Building a TWiki VM for production use

A few scribbled ideas on preparing / tuning and offering a TWiki vm for production use if to be downloadable from twiki.org. Maybe even supported.

Comments more than welcome.

Objectives, starting out

• Tune for Windows use
• Sensible defaults, try to lower AdminSkillsAssumptions
• Focus on environment (Apache / Linux), TWiki itself can be replaced or extended in a snap

Need to have

• Tighten Samba security, user access to file shares / network neighbourhood should be tied to OS user authentication
• Decide finally on default hostname
• HOWTO Change unix passwords - security PREREQUISITE for using vm
• HOWTO Change the hostname to your likings
  • workgroup / server name in samba config
  • hostname in /etc/hosts
  • hostname
• Document simple userdriven update procedures
  • HOWTO Update to new TWiki version
  • HOWTO Update to bugfix release
  • HOWTO Install a plugin
• HOWTO enable e-mail subsystem (registration, notification, actions)
• Internationalisation
  • HOWTO change L10N / I18N-setup to other languages
  • Default language: en_US
  • Installed locales - same as translations

Nice to have

• Run SpeedyCGI on 'view' as default. Adds problem of how to kill speedy_backends when there's updates to configuration, done e.g. via configure.

Possible tailored distributions

• Distribution prepared for Kerberos / Windows Active Directory Authentication, "pluggable" in typical MS environment.
• Distribution prepared for graphical plugins, seems to be a culprit for many people, getting graphic environment set up properly.
  • Install graphics tools for rendering
    • graphviz, htmldoc, pdfgen, imagemagick, dot, etc
• Distribution containing a full or many-as-possible set of plugins

Thoughts

• Easy to set up a TWiki for single users running Windows on LAN / intranet.
• Kind of "plug-in"-TWiki installation - "hand-over" distribution for ESA / VMware department, and it is installed in a blitz. Can choose to security review the vm, or build new one from scratch.
  • Allows for condensed POC trials on TWiki setups - easy setup, easy removal, once the vm is deleted, everything else is left untouched. .. leads to stuff like:
  • HowToEvaluateTWikiInYourEnterprise
    • AchiveManagementGoForPOCEvaluation
    • PerformPreEvaluationActivitiesForPOC
      • Decide which other wikis to include in test - http://wikimatrix.org/
    • MakeTWikiLookLikeTheRestOfYourIntranet
    • DecideOnAuthorisationMechanismForPOC
    • InstallTWikiForPOC
    • RunTWikiPOC
    • EvaluateTWikiPOC
  • VMware installations (ESX/GSX Server) are typically done on multi-headed (dual-cpu/core or more) equipment, good for TWiki performance

-- SteffenPoulsen - 19 Jan 2006