Manually Install Foswiki On Windows

Table of Contents

Overview

This document was constructed to allow for foswiki to be installed in manor that met a specific set of needs. These are listed here:

• The installation of all components will be on the D drive.
• Since the wiki will be used to host several "applications," there will be a development and a production instance.
• The 2 instances will share common resources, but will each be seperate wiki instances running on independent web servers.

Installation

Install Strawberry Perl

Overview:
Foswiki is heavily based on perl scripts.

Install:

1. Download the standard installer for Strawberry Perl. At the time of my install, the current version was 5.10.0.4. Note: There is also an installer designed to install to the D drive, but I didn't use this since it would still use a particular directory structure and I'd have to move it anyways.
2. Run the installer. It doesn't give a lot of options and installs to a default location of C:\strawberry 3. Copy the folder C:\strawberry\ to the desired location (in my case, it is D:\CommonApps\Strawberry\) and rename the initial folder so you have it as a backup.
3. Edit the PATH environment variable by right clicking on My Computer and chosing Properties. From there, go to the Advanced tab and press the Environment Variables button. Change all instances of C:\strawberry to your install path. Hint: it's often easiest to copy the value for PATH to word pad and make the changes there, then copy it back.
4. Create a new environment variable called PPM_DAT with the value <Install Dir%gt;\perl\site\lib\ppm.xml (in my case "D:\CommonApps\strawberry\perl\site\lib\ppm.xml"). This is required for the package manager to run.
5. Open regedit by pressing Start -> Run and entering regedit. Press ctrl-F to open a find window. Enter C:\strawberry and change the path to your install path. Press F3 to find the next and repeat until last entry found.
6. Reboot.

Test:

1. Test that the perl executables can be found (via path changes) by opening a command window and running perl --version. Version info means success.
2. Test that the package manager is working (due to the PPM_DAT variable) by running it with ppm. No error means success.

Cleanup:

1. Once your installation of perl is working correctly, delete the original installation files from the C drive to prevent the risk of confusion down the road.

Install RCS

Overview:
This is an optional step. Foswiki does include a perl based version of RCS, RCSLite, but it will not perform as well as the real thing.

Install:

1. Download the installation files for RCS. At the time of my install, the current version was 5.7 and the required files were rcs57pc1.zip (binaries), rcs57pc2.zip (documentation), and rcs57pc3.zip (source).
2. Extract the first file, rcs57pc1.zip, to a temporary location. This compressed file contains the binaries for a variety of operating systems and will only require those specific to windows.
3. Copy the windows contents of the win32 subfolder (i.e.&ltExtraction location>\bin\win32\) to the desired installation location (i.e. D:\CommonApps\RCS\)
4. Edit the PATH environment variable by right clicking on My Computer and chosing Properties. From there, go to the Advanced tab and press the Environment Variables button. Press the end button to go to the end of the current PATH entry, add a semi-colon (if it doesn't currently end with one), and add the RCS installation directory (i.e. D:\CommonApps\RCS\).
5. Set/Verify the following environment variables (see the README with the installation files for a more complete description):
   • USER or LOGNAME must contain the user's name. Windows often stores this in the variable USERNAME. In this case, creating a variable called user and setting it's value to guest will do the trick.
   • TZ should contain your proper time zone definition (i.e TZ=MST-6MDT)
   • TMP and TEMP must exist and point to the directory where temporary files should be stored.
   • RCSINIT (optional) can contain options for RCS you want to use all the time.
6. Reboot.

Test:

1. Test that the executables can be found (via path changes) by opening a command window and running diff --version. Version info means success.

Install GNU Win32 Utilities

Overview:

Install:

1. Download the setup file for GNU's windows grep. At the time of my install, the current version was 2.5.4. Downloading the setup file (as opposed to the individual binaries) ensures that all dependencies are included. I used the "Complee package, except source" download.
2. Launch the installer. Press Next.
3. Accept the License.
4. Set the installation path (i.e. D:\CommonApps\GnuWin32). Press Next.
5. Select Full installation. Press Next.
6. Set start menu preferences. Press Next.
7. Set additional tasks as desired. Press Next.
8. Press Install.
9. Press Finish.
10. Edit the PATH environment variable by right clicking on My Computer and chosing Properties. From there, go to the Advanced tab and press the Environment Variables button. Press the end button to go to the end of the current PATH entry, add a semi-colon (if it doesn't currently end with one), and add the GNU bin directory (i.e. D:\CommonApps\GnuWin32\bin).
11. Set/Verify the following environment variables (see the README with the installation files for a more complete description):
    • TMP and TMPDIR must exist and point to the directory where temporary files should be stored.
12. Reboot

Test:

1. Test that the executables can be found (via path changes) by opening a command window and running grep --version. Version info means success.

Install Apache (production instance)

Overview:
For reasons other than normal wiki operations, the apache installations will be (in my case) SSL enabled. This will not be covered here, but the installer used will include the modssl library and openssl. This is only mentioned incase the procedure differs when using a different installer.

DOCUMENT INCOMPLETE: process is still being implemented. I will continue to add to this doc as I go.

Comments

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This topic: Sandbox > JohnMedleySandbox > ManuallyInstallFoswikiOnWindows
Topic revision: 10 Apr 2009, JohnMedley

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