Jingo

#lang-nodejs #web #wiki 

Jingo is a simple Wiki software that is based on Node.js and Git. The content is stored in markdown files which are managed by a Git repository. In contrast to other Wiki software (like Mediawiki or Dokuwiki), Jingo does not provide too many functions and uses a very decent design. But because the management and versioning of the content is based on Git, it can be used in multiple ways.

At this time, Jingo is no longer actively developed but still supported for security issues.

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Note

For this guide you should be familiar with the basic concepts of

• Node.js and its package manager npm

• supervisord

• domains

Prerequisites

We’re using Node.js in the stable version 16:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace tools version show node
Using 'Node.js' version: '20'
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Your blog URL needs to be setup:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace web domain list
isabell.uber.space
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Installation

First get the Jingo code from Github:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ git clone https://github.com/claudioc/jingo ~/jingo
Cloning into '/home/isabell/jingo'...
remote: Counting objects: 2684, done.
remote: Total 2684 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 2684
Receiving objects: 100% (2684/2684), 1.88 MiB | 3.19 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1356/1356), done.
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Then you need to install the dependencies using the node packet manager:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/jingo
[isabell@stardust jingo]$ npm install
[...]
added 436 packages in 17.17s
[isabell@stardust jingo]$

Configuration

Data storage

Jingo uses a Git repository to manage its data, you just need to create an empty folder and initialize Git within it:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir ~/jingo_data
[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/jingo_data
[isabell@stardust jingo_data]$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/isabell/jingo_data/.git/
[isabell@stardust jingo_data]$

You then have to configure the Git repository with name and email, if you haven’t done it already globally:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/jingo_data
[isabell@stardust jingo_data]$ git config user.name "$USER"
[isabell@stardust jingo_data]$ git config user.email "$USER@uber.space"
[isabell@stardust jingo_data]$

Note

You can of course set arbitrary information here. If you want to share your data using Github for example, you might want to set the appropriate data.

Change the configuration

You first need to create a default config file using the jingo command:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ ~/jingo/jingo -s > ~/jingo/config.yaml
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Then you can adjust this file ~/jingo/config.yaml with your settings. First of all, set repository folder. Be sure to replace <username> with your actual username:

# Configuration sample file for Jingo (YAML)
application:
  title: Jingo
  logo: ''
  favicon: ''
  repository: '/home/<username>/jingo_data'
  docSubdir: ''
[...]

You will also need to set up an account to login. You can choose multiple ways for authentication like Github, Google, Ldap. For the initial config here, the most simple way is to set up a local account that is stored in the config file. You first need to choose a password and create a hash:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ ~/jingo/jingo --hash-string MySuperSecretPassword
7dfd2a21e27be76896430ee382e268b362d812d7
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Save the returned hash (here 7dfd2a21e27be76896430ee382e268b362d812d7) together with your account name within the config file ~/jingo/config.yaml and be sure to set enabled to true:

# Configuration sample file for Jingo (YAML)
[...]
authentication:
  [...]
  local:
    enabled: true
    accounts:
      - username: 'isabell'
        passwordHash: '7dfd2a21e27be76896430ee382e268b362d812d7'
        email: 'jingo@isabell.uber.space'

Warning

Of course you have to change the string MySuperSecretPassword to your personal password and use the corresponding hash!

Configure web server

Note

Jingo is running on port 6067.

To make the application accessible from the outside, configure a web backend:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ uberspace web backend set / --http --port <port>
Set backend for / to port <port>; please make sure something is listening!
You can always check the status of your backend using "uberspace web backend list".
[isabell@stardust ~]$

Setup daemon

Create ~/etc/services.d/jingo.ini with the following content:

[program:jingo]
command=%(ENV_HOME)s/jingo/jingo -c %(ENV_HOME)s/jingo/config.yaml
startsecs=60

After creating the configuration, tell supervisord to refresh its configuration and start the service:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl reread
SERVICE: available
[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl update
SERVICE: added process group
[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl status
SERVICE                            RUNNING   pid 26020, uptime 0:03:14
[isabell@stardust ~]$

If it’s not in state RUNNING, check your configuration.

Best practices

Personalization

You can edit the ~/config.yaml to adjust the settings to your needs. You can for example choose different authentication modes or set Git to automatically push to a remote repository.

Security

Be sure to set any random signs for the option secret within the config.yaml file.

Updates

Note

Check the update feed regularly to stay informed about the newest version.

If there is a new version available, you can get the code using Git:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/jingo
[isabell@stardust jingo]$ git pull origin master
From git://github.com/claudioc/jingo
* branch              master -> FETCH_HEAD
Updating e84c6452..1e35e8fc
Fast-forward
[...]
32 files changed, 2033 insertions(+), 212 deletions(-)
[...]
[isabell@stardust jingo]$

Then again install the dependencies:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ cd ~/jingo
[isabell@stardust jingo]$ npm install
[...]
added 116 packages in 5.607s
[isabell@stardust jingo]$

In the end you need to restart the service daemon, so the new code is used by the webserver:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ supervisorctl restart jingo
jingo: stopped
jingo: started
[isabell@stardust ~]$

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Tested with Jingo 1.9.7, Uberspace 7.15.4

Written by: ezra <ezra@posteo.de>