Building a Personal Wiki

[fredr123]

Has anyone built their own personal wiki before? Years ago I made a simple webpage for use at a previous job that basically just linked together all of the websites and resources stored on the office's server in one convenient place. Updating it was a pain and it looked like ass (I hand-coded the html) but it worked.

I would like to do something similar now but with a wiki. I need to be able to:
1. Store the wiki and all related programs required to run the wiki on my local machine; and
2. Add links to the wiki for resources stored on my office's file server.

DokuWiki seemed to do the trick until I found out the hard way that it's considered a security vulnerability to allow a browser to open locally-stored documents via a link (for example: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_to_l...es_do_not_work).

Can anyone suggest a way around this or, perhaps, a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

[bomber317]

Seems convoluted when I was looking it up.

I'm currently using MediaWiki at work, looks like the server links need to be parsed as http links. There are extensions that deal with this for Mediawiki, not sure about Dokuwiki.

Then you'd have to deal with the Firefox issue of opening local file links, seems like you can turn off the setting (not ideal). Or just use IE.

[sclitheroe]

Rather than run directly on your local machine, I would look for a VMWare appliance that is a preconfigured VM & Wiki software that is ready to go. You can then run this via the free VMWare player on a desktop or even a server down the road.

The advantage to this is that backing up the wiki is a simple, self contained operation - you simply shut down the VM and copy the files somewhere. Conversely, restoration is easy too - if you mess it up, simply shut down the virtual machine and copy the files back over from your backup.

Running in a VM is also great if/when the wiki becomes more important - it’s trivially easy to run the VM on server hardware going forward, using either the VMWare Player or a proper ESX deployment.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by bomber317

Then you'd have to deal with the Firefox issue of opening local file links, seems like you can turn off the setting (not ideal). Or just use IE.

I'm no computer scientician but the Firefox fixes out there don't always work on the newest version of the browser. And more up to date versions of IE seem to have fixed that bug too.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Rather than run directly on your local machine, I would look for a VMWare appliance that is a preconfigured VM & Wiki software that is ready to go. You can then run this via the free VMWare player on a desktop or even a server down the road.

The advantage to this is that backing up the wiki is a simple, self contained operation - you simply shut down the VM and copy the files somewhere. Conversely, restoration is easy too - if you mess it up, simply shut down the virtual machine and copy the files back over from your backup.

Running in a VM is also great if/when the wiki becomes more important - it’s trivially easy to run the VM on server hardware going forward, using either the VMWare Player or a proper ESX deployment.

I have no privileges to install or run anything on the server. Would this still work?

[Rathji]

I have only ever used Media Wiki for a school project and it was run on a Linux box with LAMP. It was really easy.

I assume you could do a similar thing with WAMP, but I have not tested that out yet. I would be interested to see how you fare, because I am thinking of setting one up at work.

VMWare is a good idea as well, like Scott mentioned it makes backing it up, complete with settings and everything a simple drag and drop procedure. This would be doubly easy if there was an actual appliance with a preconfigured software on it. If you find one throw out a link.

You need local privileged only to get it set up, but to actually run it from the server you would need admin rights.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by fredr123

I have no privileges to install or run anything on the server. Would this still work?

Yeah, just use VMWare Player on a workstation - it’s free

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Yeah, just use VMWare Player on a workstation - it’s free

Sorry to bump an oldish thread but I've got the VMware Player and what looks like a suitable appliance ready to go. I'm still confused though as to whether I will be able to use this virtual machine running on my local machine to access files stored on our company's server. If this VMware thing doesn't allow me to do that, then this isn't the solution to the problem I've been looking for.

[Rathji]

I assume you could somehow use the wiki to access files that are not stored on the local machine. It really would depend on how the network is setup.

Assuming the files are in a share, you could simply link to the documents, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a wiki? Would be just like making a locally hosted webpage with the documents linked be the same?

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I assume you could somehow use the wiki to access files that are not stored on the local machine. It really would depend on how the network is setup.

