DWWW
Section: Debian (7)
Updated: November 2nd, 2019
Index
Return to Main Contents
NAME
dwww - access documentation via WWW
SYNOPSIS
http://localhost/dwww/index.html
DESCRIPTION
A typical Linux system has documentation in many formats (manual pages,
Info files, READMEs, and so on).
dwww makes it possible to access all of these via the same interface,
a WWW browser.
This makes it easier to use the documentation.
dwww consists of several programs:
- cgi-bin/dwww
-
Run by the WWW server when user requests document via dwww.
Parses the request and runs
dwww-convert(8)
or
dwww-find(8)
with suitable arguments.
Installed in the server's cgi-bin directory.
- dwww-convert(8)
-
Converts any document to HTML.
- dwww-format-man(8)
-
Auxiliary program to convert man pages or text files to HTML.
- dwww-find(8)
-
Searches for documentation.
- dwww-quickfind(8)
-
Used by
dwww-find(8)
to quickly find which package a program belongs to.
- dwww-cache(8)
-
Manages the cache of converted documents.
- dwww-refresh-cache(8)
-
Cleans outdated documents from the cache.
- dwww-build(8)
-
Builds static lists of manual pages.
Needs to be re-run whenever documents are installed or removed.
(In default configuration is called by the dwww daily cron job).
- dwww-build-menu(8)
-
Builds the Debian Documentation Menu pages.
Needs to be re-run whenever documents are installed or removed.
(In default configuration is called by the
install-docs(8)
or by the dwww daily cron job).
- dwww-index++(8)
-
Uses
index++(1)
to build index of the documentation registered with doc-base.
In default configuration is called be the dwww weekly cron job.
For speed reasons, the converted documents are stored in
/var/cache/dwww.
The cache is cleaned by
dwww-refresh-cache(8)
of old documents to keep it from growing too large.
CONFIGURATION
dwww is configured via the
/etc/dwww/dwww.conf
file.
That file is a Bourne shell
(/bin/sh)
script that defines some or all the following variables
(defaults are used if the file doesn't exist,
or doesn't define the variable).
Basic configuration variables
These variables can be also configured by debconf script. You can change
them using the following command:
-
dpkg-reconfigure dwww
- DWWW_SERVERNAME
-
Name of the www server.
Default is
localhost.
- DWWW_SERVERPORT
-
Port on which the www server listen to.
Default is
80.
- DWWW_USEHTTPS
-
If enabled,
dwww(1)
will connect to DWWW_SERVERNAME:DWWW_SERVERPORT
through the HTTPS protocol.
Default is
no.
- DWWW_DOCROOTDIR
-
The document root for web server.
Default is
/var/www.
- DWWW_CGIDIR
-
The directory which contains the CGI scripts for your web server.
Default is
/usr/lib/cgi-bin.
- DWWW_CGIUSER
-
Name of the user that the web server uses to execute CGI scripts.
Default is
www-data.
Browser variables
- DWWW_BROWSER
-
Web-browser used by
dwww(1)
to load dwww main page.
- DWWW_X11_BROWSER
-
Web-browser used by
dwww(1)
to load dwww main page when in X11.
Path variables
- DWWW_DOCPATH
-
Colon-delimited list of directories from which
dwww-convert(8)
supplies files. For security reasons, it will refuse to convert files
outside the directories named by this variable.
Default is
/usr/share/doc:/usr/share/info:/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/doc:/usr/local/share/info:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/share/common-licenses.
- DWWW_ALLOWEDLINKPATH
-
Colon-delimited list of directories which can be targets of symlinks from
files from directories inside DWWW_DOCPATH.
Default value is
/usr/share:/usr/lib:/usr/local/share:/var/www.
For example, /usr/share/doc/package/foo.html may be symlinked to a file
/usr/share/package/foo.html, and this file can be displayed by
dwww.
Cache files locations
- DWWW_QUICKFIND_DB
-
Location of the installed packages and programs cache file, generated by
dwww-refresh-cache(8)
with the help of
dwww-quickfind(8).
Default is
/var/cache/dwww/quickfind.dat.
- DWWW_DOCBASE2PKG_DB
-
Location of the cache file, which maps installed doc-base files to packages names,
used by the
dwww-build-menu(8).
Default is
/var/cache/dwww/docbase2pkg.dat.
- DWWW_REGDOCS_DB
-
Location of doc-base registered documents contents cache. The cache is generated by
dwww-build-menu(8)
and read by
dwww-find(8)
Default is
/var/cache/dwww/regdocs.dat.
Documentation indexing variables
- DWWW_INDEX_DOCUMENTATION
-
If this variable is set to
yes
(default), and the swish++ package is installed, then
dwww-index++(8)
will generate index of registered documentation.
