Administrator Skills Assumptions
For each of these, the requirement is either pre-existing knowledge/skill, or the willingness to spend significant time (i.e. from hours to days) learning these.
- Operating system administration: Ability to use Unix/Linux command line tools (or equivalent Windows tools), including ability to move/copy/delete files, change permissions, view web server log files, set environment variables, use a text editor, etc.
- Web server administration: Ability to do basic setup, e.g. ability to edit config files or use GUI configuration tools to enable CGI scripts on a directory.
- Program compilation: Where RCS is not pre-installed (that is most Unix systems), the ability to download and compile the RCS program from source, including use of
configure
, make
, etc. This is often not necessary on Linux or Windows.
- Troubleshooting: Ability to perform tests, inspect error logs, talk to technical support (whether in an IT department or web hosting provider) and read documentation in order to help with diagnosing installation problems.
Installing Help is
not recommended for people who only know HTML and web design, unless they are willing to learn the above, or team up with someone who can handle the installation.
Although the
TWikiInstallationGuide is quite complete, there will on occasion be parts that don't work in your local environment (particularly with Help:Codev/TWikiOnWebHostingSites, which are sometimes challenging even for those with good OS and web server skills).
There are many excellent resources for learning how to administer your OS and web server, including books, web sites, web forums, IM and e-mail lists. The Help:Support web must
not be depended on as a resource for this purpose - in other words, it is not there to answer basic questions about operating system and web server administration. Asking and answering questions is time consuming for all concerned and is best used for specific
TWiki related issues, rather than helping you learn the OS and web server.
r.
To get started with Linux, visit
http://linuxbasics.org/. LinuxBasics.org offers Linux tutorials, a mailing-list and an IRC-channel to answer questions, and links to sites with information to install and use Linux. A nice tool for people migrating from Windows is
http://www.MidnightCommander.org/. It is already installed on Linux systems: try
mc -ac
and
ESC 1
to get help.
Related Topics: AdminDocumentationCategory