Assuming the files are in a share, you could simply link to the documents, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a wiki? Would be just like making a locally hosted webpage with the documents linked be the same?

Any modern browser running from my local machine will refuse to open a link to a document stored on the server in a windows share. It's a security feature.

I could (and I may have no other choice) than to build a static webpage on the server to link stuff up. I was hoping to avoid adding anything unnecessary to the server though.

Meh.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Any modern browser running from my local machine will refuse to open a link to a document stored on the server in a windows share. It's a security feature.

I could (and I may have no other choice) than to build a static webpage on the server to link stuff up. I was hoping to avoid adding anything unnecessary to the server though.

Meh.

You can change that option on windows mahines.

If this is a Windows server, why not use Sharepoint? The entry level versions are free and/or included as a part of the OS.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Any modern browser running from my local machine will refuse to open a link to a document stored on the server in a windows share. It's a security feature.

I could (and I may have no other choice) than to build a static webpage on the server to link stuff up. I was hoping to avoid adding anything unnecessary to the server though.

Meh.

You could just have the page local on your machine. A simple HTML file you store on your desktop. (edit: Heck, even a word document would work, but would be a bit more clunky imho)

For example:

<html>

<a href="\\servername\share\filename1.doc">Filename1 (Doc)</a>
<a href="\\servername\share\filename2.pdf">Filename2 (PDF)</a>
...

</html>

Could probably write a script to create the HTML automatically from the filenames, to keep the page up to date. Then set it up with some CSS so it doesn't look like crap.

Of course, if your organization is running Sharepoint, then it is a no-brainer to use that.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Rathji

You could just have the page local on your machine. A simple HTML file you store on your desktop. (edit: Heck, even a word document would work, but would be a bit more clunky imho)

For example:

<html>

<a href="\\servername\share\filename1.doc">Filename1 (Doc)</a>
<a href="\\servername\share\filename2.pdf">Filename2 (PDF)</a>
...

</html>

Could probably write a script to create the HTML automatically from the filenames, to keep the page up to date. Then set it up with some CSS so it doesn't look like crap.

Of course, if your organization is running Sharepoint, then it is a no-brainer to use that.

That's what I'm going to have to do. I tried the basic html page stored locally and stored on the server. Both were able to open documents stored locally and stored on the server. For some reason, the wiki setup won't allow such a thing to take place. Lame.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by fredr123

That's what I'm going to have to do. I tried the basic html page stored locally and stored on the server. Both were able to open documents stored locally and stored on the server. For some reason, the wiki setup won't allow such a thing to take place. Lame.

Calling it lame doesn’t help much, and isn’t the underlying issue here.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Calling it lame doesn’t help much, and isn’t the underlying issue here.

I just find it odd that the browser will allow me to, for example, load an html file and from that file link to a Word doc or PDF stored on our office's server in a Windows share. That's fine for some reason. Trying to link to the same files using a local installation of DokuWiki throws an error. Most of the stuff I've read says that it is a security feature built in to web browsers but that doesn't necessarily appear to be the case given what I found using just the html file.

What is lame is that this issue has taken up so much time that I could have spent building the wiki.

I do appreciate everyone's help and input, though. Thanks!

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by fredr123

I just find it odd that the browser will allow me to, for example, load an html file and from that file link to a Word doc or PDF stored on our office's server in a Windows share. That's fine for some reason. Trying to link to the same files using a local installation of DokuWiki throws an error. Most of the stuff I've read says that it is a security feature built in to web browsers but that doesn't necessarily appear to be the case given what I found using just the html file.

What is lame is that this issue has taken up so much time that I could have spent building the wiki.

I do appreciate everyone's help and input, though. Thanks!

Does the machine you are on (or the DokuWiki application installation if using VMware) and the user/system accounts that DocuWiki uses (php maybe?) have permissions on the network/domain to access the share?

Without seeing the error, or knowing your setup that is the most probable reason I can think of that it doesn't work in the wiki but will as an HTML file. I have never really set up a wiki (or Apache/Php etc) on anything more than a stand alone Ubuntu box without any sort of network authentication or interaction.