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An Otter Wiki

Installation

The recommend way of running An Otter Wiki is via docker compose.

Requirements

The CPU requirements are pretty low, you can run it on a Raspberry Pi 1 A (ARMv6). The RAM required is around 100MiB (according to docker stats). The required disk storage depends on the content, please keep in mind, that the backend is a git repository that never forgets: Deleting a page or an attachment does not free up any space. The wiki needs no internet access. Clients using the wiki need only access to the server running the wiki, so it can run in an environment which is isolated from the internet.

As URLs as dedicated domain (e.g. wiki.domain.tld) is required, it can not be mapped into a subfolder.

Using docker cli

An Otter Wiki is published as a Docker image on Docker hub as redimp/otterwiki. The stable images are build for the plattforms amd64, arm64, armv7 and armv6.

Make sure you have docker installed.

To run an otter wiki via docker cli, listening on port 8080 and using a local directory for data persistency, use the following command:

docker run --name otterwiki \
    -p 8080:80 \
    -v $PWD/app-data:/app-data \
    redimp/otterwiki:2.0

Open the wiki via http://127.0.0.1:8080 if you are running the docker command on your machine.

You can configure the application with environment variables e.g.

-e SITE_NAME="My Wiki" -e SITE_DESCRIPTION="An otter wiki run via docker"

For all configuration options please see Configuration.

Using docker compose

The recommended way of running An Otter Wiki is via docker compose.

  1. Create a docker-compose.yaml file

    version: '3'
services:
  otterwiki:
    image: redimp/otterwiki:2.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    volumes:
      - ./app-data:/app-data

  2. Run docker compose up -d

  3. Access the wiki via http://127.0.0.1:8080 if run on your machine.

  4. Register your account. The first account is an admin-account with access to the application settings. The first accounts email address doesn't need to be confirmed nor has the account to be activated.

  5. Customize the settings to your liking.

  6. It's highly recommended to use a webserver as reverse proxy to connect to the docker process, see Reverse Proxy below.

Alternativly you can configure the application using environment variables, for example:

version: '3'
services:
  otterwiki:
    image: redimp/otterwiki:2.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
    - 8080:80
    volumes:
    - ./app-data:/app-data
    environemnt:
      MAIL_DEFAULT_SENDER: no-reply@example.com
      MAIL_SERVER: smtp.server.tld
      MAIL_PORT: 465
      MAIL_USERNAME: otterwiki@example.com
      MAIL_PASSWORD: somepassword
      MAIL_USE_SSL: True

For all configuration options please see Configuration.

podman and podman-compose

An Otter Wiki can be run with podman and podman-compose in the same way as withdocker and docker compose please see above.

From source as WSGI application with uwsgi

  1. Install the prerequisites

    i. Debian / Ubuntu

    apt install git build-essential python3-dev python3-venv

    ii. RHEL8 / Fedora / CentOS8 / Rocky Linux 8

    yum install make python3-devel

  2. Clone the otterwiki repository and enter the directory

    git clone https://github.com/redimp/otterwiki.git
cd otterwiki

  3. Create and initialize the repository where the otterwiki data lives

    mkdir -p app-data/repository
# initialize the empty repository
git init app-data/repository

  4. Create a minimal settings.cfg e.g. via

    echo "REPOSITORY='${PWD}/app-data/repository'" >> settings.cfg
echo "SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI='sqlite:///${PWD}/app-data/db.sqlite'" >> settings.cfg
echo "SECRET_KEY='$(echo $RANDOM | md5sum | head -c 16)'" >> settings.cfg

  5. Create a virtual environment and install An Otter Wiki

    python3 -m venv venv
./venv/bin/pip install -U pip uwsgi
./venv/bin/pip install .

  6. Run uwsgi listening on the localhost port 8080

    export OTTERWIKI_SETTINGS=$PWD/settings.cfg
./venv/bin/uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:8080 --master -enable-threads --die-on-term -w otterwiki.server:app

  7. Open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser.

  8. Register your account. The first account is an admin-account with access to the application settings.

  9. Alternatively can you configure the application using the settings.cfg. For all configuration options please see Configuration.

