RcsLite test installs

Cobalt RaQ3 hosted install

Starting package: TWiki20011201.zip
Updated via CVS: 2002 April 29, ~11:30pm
Host: http://transitionalmedia.com/
Host Env: Cobalt Raq3, perl 5.00503, cgi_wrap, no shell access
Site: http://freedata.ca/~twiki/

(mostly) followed instructions in TWikiInstallationGuide

• renamed bin/* to bin/*.pl
• chmod 755 bin/*.pl (from cygwin commandline ftp)
• changed RCS locks from nobody to twiki (my username for this install)

The setup is insecure. I don't know if this would be common to any Raq3 setup or just this particular host.

• apache returns the list of files if pointed to a dir with no index.html
• scripts are executed as the user name instead of httpd
  • I understand this may be a pecularity of cgi_wrap, no known fix? xref CobaltRaqInstall
• $templateDir is writable by the user (should be httpd ), can't change this myself

Initially tried using RcsLite. It almost works. The first problem was encountered when viewing any page:

=Too many arguments for open at ../lib/TWiki/Store/RcsLite.pm line 460, near ") ) "=

The fix:

460: #original: if( ! open( $out, ">", $self->rcsFile() ) ) {
     #matt.wilkie:
     if( ! open( $out, "> $self->rcsFile()" ) ) { 

Next problem on trying to save an edited topic:

Can't use an undefined value as a symbol reference at ../lib/TWiki/Store/RcsLite.pm line 191.

Fix suggested here by JohnTalintyre is:

190: # original: my $fh;
     # matt.wilkie:
     my $fh = "";

which results in: Can't use string ("") as a symbol ref while "strict refs" in use at ../lib/TWiki/Store/RcsLite.pm line 193.

In an email discussion JohnTalintyre commented: Looks like all your problems are with open. What OS are you using? I can only guess that it's compaining that fh isn't defined here (although can't see why it should be)

At this point I tried using the default RCS store instead of RcsLite. Much to my surprise it "just worked". Some of the install docs mention shell access to compile RCS is required, which is why I didn't try this first.

So, for my purposes I could just continue with the working default RCS, however I am willing to be a guinea pig if people wan't to continue debugging this. (Please keep in mind I know next to nothing about perl).

-- MattWilkie - 05 May 2002

Re the directory indexes - this is insecure, I have submitted some sample .htaccess files that would fix this. Try this in a .htaccess file in the TWiki root directory (parent of 'bin'):

# The first path here must be a URL path, not a file pathname
# Redirect /index.html http://yourdomain.com/bin/view.pl

Options -Indexes

You may also find you can get away without renaming the scripts if you add a SetHandler cgi-script to the bin/.htaccess.

The use of your username is in fact very secure, from the point of view that other people can't arbitrarily trash your TWiki files - see SecureSetup. The only downside of this setup is that anyone who manages to find a hole in the TWiki scripts can modify your files, but then that was true of the normal 'nobody' setup as well, this is not a disadvantage really.

I created the twiki user so I could keep the experimental TWiki apart from the mainsite with a minimum of fuss. I just didn't realize this was also a security benefit. : ) --mw

Generally, all your files should be mode 644 or 755 (if executable or directories) - but check with your hosting docs, as I found that when using suexec the wrong permissions would cause everything to fail with an 'internal server error' (see DreamhostSetupNotes).

Re the RCS program 'just working' - most Linuxes that have not been specifically stripped down will include RCS. Another example is the Debian Linux used by Dreamhost. Good news that Cobalt Raqs support RCS, as they are very popular for dedicated servers.

Since you have no shell access, you may want to try CGI-Telnet from TWikiDebugging.

I did, but alas it does not work and the error message returned is useless for debugging. --mw

Good news that the fix for Cobalt Raqs worked!

uhm, which fix are you refering to? RcsLite is not working. --mw

-- RichardDonkin - 07 May 2002

Comments inline, above.

-- MattWilkie - 10 May 2002

Re CGI-Telnet, all I can suggest is to use TWikiDebugging to try to find out where it is failing, as this would probably be a useful tool for Cobalt Raqs - perhaps the cgiwrap tool used on Raqs is causing the problem. For anyone about to choose a web host for TWiki, I can only urge them to choose a host with shell access to make their lives a lot easier (see TWikiOnWebHostingSites).

If you let me know the error message from CGI-Telnet, including the Apache error log info, I'll see what I can do.

As for the Cobalt Raq fix, I was referring to the one in CobaltRaqInstall - before this, TWiki did not work with the Raq cgiwrap setup. Of course, I realise you want to get RcsLite working, but at least TWiki is working out of the box on Raqs, where it didn't before.

-- RichardDonkin - 10 May 2002

Hopefully fixed now by use of FileHandle in a couple of places.

-- JohnTalintyre - 25 May 2002

I'm a little confused ... this does not seem to be a test installation of RcsLite at all. Matt looks like he went back to the standard RCS installation. I've looked at Twiki, Rcs.pm, and RcsLite.pm , and I don't see a non-trivial way to replace the system calls to RCS with Rcs.pm. Could someone fill in the blanks a little? Do I need to write my own perl versions of ci, co, rcs etc using Rcs.pm and put them in the path?

-- AndrewRothfusz - 22 Jun 2002

You have to take all the code from CVS, you'll see that all the system calls to RCS have been replaced.

-- JohnTalintyre - 24 Jun 2002

Could someone with a clue please educate those of us who just want to implement Twiki, but don't have background in Perl or RCS, tell me... Is it possible to implement Twiki with RcsLite or not?

More generally, I don't have the privs to compile RCS on our development box and can't get Support to do it. Installing with RCSLite was my only option here. I'm a PC/Oracle programmer, but don't have any Linux/Unix experience to make all this happen. Do I have any chance in hell of getting Twiki or some other flavor installed on a local system??? If you can suggest something, could you please send a private email to my address, so I don't clog up progress here?

Thanks,

Phil

-- PhilBarnes - 24 Jun 2002

With RcsLite TWiki can run without RCS executables. For this a recent beta or code directly from CVS is needed. However, as noted in TWiki.cfg, this has not been widely tested yet and I would not recommend it for production use without first testing it locally.

-- JohnTalintyre - 25 Jun 2002