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 WebCit bundles the Nifty Corners library, written by Alessandro Fulciniti
32 [http://cerca.html.it/cgi-bin/cerca.cgi?q=nifty+corners]. This component
33 is licensed to you under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
36 The Citadel logo was designed by Lisa Aurigemma.
42 Citadel is a sophisticated groupware and BBS package which allows multiple
43 users to simultaneously access the system using a variety of user interfaces.
44 This package (WebCit) is a "middleware" package which presents an HTML/HTTP
45 user interface to the Citadel system.
47 What this means in practice is that after you've installed WebCit, users can
48 access all functions of your system using any web browser. Since this may be
49 the first Citadel experience for many new users, the screens have been designed
50 to be attractive and easy to navigate.
56 Unline some web-based packages, WebCit contains its own standalone HTTP
57 engine. As a result, you can get it running quickly without all that tedious
58 mucking about with Apache configuration files and directories. WebCit is not
59 intended to replace your Apache server, however -- it *only* provides a front
60 end to Citadel. If you do not have another web server running, you may run
61 WebCit on port 80; however, in the more likely situation that you have Apache
62 or some other web server listening on port 80, you must run WebCit on another
63 port. The default is port 2000.
65 To compile from source, enter the usual commands:
66 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/webcit [or whatever directory you prefer]
70 Package/Ports Maintainers: to make webcit fit smart into LHFS-ified systems
71 read on at the end of this file, Advanced configure options.
73 Then to initialize it:
77 After running setup, you just point your web browser to whatever port you
80 http://your.host.name:2000
84 The included "setup" program is basically just an installation helper that
85 asks a series of questions and then adds the appropriate line to inittab to
86 start WebCit. For most installations, this will do just fine. If you have
87 special circumstances, or if you'd prefer to configure WebCit manually, you
88 may skip the setup program. Instead, open /etc/inittab and add an entry
91 wc:2345:respawn:/usr/local/webcit/webserver
94 Several command-line options are also available. Here's the usage for
95 the "webserver" program:
97 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
98 [-c] [-f] [remotehost [remoteport]]
102 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
103 [-c] [-f] uds /your/citadel/directory
107 -> ip_addr: the IP address on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
108 You can leave this out, in which case WebCit will listen on all
109 available network interfaces. Normally this will be the case, but if
110 you are running multiple Citadel systems on one host, it can be useful.
112 -> http_port: the TCP port on which you wish your WebCit server to run. If
113 you are installing WebCit on a dedicated server, you can use the
114 standard port 80. Otherwise, if port 80 is already occupied by some
115 other web service (probably Apache), then you'll need to select a
116 different port. If you do not specify a port number, WebCit will attempt
119 -> tracefile: where you want WebCit to log to. This can be a file, a
120 virtual console, or /dev/null to suppress logging altogether.
122 -> The "-c" option causes WebCit to output an extra cookie containing the
123 identity of the WebCit server. The cookie will look like this:
124 Set-cookie: wcserver=your.host.name
125 This is useful if you have a cluster of WebCit servers sitting behind a
126 load balancer, and the load balancer has the ability to use cookies to
127 keep track of which server to send HTTP requests to.
129 -> The "-s" option causes WebCit to present an HTTPS (SSL-encrypted) web
130 service. If you want to do both HTTP and HTTPS, you can simply run two
131 instances of WebCit on two different ports.
133 -> The "-f" option tells WebCit that it is allowed to follow the
134 "X-Forwarded-For:" HTTP headers which may be added if your WebCit service
135 is sitting behind a front end proxy. This will allow users in your "Who
136 is online?" list to appear as connecting from their actual host address
137 instead of the address of the proxy. In addition, the
138 "X-Forwarded-Host:" header from the front end proxy will also be honored,
139 which will help to make automatically generated absolute URL's (for
140 things like GroupDAV and mailing list subscriptions) correct.
142 -> remotehost: the name or IP address of the host on which your Citadel
143 server is running. The default is "localhost".
145 -> remoteport: the port number on which your Citadel server is running.
146 The default is port 504, the IANA-designated standard port for Citadel.
148 -> "uds" is a keyword which tells WebCit that you wish to connect to a
149 Citadel server running on the same computer, rather than using a TCP/IP
150 socket. /your/citadel/directory should be set to the actual name of the
151 directory in which you have Citadel installed
152 (such as /usr/local/citadel). If you run Citadel and WebCit on the same
153 computer, this is recommended, as it will run much faster.
