Nowadays, having our own Virtual Private Server (VPS) is very not expensive. I have taken this opportunity to host my own XWiki instance. In this article, I will report how I have done so you can easily do the same.

Table of content

• 1. Chose a provider
• 2. Create a VPS on Digital Ocean
• 2bis. Create a VPS on OVH
• 3. Create a user
• 4. Configure a firewall
• 5. Minor config
• 6. Install MySQL
• 7. Install Java
• 8. Install Tomcat
• 9. Install XWiki
• 10. Install Nginx
• 11. Going further
• Other solutions
• References

1. Chose a provider

The first step is to chose a VPS provider. They are many on the market. I have chosen 2 of them:

• Digital Ocean: Good prices, SSD Drive, very nice UI, good support and nice tutorials on their site. The billing is per hour, so if your VPS is created just for a few hours, you will pay for what you have used only.
• OVH: The famous French provider. Very low prices. 

2. Create a VPS on Digital Ocean

After creating an account, you just need to click on "create Droplet" (that is how Digital Ocean call their VPS).

You fill a name and you select the size that you need. 512MB of RAM is not enough for XWiki, so I have picked up 1GB.

Then you select where your VPS will be hosted. I have chosen Amsterdam, since I am European. I also pick the option "enable backups" to have automatic backups done by the provider.

Then you chose which Operating System you want. I have chosen Ubuntu because it is the OS I use on my laptop and the one I know best. I have taken the version 14.04 because it is a LTS (Long Term Support) with 5 years of support.

Then you fill your SSH key, to be able to connect to your VPS.

After all that, you can create your droplet.

The installation takes a few minutes.

When it's done, you will receive an e-mail with the IP of your VPS. To connect, you just need to use SSH.

For the first access, the server will ask you to change the root's password.

2bis. Create a VPS on OVH

I did not take screenshot, but the process is quite simple too. I have chosen the VPS Cloud Classic that costs 2.39€/month (including taxes), with 1GB of RAM. But no real backups.

Same, I have chosen an Ubuntu Server 14.04.

When you receive the e-mail, you just need to use SSH to connect:

I suggest you to change the root's password, even if the VPS does not ask you.

3. Create a user

It is not a good practice to work with the "root" user. So we create our own:

We give him the right to use the "sudo" command:

Then we add our SSH public key in the authorized keys of that user:

Now we can connect with our user:

It's done

4. Configure a firewall

To avoid security problems with people trying to access our server, we set a basic firewall. The Linux firewall is "iptables", but Ubuntu provides a wrapper called "UFW" that is easier to use.

So, first, we install it:

Then we set some basic rules:

It's done.

5. Minor config

We configure the time-zone of our server:

and we install NTP to have a synchronized clock:

6. Install MySQL

I use MySQL simply because it is the database I know the best. But you could use PostGreSQL or any SQL database that XWiki supports (Oracle, HSQLDB).

So we install it:

We also change the default configuration:

In this file, we change the following line:

to:

We also enable the option "innodb_file_per_table" because it is better for performances. We do it by adding a new line just above [mysqld]:

Now we restart MySQL:

We need to create a database for XWiki, so we connect to the server:

The default database that XWiki uses is called "xwiki". In my opinion, it is a good practice to prefix all XWiki databases by "xwiki_", because XWiki will create one database per wiki, and it prevents mixing up with other databases not related to XWiki. So we create the database "xwiki_xwiki":

It's done.

7. Install Java

I have made the choice of using the Oracle Virtual Machine because we usually have better performances with it. But it should work with OpenJDK too.

To install it, we add a package repository that simplifies the installation of the Oracle JVM:

With OVH, it does not work. We have to manually add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

Then we update the package list and we install java:

We make sure java is well configured:

It should return something like: 

It's done.

8. Install Tomcat

XWiki should works with every Servlet Container, but I have chosen Tomcat because XWiki provides a script to handle it.

So we install Tomcat 7:

Now we need to change the options by editing the launcher file:

We replace:

by:

We also change the JAVA_OPTS variable:

Here we give 600Mb of RAM to tomcat.

If you use Digital Ocean, the tomcat launch will be very slow. It is because Tomcat computes some random numbers, and your newly created VPS lacks of entropy. To fix this, we add to the JAVA_OPTS variable the following option: 

For OVH, I have not noticed this problem. They probably handle this problem on their own.

