Audit of wiki.devuan.org

There's a bunch of wikis installed here already, so my first task is to audit the server, see where the actual content is. Then herd them together. First measure the size and shape of the mess, then decide how to clean it up, then clean it up.

One part of the mess is the mess that wiki markup syntax is, there are lots of them. Some conversion will be needed.

PmWiki

The wiki currently being used. m1k3 set it up. Not in Devuan package repos.

Uses it's own wiki syntax, which is proving hard to find decent tools to convert to it.

So far a few of us have added a little bit of actual content.

/opt/pmwiki has the wiki software and the content.

Foswiki

The previous one. It's still setup, but the web server currently redirects to PmWiki. Not in Devuan package repos.

It has what looks like a bunch of content. I'll read through it.

rrq saved the content that chomwitt wrote in a separate folder. I think that Profiles.SharingFilesInLANWithNFS is a rewrite of one of those.

Foswiki forked from TWiki, and later changed their markup syntax from the TWiki one. I think that was TikiWiki. Their new one is TopicMarkupLanguage or TML. Dunno yet which one our content is in. Maybe ours was installed before the change, later updated to after, and the update script was run. There's what looks like a backup of /opt/foswiki made in 2021, parts updated in 2022 I think. Could be that was made as a precaution before the update that changed the wiki markup syntax. More digging needed.

PmWiki has a Cookbook recipe that says it integrates TikiWiki into the system. Last maintained in 2007, not well documented. I couldn't get it to actually do anything other than print an error message when I moved it's content folder. So at least it was getting invoked. Likely it bit rotted and works fine on a 2007 PmWiki. Or could just be that the content isn't TikiWiki format, but usually I'd expect errors or a bad render. Or it just didn't recognise any markup files, coz the file extension is different.

/opt/foswiki has the wiki software and the content. There's also a backup from 2022 in /opt.

docuwiki

golinux mentioned that she used to deal with content on a docuwiki we once had. No idea if that was on this server, or if any of it was left behind here if it was. I may find that during this audit. I suspect it had plenty of content.

Not in Devuan package repos.

friendsofdevuan.org

This appears to be gone. I went there, saw what looked like an advert for an Indonesian lottery system, and nothing else. I didn't investigate further. Maintain eye contact, back away slowly.

This may have been the docuwiki golinux mentioned, I think that's what it used.

I did manage to find a backup copy of the page I had there. Onefang.ThroughTheLookingGlass is that page that I manually converted from whatever markup syntax was used there.

Mediawiki

/var/lib/mysql/mediawiki exists. There's evidence that MySQL and MariaDB where installed, as was PostgreSQL. Ah looks like it's MariaDB with a MySQL compatability layer. None of those are running now. I'll have to fire one up to see if there's any content in there.

XWiki

/var/lib/xwiki exists, doesn't seem to have any actual content, but I haven't yet dug further to see if that's elsewhere. This might just be the XWiki markup syntax for something else, or it's the XWiki syntax for the XWiki system.

Still digging.

Other things to deal with later that I stumble across.

While it's currently using nginx, apache was used in the past, and there's evidence Caddy was to. Clean those up.

Brightness is installed. lol

What's next?

After this audit, the next step is to herd together all content I find on the server.

First decision is - which wiki system to use for the results?

Should be something where converting what ever existing formats to something it can use is easyish.

Perhaps the one with the most existing content, so less to convert.

Also important would be the ability to export it's content to popular markup syntaxes. There's reasons why we abandoned those old wiki systems, some of those reasons might still be valid. So what ever system falls out of this audit as the one to use right now is just gonna be temporary while we do a proper review and choose of a new wiki system. Then it'll be my responsibility to migrate to the newness. Or we can stick with whatever works after this audit'n'herd, then fix up it's problems.