XWiki Distribution / Cannot create admin user

Help / Discuss
1

Hello,
I am trying to do a first time setup of XWiki with Tomcat, MySQL and a WAR file distribution (9.9-rc-2).
I believe I have set everything up correctly.

When I start tomcat and access the “/twiki” page the initialization completes without errors and 38 tables are successfully created in the MySQL xwiki database.

I see the distribution page and am shown the form for “Step 1 - Admin User”. When I fill out the form and click “Register and login” the page does a short reload and return to the Step 1 page (cleared of all values). I am unable to proceed beyond this page and can not create the main UI.

Any tips? :slight_smile:

2

I guess you mean “/xwiki” :slight_smile:

It’s the first time I see this so not much ideas.

When you make a mistake in the form you get an error displayed indicating what is the error you made but there is not much errors you can make since the only things required are:

  • a username
  • a password (without any kind of constraint)
  • a confirm password that matches the password

Did you checked the log ?

3

haha yes of course xwiki… (before i found xwiki i wasted hours trying to get twiki up and running :confused:).

no warnings or errors… it seems to be related to mysql but i cant say for sure. If I install the standalone enterprise .exe version with HQSQL database everything works. As soon as I switch over to mysql (switch out thr database configuration) the mysql database is populated with tables but i get stuck on this step 1 admin user step.

4

Well MySQL is what we use the most in production. If you have the tables it sounds like MySQL is properly configured so I don’t have much ideas other than debugging what exactly happen in /templates/distribution/firstadminuser.wiki script.

5

Shot in the dark:

  • Did you try a simple username like “wikiadmin” or similar? I just believe to remember this behavior when I tried to add an user with an @ in it (e.g eMail address), but not 100% sure any more …

  • Don’t know if this might have any influence on this, but in MySQL run the following command “show engines;”. The default storage engine must be InnoDB (which is the default on recent versions AFAIK)

HTH

Beat

6

Hi Beat, thanks for the response.

I tried pretty much everything…leaving all optional fields empty. simple admin/admin username and password.

i ended up downloading a jetty installation with the hsqldb…installing it and then dissecting it to get it up and running with tomcat. I still could not get it going with mysql though (latest stable release version).

Cheers, Jeff

7

… given all your efforts, I’m wondering why not installing tomcat, mysql and the deploying the war to see what happens then …

8

well that is where i started…

9

… true, didn’t remember your first line of the initial post :wink:

Although I don’t expect an issue with that 9.9 rc2 release when it comes to this but did you ever try another (older) or the LTS release?

Regards
Beat

10

mmm i tried a lot of things… every version I pointed at MySQL had the same problem… I am using an XAMPP installation and I guess while the tables all got created successfully I didnt suspect the mysql side of things…but now you got me thinking I should try a clean standalone install of mysql :wink:

11

Well I installed a clean mysql (no xampp) and added the xwiki database as described in the documentation.

NOTE: The documentation should probably be updated to provide a hint about increasing the mysql max_allowed_packet to at least 32M so that the standard xwiki distribution can be added. :slight_smile:

I was able to install everything with a WAR distribution of XWiki 9.9… a new empty wiki was installed but the import of the XWiki Standard Flavor from XIP did not work - I could add the package but clicking on it to install it just gave an endless “hourglass”. I then stopped Tomcat, deleted the contents of the XWiki data-directory, restarted Tomcat and went through the Distribution Wizard again… this time I was offered the standard flavor and was able to install it. (There was a merge error on the XWiki Preferences page although I have an empty wiki but I chose to accept the newest version and it installed everything).

There definately seem to be a few problems with the installation process but I now have a XWiki up and running with MySQL.

12

NOTE: The documentation should probably be updated to provide a hint about increasing the mysql max_allowed_packet to at least 32M so that the standard xwiki distribution can be added. :slight_smile:

I never changed this setup myself and it’s certainly not needed to install XWiki the standard way(s) (which does not involve importing anything for sure).

13

well if you import anything ober 4M via the admin interface (using mysql) you are gonna need to change this.

According to the installation documentation the all-in-one jetty installation is for standalone non-production wikis. The production approach is the WAR file distribution. At the very bottom of this page is “Install the XWiki UI” (for which the documentation is also missing). If your first pass setup fails for any reason or you install no flavor you get the empty wiki. Attempting to then install the standard flavor from the XIP as documented will fail on mysql if you do not increase this setting.

xwiki_fail_01
xwiki_fail_02
xwiki_fail_stacktrace.txt (9.4 KB)

14

I had this same issue nowadays while running XWiki in Kubernetes.

My solution was to create the admin user directly in the wiki config file (/usr/local/xwiki/data/xwiki.cfg in my case, maybe /etc/xwiki/xwiki.cfg in yours) like:
xwiki.superadminpassword=yourpassword

Then restart the service (or redeploy the pod if Kubernetes), then access the application using:
login: superadmin
password: yourpassword

Now you can follow the setup wizard.

Hope it helps somebody. :slight_smile: