1 WEBCIT for the Citadel System
4 Copyright (C) 1996-2008 by the authors. Portions written by:
18 This program is open source software released under the terms of the GNU
19 General Public License, version 3. Please read COPYING.txt for more
20 licensing information.
22 WebCit bundles the Prototype JavaScript Framework, writen by Sam
23 Stephenson [http://prototype.conio.net]. These components are licensed to
24 you under the terms of an MIT-style license.
26 WebCit bundles the script.aculo.us JavaScript library, written by
27 Thomas Fuchs [http://script.aculo.us, http://mir.aculo.us]. These
28 components are licensed to you under the terms of an MIT-style license.
30 WebCit bundles the TinyMCE text editor, written by Moxiecode Systems AB
31 (http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/tinymce/docs/credits.html). This component
32 is licensed to you under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
35 WebCit bundles the Nifty Corners library, written by Alessandro Fulciniti
36 [http://cerca.html.it/cgi-bin/cerca.cgi?q=nifty+corners]. This component
37 is licensed to you under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
39 The Citadel logo was designed by Lisa Aurigemma.
45 Citadel is a sophisticated groupware platform which allows multiple
46 users to simultaneously access the system using a variety of user interfaces.
47 This package (WebCit) is a "middleware" package which presents an HTML/HTTP
48 user interface to the Citadel system.
50 What this means in practice is that after you've installed WebCit, users can
51 access all functions of your system using any web browser. Since this may be
52 the first Citadel experience for many new users, the screens have been designed
53 to be attractive and easy to navigate.
59 Unline some web-based packages, WebCit contains its own standalone HTTP
60 engine. As a result, you can get it running quickly without all that tedious
61 mucking about with Apache configuration files and directories. WebCit is not
62 intended to be a general-purpose web server, however -- it *only* provides a
63 front end to Citadel. If you do not have another web server running, you may
64 run WebCit on port 80; however, if you have Apache or some other web server
65 listening on port 80, you must run WebCit on another port. If you do not
66 specify a port number, WebCit will bind to port 2000.
68 To compile from source, enter the usual commands:
69 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/webcit [or whatever directory you prefer]
73 Package/Ports Maintainers: to make webcit fit smart into LHFS-ified systems
74 read on at the end of this file, Advanced configure options.
76 Then to initialize it:
80 After running setup, you just point your web browser to whatever port you
85 (or if you specified some other port, such as 2000 in this example...)
87 http://your.host.name:2000
91 The included "setup" program is basically just an installation helper that
92 asks a series of questions and then adds the appropriate line to inittab to
93 start WebCit. For most installations, this will do just fine. If you have
94 special circumstances, or if you'd prefer to configure WebCit manually, you
95 may skip the setup program. Instead, open /etc/inittab and add an entry
98 wc:2345:respawn:/usr/local/webcit/webcit
101 Several command-line options are also available. Here's the usage for
102 the "webcit" program:
104 webcit [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
105 [-c] [-f] [remotehost [remoteport]]
109 webcit [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
110 [-c] [-f] uds /your/citadel/directory
114 -> ip_addr: the IP address on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
115 You can leave this out, in which case WebCit will listen on all
116 available network interfaces. Normally this will be the case, but if
117 you are running multiple Citadel systems on one host, it can be useful.
118 You can also use this option to run Apache and WebCit on different IP
119 addresses instead of different ports, if you have them available.
121 -> http_port: the TCP port on which you wish your WebCit server to run. If
122 you are installing WebCit on a dedicated server, you can use the
123 standard port 80. Otherwise, if port 80 is already occupied by some
124 other web service (probably Apache), then you'll need to select a
125 different port. If you do not specify a port number, WebCit will attempt
128 -> tracefile: where you want WebCit to log to. This can be a file, a
129 virtual console, or /dev/null to suppress logging altogether.
131 -> The "-c" option causes WebCit to output an extra cookie containing the
132 identity of the WebCit server. The cookie will look like this:
133 Set-cookie: wcserver=your.host.name
134 This is useful if you have a cluster of WebCit servers sitting behind a
135 load balancer, and the load balancer has the ability to use cookies to
136 keep track of which server to send HTTP requests to.
138 -> The "-s" option causes WebCit to present an HTTPS (SSL-encrypted) web
139 service. If you want to do both HTTP and HTTPS, you can simply run two
140 instances of WebCit on two different ports.
142 -> The "-f" option tells WebCit that it is allowed to follow the
143 "X-Forwarded-For:" HTTP headers which may be added if your WebCit service
144 is sitting behind a front end proxy. This will allow users in your "Who
145 is online?" list to appear as connecting from their actual host address
146 instead of the address of the proxy. In addition, the
147 "X-Forwarded-Host:" header from the front end proxy will also be honored,
148 which will help to make automatically generated absolute URL's (for
149 things like GroupDAV and mailing list subscriptions) correct.
151 -> remotehost: the name or IP address of the host on which your Citadel
152 server is running. The default is "localhost".
154 -> remoteport: the port number on which your Citadel server is running.
