Deki Wiki: Uploads larger than 2MB failing

Under 1.8.3c - after making the recommended changes to /etc/init.d/php.ini, and restarting apache2 and dekihost, and then attempting to upload a file greater than the php.ini default of 2M, the "Uploading" dialog box displayed the contents of the http://deki-hayes site - instead of the upload windows, or generating an error message. After refreshing the browser at http://deki-hayes, LDAP (AD) logins started failing.

I proceeded to modify memory_limit in the php.ini per this forum post. I actually specified 256M to see what would happen - then again restarted apache2 and dekihost - and now all is functioning normally. AD logins work, and I'm able to upload larger files.

Getting email links to Work with Deki Wiki and Exchange

As I've mentioned, we're running Deki Wiki 1.8.3c on Ubuntu 7.10 and we have an SBS/Exchange 2003 box serving as our SMTP server. In DekiWiki, whenever someone uses the “email link” functionality, we want the email that get’s generated to be delivered to their Exchange mailbox. So, after getting LDAP integration configured properly, we looked at the email piece. In addition to the FAQ, there are some resources in the Deki Wiki forums.

If you’ve got a similar site configuration, you can do everything to get this working through either DekiWiki's Control Panel web interface, or though the LocalSettings.php file. Or, you could install a local MTA on Ubuntu like Exim4 - but it's not really necessary. Since we have an SMTP server in production, we're using PHPMailer which is part of the DekiWiki pre-req install list... it passes messages though to the SMTP server. From Deki Wiki, go here:

• Go to Tools>Control Panel>Configuration
• admin/smtp-server: Exchange server IP address
• mail/smtp-servers: Exchange server IP address (or mail.mydomain.com)

Note, you may need to add the "mail/smtp-servers" option in the control panel.

Automating Restores for Deki Wiki

If you've got your backup script running for Deki Wiki, and stakeholders are busy adding knowledge - it might be time to build a test environment if you haven't already. After the backup of the production server runs, we're restoring the attachments, and .sql file to our test box. There are some obvious benefits of having a test environment, including...

1. We have a tested and automated restore procedure that we know works because it happens every day
   
2. A box we can test stuff without having to worry about breaking a production box
   

All you need to do is build out your test box following the same procedures as your production box, then modify your backup script to become a restore script like so... and then schedule the script to run as a cron job.


#!/bin/bash
today="$(date +%a)"

#mount Windows Share
sudo -u root -p password smbmount //server/share /mnt/subdir -o username=user,password=password,rw

#copy down Today's database and attachments
cp /mnt/share/$today.wikidb-backup.sql /home/user/tmprestore
cp /mnt/share/$today.attachments-backup.tar.gz /home/user/tmprestore

#restore Today's database and attachments
cd /home/user/tmprestore
sudo mysql -uroot -ppassword wikidb < $today.wikidb-backup.sql cd /var/www/deki-hayes sudo tar xvzpf /home/user/tmprestore/$today.attachments-backup.tar.gz

Getting daily backups running in Deki Wiki

The backup and restore process for Deki Wiki is pretty easy. No backup agents, no fights, just a short script and a tested procedure.

Dump your database to a .sql file, archive the attachments, put it in a bash script, and schedule it via the root Crontab (sudo crontab -e).

The script linked above is the 95% solution. The only thing you really need to do is have a share on another box somewhere mounted in the /mnt directory. So create a subdirectory “/mnt/backup”, and then use smbmount to mount the new share off of that subdirectory. Just make sure that the credentials you specify with smbmount exist on the target box. Something like this will work in a pinch...

#!/bin/bash
today="$(date +%a)"

#mount Windows Share
smbmount //windowsbox/apps /mnt/backup -o username=username,password=password,rw

#dump today's database
mysqldump -uroot -psqlrootpass wikidb > /mnt/backup/wiki/$today.wikidb-backup.sql

#dump today's attachments
cd /opt/deki-hayes/
tar czf /mnt/backup/wiki/$today.attachments-backup.tar.gz attachments

#Log the job status
echo "Nighly Backup Successful: $(date)" >> /var/log/dekiwikibackup.log




So you moved Deki Wiki to a new box, and now your attachments aren't working?

