Ubuntu Manpage: dwww - access documentation via WWW

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              Cleans outdated documents from the cache.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.

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.