This distribution allows installing XWiki and every component needed for a production instance automatically.

This method works for all Debian-based linux distribution. Feel free to use the User Forum to report issues, or discuss about it.

Before you start, make sure you've checked the System Requirements. The most important step is to have a Java JRE installed.

APT Configuration

First, you have to configure your package manager in order to use xwiki's repository. This can be done simply, using this command:

Now you can update the packages database to read the data from this repository.

Now you can make a little search to see what this repo offers.

It shows the following packages (the exact list depends on the version the repository contains):

• xwiki-common - XWiki, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the database and application server
• xwiki-mysql-common - XWiki MySQL common package, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the application server
• xwiki-pgsql-common - XWiki PostgreSQL common package, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the application server
• xwiki-tomcat7-common - XWiki Tomcat 7 common package, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the database link
• xwiki-tomcat8-common - XWiki Tomcat 8 common package, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the database link
• xwiki-tomcat9-common - XWiki Tomcat 9 common package, you can install this if you want to take care yourself of the database link
• xwiki-tomcat7-mysql - XWiki Tomcat 7/MySQL based package
• xwiki-tomcat8-mysql - XWiki Tomcat 8/MySQL based package
• xwiki-tomcat9-mysql - XWiki Tomcat 9/MySQL based package
• xwiki-tomcat7-pgsql - XWiki Tomcat 7/PostgreSQL
• xwiki-tomcat8-pgsql - XWiki Tomcat 8/PostgreSQL
• xwiki-tomcat9-pgsql - XWiki Tomcat 9/PostgreSQL
• xwiki-solr-data - A pre configured Solr core to be used to setup a standalone instance of Solr for XWiki

Plus legacy packages from older versions of XWiki like xwiki-enterprise-* packages.

Java 8

XWiki require Java 8 since XWiki 8.1, OpenJDK 8 will be automatically installed as dependency on recent distributions.

For some older distributions the problem is that Ubuntu and Debian did not bothered put OpenJDK 8 on older but still supported distributions default repositories (for example Ubuntu 14.04 or Debian Wheezy/Jessie). For those you will have to make sure there is some repository with it so that Java 8 is installed as a package so that XWiki find it as dependency.

Also if you have several versions of Java installed you might need to explicitly tell Tomcat which one to use after the install. See Tomcat Usability section.

Here is a few helpers for specific distributions:

Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr), Debian < 9

• AdoptOpenJDK provide a Debian reposutory to install OpenJDK, see https://adoptopenjdk.net/installation.html#linux-pkg

Complete Installation

Using MySQL

You only have to run this command to install all the interesting components.

This package depends on xwiki-common, xwiki-tomcat8-common, xwiki-mysql-common, mysql-server, tomcat8 and libmysql-java.

During the installation, you may have some questions from dbconfig, in charge of the configuration of the database. Don't confuse it with the MySQL root password prompt, which beg you to put a password for the superuser.
DBconfig prompt is about the configuration of xwiki and mysql. If you haven't any mysql already installed and you aren't familiar with it, you should let dbconfig handle this.

DBconfig is then asking you for the mysql root password (you may have entered before). Then, you can choose the password for the "xwiki" mysql user. This user will be used to connect from XWiki application. Choose it wisely, but you don't have to pay a lot of attention to it, because after that, dbconfig is configuring XWiki automatically with these credentials.

The installation now ends, with the automatic start of tomcat daemon ("Starting Tomcat servlet engine tomcat7      [OK]").

Using PostgreSQL

It's as simple as the MySQL installation, you only need to choose the right virtual package.

After you've made sure to update the memory settings (see below), you can now point your favorite browser to the following URL to use your wiki: http://localhost:8080/xwiki

PostgreSQL is slightly different than MySQL in the handling of databases and in the manual configuration, but everything should work on the first try.

Security settings

1. Open /etc/xwiki/xwiki.cfg file and change lines:

   ...
   #-# Cookie encryption keys. You SHOULD replace these values with any random string,
   #-# as long as the length is the same.
   xwiki.authentication.validationKey=your1stkeyhere
   xwiki.authentication.encryptionKey=your2ndkeyhere
   ...

