Installation

Version 12.1 by Raffaello Pelagalli on 2008/04/11
Warning: For security reasons, the document is displayed in restricted mode as it is not the current version. There may be differences and errors due to this.

Installation

XWiki is a Java-based wiki and runs on a Servlet Container such as Tomcat, Jetty, JBoss, WebLogic, WebSphere, etc. It also uses a relational database to store its content. It can run on almost any database (HSQL, MySQL, etc) but XWiki and the database need to be setup correctly.

There are 2 solutions when installing XWiki:

  • Use the Standalone distribution which already packages a Servlet Container (Jetty) and a database (HSQL). This is the recommended option for first time XWiki users and for users who wish to quickly try out XWiki.
  • Use the WAR distribution and configure both your container and your database to work with it.

If you're instead upgrading an existing XWiki install check the Upgrade instructions below.

There's a nice tutorial (in French) contributed by an XWiki user for getting started with XWiki with step by step instructions for installing it.

Pick one of the following trails:

Invalid macro parameters used for the [toc] macro. Cause: [Failed to validate bean: [must be greater than or equal to 1]]. Click on this message for details.

Once you've finished the installation check the other topics in the Admin Guide for configuring and securing your wiki.

If you want to make manual installation or need to migrate an existing XWiki installation, check the Release Notes.

Prerequisites

You'll need to have Java 5 installed.

Installing the Standalone distribution

This is by far the easiest way to install XWiki. We are offering 3 packaging for ease of installation:

  • A Windows exe. Simply execute it and follow the instructions
  • A generic Installer that works on all platforms. It requires Java to be installed on your system. Simply double-click on it and follow the instructions.
  • A zip version. Unzip it in any [XWIKIHOME] directory of your choice.

The Windows installer creates shortcuts to start and stop XWiki. If you've used the zip file or generic Installer, go to the directory where you've installed XWiki ([XWIKIHOME]) and run start_xwiki.bat in Windows or start_xwiki.sh on Unix. To stop it, run the stop_xwiki.bat script on Windows and stop_xwiki.sh on Unix.

Once XWiki is started point your browser to http://localhost:8080/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome and the go to the User's Guide to learn how to use XWiki. To change the port, edit the start script and replace 8080 by the number you want.

You can log in using the default Admin user (first letter is capitalized). The default password is 'admin' (lowercase).

Installing the XWiki WAR manually

You'll need to perform 2 mandatory steps:

  • Install and configure a Servlet Container
  • Install and configure a relational database

If your database is empty this will result in a minimal empty wiki installation. You may want to use the Import/Export tool to import some pages in your wiki. We recommend that you import the provided default XAR. If you're upgrading from an existing installation your database should already contain the pages you had before. If you're using the new XWiki 1.0 skin you might want to install the Panels Application.

If you are installing in a linux/unix environment you have to setup the xwiki.upload.tempdir parameter as explained in the JIRA entry (http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-530) before importing anything into XWiki.

Install and configure a Servlet Container

XWiki will work with any Servlet Container. We're only listing instructions for a few containers but you can adapt these instructions for your favorite container.

You're now ready to install and configure your relational database.

Install and configure a Relational Database

XWiki can work with a lot of relational databases. We're only listed those that we have tested it on.

The general strategy is the following:

  • Install your favorite RDBMS
  • Create a xwiki database
  • Create a user with all privileges on that xwiki database
  • Copy your RDBMS Java drivers to the XWiki webapp's WEB-INF/lib directory
  • Configure XWiki to use the created database. This involves modifying the WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml file as is described in the tutorials for each database below. Also make sure that your xwiki.cfg file has an entry that points to your WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml file (xwiki.store.hibernate.path=/WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml) as otherwise your settings won't be used.

Install and configure the database you wish to use:

Concluding Step

At this stage you have finished configuration XWiki. If you start your database and container and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/xwiki/ you'll have a working, albeit minimal, wiki (without any page loaded). The next step is either to create new pages by hand or import the default Wiki that we are providing as a XAR file, by using the Import feature.

Tutorials

Installing the eXo Enterprise WebOS integration WAR

The integration with eXo is still very experimental and the instructions below are not finalized yet. Proceed with caution!

Install eXo WebOS

  • Download the latest version of eXo Portal on http://forge.objectweb.org/projects/exoplatform/ (version 2.0-Alpha-2 or greater is required).
  • Follow the eXo installation instructions located inside the Portal ZIP and try to login in the portal.

Install XWiki inside eXo

  • Stop eXo Portal.
  • Download the latest XWiki eXo WAR. You'll need version 1.0-beta-6 or above.
  • Create a directory exo-tomcat/webapps/xwiki.
  • Unzip the WAR in exo-tomcat/webapps/xwiki and rename the exploded directory to "xwiki".
  • Move the ehcache.jar from xwiki/WEB-INF/lib to exo-tomcat/common/lib (There are some conflicts with it that both XWiki/eXo will need to fix in future versions).
  • Remove all the eXo jars from xwiki/WEB-INF/lib
  • Configure XWiki's database as explained above.
  • Change in xwiki.cfg: xwiki.exo=1 to xwiki.exo=0. TODO: Explain why this is required as it is very counter-intuitive!
  • Restart eXo Portal.
  • You can now either import XWiki as a Portlet inside the Portal as described below or access XWiki directly by using the usual URL.
  • Change the skin to use the XWiki 1.0 skin. This skin is compatible with the Portlet mode and specifically with eXo WebOS.
  • Import the default wiki XAR or use your own XWiki database.
  • Give the admin right to XWikiGuest
  • To be continued...

