Installing and using a web-based documentation browser

You can use a browser as a central information place to view all locally existent documentation.

Note:

The linux4afrika team decides which packages should be installed for local server configuration.

Nevertheless we refer to the whole install and configuration process to enable you to understand how to proceed in similar cases.

Installing dwww & doccentral

Note:

dwww or doc-central require a running webserver environment. Both packages check if a webserver is allready installed - otherwise the necessary webserver will be installed with all requirements.

doc-central single install:

sudo aptitude doc-central

will automatically install the following packages:

apache2-mpm-itk apache2-utils apache2.2-common doc-central info2www libapr1 libaprutil1 libpq5

dwww single install:

sudo aptitude dwww

will automatically install the following packages:

apache2-mpm-itk apache2-utils apache2.2-common dctrl-tools dlocate dwww
info2www libapr1 libaprutil1 libfile-ncopy-perl libmime-types-perl libpq5
menu

info2www will enable you to read info files with a browser

In both cases I suggest to install man2html aswell

sudo aptitude man2html

will automatically install the following packages:

manpages, manpages-dev, swish++, lynx | www-browser

man2html uses an indexing system called swish++ to improve the manual search

From my own personal experience it make sense to install both applications at once.

First start

Before start you start dwww or man2html you should run following the command once:

sudo run-parts /etc/cron.weekly

This may take a while.

Before start using the applications check if the webserver is running:

netstat -tulp | grep www

You should see the following line:

tcp 0 0 *:www *:* LISTEN -

Otherwise start the webserver manually

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

To start using the applications open your browser an type following:

http://localhost/dc/ for doccentral

http://localhost/dwww for dwww

http://localhost/cgi-bin/man/man2html for directly reaching man2html

http://localhost/cgi-bin/man/mansearch for a manual fullsearch
http://localhost/cgi-bin/info2www for directly reaching info2www

Tip:

Move the some scripts of /etc/cron.weekly to /etc/cron.monthly

sudo mv /etc/cron.weekly/dwww /etc/cron.monthly/dww

sudo mv /etc/cron.weekly/man2html /etc/cron.monthly/man2html