--- name: "dwww" section: "8" platform: "linux" package: "dwww" version: "1.10.15" release: "Debian 5.0 (Lenny)" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/dwww/8" --- # dwww(8) 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)](/dwww-convert/8.md) or [**dwww-find**(8)](/dwww-find/8.md) with suitable arguments. Installed in the server's cgi-bin directory. - [**dwww-convert**(8)](/dwww-convert/8.md) Converts any document to HTML. - [**dwww-format-man**(8)](/dwww-format-man/8.md) Auxiliary program to convert man pages or text files to HTML. - [**dwww-find**(8)](/dwww-find/8.md) Searches for documentation. - [**dwww-quickfind**(8)](/dwww-quickfind/8.md) Used by [**dwww-find**(8)](/dwww-find/8.md) to quickly find which package a program belongs to. - [**dwww-cache**(8)](/dwww-cache/8.md) Manages the cache of converted documents. - [**dwww-refresh-cache**(8)](/dwww-refresh-cache/8.md) Cleans outdated documents from the cache. - [**dwww-build**(8)](/dwww-build/8.md) 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)](/dwww-build-menu/8.md) 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)](/install-docs/8.md) or by the dwww daily cron job). - [**dwww-index++**(8)](/dwww-index++/8.md) Uses [**index++**(1)](/index++/1.md) 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)](/dwww-refresh-cache/8.md) 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)](/dwww/1.md) 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)](/dwww/1.md) to load dwww main page. - DWWW\_X11\_BROWSER Web-browser used by [**dwww**(1)](/dwww/1.md) to load dwww main page when in X11. ### Path variables - DWWW\_DOCPATH Colon-delimited list of directories from which [**dwww-convert**(8)](/dwww-convert/8.md) supplies files. For security reasons, it will refuse to convert files outside the directories named by this variable. Default is */usr/share/doc : /usr/doc : /usr/share/info : /usr/info :* */usr/share/man : /usr/man : /usr/X11R6/man : /usr/local/man :* */usr/local/doc : /usr/local/info : /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:/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)](/dwww-refresh-cache/8.md) with the help of [**dwww-quickfind**(8)](/dwww-quickfind/8.md). 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)](/dwww-build-menu/8.md). 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)](/dwww-build-menu/8.md) and read by [**dwww-find**(8)](/dwww-find/8.md) 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)](/dwww-index++/8.md) will generate index of registered documentation. - DWWW\_INDEX\_FULL\_TIME\_INTERVAL Specifies how often (in days) [**dwww-index++**(8)](/dwww-index++/8.md) will generate full index of documentaion. The default value is **28**. - DWWW\_INDEX\_INCREMENTAL\_TIME\_INTERVAL Specifies how often (in days) [**dwww-index++**(8)](/dwww-index++/8.md) 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)](/dwww-index++/8.md) 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)](/dwww-refresh-cache/8.md) keep documents that have not been accessed? Default is **10** days. - DWWW\_TMPDIR Directory used by [**dwww-build**(8)](/dwww-build/8.md) and [**dwww-build-menu**(8)](/dwww-build-menu/8.md) to temporailly store the web pages it generates. Default is */var/lib/dwww*. For security reason any public writeable 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)](/dwww-cache/8.md). ### Deprecated variables Since version 1.10, dwww no longer uses the following variables: DWWW\_HTMLDIR, DWWW\_MAN2HTML, DWWW\_TEXT2HTML, DWWW\_DIR2HTML. ## 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 postinstalation script creates symlinks from */etc/apache\*/conf.d/dwww* to this file. - */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)](/dwww-index++/8.md) 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)](/dwww-build/8.md) 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/1.md), [**dwww-build**(8)](/dwww-build/8.md), [**dwww-build-menu**(8)](/dwww-build-menu/8.md), [**dwww-cache**(8)](/dwww-cache/8.md), [**dwww-convert**(8)](/dwww-convert/8.md), [**dwww-find**(8)](/dwww-find/8.md), [**dwww-format-man**(8)](/dwww-format-man/8.md), [**dwww-index++**(8)](/dwww-index++/8.md), [**dwww-quickfind**(8)](/dwww-quickfind/8.md), [**dwww-refresh-cache**(8)](/dwww-refresh-cache/8.md), [**dwww-txt2html**(8)](/dwww-txt2html/8.md). ## AUTHOR Originally by Lars Wirzenius \. Modified by Jim Pick \ and Robert Luberda \. Bugs should be reported via the normal Debian bug reporting system, see */usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt* file or [**reportbug**(1)](/reportbug/1.md) 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.