LHammonds Tutorials

WORK-IN-PROGRESS --------- WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Greetings and salutations,

I hope this thread will be helpful to those who follow in my foot steps as well as getting any advice based on what I have done / documented.

To discuss this thread, please participate here: Ubuntu Forums

High-level overview

This article will cover the install and configuration of a MoinMoin wiki web app with Apache web server on a dedicated Ubuntu server. The server will be installed inside a virtual machine vSphere running on ESXi servers. Although there are some VMware-specific steps, they are very few and the majority of this documentation will work for other environments such as VirtualBox, Proxmox or even directly installed onto a physical machine. MoinMoin can run independently from Apache but it is Apache allows for larger, more popular sites which is why this configuration was selected.

At the time of this writing, MoinMoin 1.x cannot work with Python3. Ubuntu 20.04 comes with Python3 and even though you can install Python2, not all required libraries can be found in the repository making for a painful installation experience on 20.04. This is why this document covers the installation on the prior version of Ubuntu (18.04) which comes with Python2 and all the various requirements for that version can be easily installed.

Please excuse any ignorance on my part and if you have any advice on doing things better, please let me know. I love feedback and learning better ways of doing things!

After Ubuntu is installed and configured, Apache web server will be installed and configured. Next will be the installation and configuration of MoinMoin. Some extensions will then be installed and tested.

Tools utilized in this process

• Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS, 64-bit
• Apache 2.4.29
• MoinMoin 1.9.11
• Python 2.7.17
• Portable PuTTY 0.74
• Server virtualization such as VMware vSphere or VirtualBox or ProxMox

Helpful links

The list below are sources of information that helped me configure this system as well as some places that might be helpful to me later on as this process continues.

• Ubuntu Documentation
• MoinMoin Install Docs

Assumptions

This documentation will need to make use of some very-specific information that will most-likely be different for each person / location. And as such, I will note some of these in this section. They will be highlighted in red throughout the document as a reminder that you should plug-in your own value rather than actually using my "place-holder" value.

Under no circumstance should you use the actual values I list below. They are place-holders for the real thing. This is just a checklist template you need to have answered before you start the install process.

Wherever you see RED in this document, you need to substitute it for what your company uses. Use the list below as a template you need to have answered before you continue.

• Ubuntu Server name: srv-wiki
• Internet domain: wiki.mydomain.com
• Ubuntu Server IP address: 192.168.107.30
• Ubuntu Admin ID: administrator
• Ubuntu Admin Password: myadminpass
• Email Server (remote): 192.168.107.25
• Wiki admin: wikiadmin
• Wiki admin Password: wikiadminpass

Web Server - Setup an Ubuntu server for use as the web server. This tutorial assumes the server was configured according to this tutorial: How to install Apache web server

Add Non-SSL Apache Site Configuration

Refer to this tutorial but substitute the example domain name and path for your domain.

Add SSL Apache Site Configuration

Please refer to this tutorial but substitute the example domain name and path for your domain.

MoinMoin Prerequisites

EDIT: ah crap, MoinMoin 1.x requires Python 2.7.x and will NOT work with Python 3.x. Ubuntu 20.04 comes with Python 3.8.5.

1. At the server console, type the following to install the additional modules and restart the web service :

   Code: Select all

   sudo apt install ?
   sudo systemctl restart apache2

2. To make sure the modules are loaded, we will create a phpinfo file:

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   sudo touch /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php
   sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php
   sudo chmod 0644 /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php
   echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" >> /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php
   

3. Now open a web browser and go to http://192.168.107.23/phpinfo.php or http://wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php and verify that all the required modules are present.
4. When satisfied everything is good, delete the test files:

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   sudo rm /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/index.html
   sudo rm /var/www/wiki.mydomain.com/phpinfo.php