Hosting Your Wiki with EECS

Thanks for your interest in using the EECS wiki hosting service. Our level of service is focused on the infrastructure needed to run a wiki and we leave the configuration and maintenance of your wiki to you.

We’ve settled on PmWiki for wiki software as it is simple and file-based (i.e. there is no database system involved). We are running it in a WikiFarm configuration.

All wikis are hosted under https://wiki.eecs.berkeley.edu/<name> where <name> is the name of your wiki.

What We Provide

• The webserver and PHP installation needed to run PmWiki.
• The base installation of PmWiki.
• A tarball of the files you'll need to get started.
• wiki-users@lists mailing list to announce downtime, maintenance, upgrades, etc. for the wiki server.

What You’re Responsible For

• Project space to host your wiki in.
• Configuration of your instance of PmWiki.
• The design, content, and administration of your wiki.

To Get Started

1. Create a directory to hold your wiki in your project space (i.e. /project/eecs/<groupname>/wiki). If you don’t have any project space, you may purchase some.
2. Download the pmwiki starter kit and uncompress it in the directory you created in step 1 (i.e. cd <your directory> and tar zxvf pmwiki-starter-kit.tar.gz).
3. Change the owner of the wiki.d directory to webuser (from Windows, make sure the EECS\webuser has write access). This is necessary to allow the webserver to write files in that directory (i.e. the pages of your wiki).
4. Edit local/config.php and change the text CHANGEME in the following places:
   1. DefaultPasswords['admin'] to something only you know, this is the password for the admin user.
   2. $AnalyzeKey to something only you know.
   3. $WikiTitle to the title or “full name” of your wiki (spaces, mixed case, etc. are fine here).
   4. $ScriptUrl to the “short name” of your wiki (no spaces, please). This will be used to build the URL to your wiki (https://wiki.eecs.berkeley.edu/<name>). It is usually good to use a short, lowercase name here.
5. Edit .htaccess in the directory you created in step 1. Change CHANGEME to the “short name” you set in step 4.
6. E-mail help@eecs.berkeley.edu with the following information:
   • The path to your wiki on project space (where you uncompressed the starter kit earlier).
   • The “full name” of you wiki (which you set in step 4).
   • The “short name” of your wiki (which you also set in step 4).
   • A contact e-mail address to notify for wiki outages, server maintenance, upgrades, etc. This e-mail will be subscribed to the wiki-users@lists mailing list.

Configuring Your Wiki

First off, read the documentation provided by PmWiki. This will tell you pretty much all you need to know about running your wiki.

Also look at local/config.php which holds many of the configuration options you can set. It is well-documented and you may want to enable or disable some of the options therein.

Users and Permissions

By default, only the admin user can access the wiki. The AuthUser extension enabled, so you can manage users and groups from within the wiki itself.

If you’d like to use LDAP authentication, uncomment the ldap line towards the bottom of the “Site/AuthUser” page of your wiki and use:

ldaps://ldap.eecs.berkeley.edu/ou=people,o=eecs.berkeley.edu,dc=eecs,dc=berkeley,dc=edu?uid?sub

as the URI (Note: Ensure the URI begins with ldaps or you will be submitting passwords in cleartext over the network).

You may then specify user’s LDAP usernames in groups, the config file, etc. and they will be able to authenticate with their LDAP password.

If You Need Help

Please e-mail help@eecs.berkeley.edu with any questions you have.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the manpower to configure your instance for you or consult on your design or content, but if there is a technical issue we'll work to resolve it ASAP.