Question

I'm installing TWiki on a hosted server following DreamhostSetupNotes, and it's promising so far. What I am having trouble with are two things:

1. Authorization doesn't run. TWiki defaults to using TWikiGuest and never prompts for a login. Why? Solution: The .htaccess and TWiki.cfg weren't set up correctly.
2. Skins are not applied. The skin files are there, as are all the settings, but they don't get applied (not even by forcing it in the URL). Why? The skin is not set in the pre-user settings for TWikiGuest, so that's not the cause either. Solution: It helps to make sure all the files are present.

The website is a copy of my current TWiki (because I am migrating from a private server to a hosted one). All the same files are present in both TWikis. The only difference is minor changes in TWiki.TWikiPreferences and TWiki.cfg that relate to the WIKIHOMEURL.

• The problem TWiki: http://gbdk.dreamhost.com/bin/view
• The real-time testenv: http://gbdk.dreamhost.com/bin/testenv
• The good TWiki master: http://twiki.no-ip.com/bin/view
  • Note that this TWiki site does work with authorization and skins.

Please find the testenv output and the TWiki.cfg attached as well. See also: DreamhostSetupNotes.

Environment

-- TorbenGB - 01 Sep 2003

Answer

If you aren't getting a prompt for login, most likely the .htaccess file (not .htaccess.txt) in your twiki/bin directory is not set up correctly. If you copied it from your first TWiki, it may need editing - please attach it here if possible, or send me an email. Also, the TWikiAlphaRelease has some sample .htaccess files for all directories, not included in the main distribution, which may help.

Not sure about the skin issue, but if the skin set in the per-user home page the above would explain why this is happening.

Of course, checking your Apache error log etc as in SupportGuidelines is a good idea - this is under ~/logs or similar on Dreamhost. The TWiki debug and warning logs may also help.

-- RichardDonkin - 01 Sep 2003

Thank you for the pointers Richard, I'll take a look at the .htaccess and various log files. Access permissions would be a good bet for this issue.

I just checked the TWikiGuest skin setting and there is none, meaning it should inherit the global setting in TWiki.TWikiPreferences. Perhaps the logs can tell me that. I'll check and report back.

-- TorbenGB - 02 Sep 2003

* Sheepish grin *   - oops... I thought I had copied all the files from the old host to the new one, but I found that certain files were not copied, including the templates directory. That explains of course why the skin didn't show - it wasn't installed. (Warning: Turn on brain before operating heavy machinery.) With the template files and plugins and all the other missing bits'n'pieces, the site now looks as it should. Now I can look at the user-login issue too.

-- TorbenGB - 04 Sep 2003

One hint on copying TWiki installations between hosts - use tar on Unix/Linux to ensure that you capture all the .htaccess files, as well as the permissions for all files. Something like tar czvf twiki-install.zip . from within the twiki directory should work with GNU tar.

-- RichardDonkin - 04 Sep 2003

Closing this issue - it was solved a few days ago. It boiled down to a case of RTFM, more or less. TWiki is great, though still somewhat tricky to install for Unix novices. I learned a few things here.

-- TorbenGB - 17 Sep 2003