155 The default is port 504, the IANA-designated standard port for Citadel.
157 -> "uds" is a keyword which tells WebCit that you wish to connect to a
158 Citadel server running on the same computer, rather than using a TCP/IP
159 socket. /your/citadel/directory should be set to the actual name of the
160 directory in which you have Citadel installed
161 (such as /usr/local/citadel). If you run Citadel and WebCit on the same
162 computer, this is recommended, as it will run much faster.
168 WebCit contains graphics, templates, JavaScript code, etc. which are kept
169 in its "static" subdirectory. All site-specific graphics, however, are
170 fetched from the Citadel server.
172 The "images" directory on a Citadel system contains these graphics. The
173 ones which you may be interested in are:
175 -> background.gif: a background texture displayed under all web pages
176 -> hello.gif: your system's logo. It is displayed along with the logon
177 banner, and on the top left corner of each page.
179 If you would like to deploy a "favicon.ico" graphic, please put it in
180 the static/ directory. WebCit will properly serve it from there.
186 The default WebCit installation will create an empty directory called
187 "static.local". In this directory you may place a file called "webcit.css"
188 which, if present, is referenced *after* the default stylesheet. If you
189 know CSS and wish to customize your WebCit installation, any styles you
190 declare in static.local/webcit.css will override the styles found in
191 static/webcit.css -- and your customizations will not be overwritten when
192 you upgrade WebCit later.
194 You may also place other files, such as images, in static.local for
195 further customization.
201 WebCit contains support for calendaring and scheduling. In order to use it
202 you must have libical v0.26 (or newer) on your system. You must also be
203 running a Citadel server with calendaring support. The calendar service will
204 be automatically configured and installed if your host system supports it.
206 WebCit also provides iCalendar format free/busy data for calendar clients.
207 Unlike with some other servers, there is no need for each user to "publish"
208 free/busy data -- it is generated on-the-fly from the server-side calendar
209 of the user being queried.
212 HTTPS (encryption) SUPPORT
213 --------------------------
215 WebCit now supports HTTPS for encrypted connections. When a secure server
216 port is specified via the "-s" flag, an HTTPS service is enabled.
218 The service will look in the "keys" directory for the following files:
220 citadel.key (your server's private key)
221 citadel.csr (a certificate signing request)
222 citadel.cer (your server's public certificate)
224 If any of these files are not found, WebCit will first attempt to link to the
225 SSL files in the Citadel service's directory (if Citadel is running on the
226 same host as WebCit), and if that does not succeed, it will automatically
227 generate a key and certificate.
229 It is up to you to decide whether to use an automatically generated,
230 self-signed certificate, or purchase a certificate signed by a well known
234 INTEGRATING INTO APACHE
235 -----------------------
237 It is best to run WebCit natively on its own HTTP port. If, however, you wish
238 to have WebCit run as part of an Apache web server installation (for example,
239 you only have one IP address and you need to stay on port 80 or 443 in order to
240 maintain compatibility with corporate firewall policy), you can do this with
241 the "mod_proxy" Apache module.
243 The preferred way to do this is to configure a NameVirtualHost for your WebCit
244 installation (for example, http://webcit.example.com) and then proxy that
245 virtual host through to WebCit. The alternative way, which does work but is not
246 quite as robust, is to "mount" the WebCit paths as directory aliases to your
249 Here is how to configure the NameVirtualHost method:
251 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
252 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
253 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
257 ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
258 ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:2000/
259 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
260 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
261 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
264 Here is how to configure the "subdirectory" method:
266 <VirtualHost mydomain.com:443>
267 #here some of your config stuff like logging, serveradmin...
268 NameVirtualHost www.mydomain.com
278 <location /who_inner_html>
282 ProxyPass /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
283 ProxyPassReverse /webcit/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/webcit/
284 ProxyPass /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
285 ProxyPassReverse /listsub/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/listsub/
286 ProxyPass /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
287 ProxyPassReverse /groupdav/ http://127.0.0.1:2000/groupdav/
288 ProxyPass /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
289 ProxyPassReverse /who_inner_html http://127.0.0.1:2000/who_inner_html
290 # The following line is optional. It allows WebCit's static content
291 # such as images to be served directly by Apache.
292 alias /static /var/lib/citadel/www/static
296 ADVANCED CONFIGURE OPTIONS
297 --------------------------
299 If you are building packages and prefer not to have WebCit reside entirely in
300 a single directory, there are several compile-time options available.
302 --with-wwwdir defines where webcit should locate and search its templates and images.
303 --with-localedir defines where to put webcits locale files.
305 Also, there are possibilities to load the TinyMCE editor into a system-wide location. WebCit
306 uses this standard component to compose its messages for messages and postings. Several WebCit installations
307 that may differ in design but use the same TinyMCE (which is the default that WebCit ships with)
308 (set --with-editordir for that, it defaults to the dir the templates go)
310 Install targets have diversified to reflect these changes too:
312 locale: the webcit .mo files for gettext & locales.
313 tinymce: the editor. if your system brings one, just ommit this.
314 wwwdata: our templates.
315 setupbin: if you want to use webcits setup facility... but isn't needed in case you provide own init & config scripts.
322 That's all you need to know to get started. If you have any questions or
323 comments, please visit UNCENSORED! BBS, the home of Citadel, at
324 http://uncensored.citadel.org - and go to the "Citadel Support" room.