Setup Deki Wiki

Description

This page basically describes how to configure DekiWiki as a VMWare Virtual Appliance  I had read about it again this month in Linux Magazine.  I had tried it initially in my initial Wiki "bake off", but had issues with it being temporary only, or requiring some sort of pay-for key.  

For me personally, I want one single wiki that shows the look and feel Im after, with allowance for me to keep some private content, along side some public content, and control who can do what.  This is likely doable with Twiki, but I had difficulty with that.  So I setup Twiki (vmTwiki) as my public wiki, and Confluence (vmConfWiki) as my private wiki.  After reading the article, and seeing how you can control readers/writers of some pages in what appears to be a very easy fashion, I felt that !DekiWiki was worth another shot.

Process/Implementation

There were actually very few steps to get this going.  Its bascially download, configure, and use.   So without further ado, here are the steps :

• Download the VMWare Appliance.  
• Extract the zip somewhere - I chose my Virtual Machines drive (F:\), in the "Linux\Etch\DekiWiki" sub folder.
• Double click on the vmx file to have it auto import into the VMWare management console.
• Rename the logical descriptor - in my case "vmDekiWiki".
• Start the virtual machine.
• As its booting in the BIOS screen, hit F2, and change the auto-key repeat function to longest delay and slowest repeat (an annoying issue for me normally)
• At that point, its up and running.  In my case it auto grabbed a DHCP address which is not preferred, but at least its up.

Tuning / Customization

From that point, its all about tuning/customization to get it to "fit" into my infrastructure.  Configuration for me consisted of changing the IP, the host name, and adding a user account.

• Login with the default root user and "password" password on the console
• Edit /etc/hostname file changing from "deki-hayes" to "vmDekiWiki"
• Edit /etc/hosts file changing from "deki-hayes" to "vmDekiWiki"
• Edit /etc/mailname file changing from "deki-hayes" to "vmDekiWiki"
• Update the /etc/network/interfaces file from this :
  

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

to this :

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.60
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.1.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255
        gateway 192.168.1.253
        dns-namesers 192.168.1.2
        dns-search example.com

Lastly, edit /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group - and add a new account.  I know you can just use useradd or adduser, but this is something I have done this way for a long ... LONG time.  Then make the /home/USER account for the user you create, and finally issue the password change command for the new user.  I also modified root's password too because I didnt want to keep the default.

Then just reboot and its all good.