd nlw
./configure --socialtext-open 1 --apache-proxy 0 --force-ssl-login 1
make
make test
sudo make install
sudo /etc/init.d/st-apache stop
sudo /etc/init.d/ceqlotron restart
sudo /etc/init.d/st-apache start
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^ Add new admin user

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sudo -u www-data st-admin create-user --email dpavlin@rot13.org --password wikidream \
--first-name Dobrica --last-name Pavlinusic
sudo -u www-data st-admin add-workspace-admin --email dpavlin@rot13.org
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^ Configuring mailer

^^ postfix

Install and configure postfix for mail delivery

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apt-get install postfix
vi /etc/postfix/main
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Important lines are following:

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alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/etc/aliases.deliver
alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/etc/aliases.deliver
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They add `/etc/aliases.deliver` (which SocialText generates with names of wiki workspaces) to configuration.

Next, we need to create `/etc/aliases.deliver.db` which is binary version of database needed for postfix. It's extremly important that `aliases.deliver` file is owned by `www-data` because postfix picks user which will do e-mail delivery based on owner of aliases file. If your owner of `/var/www/socialtext` is some other user than `www-data` you will have to modify following command appropriately:

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# make www-data owner of file
chown www-data:root /etc/aliases.deliver
# allow root group to write in /etc/
chmod g+w /etc/
# create /etc/aliases.deliver.db
sudo postalias /etc/aliases.deliver
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Now restart postfix as `root` user

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/etc/init.d/postfix restart
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^^ crontab

Add following to `/etc/crontab` to refresh aliases database for postfix regularly:

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*/10 * * * * root postalias /etc/aliases.deliver
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^ Handling e-mail errors

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sudo tail /var/log/mail.log | grep st-admin
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> dsn=5.3.0, status=bounced (Command died with status 13: "/usr/local/bin/st-admin deliver-email --workspace bio". Command output: open nlw-stats.log: Permission denied at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/Socialtext/Statistics.pm line 103. END failed--call queue aborted. )

This problem is reported on socialtext-devel list, but no response so far.

.pre
# sudo vi +24 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/Socialtext/Statistics.pm
Readonly my $LOG_NAME => 'nlw-stats.log';
Readonly my $LOG_PATH => $ENV{APACHE_LOG_DIR}
? "$ENV{APACHE_LOG_DIR}/$LOG_NAME"
: "/tmp/$LOG_NAME";
.pre

^ Customize template

Remove "Did you know?" box from dashboard

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sudo vi /usr/share/nlw/template/view/homepage
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Or from your `socialtext/nlw` checkout (so that `make install` will install correct one):

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vi share/template/view/homepage
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^ Fix RSS feed errors

If you are using `{fetchrss http://blog.rot13.org/index.xml}` and having problems with RSS feeds, try to re-installing two perl modules:

.pre
sudo cpan XML::RSS XML::Atom
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^ Change e-mail address of workspace

This configuration change will feed responses to e-mails generated by wiki back into wiki. You might not want to do that! :-)

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st-admin set-workspace-config --workspace rot13 \
email_notification_from_address '"random unstructured stuff" <rot13@wiki.rot13.org>'
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^ Access simple version of page

Every SocialText wiki has a lite version available at http://wiki.example.com/lite/page/:workspace/

For this wiki it's http://saturn.ffzg.hr/lite/page/rot13

^ Configure sane resource usage

Since SocialText wiki is designed to run on dedicated box, it's resource requiements are not for faint-hearted users. However, if you are installing it on machine with constraint hardware (or virtual machine) you might want to decrease number of `apache-perl` server which are created on startup and kept running. Each apache child takes about 80Mb of RAM, so lowering number of children will have beneficial effect on your memory usage.

If you open `/etc/apache-perl/st-httpd.conf` you will see comment that describes command used for generating this configuration. So, let's edit command limits, re-create config and restart apache:

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vi +485 dev-bin/gen-config
dev-bin/gen-config --sitewide --apache-proxy=0 --hostname=saturn.ffzg.hr
/etc/init.d/st-apache reload
.pre

^ Convert RSS feed URLs to absolute

If you need to fetch RSS feeds from remote URLs and those providers create only relative URLs in feeds (like svnweb does) that this patch might help you: {file: FetchRSSPlugin.pm.diff}

It does dirty magic to prepend hostname before URL in feeds making them work from Socialtext wiki which is on different host.

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{include: [SocialText CSS design]}