Now we restart Tomcat:

We also add a temporary rule to our firewall to be able to connect to tomcat from the outside:

Now, with your favourite browser, you go to the URL: http://your_vps_ip:8080/ and after some time, you will see the success page:

It's done.

9. Install XWiki

Now we can install XWiki. First we download it:

Then we unzip it inside the webapp folder:

Now we need the MySQL connector that XWiki does not bundle:

Then we need to change the XWiki database configuration:

Here, we comment the default configuration:

And we uncomment the MySQL section:

We have also changed the MySQL user and password. I personally use the MySQL "root" user since XWiki needs all privileges to create and drop databases. But you could create your own MySQL user and set it there.

Now we go to the XWiki configuration, which is split in 2 files (for legacy reason).

Let's edit the first file:

There, I have chosen to use the FileSystem Attachment Storage. It makes XWiki store its attachments in the FS instead of the database. You can have bigger attachments and I think it's better to now crowd the database with binary files.

I also extend the cache size for performances reasons:

And I enable the "xwiki_" prefix on the databases:

Now we don't forget to change the salt used for the cookies:

And that's all.

Now we modify the other file:

Here, I set a different permanentDirectory (that should exists and that the user tomcat7 can write):

I also suggest to change the way the LESS cache works. By default, the LESS cache is flushed at every restart, but I think it's not needed and very bad for performances. So I edit:

And I change:

The configuration is done, we can restart Tomcat:

Now, let's go to XWiki with your browser (http://your_vps_ip:8080/xwiki)

You should see the XWiki Distribution Wizard. Now you just have to follow the steps and XWiki will be ready! (BTW, the default admin user is "Admin" and the password is "admin").

10. Install Nginx

XWiki is installed but our system is not ready. Tomcat is a servlet container and not a real web server, so we need to set up a reverse proxy. The usual choice for that is the Apache web server, but I have chosen Nginx which is becoming more and more popular, and that has better performances. It seems a better fit regarding the fact that we have only a little server.

So we install it:

Then we go to the URL with our browser: (http://your_server_ip). And we get:

Now we disable the default configuration:

and we create our own:

Here is my configuration:

This configuration redirects every requests for mydomain.com to mydomain.com/xwiki.

If you want to use a different domain name for each subwiki, I suggest to add:

If not, XWiki will not be able to detect the current wiki from the domain name.

To finish, we enable our configuration and we reload Nginx:

It's almost done. Now that we have a proper web server, we should stop allowing access to the port 8080 (the tomcat port).

It displays all the firewall rules. Now we delete the rules concerning the port 8080:

And we can reload the firewall:

It's done.

11. Going further

The server is ready, but we can improve the set-up. I will write other articles about that in the future. Here is the list of suggestions I propose:

• Installing XInit, a script that monitorizes XWiki, restarts tomcat if needed, sends e-mails in case of errors, etc...
• Installing an e-mail server to allow XWiki to send messages (registration form, watchlist, etc...)
• Installing OpenOffice, to enable the import/export of office documents.
• Using short URLS, to get rid of the xwiki/bin/view part of the URL (the tutorial is very clear and I managed to make it work without difficulty).
• Make automatic back-ups of the database and the permanent directory.

Stay tuned!

Other solutions

If you are discouraged about hosting XWiki yourself, you can still use an XWiki hoster:

• MyXWiki: a free service for non-profit organizations and individuals.
• XWiki SAS: the company I work for. Provide a professional hosting and support.

References

• Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 14.04 (Digital Ocean)
• Additional Recommended Steps for New Ubuntu 14.04 Servers (Digital Ocean)
• How To Setup a Firewall with UFW on an Ubuntu and Debian Cloud Server (Digital Ocean)
• A Basic MySQL Tutorial (Digital Ocean)
• Install Oracle Java 8 In Ubuntu Via PPA Repository [JDK8] (WebUpd8)
• How To Install Apache Tomcat 7 on Ubuntu 14.04 via Apt-Get (Digital Ocean)
• Use XWiki with Tomcat (xwiki.org)
• Use XWiki with MySQL (xwiki.org)
• FileSystem Attachment Porter (extensions.xwiki.org) ...