Make sure the web UI is installed before proceeding with configuration of it.
The web interface needs its own user account to authenticate towards the backend and it should be a trusted account. Create it with the following:
nipap-passwd add --username nipap-www --password s3cr3t --name "User account for the web UI" --trusted
Obviously, replace "s3cr3t" with a better password and feel free to use whichever username you want, as long as you configure it accordingly. The user account for the web UI should not be used by any other user. Configure the web UI to use this account by configuring the xmlrpc_uri variable in the www section of nipap.conf:
xmlrpc_uri = http://nipap-www@local:s3cr3t@127.0.0.1:1337
This configuring assumes that you did indeed name the account "nipap-www", replace "s3cr3t" with your password. "@local" instructs the backend to use the "local" authentication backend. If you are running nipapd on a different host or port, then update the "127.0.0.1:1337" part accordingly.
Finally, you can add a user for yourself and once you've configured your web server to serve the NIPAP web UI you should be able to login with this user:
nipap-passwd add --username myuser --password mypassword --name "my user"
The NIPAP web UI can be served by any WGSI-capable web server such as Apache httpd with mod_wsgi. For quick tests and development the lightweight server 'paster', part of Python Paste, is handy.
Using paster is the easiest way to get the NIPAP web UI up and running, but it's not really suitable for production deployment. To serve the NIPAP web UI from paster, run the following:
paster serve /etc/nipap/www/nipap-www.ini
Using the default configuration, the web UI should now be reachable on port 5000. To change the port, edit /etc/nipap/www/nipap-www.ini.
Begin by installing Apache httpd with mod_wsgi:
apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi
Then, add a new virtual host or configure the default one with the line:
WSGIScriptAlias / /etc/nipap/www/nipap-www.wsgi
If you are using Apache 2.4 you will also need to add the lines:
<Directory /etc/nipap/www/>
Require all granted
</Directory>
The web server needs to be able to write to its cache, alter the permissions of /var/cache/nipap-www so that the web server can write to it and preferrably also make sure no one else has access to it. For a typical Debian install of Apache httpd, the following should suffice:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/cache/nipap-www chmod -R u=rwX /var/cache/nipap-www
Now, restart Apache httpd and the NIPAP web UI should be up and running!
That wraps up this getting started guide, for more information see the manual pages.