1 WEBCIT for the Citadel System
4 Copyright (C) 1996-2006 by the authors. Portions written by:
14 This program is open source software released under the terms of the GNU
15 General Public License, version 2. Please read COPYING.txt for more
16 licensing information.
18 WebCit bundles the Prototype JavaScript Framework, writen by Sam
19 Stephenson [http://prototype.conio.net]. These components are licensed to
20 you under the terms of an MIT-style license.
22 WebCit bundles the script.aculo.us JavaScript library, written by
23 Thomas Fuchs [http://script.aculo.us, http://mir.aculo.us]. These
24 components are licensed to you under the terms of an MIT-style license.
26 WebCit bundles the TinyMCE text editor, written by Moxiecode Systems AB
27 (http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/tinymce/docs/credits.html). This component
28 is licensed to you under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
31 The Citadel logo was designed by Lisa Aurigemma.
37 Citadel is a sophisticated groupware and BBS package which allows multiple
38 users to simultaneously access the system using a variety of user interfaces.
39 This package (WebCit) is a "middleware" package which presents an HTML/HTTP
40 user interface to the Citadel system.
42 What this means in practice is that after you've installed WebCit, users can
43 access all functions of your system using any web browser. Since this may be
44 the first Citadel experience for many new users, the screens have been designed
45 to be attractive and easy to navigate.
51 Unline some web-based packages, WebCit contains its own standalone HTTP
52 engine. As a result, you can get it running quickly without all that tedious
53 mucking about with Apache configuration files and directories. WebCit is not
54 intended to replace your Apache server, however -- it *only* provides a front
55 end to Citadel. If you do not have another web server running, you may run
56 WebCit on port 80; however, in the more likely situation that you have Apache
57 or some other web server listening on port 80, you must run WebCit on another
58 port. The default is port 2000.
60 To compile from source, enter the usual commands:
61 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/webcit [or whatever directory you prefer]
65 Package/Ports Maintainers: to make webcit fit smart into LHFS-ified systems
66 read on at the end of this file, Advanced configure options.
68 Then to initialize it:
72 After running setup, you just point your web browser to whatever port you
75 http://your.host.name:2000
79 The included "setup" program is basically just an installation helper that
80 asks a series of questions and then adds the appropriate line to inittab to
81 start WebCit. For most installations, this will do just fine. If you have
82 special circumstances, or if you'd prefer to configure WebCit manually, you
83 may skip the setup program. Instead, open /etc/inittab and add an entry
86 wc:2345:respawn:/usr/local/webcit/webserver
89 Several command-line options are also available. Here's the usage for
90 the "webserver" program:
92 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
93 [-c] [-f] [remotehost [remoteport]]
97 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
98 [-c] [-f] uds /your/citadel/directory
102 -> ip_addr: the IP address on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
103 You can leave this out, in which case WebCit will listen on all
104 available network interfaces. Normally this will be the case, but if
105 you are running multiple Citadel systems on one host, it can be useful.
107 -> http_port: the TCP port on which you wish your WebCit server to run. If
108 you are installing WebCit on a dedicated server, you can use the
109 standard port 80. Otherwise, if port 80 is already occupied by some
110 other web service (probably Apache), then you'll need to select a
111 different port. If you do not specify a port number, WebCit will attempt
114 -> tracefile: where you want WebCit to log to. This can be a file, a
115 virtual console, or /dev/null to suppress logging altogether.
117 -> The "-c" option causes WebCit to output an extra cookie containing the
118 identity of the WebCit server. The cookie will look like this:
119 Set-cookie: wcserver=your.host.name
120 This is useful if you have a cluster of WebCit servers sitting behind a
121 load balancer, and the load balancer has the ability to use cookies to
122 keep track of which server to send HTTP requests to.
124 -> The "-s" option causes WebCit to present an HTTPS (SSL-encrypted) web
125 service. If you want to do both HTTP and HTTPS, you can simply run two
126 instances of WebCit on two different ports.
128 -> The "-f" option tells WebCit that it is allowed to follow the
129 "X-Forwarded-For:" HTTP headers which may be added if your WebCit service
130 is sitting behind a front end proxy. This will allow users in your "Who
131 is online?" list to appear as connecting from their actual host address
132 instead of the address of the proxy. In addition, the
133 "X-Forwarded-Host:" header from the front end proxy will also be honored,
134 which will help to make automatically generated absolute URL's (for
135 things like GroupDAV and mailing list subscriptions) correct.
137 -> remotehost: the name or IP address of the host on which your Citadel
138 server is running. The default is "localhost".
140 -> remoteport: the port number on which your Citadel server is running.
