There are three major components you need to configure before you actually install Tiki: PHP, MySQL, and Apache.

There are several settings that need to be edited in the php.ini file. If you have installed the Debian PHP packages, you will find this file in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

1. Make a backup of the php.ini file.

cp -a php.ini php.ini.orig

2. You must edit these configurations. Some need to be changed, others just need to be umcommented. Set them to the values below:

max_execution_time = 60     ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
session.save_path = /var/www/tmp
log_errors = error_log
error_log = syslog

The following should not be needed:

extension=mysql.so
memory_limit = 32M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (current default is already 128 MB)

3. Save the file and restart apache.

If you have installed MySQL from Debian packages, it should already be set up, and the 'mysql' database should be created. You'll need to secure the database, create the tiki database, and grant rights to the tiki database user.

1. Verify that MySQL is running.

2. Secure the mysqladmin (root) user. Follow the instructions
at www.mysql.com. Do it now. Leaving this user without a password is insecure.

3. Follow the instructions in Requirements to create the tiki database. Use a secure name for the database user. Do not use "admin".

1. Make the appropriate modifications to the Apache configs to set up tikiwiki as a host or virtual host. Put a simple file (index.html.en) in the DocumentRoot of your host or virtualhost. Test access from localhost and from external machines.

2. Find the name of the user that Apache runs as. Debian uses userid "www-data" by default.

1. Download the latest release.
2. Move the tiki tarball to the appropriate directory. Debian places it's document root at /var/www/.
3. Untar the tiki release file. It should create a subdirectory with the release number. Here's what mine looked like:

pince:/var/www# ls -l
total 35236
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root       24 2005-11-15 07:26 analog -> /usr/share/analog/images
drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root     4096 2005-12-26 17:07 apache2-default
drwxrwxr-x  20 www-data 1015    16384 2005-12-28 00:36 tikiwiki-1.9.2
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root 36014080 2005-12-26 19:38 tikiwiki-1.9.2.tar

4. I like to create a symbolic link to my tiki directory:

pince:/var/www# ln -s /var/www/tiki-1.9.2 tiki
pince:/var/www# ls -l
pince:/var/www# ls -l
total 35236
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root       24 2005-11-15 07:26 analog -> /usr/share/analog/images
drwxr-xr-x   3 root     root     4096 2005-12-26 17:07 apache2-default
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root       23 2005-12-27 23:42 tiki -> /var/www/tikiwiki-1.9.2
drwxrwxr-x  20 www-data 1015    16384 2005-12-28 00:36 tikiwiki-1.9.2
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root 36014080 2005-12-26 19:38 tikiwiki-1.9.2.tar

5. Run setup.sh to set permissions on the directories. The defaults should do.

/var/www/tiki# sh setup.sh

6. Go to tiki-install.php. You may enter open an URL similar to