[Moin-user] why /var/www ?!?

[John Perry]

> You shouldn't link all your home directories to be accessible via the
> webserver, because they are linked to be below documentroot.

Ooooooops. I happened to mention my difficulties with one of my 
security-conscious colleagues, and he promptly went and read everything on 
the machine, just to prove your point.

Okay, removed that symlink.

> > I set up MoinMoin successfully today. I thought I followed the directions,
> > but
> > I kept encountering a problem. The CSS did not seem to load, 
> 
> That is usually because the Alias for /moin_static185 (e.g.) is missing
> or is not working.

This was in fact my problem. I didn't understand your hint until I looked 
carefully at both the Apache setup file and the wikiconfig.py. In case anyone 
else Googles across this, I'll explain my confusion, along with what I did to 
fix it.

The wikiconfig.py requires the assignment of three directories,

    data_dir
    data_underlay_dir
    url_prefix

The defaults for the first two ('./data' and './underlay') don't work, at 
least not on my system. When it fails, a helpful error message recommends 
giving the absolute pathname, e.g., /home/luser/read/the/directions . (That's 
not the actual help text I saw, in case anyone's wondering. It's just how I 
felt. ;-))

I figured the third one (url_prefix) would need an absolute path, too, and I 
seem to have misread at least one of the many web pages online that discuss 
the setup & configuration of this file. So url_prefix had the absolute path 
to the static files, when it wants a *relative* path.

So that was the problem. I got it to work by changing url_prefix 
to '/moin_static160'. Likewise Apache's configuration *must* have the alias 
directive

    Alias /moin_static160/ /absolute/path/to/moin_static160/

I should have caught this sooner, but I didn't understand the hint in 
wikiconfig.py on THE LINE ABOVE THAT VERY ASSIGNMENT:

    # For CGI, it should match your Apache Alias setting.

I understand what it's saying now, but that was weird.

If someone has better advice, I'm open to it. For reference, I'm running Moin 
1.90 on Ubuntu 8.04.3.

regards
john perry
-- 
John Perry, PhD
University of Southern Mississippi
Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics
http://www.math.usm.edu/perry/
john.perry at usm.edu
601-266-4293

endless loop: See endless loop.
(AmigaDOS 3.1 manual, Glossary, pg. 4)