see http://foswiki.org/downloads and http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ for more information.

Foswiki 1.0.4 has been released with more than 100 bug fixes and some small enhancements. Upgrading is highly recommended. If you did not upgrade from TWiki yet, now is a good time as Foswiki 1.0.4 fixes more around 300 bugs relative to TWiki 4.2.4.

Grab it now from : http://foswiki.org/Download/WebHome – the straight and upgrade archives, OSX installer and my Windows Installers are here.

My debian package repository now spans Foswiki 1.0.4 and 168 Foswiki extensions – its never been easier to install

see http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian

Over the 4 months of our project’s existence, 33 developers have been involved in making ~3000 commits – next up, the future !

I’ve set up a debian repository that you can help test the release package before it gets uploaded into debian proper.

To try it out, add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ stable main contrib
deb-src http://fosiki.com/Foswiki_debian/ stable main contrib

and then run

apt-get update
apt-get install apache2 foswiki

This repository contains about 108 foswiki-extensions – auto updated nightly direct from foswiki.org. The packages have as many dependencies as I was able to coerce my build scripts to work out – but there is more work needed.

Sorry, you will get a gpg error on these packages, they are updated nightly direct from foswiki.org – and signing the repository requires personal intervention (as far as I can see).

In just 10 weeks, the Foswiki project has re-built the project infrastructure, fixed an additional 100 bugs over and beyond those we fixed in the TWiki source repository before the fork, moved to a new web application architecture (FSA) and undertaken a detailed security audit, fixing at their roots a large number of potential exploits.

Additionally, we already have the following easy installers:

Windows Installer – I’ve built an installer using Apache 2.2 and Strawberry Perl, making it possible to install Perl dependencies.

OSX Leopard installer – Matthias Wientapper has built an pkg

Debian and Ubuntu linux – I’ve ported my TWiki package builder to Foswiki, and now have a live updated (nightly) Debian repository containing Foswiki v1.0.0 and 105 of the 109 Extensions uploaded to http://foswiki.org/Extensions

Virtual machine image – Eugen Mayer has built a virtual machine, with detailed instructions for use with Virtual Box and VMWare.

So given the over 1800 commits in 10 weeks, a release, and much much more, It seems to me that Foswiki is a success..

Download Foswiki today!

Easy installation on Windows, Linux and OSX!

Trivial upgrades of TWiki and TWiki Plugins

Summary: This package enables you to quickly and easily install a pre-configured TWiki 4.2 ‘software appliance’ on Windows, by using the free VMware Player or VMware Server – like another computer running within your computer. This generally performs better than a normal WindowsInstallCookbook approach and is easier to install than IndigoPerlCookbook (takes just 5 minutes, a bit like installing a hard disk that has TWiki and Linux pre-installed). Although running TWiki on Linux on top of Windows may seem complicated, it’s actually much simpler than installing TWikiOnWindows – no TWiki or Linux knowledge is needed to get a working TWiki installation!

This uses TWiki VM 4.2.3 released on 12 September 2008. It is installed using SvenDowideit‘s fosiki TWiki debian package repository to make upgrades, and installation of TWiki Plugins (with external dependencies) easy.

I’ve been running a firefox 3.0 pre-release build for ages now, and finally thought I’d upgrade – (it turns out) mozilla do not provide 64 bit binaries. The i686 build that you can download from getfirefox.org does not work on my debian amd64 system – but not everything is lost.

As I’m a developer, I’m reasonably happy to play with nightly builds – and so – http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ has what I need – today its firefox-3.1a2pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2.

Unziped into my non-debian firefox dir, and runs seemingly fine, except that the firefox addins won’t run, as they are scared of firefox versions that they have not been tested on

That too can be solved – edit the application.ini file, and replace the Version=3.1a2pre with Version=3.0.1 or whatever the release is that your addons are willing to work on.

so far, only VMWare’s addon won’t run – perhaps I need to set the Version lower, as it worked on Minefield 3.0pre.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all tells me that 3.0.1 is in amd64 debian testing since July 2008

VMWare’s addon to give console access won’t run in the 3.0.1 debian version either – talk about disappointing. The 3.1 nightly build seems to feel faster too, so I suspect I’ll be running that most of the time, and will look to migrate away from VMWare over time.

CPAN, while incredibly useful, can be a pain, if you forget that you need to re-configure it after installing essential tools.

