[pmwiki-users] PmWiki work directory

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Thu Dec 28 16:02:26 CST 2006


On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 03:08:18PM +0100, christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com wrote:
> This is be a long post... sorry.
> 
> Questions/choices:
> 
> * Is everything in the web tree, or is the installation split?

The default should continue to be "everything in one place", to
simplify installation and backup.

> * Do files under uploads/ have to be in the web tree?

They don't have to be in the web tree.  However, there's a bit of
a performance penalty in requiring pmwiki.php to handle every
access to an attachment, whereas if they're in the web tree it
can be handled directly by the webserver.

> * Any recipes that need write access?

Sure, there are recipes that want write access to various places.
The proposed work.d/ would seem to be an appropriate place.

> * Any recipes that need write access to files in the web tree?
>   Eg. MimeTeX and the directory pub/cache/.

And yes, MimeTeX is just one example of a recipe that wants to
write things into a web accessible space.  There are others.

> The purpose of all the .htaccess files is to block browsers from the 
> contents of those directories, or making sure that .php-files aren't 
> executed. Ideally cookbook/, local/, wiki.d/ and possibly docs/ should be 
> outside the web tree.

Ideally, everything except pub/ would be outside the web tree.  If we
want to allow direct access to attachments (bypassing pmwiki.php), then
uploads/ needs to be in the web tree as well.

> Strange... there is no .htaccess in wikilib.d/. Patrick?

I don't see any real need to protect wikilib.d/ - its contents aren't
really "private".

> At the very least the location of uploads/ will be configurable. And the 
> location of uploads/ in existing installations doesn't have to change.  The 
> way I see it, we are considering the structure for new installations.

I'm considering the structure for new installations, yes, but I don't
necessarily want to require every existing installation to have to set
a configuration variable in order to get things to continue to work.

> What I see as a big advantage of keeping uploads/ in var/ is that the 
> administrator only has to fiddle with the write permissions once. 

...unless they're running with safe_mode enabled.  In that case the
administrator has to manually create (and set the permissions for)
the directories in var/ .

> The drawback would then be that the URI for the uploaded files by default 
> would be something like
> 
> 	pmwiki.org/wiki/var/uploads/<Group>/<File>

Hmm, that uri doesn't look so hot to me.  In fact, that's probably
one of the strongest arguments I've seen yet for leaving uploads/
where it is now.  :-|

> The folder for uploads/ is a bit special since it in some installations 
> must be in the web tree, and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe you want 
> different directory structures for these cases.

Not really, as it should be relatively easy for someone to switch from
one form to the other.

Pm




More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list