Sunday 21 March 2010

Free Wiki-Server Setup With Ubuntu, Easy!

Let's assume you have any machine that can run Ubuntu. 64 bits or 32 (i386), doesn't matter. You can easily turn this machine a wiki server. With this mini guide and without any-cost; you'll have a very efficient web-server with PHP5 support / a Wiki / an SSH-Server. First things first, here's my configuration and my end-results before you lose time on reading this post.

** 3GB Memory (my experience tells me if you have only a single machine for everything you are going to do, memory is more important than CPU, well most of the cases)
** AMD Athlon X2 64 bit @ 2.0 GHz (my mainboard is the cheapest mainboard I could find with everything on-board (ECS))
** 16 GB SSD Disk (well in such systems IO is actually more important than CPU, again most of the cases, but this wiki-thing I am setting up is going to be used only by 5 or less people so IO for this will be no importance. If yours is going to be serve as a more serious manner, then please choose accordingly. I chose this way cause this machine will be in my study-room and I don't like that much computer sound (I even disabled the fans, it works ok))
** 64 bits Ubuntu with broadband Internet connection set and ready to go (yes, this part I am assuming you can do without this tiny-miny guide)

Guess we are ready to install the software; one last thing, a reminder: you have your root password or never set root user of Ubuntu right? Ok then, let's start.

1. From the Administration / Synaptic Package Manager choose the "repositories" from the main menu. Find the Preferred Server and make it to "Main Server" if it is not already set. (This will help the download process and finding the necessary software for our installation process)

2. Open up the Terminal and then type

sudo apt-get install apache2

This will install the Apache 2.2 Web Server

3. After that type this to install PHP 5 automatically to your Apache Web Server.

sudo apt-get install php5

4. Again type this in Terminal Window

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

This was already done when I did it but every other detailed guide I found says "do this just to be safe" so I am saying too.

5. Well installation process for the infrastructure part is done, I restarted my computer, and typed localhost in my browser and Apache's "It works" was there. But if you don't want to restart just type this to restart only you Apache. It'll take only a moment to do so...

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

6. Go to this address: http://pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Download and download the latest version of PmWiki

7. Extract the compressed files to the location of /var/www/ of your Ubuntu... This directory is your home www of Apache.

8. As soon as you type the url of the wiki page you are going to see your HomeWikiServer. It's going to ask you a final creation of a directory and giving 777 to it, but this part I'll leave it to the Wiki Page Instructions. It is only 2 commands you are going to copy paste anyway.

9. There you have your Wiki now for SSH-Server to connect your server and access the logs and etc and control/administer it remotely.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

There you have your SSH-server too, but let me remind you now you may want to reconsider your password strength and stuff, this is a nice little guide you can take a look.

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start


Restart your Ubuntu just to be safe and you're done...

I assumed you have a very very basic understanding of Linux at least. I don't know if this will help anyone, but I tried anyway. Enjoy... Thanks for reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment