Install XWiki on Ubuntu 16.04

We’ll show you, how to install XWiki on Ubuntu 16.04. XWiki is a free and open source advanced wiki software platform written in Java. It runs on servlet containers like JBoss, Tomcat etc. which uses a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL to store its information. There are several methods of installing XWiki. In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install XWiki on Ubuntu 16.04 using .DEB  packages. The method of installing XWiki on Ubuntu using .DEB packages is probably the fastest and easiest way because all components needed by XWiki for a production instance are automatically installed on the server. We will use a VPS with Ubuntu 16.04 but you should be able to install XWiki following this tutorial on all Debian based Linux distributions. Installing XWiki on Ubuntu 16.04 is a fairly easy task and it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to finish it.

XWiki comes with tons of useful features such as the following:

• Page editing
• Content organization
• Create your own applications
• Different translations of the documents
• Version control
• Content imports
  and much more…

1. Login via SSH

Let’s start with the XWiki installation. Login to your server via SSH as user root

ssh root@IP_Address

2. Install screen

If the screen is not installed on your server you can easily install it using the following command

apt-get install screen

3. Start a new screen session

and first of all start a new screen session

screen -U -S xwiki

4. Update all installed packages

Make sure that all installed packages are up to date

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

5. Install Tomcat 8

Install Tomcat 8 on your server

apt-get install tomcat8

6. Add the XWiki repository

Add the official XWiki repository

wget -q "http://maven.xwiki.org/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
wget "http://maven.xwiki.org/stable/xwiki-stable.list" -P /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

7. Update the OS

and update the system

apt-get update

8. Install XWikki on Ubuntu 16.04

You can check all available packages in this repository using the following command

apt-cache search xwiki
xwiki-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-mysql-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-pgsql-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat-mysql - XWiki enterprise Tomcat/MySQL based package
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat-pgsql - XWiki enterprise Tomcat/PostgreSQL
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat5-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat5-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat6-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat6-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat7-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat7-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat7-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat8-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat8-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-enterprise-tomcat8-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-mysql-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-pgsql-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-solr-data - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat7-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat7-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat7-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat8-common - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat8-mysql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis
xwiki-tomcat8-pgsql - XWiki is a free wiki software platform written in Java with a design emphasis

You can see on the list that the repo contains packages that can install XWiki with different versions of Tomcat, MySQL and PostgreSQL. We will install XWiki Enterprise with Tomcat 8 and MySQL database server, but depending on your needs, you can select another package. Run the following command in the Linux terminal

apt-get install xwiki-enterprise-tomcat8-mysql

Since all dependencies have to be installed, the installation may take some time. During the installation, you will be prompted to enter a password for the MySQL ‘xwiki’ user. Once the installation is completed the Tomcat server will be automatically started.

9. Configure Tomcat 8

Create the following directory

mkdir /var/lib/tomcat8/bin

and create ‘setenv.sh’ file in this directory with the following content

vim /var/lib/tomcat8/bin/setenv.sh
#!/bin/sh
export JAVA_OPTS="${JAVA_OPTS} -Djava.awt.headless=true"
CATALINA_OPTS="-Xms4096M -Xmx4096M -XX:PermSize=512M -XX:MaxPermSize=512M"

Save the file and restart Tomcat

/etc/init.d/tomcat8 restart

Now you can access XWiki at http://yourdomain.com:8080/xwiki

For more information about XWiki, you can visit their official website.

Of course, you don’t have to install XWiki on Ubuntu 16.04, if you use one of our Tomcat Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install XWiki on your Ubuntu 16.04 server for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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