Ubuntu is a port of Debian and therefore the issues that arise for either often have the same answers; differences will be noted.

The package manager is either the command line tool apt-get or the GUI Synaptic Package Manager. The package manager is convenient and automates the installation process. One problem with the package manager is that its distributions of Dokuwiki can be behind the Dokuwiki distribution schedule. With the very long release cycles in Debian it is not uncommon that the package lags behind several years. Therefore we recommend to install DokuWiki manually and not use the Debian package if possible.

The package manager creates its own file structure for Dokuwiki.

• /etc/dokuwiki
  Holds all of your configuration files, including those for the web server.
  
• /usr/share/dokuwiki
  The main dokuwiki directory, which is where the web server points to.
  
• /var/lib/dokuwiki
  Essentially your data directory.

/usr/share/dokuwiki holds three subdirectories:

1. bin
2. inc
3. lib
4. Ubuntu adds to this two symbolic links:
   • data, which points to /var/lib/dokuwiki
   • conf which points to /etc/dokuwiki

/var/lib/dokuwiki contains the following subdirectories:

1. acl, which contains the acl files
2. data, which is the standard Dokuwiki data section
3. plugins, the plugins directory
4. tpl, the template directory

The default settings are very restrictive. The package manager sets up a wiki which has only localhost access and where only root can make any changes to the configuration settings and only root can install plugins. The administrator cannot use the Dokuwiki administration facilties which are normally accessed from the admin button. Also, by default the administrator's userid is 'admin'. In the Debian setup, the package manager asks for an administrator password; on Ubuntu it does not.

The default settings can be modified from the command line using the command line tool dpkg-reconfigure:

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure dokuwiki

You can run this tool after the initial install and change the settings to your requirements. For more information on this tool and on the default settings, see the debian installation instructions.

You do not have to use the package manager to install Dokuwiki on Debian. Instead you can download the latest Dokuwiki and follow the Dokuwiki installation instructions. This will give you a standard installation with the usual options and features. See dokuwiki.