Control: tags 775310 + moreinfo
On Tue, 13 Jan 2015 at 22:31:57 +0000, lkcl wrote:
> as i am editing a site over which i do not have direct sysadmin control
> (cannot re-generate the wiki by hand nor correct errors in its operation)
I would not particularly recommend the ikiwiki CGI for this particular
use-case, except in very constrained/predictable situations like the one
set up by ikiwiki-hosting. Making a normally-interactive version control
system fully automated is not something that ikiwiki's maintainers can
make 100% reliable in our spare time.
I would recommend either shared hosting with a shell (there are specific
instructions for NearlyFreeSpeech and DreamHost on its wiki, but most
similar providers should work); a virtual machine that you control (I
use ikiwiki-hosting on a VM from mythic-beasts.com); or the hosting
service branchable.com, for which ikiwiki-hosting was written,
and which is co-maintained by the original author of ikiwiki.
If these are not an option for your site, I will need information from
the sysadmin of your ikiwiki installation.
> to reproduce:
>
> * create some files and subdirectories (any method is ok)
> * using direct git access (bypassing ikiwiki) perform
> a "git mv" operation
> * perform a direct "git push" operation.
Using direct git access to what? What repositories do you have here?
Is it a typical ikiwiki git arrangement like this?
e.g. a laptop | VCS server | web server
| |
mywiki ---|--> mywiki.git ----|-----> $srcdir -----> $destdir
push git hook ikiwiki
where mywiki and $srcdir are both non-bare git clones of the bare git
repository mywiki.git, and you are doing the "git mv"/"git commit"
in your local clone on your laptop or whatever, then pushing to the
VCS server?
> the only method of recovery is to have sysadmin rights *on the target
> system* (which is not available in this specific instance) and to
> perform a manual recovery.
>
> ideally such a manual override / recovery should be available as
> an option on the preferences/admin page.
What is involved in this manual recovery? Do you have a specific
proposed action that ikiwiki should take to recover?
> error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by
> merge:
> community_ideas/laptop_13in.mdwn
This means that at some point in the past, there was a change to this
file on the server (probably via the CGI) which was not committed correctly.
Obviously, that isn't something that's meant to happen in the first place.
Is there anything about that file in the web server's error log?
(ask your sysadmin)
Are there any other uncommitted changes? (ask your sysadmin to run
"git status" in the wiki's working copy, which is the directory that
was configured as the $srcdir for ikiwiki)
If the sysadmin runs something like
git commit -a -m "import uncommitted changes from web server"
in the srcdir, as the uid that would run the CGI hook and with the
environment variables that would typically be seen by the CGI hook,
what happens?
One thing that might have broken commits is that recent versions of git
will refuse to commit if the user (in ikiwiki's case, whatever user will
run the CGI hook) doesn't have a configured git identity. The next
ikiwiki release will work around this by using "IkiWiki <ikiwiki.info>"
as a fallback. If this is what's happening, your sysadmin can resolve
this in current ikiwiki by setting GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="IkiWiki" and
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="ikiwiki.info" (or any other suitable placeholder)
in the CGI script's environment.
S
