1 WEBCIT for the Citadel System
4 Copyright (C) 1996-2005 by the authors. Portions written by:
13 This program is free software released under the terms of the GNU General
14 Public License. Please read COPYING.txt for more licensing information.
20 Citadel is a sophisticated BBS and groupware package which allows multiple
21 users to simultaneously access the system using a variety of user interfaces.
22 This package (WebCit) is a "middleware" package which presents an HTML/HTTP
23 user interface to the Citadel system.
25 What this means in practice is that after you've installed WebCit, users can
26 access all functions of your system using any web browser. Since this may be
27 the first Citadel experience for many new users, the screens have been designed
28 to be attractive and easy to navigate.
34 Unline some web-based packages, WebCit contains its own standalone HTTP
35 engine. As a result, you can get it running quickly without all that tedious
36 mucking about with Apache configuration files and directories. WebCit is not
37 intended to replace your Apache server, however -- it *only* provides a front
38 end to Citadel. If you do not have another web server running, you may run
39 WebCit on port 80; however, in the more likely situation that you have Apache
40 or some other web server listening on port 80, you must run WebCit on another
41 port. The default is port 2000.
43 To compile from source, enter the usual commands:
44 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/webcit [or whatever directory you prefer]
48 Then to initialize it:
52 After running setup, you just point your web browser to whatever port you
55 http://your.host.name:2000
59 The included "setup" program is basically just an installation helper that
60 asks a series of questions and then adds the appropriate line to inittab to
61 start WebCit. For most installations, this will do just fine. If you have
62 special circumstances, or if you'd prefer to configure WebCit manually, you
63 may skip the setup program. Instead, open /etc/inittab and add an entry
66 wc:2345:respawn:/usr/local/webcit/webserver
69 Several command-line options are also available. Here's the usage for
70 the "webserver" program:
72 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
73 [-c] [remotehost [remoteport]]
77 webserver [-i ip_addr] [-p http_port] [-s] [-t tracefile]
78 [-c] uds /your/citadel/directory
82 -> ip_addr: the IP address on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
83 You can leave this out, in which case WebCit will listen on all
84 available network interfaces. Normally this will be the case, but if
85 you are running multiple Citadel systems on one host, it can be useful.
87 -> http_port: the TCP port on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
88 This can be any port number at all; there is no standard. Naturally,
89 you'll want to create a link to this port on your system's regular web
90 pages (presumably on an Apache server running on port 80). Or, if you
91 are installing WebCit on a dedicated server, then you might choose to
92 use port 80 after all.
94 -> tracefile: where you want WebCit to log to. This can be a file, a
95 virtual console, or /dev/null to suppress logging altogether.
97 -> The "-c" option causes WebCit to output an extra cookie containing the
98 identity of the WebCit server. The cookie will look like this:
99 Set-cookie: wcserver=your.host.name
100 This is useful if you have a cluster of WebCit servers sitting behind a
101 load balancer, and the load balancer has the ability to use cookies to
102 keep track of which server to send HTTP requests to.
104 -> The "-s" option causes WebCit to present an HTTPS (SSL-encrypted) web
105 service. If you want to do both HTTP and HTTPS, you can simply run two
106 instances of WebCit on two different ports.
108 -> remotehost: the name or IP address of the host on which your Citadel
109 server is running. The default is "localhost".
111 -> remoteport: the port number on which your Citadel server is running.
112 The default is port 504, the IANA-designated standard port for Citadel.
114 -> "uds" is a keyword which tells WebCit that you wish to connect to a
115 Citadel server running on the same computer, rather than using a TCP/IP
116 socket. /your/citadel/directory should be set to the actual name of the
117 directory in which you have Citadel installed
118 (such as /usr/local/citadel). If you run Citadel and WebCit on the same
119 computer, this is recommended, as it will run much faster.
125 WebCit contains a small amount of graphics (buttons, etc.) which are kept
126 in its "static" subdirectory. All site-specific graphics, however, are
127 fetched from the Citadel server.
129 The "images" directory on a Citadel system contains these graphics. The
130 ones which you may be interested in are:
132 -> background.gif: a background texture displayed under all web pages
133 -> hello.gif: your system's logo. It is displayed along with the logon
134 banner, and on the top left corner of each page.
136 If you would like to deploy a "favicon.ico" graphic, please put it in
137 the static/ directory. WebCit will properly serve it from there.
143 WebCit contains support for calendaring and scheduling. In order to use it
144 you must have libical v0.24 (or newer) on your system. You must also be
145 running a Citadel server with calendaring support. The calendar service will
146 be automatically configured and installed if your host system supports it.
148 WebCit also provides Kolab-compatible free/busy data for calendar clients.
149 Unlike the Kolab server, however, there is no need for each user to "publish"
150 free/busy data -- it is generated on-the-fly from the server-side calendar
151 of the user being queried. Note: in order to support Kolab clients, you must
152 have WebCit running in HTTPS mode on port 443, because that is what Kolab
153 clients will be expecting.
156 HTTPS (encryption) SUPPORT
157 --------------------------
159 WebCit now supports HTTPS for encrypted connections. When a secure server
160 port is specified via the "-s" flag, an HTTPS service is enabled.
162 The service will look in the "keys" directory for the following files:
164 citadel.key (your server's private key)
165 citadel.csr (a certificate signing request)
166 citadel.cer (your server's public certificate)
168 If any of these files are not found, WebCit will first attempt to link to the
169 SSL files in the Citadel service's directory (if Citadel is running on the
170 same host as WebCit), and if that does not succeed, it will automatically
171 generate a key and certificate.
173 It is up to you to decide whether to use an automatically generated,
174 self-signed certificate, or purchase a certificate signed by a well known
181 That's all you need to know to get started. If you have any questions or
182 comments, please visit UNCENSORED! BBS, the home of Citadel, at
183 uncensored.citadel.org.