2. If you need, add password to the built-in superadmin account, by changing line:

   ...
   #-# Enable to allow superadmin. It is disabled by default as this could be a
   #-# security breach if it were set and you forgot about it. Should only be enabled
   #-# for recovering the Wiki when the rights are completely messed.
   xwiki.superadminpassword=yourpassword
   ...

Tomcat Usability

You can find various generic advices and troubleshooting related to Tomcat on https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/InstallationWAR/InstallationTomcat/.

Java Version

Make sure Tomcat is executed with the right Java version.

This is usually indicated in the file /etc/default/tomcat8 (or /etc/default/tomcat7 for Tomcat 7, etc).

Memory

The default Tomcat memory setup is too low for XWiki's needs.

You can change it in the file /etc/default/tomcat8 (or /etc/default/tomcat7 for Tomcat 7, etc).

Modify the property JAVA_OPTS. For example:

You should check the Memory settings we recommend.

/dev/urandom

In most Debian-based systems the default random implementation is /dev/random which can be very slow. /dev/urandom is much faster and it's fine for XWiki's needs so you should use it when possible:

• edit /etc/default/tomcat8 file and add

Concluding Step

At this point your wiki is empty, i.e it doesn't contain any wiki page. Since applications in XWiki are done in wiki pages so you also don't need any application available (e.g. Blog, User Directory, User Profiles, etc). In addition, your wiki doesn't contain any user.

Thus the final step is to fill your Wiki with some initial content (i.e. wiki pages).

This is the job of the Distribution Wizard which automatically starts when you are browsing your new XWiki instance for the first time.

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

• A Dashboard
• A Panels Application
• Search
• Administration features (Access rights, Group and users management, etc)
• ... and much more

Installing without internet connection

XIP Package

A XIP package is available. It contains an offline extension repository with all the extensions making the Standard Flavor.

This is actually a zip file containing the required XWiki extensions for both the main wiki and subwikis, in the same format as the one of the local extensions repository. It allows the Distribution Wizard to find the extensions locally instead of getting them online and is thus suited for offline installations of XWiki.

• download it (use the exact same version of the XIP package as the version of XWiki you have)
• Unzip it (rename it to .zip if your zip tool does not recognize it) in the folder <permanentdirectory>/extension/repository (if you get complains about already existing files don't overwrite them)
• Make sure the user running XWiki has the permissions to write to these unzipped files
• Restart XWiki if it was running
• Resume standard installation, this time it will find the flavor locally

Other methods

Several options:

• Set up a local Extension Repository, either as a Maven Repository or using the Extension Repository Application. Of course you'll need to prefill it with all the extensions you'll wish to install when offline, which isn't something easy to do.
• Install the Standalone Distribution which contains a default set of wiki pages.
• Use the Offline Packager Maven plugin.

Extension Repositories

XWiki performs some checks at startup and even at runtime and tries to connects to remote Extension repositories. This will not cause any problem if you're offline but you'll get some error logs. You may want to disable Extension repositories by editing your xwiki.properties config file and adding the following empty property (make sure that this is the only property defined with the name):

Uninstallation

If you want to remove XWiki from your system, you only have to uninstall the package you've installed at the beginning of this documentation. For example:

Attention, these commands do not remove MySQL/PostgreSQL nor Tomcat from your system. To do so, if you don't use these applications for another purpose, you can make some cleaning with

Troubleshooting

Tomcat

See Tomcat Installation for generic Tomcat related issues.

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)

At time of writing the version of Tomcat provide by Ubuntu 16.04 repository has a serious classloader related bug which makes impossible to use code macro or write Python scripts in XWiki. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tomcat8/+bug/1644144 and https://forum.xwiki.org/t/code-macro-requirements/909/20 for some more detailed explanations and workarounds.

Don't hesitate to click on "This bug affects me" on launchpad page if it's still not fixed, might help speeding up things...

MySQL

See MySQL Installation for generic MySQL related issues.

PostgreSQL

See PostgreSQL Installation for generic PostgreSQL related issues.

Bad version of PostgreSQL driver on Debian Wheezy

The version of the PostgreSQL driver on Debian Wheezy is the 9.1 (at least when writing those lines) which does not work well with XWiki. You will have to upgrade it.