141 The default is port 504, the IANA-designated standard port for Citadel.
143 -> "uds" is a keyword which tells WebCit that you wish to connect to a
144 Citadel server running on the same computer, rather than using a TCP/IP
145 socket. /your/citadel/directory should be set to the actual name of the
146 directory in which you have Citadel installed
147 (such as /usr/local/citadel). If you run Citadel and WebCit on the same
148 computer, this is recommended, as it will run much faster.
154 WebCit contains graphics, templates, JavaScript code, etc. which are kept
155 in its "static" subdirectory. All site-specific graphics, however, are
156 fetched from the Citadel server.
158 The "images" directory on a Citadel system contains these graphics. The
159 ones which you may be interested in are:
161 -> background.gif: a background texture displayed under all web pages
162 -> hello.gif: your system's logo. It is displayed along with the logon
163 banner, and on the top left corner of each page.
165 If you would like to deploy a "favicon.ico" graphic, please put it in
166 the static/ directory. WebCit will properly serve it from there.
172 WebCit contains support for calendaring and scheduling. In order to use it
173 you must have libical v0.24 (or newer) on your system. You must also be
174 running a Citadel server with calendaring support. The calendar service will
175 be automatically configured and installed if your host system supports it.
177 WebCit also provides iCalendar format free/busy data for calendar clients.
178 Unlike with some other servers, there is no need for each user to "publish"
179 free/busy data -- it is generated on-the-fly from the server-side calendar
180 of the user being queried.
183 HTTPS (encryption) SUPPORT
184 --------------------------
186 WebCit now supports HTTPS for encrypted connections. When a secure server
187 port is specified via the "-s" flag, an HTTPS service is enabled.
189 The service will look in the "keys" directory for the following files:
191 citadel.key (your server's private key)
192 citadel.csr (a certificate signing request)
193 citadel.cer (your server's public certificate)
195 If any of these files are not found, WebCit will first attempt to link to the
196 SSL files in the Citadel service's directory (if Citadel is running on the
197 same host as WebCit), and if that does not succeed, it will automatically
198 generate a key and certificate.
200 It is up to you to decide whether to use an automatically generated,
201 self-signed certificate, or purchase a certificate signed by a well known
205 INTEGRATING INTO APACHE
206 -----------------------
208 It is best to run WebCit natively on its own HTTP port. If, however, you wish
209 to have WebCit run as part of an Apache web server installation (for example,
210 you only have one IP address and you need to stay on port 80 or 443 in order to
211 maintain compatibility with corporate firewall policy), you can do this with
212 the "mod_proxy" Apache module.
214 The preferred way to do this is to configure a NameVirtualHost for your WebCit
215 installation (for example, http://webcit.example.com) and then proxy that
216 virtual host through to WebCit. The alternative way, which does work but is not
217 quite as robust, is to "mount" the WebCit paths as directory aliases to your
220 Here is how to configure the NameVirtualHost method:
222 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
223 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
224 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
228 ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
229 ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
230 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
231 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
232 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
235 Here is how to configure the "subdirectory" method:
237 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
238 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
239 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
249 <location /who_inner_html>
253 ProxyPass /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
254 ProxyPassReverse /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
255 ProxyPass /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
256 ProxyPassReverse /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
257 ProxyPass /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
258 ProxyPassReverse /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
259 ProxyPass /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
260 ProxyPassReverse /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
261 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
262 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
263 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
267 ADVANCED CONFIGURE OPTIONS
268 --------------------------
270 If you are building packages and prefer not to have WebCit reside entirely in
271 a single directory, there are several compile-time options available.
273 --with-staticdir defines where webcit should locate and search its templates and images. If you
274 want to go with a different installation location then the point at which it is accessed at runtime,
275 you can use --with-staticrundir. This option is meant to ease your needs if you're going
276 to install the static files as 'examples' in a location like /usr/share/doc/webcit/examples,
277 and enable the user to copy them over to another dir (like /var/lib/citadel/www), where
278 they're accessed at runtime. (The debian instatll scripts provided with this package
279 do this to preserve user changes to the template system, see debian/citadel-webcit.postinstall)
281 Also, there are possibilities to load the TinyMCE editor into a system-wide location. WebCit
282 uses this standard component to compose its messages for messages and postings. Several WebCit installations
283 that may differ in design but use the same TinyMCE (which is the default that WebCit ships with)
284 (set --with-editordir for that, it defaults to the dir the templates go)
290 That's all you need to know to get started. If you have any questions or
291 comments, please visit UNCENSORED! BBS, the home of Citadel, at
292 uncensored.citadel.org.