For example, if you make the mistake of setting up a basic, non-development Debian virtual machine, configure CPAN, try to use it, and on seeing ‘make’ errors like (from install Bundle::CPAN of all things) :

Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running install for module Compress::Raw::Zlib
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

cpan>


You install make apt-get update ; apt-get install build-essential…, only to continue to see the same errors wizz past….

CPAN really truly needs to realise that the make settings are mis configured, and tell you.

What you need to do, is to tell your cpan about it by running:
cpan> o conf init

OR, if you’ve not yet messed (configured) up your cpan, install build-essential first.

And while you’re contemplating using cpan, think hard about trying dh-make-perl instead

Ideally, CPAN should be able to realise that it can’t call make if it does not know where it is – and point this fact out, rather than making it appear as though the package being installed has an issue.

I’ve just updated the Experimental TWiki and Plugins repository. It now contains TWiki 4.2.2 and 226 Plugins, Contribs and Skins that you can simply apt-get install

To use them, add the following 2 lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib
deb-src http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib


then type

apt-get update

to update the available packages.

you can now see all 226 packages with apt-cache search twiki-

and install (assuming you don’t have twiki installed yet)

apt-get install apache2 twiki

Now that I’ve added external dependancies to the repository, complex TWiki Plugin like ImageGalleryPlugin is as easy as apt-get install twiki-imagegalleryplugin and then enabling it via configure.


etch:~# apt-get install twiki-imagegalleryplugin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
defoma gsfonts libfreetype6 libgraphics-magick-perl libgraphicsmagick1 libice6 libjasper-1.701-1 libjpeg62 liblcms1 libmagick9 libpng12-0 libsm6 libtiff4 libwmf0.2-7
libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxt6 perlmagick x11-common
Suggested packages:
defoma-doc psfontmgr x-ttcidfont-conf dfontmgr libfreetype6-dev graphicsmagick-dbg libjasper-runtime liblcms-utils libwmf-bin
Recommended packages:
libft-perl gs-gpl gs xml-core
The following NEW packages will be installed:
defoma gsfonts libfreetype6 libgraphics-magick-perl libgraphicsmagick1 libice6 libjasper-1.701-1 libjpeg62 liblcms1 libmagick9 libpng12-0 libsm6 libtiff4 libwmf0.2-7
libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxt6 perlmagick twiki-imagegalleryplugin x11-common
0 upgraded, 24 newly installed, 0 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
Need to get 11.2MB of archives.
After unpacking 25.4MB of additional disk space will be used.


You will still need to use configure to enable Plugins.

Please report your experiences to me – bugs, gripes, you name it – its a work in progress. and I need your help!

I’ve just updated the Experimental TWiki and Plugins repository. It now contains TWiki 4.2.0 and 212 Plugins, Contribs and Skins that you can simply apt-get install

To use them, add the following 2 lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib
deb-src http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib


then type

apt-get update

to update the available packages.

you can now see all 212 packages with apt-cache search twiki-

and install (assuming you don’t have twiki installed yet)

apt-get install apache2 twiki

and TWiki Contrib installation is as easy as

apt-get install twiki-bugscontrib

You will still need to use configure to enable Plugins.

Please report your experiences to me – bugs, gripes, you name it – its a work in progress. and I need your help!

I was having a discussion with someone on IRC about how TWiki is vulnerable to Cross-site scripting and Cross-site request forgery, and we realized that there are 2 possible approaches to securing TWiki effectively (both requiring a unique magic number for all URLs):

1. add a pre process to the TWiki::UI system, requiring a valid and unique magic, and a post process step between rendering and output to the browser
2. use a small proxy system between TWiki and browsers to add and validate the magic

1. is actually still risky as all scripts still are able to output directly to the browser using a =print= statement, thus giving the user urls that may not have a necessary magic in the url, or similarly for AddOns that persist in not using resthandlers.

whereas 2. abstracts the security from the application server, in much the same way as it is for ssl – goodness all round.

So – I wonder if there is such a proxy already?

There are also massive performance reasons why you should always have a proxy between browsers and heavy application servers like TWiki – this too could do with filling out.Securing TWiki is not as simple as converting all actions to POST (ie using proper REST / HTTP) because there are too many legacy conveniences, allowing GET URL’s to act upon the data. But, by delegating the securing of the transactions to an external wrapper, I think we can avoid these flaws.
see Wikipedia on Cross Site Scripting and Cross-site request forgery