TWiki - reference design for a scalable, structured wiki application

Functional Overview

TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser.

For administration and user guides please see the TWiki website or follow the links below:

• http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki04x03/TWikiUsersGuide
• http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki04x03/TWikiReferenceManual
• http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki04x03/TWikiReleaseNotes04x03

The TWiki application is packaged as an appliance. All required configuration is exposed on the boundary of the application, so that the application can be configured as a single appliance (using the Application Configuration property sheet in the editor).

Boundary

Properties

These are the only settings that you must configure in order to start the application. Note that certain settings are automatically distributed to multiple appliances (such as the DNS servers, the admin e-mail, etc.). You don't need to understand the internal structure of the application in order to be able to configure it.

The IP addresses configured in the usr_ip and mail_ip properties must be IP addresses available on your AppLogic grid. You can find them, together with the netmask, gateway and dns servers on the dashboard of your grid. We are working to make it possible for AppLogic to provide these addresses automatically

Resources

User Volumes

The application itself uses a single volume, described below. It is part of the application and is already configured into the appliance instances. There are no volumes that need to be configured on the application boundary.

Application Volumes

The TWiki application has the following volumes:

Description

Users of the TWiki application can access it at the usr input (defined by the usr_ip address).

Operation

To start using the app

1. ssh to the web appliance and edit /mnt/content/twiki/lib/LocalSite.cfg and delete the line:
   $TWiki::cfg{Password} = '...';
2. Access the application at its IP or resolvable domain name and configure TWiki (e.g. http://192.168.100.100/bin/configure):
   1. Under General path settings set the DefaultUrlHost to the IP address or resolvable domain name of the application
   2. Under Mail and Proxies set the WebMasterEmail to the e-mail address of the TWiki web-master. This is required for registration to work.
3. (Optional) Once you are done configuring your Twiki, it is recommended to restrict access to the configure section. To do this, have a look at the twiki/.htconf file on the data volume, it has a commented section that limits access to the configure section just to localhost. Feel free to uncomment that and edit it to suit your needs.

The TWiki administrator name is TWikiAdministrator.

Implementation details

Application Architecture

It has the following components:

• one firewalled input gateway
• a web server
• a content file storage
• firewalled output gateway to e-mail server
• a monitoring appliance

The application infrastructure is shown below:

Open source and 3rd party software used inside of the application

TWiki uses the following open source and 3rd party packages:

Notes

Questions and Comments

To post questions and comments for this application, visit our forum.

-- ApoorvaKulkarni - 30 Jan 2010