If you’re in the process of rebuilding, moving, or testing the backup/restore procedure to get Deki Wiki onto a new box like so, but your attachment links aren’t working, make sure that your attachment path is accurate. You can set this from the Deki Wiki web Control Panel (under Control Panel>Configuration> “storage/fs/path” configuration). In my case, I needed to create an attachments folder and point it here: /opt/deki-hayes/attachments.

Getting Virtual Machine Additions (for Virtual Server) to work in Ubuntu 7.10

As anyone who’s worked with Linux distros under Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 can attest, getting them running is not particularly fun. Assuming you get past video problems, and can get your guest built, you then have to contend with limited support for vm-additions, CPU utilization problems, and the like. With apparent Linux-support improvements forthcoming, you might be able to wait. But if you can’t wait, it is possible to get the vm-additions installed and working in Ununtu. The key to making this work is converting the RPM’s to DEB packages via alien. Despite forum posts to the contrary, it will work.

After you’ve got your Ubuntu guest installed and running, grab a copy of the vm-additions and either mount the ISO in the guest via the management console, or just extract and copy the RPM’s over to the guest instance via SMB . After doing so, use alien to convert the RPM files to .DEB files, like so:

“$ sudo alien -k --script vmadd-full-2.0-1.i386.rpm”

Now that you’ve converted them, you should have *.DEB files in the directory you were working in. Go ahead and launch your package installer (e.g. GDebi Package Installer), and install vmadd-full-rhel_2.0-1_i386.deb. It should display a message to the effect of … “The Microsoft VM additions… (converted by alien)”. At this point, Gnome crashed on me (down at the bottom of VMAdditionsForLinux-README.txt in the vm-additions ISO it refers to having to exit the GUI). I’m telling you this because Gnome crashing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s broken.

If you’ve reached this point, for good measure check the install log.

It lives here… /var/log/vmadd-install.log

The only thing left to do would be test it…

“$ /etc/init.d/vmadd start”
“$ /etc/init.d/vmadd-heartbeat start
“$ /etc/init.d/vmadd-timesync start

DekiWiki - Active Directory Integration

As far as Active Directory integration with Dekiwiki goes, it's actually not too difficult to setup.

First, they've got some setup instructions here, plus they have active forums.

The only problem I ran into with the instructions was with the searchbase syntax in the configuration. The instructions make it appear that you should specify the hostname twice… once in the hostname configuration, and then again as part of the Distinguished Name (DN) that you’re providing for searchbase. For instance, I was specifying “dc=DCServerName, DC=domain, DC=local. On the client side (the web interface), authentication attempts were failing, but while watching DCServerName’s security log, it showed successful authentication attempts coming from the Dekiwiki box.

To resolve this, all I did was remove the dc=DCServerName from the searchbase. Once I removed it, such that the searchbase configuration was dc=domain, dc=local –it worked.
As an aside, all of this was done in a standard SBS 2003 R2 environment. Nothing extra or special required on the SBS server.

Deki Wiki Intro - CMS and Wiki features in any enviornment

We’ve been trialing Deki Wiki a bit in a pilot group lately. What’s DekiWiki? Well, at a glance, it’s a CMS platform - targeted at the wiki-space (Microsoft’s case study). If you’ve used Windows SharePoint Services - WSS 3.0 Wiki-features, think about that. If you haven’t, then think Wikipedia. For us, the need is knowledge transfer and some versioning – both on the dev side and IT pro side. So, without a huge time investment we put together a small group to look at the two WSS and DekiWiki side-by-side. Turns out DekiWiki got everyone’s attention and buy-in more quickly. WSS definitely does a lot of stuff – and it’s not that we won’t use it for our team spaces– but everyone really liked DekiWiki’s Wiki features.

Why is DekiWiki good? Well, it’s built on Mono. Yes, that Mono, the .NETish one that runs Visual Studio binaries without recompiling. Internally, our test box is running Linux in a guest instance under Virtual Server, but you can install it on Windows/IIS as well. Is it AD integrated? Yes. So, yes, SBSers it integrates just as easily into SBS enviornments, and we can all install it, deploy it, and leverage it in our client base. Does it all work automagically? Well, no, not exactly. But it’s not terribly difficult to be up and running in short order. What’s more – it’s got a complete API and can be extended by lots of languages –and it’s free.