  10. Create a service file e.g. /etc/systemd/system/otterwiki.service

[Unit]
Description=uWSGI server for An Otter Wiki

[Service]
User=www-data
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/an/otterwiki
ExecStart=/path/to/an/otterwiki/env/bin/uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:8080 -enable-threads --die-on-term -w otterwiki.server:app
SyslogIdentifier=otterwiki

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

It's highly recommended to use a webserver as reverse proxy to connect to uwsgi, see Reverse Proxy below.

Reverse Proxy

A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of web servers and forwards client (e.g. web browser) requests to those web servers. They are useful when hosting multiple services on a host and make it much easier to configure https. Neither An Otter Wiki itself nor the in the docker image provides https.

Mini how-tos for configuring Apache, NGINX and Caddy are provided below. For complete documention please check the corresponding software documention.

NGINX

This is a minimal example of a config that configures NGINX as a reverse proxy. The full documentation about NGINX as reverse proxy can be found here.

It's assumed that An Otter Wiki is running either in a docker container or as a uwsgi process and listening on port 8080.

server {
    server_name wiki.domain.tld;
    listen 80;
    location / {
       proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }
}

NGINX on Debian, Ubuntu and derivates

  • Install nginx via apt install -y nginx
  • Create the otterwiki.conf in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
  • Check the syntax via nginx -t
  • Restart nginx via systemctl restart nginx
  • Open http://wiki.domain.tld in your browser
  • Check journalctl -xeu nginx and /var/log/nginx/error.log for errors.

NGINX on RHEL, CentOS, Rocky and derivates

  • Install nginx via dnf install nginx
  • Start NGINX and enable at boot: sudo systemctl enable --now nginx
  • With SELinux enabled, make sure httpd can connect using setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on
  • Create the otterwiki.conf in /etc/nginx/conf.d/
  • Check the syntax via nginx -t
  • Restart nginx via systemctl restart nginx
  • Open http://wiki.domain.tld in your browser
  • Check journalctl -xeu nginx and /var/log/nginx/error.log for errors.

See https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/setting-reverse-proxies-nginx for a complete guide.

Apache

This is a minimal example how to configure Apache as reverse proxy. Please see the Apache documentation for complete details.

It's assumed that An Otter Wiki is running either in a docker container or as a uwsgi process and listening on port 8080.

<VirtualHost *:*>
  ServerName wiki.domain.tld
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyPass / http://0.0.0.0:8080/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://0.0.0.0:8080/
</VirtualHost>

Apache on Debian, Ubuntu and derivates

  • Install apache2 via apt install -y apache2
  • Enable proxy modules via a2enmod proxy proxy_http
  • Create the otterwiki.conf config file in /etc/apache2/site-available/
  • Enable the site via a2ensite otterwiki
  • Restart apache2 systemctl restart apache2
  • Open http://wiki.domain.tld in your browser
  • Check journalctl -xeu apache2.service and /var/log/apache2/error.log for error messages.

Apache on RHEL, CentOS, Rocky and derivates

  • Install apache2 via dnf install httpd
  • Start apache2 and enable at boot: sudo systemctl enable --now httpd
  • Create the otterwiki.conf config file in /etc/httpd/conf.d/
  • With SELinux enabled, make sure httpd can connect using setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on
  • Restart apache2 via systemctl restart httpd
  • Open http://wiki.domain.tld in your browser
  • Check journalctl -xeu httpd.service and /var/log/httpd/error_log for error messages.

Caddy

Caddy is an open source webserver with a very light configuration that makes a fine reverse proxy.

After installing caddy, configure /etc/caddy/Caddyfile with e.g.

domain.tld {
    reverse_proxy localhost:8080
}

With a server accessible from the internet, domain.tld beeing a proper domain name with A/AAAA DNS records pointing to the server, caddy will automatically serve HTTPS.