Configure Apache for multiple projects

By following these instructions, you will set up Apache to automatically serve multiple Trac projects for you.

Start out by creating a project directory in your documentroot (/var/www in this example). Projects will be accessed as ​http://hostname/projects/projectname. Copy (or symlink) trac.cgi to this directory together with a file named index.html. This will be shown when users try to access nonexistent projects.

Then create your trac projects with trac-admin. It's important that they are all placed in the same directory. In this example we'll use /var/lib/trac. Add to your Apache configuration:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/projects/+$			/projects/index.html [L]
RewriteCond /var/lib/trac/$1			-d
RewriteRule ^/projects/([[:alnum:]]+)(/?.*)	/projects/trac.cgi$2 [S=1,E=TRAC_ENV:/var/lib/trac/$1]
RewriteRule ^/projects/(.*)			/projects/index.html

<Directory "/var/www/projects">
	AllowOverride None
	Options ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
	AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
	Order allow,deny
	Allow from all
</Directory>

<LocationMatch "/projects/[[:alnum:]]+/login">
	AuthType Basic
	AuthName "trac"
	AuthUserFile /path/to/trac.htpasswd
	Require valid-user
</LocationMatch>

Or for windows systems:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/projects/+$			/projects/index.html [L]
#RewriteCond /var/lib/trac/$1			-d
RewriteCond d:/svn/$1.db				-d
RewriteRule ^/projects/([[:alnum:]]+)(/?.*)	/projects/trac.cgi$2 [S=1,E=TRAC_ENV:d:/svn/$1.db]
RewriteRule ^/projects/(.*)			/projects/index.html

<Directory "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\projects">
	AllowOverride None
	Options ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
	AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
	Order allow,deny
	Allow from all
</Directory>

<LocationMatch "/projects/[[:alnum:]]+/login">
	AuthType Basic
	AuthName "trac"
	AuthUserFile D:/svn/.htaccess
	Require valid-user
</LocationMatch>

Make sure you have the rewrite module loaded or compiled in Apache.

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Now, when you add another project, you don't need to edit any apache config. The only file you may want to edit is index.html to make it list the new project. If you think this is too much work, replace it with a python cgi script that does it for you.

tracd and ModPython can also serve multiple projects.

---

If you have a normal account on a Unix server and you can have your own cgi-scripts launched by suExec, then you can setup trac to serve multiple projects. The main problem is that suExec cleans up your environment and "SetEnv TRAN_ENV …" have no effect.

I use the following setup.

I install Clearsilver:

./configure --prefix=$HOME/sw
make
make install
cp python/neo_cgi.so ~/sw/lib/python2.3/site-packages/

I install trac:

./setup.py install --prefix=$HOME/sw
cp ~/sw/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi ~/public_html

I create ~/public_html/.htaccess (change "marcenuc" with your username):

Options +ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex index.cs index.html
Action cs-handler /~marcenuc/static.cgi
AddHandler cs-handler .cs
AddType text/html .cs

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~marcenuc

RewriteRule ^prj/?$                     projects [R,L]
RewriteCond /home/marcenuc/.trac/prj/$1 -d
RewriteRule ^prj/([[:alnum:]]+)(/?.*)   trac-wrapper.cgi/$1$2 [S=1]
RewriteRule ^prj/(.*)                   projects [R,L]

I create ~/public_html/trac-wrapper.cgi (change "marcenuc" with your username) and make it executable:

#!/bin/bash
user="marcenuc"

prj="${PATH_INFO#/}"
prj="${prj%%/*}"
export TRAC_ENV="/home/${user}/.trac/prj/${prj}"
export SCRIPT_NAME="/~${user}/prj/${prj}"
export PATH_INFO="${PATH_INFO#/${prj}}"
export PYTHONPATH="/home/${user}/sw/lib/python2.3/site-packages"

exec ./trac.cgi

Create your projects repository and trac-environment:

mkdir -p ~/.trac/{prj,svn}
svnadmin create ~/.trac/svn/myfirstproject
trac-admin ~/.trac/svn/myfirstproject initenv

Open ​http://severname/~username/prj/myfirstproject

---

See also: TracGuide, TracInstall