Wcal 2.1 documentation

Configuring Wcal

wcal.conf contains runtime configuration data for Wcal daemon wcald. There are a few parameters you can only set by editing the variables at top of wcald code itself, but most users don't need to touch them. Wcal comes with a sample configuration file which lists all possible parameters and their default values together with brief comments.

If you change wcal.conf, it will be reloaded upon next request to wcald. No restarting or sending signals to wcald will be necessary.

If you want to put wcal.conf elsewhere, you must change variable definition at top of both index.c and wcald.

File format

Lines containing nothing or only white space, and lines starting with # are ignored. All other lines contain a parameter definition. White space is allowed (but not required) at beginning and end of lines and between keywords (but not within multi word keywords such as access file).

Most parameter definitions use the most common single line format. They start with the parameter name (which may consist of multiple words), then comes an equal to sign (=), and the rest of the line is the parameter value. No comments are allowed at end of the lines.

The configuration file is implicitely divided into two sections: global section and user definition section. Global section starts from the beginning of the configuration file and ends to the first user definition. Global section contains either non-user related parameters or defaults for user definitions. Parameter definitions inside user definitions affect that user only. Parameters that can be set in the global section are marked Global below. Parameters that can be set in the user section are marked User below.

User definitions and access file definitions span multiple lines. Access file definition defines a file that will be written into each Wcal user's directory (these have nothing to do with Unix system users) into a file .htaccess. This mechanism is designed with Apache in mind. Apache will read file .htaccess from every directory it accesses, and the file may contain directives which define who is allowed to access that directory. Access file definition can occur either in the global section or inside a user definition (see the next paragraph). Access file definition given in the global section is the default for those users whose definition doesn't contain a user specific access file definition. Access file definition starts with a line containing a string access file and ends to line end access file. In between is zero or more free form lines. These lines form contents of the access file. Sample access file definition is given in the sample configuration file that comes with Wcal distribution.

User definition starts with line user = value, where value is an alphanumeric user name. No space is allowed in the user name. User definition ends in a line which contains literal text end user with nothing else on it. In between is zero or more lines which contain single line parameter definitions and possibly an access file definition. Everything in user definition applies to this user only. If some parameter isn't defined in user definition (which is the usual case), the default value will be used.

Configurable parameters

access file name Global
If you use Apache, you don't need to change this from the default value .htaccess. Value of this parameter is the name of the file that will be written into each user's directory. The contents of the file are given in multi line access file definition.

address Global

Address (IP address or domain name) of the computer where wcald is running. The default is 127.0.0.1 ie. localhost (the same computer where index.cgi is). You usually don't need to change this.

base url Global

This should be the URL under which you installed Wcal. For example if HTML root of your web server is /home/httpd/html, and you installed Wcal into directory home/httpd/html/wcal, set this parameter to /wcal. The default is /wcal.

clock Global User

You can choose to show time in either 24-hour or 12-hour format. Possible values are:

data id User

The parameter allows giving several names for one "user". This is useful when used together with the read only parameter, since it allows you to set up two (or more) views for one data, one read/write, the other read only. See Create calendars for more information.

database directory Global

Enter the absolute path of the directory under which you want Wcal to create its databases. Wcal must be able to create this directory (or it must exist already). Default is /var/wcal.

date format Global User

Date is printed in different formats in different countries. Wcal allows five different formats for printing the date. These are refered to with numbers between 1 and 5, inclusive. Default is 1, which is day.month.year. You may want to use 2, which is month/day/year. Possible values are:

  1. day.month.year
  2. month/day/year
  3. day/month/year
  4. year/month/day
  5. year-month-day
  6. YYYYMMDD where Y = year, M = month and D = day of month

If you need some other format, please drop a request to the author.

first day Global

This defines which day starts the week. Allowed values are monday or sunday. Default is monday.

WARNING : You can only fix this parameter before accessing the calendar for the first time. This parameter conditions the structure of the Wcal database. That's why you can't change it after the database creation. Maybe I would write a script to convert a monday database to a sunday database and vice-versa.

long name User

If you want more descriptive name be shown for a user, you can set it with this parameter. Value of this parameter is used only for visual purposes.

organization Global

Type here the name of your organization, or any string describing this particular instance of Wcal. This string is shown at the main page of Wcal.

password Global

This is any hard-to-guess string. You should change this to something else if want to prevent unauthorized access. Both index.cgi which is the actual CGI proxy run by the web server, and wcald read this parameter, and use it for making sure the request isn't sent by a spoofer. Default is not relevant.

port Global

The port which wcald listens to for requests and index.cgi connects to. You probably don't need to change this.

read only User

Valid values are true and false. If the value is true, this user won't be allowed to change data in his or her calendar. This is useful when user together with the data id parameter. See Create calendars for more information.

remote cal Global

Default calendar checked by checkalarm when used with no argument. all means that checkalarm will check all calendars. See Using checkalarm for more information.

remote lang Global

Language used by Wcal. Only english (en), french (fr) and german (de) are available for the moment. Contributors are welcome for translation. See /etc/wcald.msg.

remote mail Global User

Default address mailed by checkalarm when used with no argument.

show weekend Global

Control wether weekend days are shown or not. Possible values are yes or no. Default value is yes.

WARNING : When the parameter is set to no, you must NOT set the parameter first day to sunday.


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