Use XWiki inside the WebOS

Inside the WebOS, XWiki is seen as a Portlet and therefore must be imported in eXo through the PortletRegistry application. To do so you need to login as exoadmin / exo in eXo and go to the Administration desktop and use the PortletRegistry application. Click on the "Import Portlet Category" icon, you should now see XWiki in the list. You can now add the Portlet in your desktop page though the "Add Application" icon in the desktop dock.

Installing the Default Wiki XAR

The default wiki is a fully configured wiki that you can use as a starting point for creating your own wiki content. It provides the following:

  • A Blog
  • Photo albums
  • A What's New page
  • The Panels Application
  • Search
  • Administration page (Access rights, Group and users management, etc)
  • ... and much more

It comes configured with an "Admin" user (password is "admin" in lowercase). You'll need that username/password to log in once you've imported the default wiki.

To install the XAR, use the Import/Export tool.

If you're upgrading an existing wiki be careful that the XAR import operation will replace the content of the existing pages of your wiki with the content of the XAR (New pages that you have created will not be modified). As a consequence it's critical that you perform a backup first.

Upgrading an XWiki Installation

There are different parts of XWiki that you may want to upgrade:

If you're upgrading an XWiki 0.9 installation refer to this guide.

Upgrading XWiki Core

The general strategy is to download the WAR distribution and to replace your current installed WAR. Make sure you don't copy on top since this could leave some old files around which would make XWiki fail (like if old JARs are lying around in WEB-INF/lib). Before replacing your current WAR, make sure you back it up and more specifically that you copy the hibernate.cfg.xml and xwiki.cfg files which you'll need to copy in your newly installed WAR since they container your XWiki configuration. Make sure you also copy any plugins you may have added or any template files you may have modified.

Some additional operations may be required for upgrading and you must check the release notes for all the versions from the version you're upgrading from up to the new version you're installing.

Upgrading wiki documents

You may want to upgrade to a newer version of the Default Wiki XAR in order to benefit from the latest changes. As mentioned above in the "Installing the Default Wiki XAR" section you should be very careful and when doing the import make sure you selectively decide what pages you wish to import. More specifically the following pages should be imported with great care:

  • XWiki.XWikiPreferences: This page contains the configuration of your wiki (it overrides the configuration defined in xwiki.cfg). If you import a new version of this page you'll loose any customization you may have made such as the skin to use, the rights for your wiki, etc.
  • XWiki.WebPreferences, Main.WebPreferences, and all other spaces WebPreferences pages: Same as XWiki.XWikiPreferences but at the level of a space.
  • XWiki.XWikiAllGroup (list of registered users) and XWiki.AdminGroup (list of Admins): If you have existing users and import a new version of these pages, you'll find that your users do not belong to these groups anymore and thus may not be able to edit pages, log in, etc. You'll need to add them again to the right groups.
  • Any other page you have modified, such as Main.WebHome, a modified Panel, etc.

Let's clean it up

  • Expand the XWiki WAR that you installed in your servlet container (the one that contains the JDBC drivers to access your database) into a new folder, using  jar xvf xwiki-1.1-enterprise.war, or avoid this step if you performed an export/import data migration (you already expanded it) 
  • Copy your old  xwiki.cfg and  hibernate.cfg.xml file to the WEB-INF folder. Take care that if some changes were already made (probably because of database configuration when you installed the JDBC drivers) could be lost, so take car to add these changes
  • Rename the skins/albatross folder to albatross.original, and copy the skins/default folder from XWiki 0.9 to skin/albatross. (WARNING: this is an optional step, in case you don't want to use the default skin for 1.1x and want to retain your current skin in the new version)
  • Install this new folder as the xwiki application in your servlet container (may be by copying the folder to the servlet filesystem space or by packing it in a WAR file and deploying it)

\ At this point all is set, you can experience our old wiki data over the new XWiki core !!!

Troubleshooting

Field 'XWD_ARCHIVE' doesn't have a default value

If you get an error like the one below it probably means you had an old XWiki version installed (most likely a 0.9 version) which had a wrong schema. We're normally automatically fixing schemas at startup when you set the xwiki.store.hibernate.updateschema configuration parameter in xwiki.cfg (it's set to on by default). However it's currently not done for this error.

Wrapped Exception: Could not execute JDBC batch update
[...]
Wrapped Exception:
java.sql.BatchUpdateException: Field 'XWD_ARCHIVE' doesn't have a default value

To fix this run the following SQL command on your database:

alter table xwikidoc modify column XWD_ARCHIVE mediumtext null;

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