knowledgeroot – SMR Freelancing

This time I’ll report on my success in installing knowledgeroot on my application server.

Knowledgeroot (http://www.knowledgeroot.org/) is a wiki-type open-source product written using LAMP which is meant to hold documents and pages of information. Its primary purpose is to provide documentation or information for workgroups.

LAMP for those of you who don’t know is the open-source platform for much of the websites on the internet. It is a acronym (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) for more information on LAMP.

When you go to the knowledgeroot website – which itself uses knowledge root – the install instructions are very terse. It simply tells you to copy the files into the Apache space. Then browse to the install.php page and follow the instructions.

First I had to install Apache. This was easily done as it was already on my CentOS 5.3 server, I only had to start it when I was ready.

Rather than copy the files under Apache folders I rather was going to the alias facilty found in any modern webserver. I placed them in /usr/Knowledgeroot/knowledgeroot-0.9.9.1 and then went into the Apache config file (httpd.conf) and added in the alias knowledgebase to point to the folder above.

I then started Apache and navigated to http://localhost/knowledgebase/install.php and was confronted with the “install” page. This was just a simple page with no instructions really. Most of it I could figure out, it was only the database part which I didn’t understand. I reckoned I that I first needed to setup the database before progressing further with the install.

I pulled out my favorite took in these instances…Google. I found this page http://www.debian-administration.org/users/ericrox/weblog/1 which helped immensly!

I more, or less followed those instructions, knowledgeroot is not a package on CentOS, and I had a separate user just for the knowledgeroot database. The database created was not in Innodb format so I had to copy the files over to my NAS and create a symbolic link to the folder, easy-peasy.

Then I tackled the install page and it came up with the entries to the config files and instuctions on to delete the install.php files. If the developers are reading this, the install needs to be improved! I’ve put it on my TODO list.

Then onto using it! I setup my users…a bit ugly. Again an area which needs work. And then I put some content in.

Overall its working quite well. I haven’t trained user’s on it yet. I have a load of work to finish on other things first. Plus I also had to install a IMAP server and then setup fetchmail and procmail onto my servers. Something which is still causing my trouble. More on that next time.

I certainly hope this helps others with knowledgeroot out there. There are forums of course if you get really stuck. I see this as a experiment at present. I haven’t decide whether I will build a product on top of it. There would be some licensing and technology issues that would need to be decided on first.

Hello all. I’ve been a bit better and managed to post another blog entry this month. Recently I’ve been having “fun” with dnsmasq and ssh. As well I think I’ve found a good tool for internal wikis.

I’ve lately experienced a “problem” with dsnmasq where if I try and apply aliases to a machine by adding them into the /etc/hosts file and where the machine is setup to obtain its address by DHCP, then the machine’s name is not registered into dnsmasq. So a ping machine-name will return not found. Which I found bizarre but sensible. It took me a while to understand that. Now I’m seeking a way to create alias records in dnsmasq. There was a directive cname in a older copy of the documentation, but not in the version I have. Adding this to the dnsmasq.conf file created an error, so if it ever was possible it isn’t now.

The other issue I was having was a delay of about 10seconds logging into one of my linux machines through ssh. I hunted around the internet for a reason for this. There seemed to be many. Some have suggested setting the option GSSAPIAuthentication no, but this did not work for me. However another suggestion to add the line UseDNS no did work. Presumably the specific version of Ubuntu (Jaunty 9.04) was compiled with this option turned on. I wonder why it would be slow, given that I run dnsmasq. perhaps dnsmasq does not perform reverse lookups very well? Its a mystery.

Lastly, I have been searching many systems for use as a basis of a simple document handling product. I came across something which could be used as a basic wiki tool. Knowledgeroot (http://www.knowlegeroot.org/) is a basic wiki type tool which is very open and easy to use. I plan on setting it up internally for use as a systems and development documentation tool. I will post an update on that when I get it going. I think I’ll firs post a blog on setting up Apache and mySQL first!

I’ve cut the blog short as I’ve had a bit of a domestic problem. my fridge started putting out heat rather than sucking it up! Its been a struggle to get a newish one.