The latest JDBC postgres driver is available at https://jdbc.postgresql.org/download.html , at the time of this writing, the latest version is postgresql-9.4-1201.jdbc41.jar (which works fine with xwiki), you need to download the driver to your server, a good place is where the other drivers are: /usr/share/java, then remove the symlink postgresql-jdbc4.jar and replace it by one to the new driver:

Restart tomcat and you will not have any issue with the JDBC driver.

XWiki won't start and I get Solr related error(s) in the log

There is no automatic migration of Solr schema and it changes from time to time. The simplest fix in such case is usually to stop Tomcat, delete the folder /var/lib/xwiki/data/solr and restart Tomcat. XWiki will automatically create a new one and start indexing the wiki.

Other useful info

XWiki as root webapp (short URLs)

• Rename file /etc/tomcat7/Catalina/localhost/xwiki.xml into /etc/tomcat8/Catalina/localhost/ROOT.xml
• Edit file /etc/xwiki/xwiki-tomcat8.xml (or /etc/xwiki/xwiki-tomcat7.xml depending on your tomcat version) and modify Context XML element path from /xwiki to / as in moving from
  <Context path="/xwiki" docBase="/usr/lib/xwiki" privileged="true" allowLinking="true" crossContext="true">
   <!-- make symlinks work in Tomcat -->
   <Resources className="org.apache.naming.resources.FileDirContext" allowLinking="true" />
  </Context>

  to

  <Context path="/" docBase="/usr/lib/xwiki" privileged="true" allowLinking="true" crossContext="true">
   <!-- make symlinks work in Tomcat -->
   <Resources className="org.apache.naming.resources.FileDirContext" allowLinking="true" />
  </Context>
• Edit file /etc/xwiki/xwiki.cfg and uncomment xwiki.webapppath=

Note that this is only the part of Short URL which is specific to the Debian setup, for the rest you will have to look at the generic documentation.

Integrate with LibreOffice

Install libreoffice with sudo apt-get install libreoffice.

And setup XWiki to automatically start and access libreoffice in /etc/xwiki/xwiki.properties:

See Office Importer Application for more details.

Overview of the important files

Here is a list of a different tree. The point is to help you find useful files easily. This list is showing a few files and directories, to keep it simple and clear. The '->' is used to show a link to another file/directory.

XWiki

/etc/xwiki/

• hibernate.cfg.xml        Hibernate configuration, helping to configure the database resources
• xwiki.cfg            
• xwiki.properties

/usr/lib/xwiki/

• META-INF
• resources
• skins
• templates
• WEB-INF
  • hibernate.cfg.xml -> /etc/xwiki/hibernate.cfg.xml
  • xwiki.cfg -> /etc/xwiki/xwiki.cfg
  • xwiki.properties -> /etc/xwiki/xwiki.properties

Tomcat

/etc/tomcat<version>/

• context.xml
• logging.properties
• server.xml
• tomcat-users.xml
• web.xml

/etc/default/

• tomcat<version>                 This file helps configuring the Tomcat daemon. Every change needs a restart to be effective

/etc/init.d/

• tomcat<version>                 Daemon start/stop script

/var/lib/tomcat<version>/

• common
• conf -> /etc/tomcat<version>
• logs -> ../../log/tomcat<version>
• server
• shared
• webapps

/var/log/tomcat<version>/

• catalina.out            First logging file. Check this one if you're experiencing troubles with Tomcat/XWiki.
• localhost.<date>.log     "Container Log file": Start of each filter and failures thereof are listed.

MySQL

/etc/mysql/

• debian.cnf
• my.cnf                  Database configuration. Max_allowed_packet is the parameter you  need to change to improve upload data size. permitted.

/var/lib/mysql/

• mysql
• xwiki                   This is the xwiki database. You may want to backup this directory from time to time.

/var/log/

• syslog
• mysql
  • error.log

PostgreSQL

/etc/postgresql/

• <version>
  • main
    • postgresql.conf
    • pg_hba.conf

/var/lib/postgresql/<version>/main/

• base