[pmwiki-users] A technical point about wikilib.d

[Joachim Durchholz]

Henrik Bechmann wrote:
> However it is convenient for me to have a few central pages (accessible 
> by all wikifields) for help pages, explanation of website philosophy 
> etc., and I have found that wikilib.d is on a search chain, so that if a 
> wiki page is not found in the local wikifield, then it will be found in 
> the wikilib.d directory. In particular I have DufferinParkWiki.About, 
> DufferinParkWiki.EditHelp, etc. placed in this wikilib.d directory.
> 
> My question: is that legitimate, or am I asking for some kind of trouble?

The answers are: no, yes.

wikilib.d is the directory for "precanned pages" that come with PmWiki. 
It's the place where updates to the documentation go. With every update 
to PmWiki, there is a risk that the new distribution will accidentally 
have a page with the same name as yours, and then your page will be 
overwritten (there won't even be a change history from which you could 
resurrect the page).

Of course, it's very, very unlikely that wikilib.d will ever by 
distributed with pages in a DufferinParkWiki group ;-)

> BTW I also find that when I edit those, the edited versions end up 
> either in wiki.d of the main wiki installation, or wiki.d of the field 
> installation, depending from where I am editing. I just move the edited 
> copies to wikilib.d after I edit them, and everything works. Same 
> question: is this asking for trouble or is it legitimate?

It's the way that PmWiki works. The intent is

> Another question: I have the wiki.d directoires chmod at 777, but the 
> upload directories (which are not under wiki.d, but rather siblings) 
> seem fine with 755 (I haven't tried imlicit creation of a new group 
> directory for upload yet). Does wiki.d need to stay at 777?

755 is better because it limits write access; a 777 directory can be 
overwritten (i.e. the files in it renamed or deleted) by everybody with 
a shell account on the machine.

Whether the permissions can be fixed or not depends on the Apache 
configuration and its setup for PHP. Also, whether the two directories 
are handled the same (and thus can take the same permissions) depends on 
whether they have the same owner or not.

Regards,
Jo