[Moin-user] Local wiki and external access

Greg Ward gerg.ward+moin at gmail.com
Tue Aug 26 12:19:05 EDT 2008


On 25 August 2008, Bjarke Roune said:
> I'm using MoinMoin for my personal information, so I'd really like the
> wiki to only be accessible from the machine on which the server is
> running. I think I am already running MoinMoin in this way, but I
> don't really know, since I don't know how to tell. I've just
> downloaded MoinMoin, run the wikiserver.py file and started using it
> in my browser by accessing http://localhost:8080/.
> 
> How do I tell if the wiki is accessible by other people on my same
> network, or the internet at large, for that matter?

Ummm... test it?  I.e. walk down the hall to another machine on the same
network and try to access http://<yourmachine>:8080/.  Do the same with
your machine's IP address just to be sure.  Then do the same from
somewhere out there on the Internet.  (Friend, neighbour, relative, at
work, Internet cafe, ...)

If the server is running UNIX or Linux, there are some tricks you can
use that do not require using another client:

  # netstat -tnlp

will, at least on Linux, report all processes listening on some TCP
port.  Look for the process listening on port 8080 (should be called
"python" or "moin", depending on how the server process is launched) and
make sure that the local address is "127.0.0.1:8080", NOT
"0.0.0.0:8080".  netstat also exists on BSD and OS X, but I believe the
syntax is slightly different.  "man netstat" for details.

If you have lsof, it's an amazingly useful tool for this sort of thing:
e.g.

  # lsof -n -P -i tcp:80 -a -l

reports which processes are listening on TCP port 8080.  You want it to
look something like

  python    15914        0    0u  IPv4  52499       TCP 127.0.0.1:8080 (LISTEN)

and NOT like

  python    15914        0    0u  IPv4  52499       TCP *:8080 (LISTEN)

I believe that lsof works the same on most UNIX flavours, so I *think*
the above commands will work the same on Linux, BSD, OS X, etc.

        Greg




More information about the Moin-user mailing list