Question

I have installed Twiki on Red Hat Linux. I did it as a root user. This installation is not working properly after going through step 1 to 5.

PROBLEM: I able to browse URL http://localhost/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome but NOT able to browse further - http://localhost/twiki/bin/view.pl/Main/TWikiUsers, ..../TwikiGroups, etc. And gives Object Not Found error.

Is installation through root user login causing the problem? How can I resolve this problem?

Environment

-- NikhilKarkhanis - 02 Sep 2003

Answer

Just a guess (aren't they all, though?), look at the two URLs you used, one used view (it worked), one used view.pl (it didn't work) — try removing the ".pl" from the second.

-- RandyKramer - 02 Sep 2003

Please attach the testenv output as per SupportGuidelines, and of course any error output as requested in the guidelines. Without this, we really are guessing, as Randy says. Please be sure to read the bit in SupportGuidelines about only telepaths being able to answer support questions with this much information

It's very likely that installing TWiki as a root user is causing the problem - it would be best to remove what you've done and then create a new user, e.g. twiki, and install under that. More secure, easier to debug, etc.

-- RichardDonkin - 02 Sep 2003

The Guesswork worked! I'm a CGI-Perl-layman. Hence I could not imagine much. I refered the manual but it was diverting the track. So it was not just guess.

Thank you Randy your observation, which was very crucial one! Here is the part of the manual which actually misled me. And hence it can be modified:

{ Step 2: Set File Permissions

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 elsewhere, change the path to Perl in the first line of each script in the twiki/bin directory, or create a symbolic link from /usr/bin/perl. IMPORTANT: On ISP-hosted accounts, Perl CGI scripts usually require a .cgi extension to run. Some systems need .pl, the regular Perl extension. Modify all twiki/bin script filenames if necessary. }

I think this is not just valid on ISP-hosted accounts but others as well. Let us make it look general, than using words like some systems or ISP-hosted accounts. Or we have the copies of the script with .cgi / .pl extension also bundelled along. To avoid problems for a CGI-Perl-layman like me.

Thanks Richard. Also Root Login may cause problems in access privileges. I'm yet to face it I suppose. I would work on your suggestion too.

-- NikhilKarkhanis - 03 Sep 2003

I updated the TWikiInstallationGuide here. The real solution is an installation script such as TWikiUnixInstaller (not official at this point).

Now that you have TWiki installed OK, it should be fairly quick to re-install as a non-root user - I'd really encourage doing this soon to avoid having to log on as root all the time (which is particularly not recommended for non-experts in Unix/Linux).

-- RichardDonkin - 04 Sep 2003