159 WebCit contains graphics, templates, JavaScript code, etc. which are kept
160 in its "static" subdirectory. All site-specific graphics, however, are
161 fetched from the Citadel server.
163 The "images" directory on a Citadel system contains these graphics. The
164 ones which you may be interested in are:
166 -> background.gif: a background texture displayed under all web pages
167 -> hello.gif: your system's logo. It is displayed along with the logon
168 banner, and on the top left corner of each page.
170 If you would like to deploy a "favicon.ico" graphic, please put it in
171 the static/ directory. WebCit will properly serve it from there.
177 WebCit contains support for calendaring and scheduling. In order to use it
178 you must have libical v0.24 (or newer) on your system. You must also be
179 running a Citadel server with calendaring support. The calendar service will
180 be automatically configured and installed if your host system supports it.
182 WebCit also provides iCalendar format free/busy data for calendar clients.
183 Unlike with some other servers, there is no need for each user to "publish"
184 free/busy data -- it is generated on-the-fly from the server-side calendar
185 of the user being queried.
188 HTTPS (encryption) SUPPORT
189 --------------------------
191 WebCit now supports HTTPS for encrypted connections. When a secure server
192 port is specified via the "-s" flag, an HTTPS service is enabled.
194 The service will look in the "keys" directory for the following files:
196 citadel.key (your server's private key)
197 citadel.csr (a certificate signing request)
198 citadel.cer (your server's public certificate)
200 If any of these files are not found, WebCit will first attempt to link to the
201 SSL files in the Citadel service's directory (if Citadel is running on the
202 same host as WebCit), and if that does not succeed, it will automatically
203 generate a key and certificate.
205 It is up to you to decide whether to use an automatically generated,
206 self-signed certificate, or purchase a certificate signed by a well known
210 INTEGRATING INTO APACHE
211 -----------------------
213 It is best to run WebCit natively on its own HTTP port. If, however, you wish
214 to have WebCit run as part of an Apache web server installation (for example,
215 you only have one IP address and you need to stay on port 80 or 443 in order to
216 maintain compatibility with corporate firewall policy), you can do this with
217 the "mod_proxy" Apache module.
219 The preferred way to do this is to configure a NameVirtualHost for your WebCit
220 installation (for example, http://webcit.example.com) and then proxy that
221 virtual host through to WebCit. The alternative way, which does work but is not
222 quite as robust, is to "mount" the WebCit paths as directory aliases to your
225 Here is how to configure the NameVirtualHost method:
227 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
228 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
229 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
233 ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
234 ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
235 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
236 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
237 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
240 Here is how to configure the "subdirectory" method:
242 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
243 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
244 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
254 <location /who_inner_html>
258 ProxyPass /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
259 ProxyPassReverse /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
260 ProxyPass /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
261 ProxyPassReverse /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
262 ProxyPass /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
263 ProxyPassReverse /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
264 ProxyPass /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
265 ProxyPassReverse /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
266 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
267 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
268 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
272 ADVANCED CONFIGURE OPTIONS
273 --------------------------
275 If you are building packages and prefer not to have WebCit reside entirely in
276 a single directory, there are several compile-time options available.
278 --with-staticdir defines where webcit should locate and search its templates and images. If you
279 want to go with a different installation location then the point at which it is accessed at runtime,
280 you can use --with-staticrundir. This option is meant to ease your needs if you're going
281 to install the static files as 'examples' in a location like /usr/share/doc/webcit/examples,
282 and enable the user to copy them over to another dir (like /var/lib/citadel/www), where
283 they're accessed at runtime. (The debian instatll scripts provided with this package
284 do this to preserve user changes to the template system, see debian/citadel-webcit.postinstall)
286 Also, there are possibilities to load the TinyMCE editor into a system-wide location. WebCit
287 uses this standard component to compose its messages for messages and postings. Several WebCit installations
288 that may differ in design but use the same TinyMCE (which is the default that WebCit ships with)
289 (set --with-editordir for that, it defaults to the dir the templates go)
295 That's all you need to know to get started. If you have any questions or
296 comments, please visit UNCENSORED! BBS, the home of Citadel, at
297 uncensored.citadel.org.