- DWWW_INDEX_FULL_SLEEP_TIME
-
In order to not impede regular server operation,
dwww-index++(8)
sleeps for the specified amount of time (in seconds) before feeding the next file path to index to
index++(1).
The default value is
0.15.
- DWWW_INDEX_FULL_TIME_INTERVAL
-
Specifies how often (in days)
dwww-index++(8)
will generate full index of documentation.
The default value is
28.
- DWWW_INDEX_INCREMENTAL_TIME_INTERVAL
-
Specifies how often (in days)
dwww-index++(8)
will run incremental indexing of new documentation files.
The default value is
7.
- DWWW_MERGE_MAN2HTML_INDEX
-
If this variable is set to
yes,
then while generating index of registered documents,
dwww-index++(8)
will use man pages index generated by man2html package,
if it's available.
Other variables
- DWWW_KEEPDAYS
-
How many days should
dwww-refresh-cache(8)
keep documents that have not been accessed?
Default is
10
days.
- DWWW_TMPDIR
-
Directory used by
dwww-build(8)
and
dwww-build-menu(8)
to temporally store the web pages it generates.
Default is
/var/lib/dwww.
For security reason any public writable directory like
/tmp
should not be used.
- DWWW_USEFILEURL
-
If this variable is set, dwww will use file:/ style URLs to
access html files - bypassing the CGI script. This is faster
on slow machines. Of course, you will not be able to read
the html documentation on a non-local machine. Default is
to not enable this feature.
- DWWW_TITLE
-
Title to appear on dwww generated files.
Default is
dwww: $(hostname)
- DWWW_USE_CACHE
-
If this variable is set to
yes
(default), dwww will cache accessed documents in
/var/cache/dwww/db. See
dwww-cache(8).
Deprecated variables
Since version 1.10, dwww no longer uses the following variables:
DWWW_HTMLDIR,
DWWW_MAN2HTML,
DWWW_TEXT2HTML,
DWWW_DIR2HTML.
CUSTOMISING DWWW PAGES LAYOUT
dwww uses a CSS file for managing the layout of the pages it generates. The file is built from
two other files, namely
/usr/share/dwww/dwww.css,
which is a global one, provided by the package, and
/etc/dwww/dwww-user.css,
a local one, that can be provided by the user to override settings from the former file.
The latter file does not exist by default, but when it exists,
dwww-build(8)
will append its contents at the end of generated file. Since web browsers tend to use
the last one setting defined for a given CSS element, this
has the expected effect of customisation.
Example
To use some image as a background for dwww pages, please put something like this
in
/etc/dwww/dwww-user.css:
-
body { background: url('http://host/path/to/background.png')
repeat; }
table,pre,code,tt { opacity: 0.7; }
Please make sure to run
dwww-build(8)
afterwards.
FILES
- /etc/dwww/dwww.conf
-
Configuration file for dwww.
It's not necessary for this file to exist,
there are sensible defaults for everything.
- /etc/dwww/apache.conf
-
Default configuration file for various apache-based web servers.
The dwww package post-installation script creates symlinks from
/etc/apache*/conf.d/dwww
to this file.
- /etc/dwww/dwww-user.css
-
If such a file exists, its contents will be appended to the dwww.css file.
This allows local administrators to customise dwww pages layout.
- /etc/cron.daily/dwww
-
Dwww daily cron job, which rebuilds cache directory and dwww HTML pages.
- /etc/cron.weekly/dwww
-
Dwww weekly cron job. Uses
dwww-index++(8)
to rebuild registered documentation index.
- /var/cache/dwww
-
Directory, where are placed various cache files generated and used by dwww.
- /var/cache/dwww/db
-
Cache for the converted documents.
- /usr/share/dwww
-
Templates for the dwww web pages (used by
dwww-build(8)
and others).
- /var/lib/dwww
-
The dwww pages.
The server's document root directory should have a link to
this directory.
SEE ALSO
dwww(1),
dwww-build(8),
dwww-build-menu(8),
dwww-cache(8),
dwww-convert(8),
dwww-find(8),
dwww-format-man(8),
dwww-index++(8),
dwww-quickfind(8),
dwww-refresh-cache(8),
dwww-txt2html(8).
AUTHOR
Originally by Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>.
Modified by Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com> and Robert Luberda <robert@debian.org>.
Bugs should be reported via the normal Debian bug reporting system, see
/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt
file or
reportbug(1)
man page.
dwww is licensed via the GNU General Public License.
While it has been written for Debian, porting it to other
systems is strongly encouraged.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- CONFIGURATION
-
- Basic configuration variables
-
- Browser variables
-
- Path variables
-
- Cache files locations
-
- Documentation indexing variables
-
- Other variables
-
- Deprecated variables
-
- CUSTOMISING DWWW PAGES LAYOUT
-
- Example
-
- FILES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHOR
-
This document was created by
man2html,
using the manual pages.
Time: 11:39:48 GMT, March 28, 2024