Help On Installing/ Internet Information Server

Index

1. Requirements
2. Preparation
   1. Installing IIS
   2. Installing Python
   3. Installing MoinMoin
3. Creating a Wiki Instance
   1. IIS 6.0 (Windows.NET Server 2003)
   2. Troubleshooting

Requirements

Before you install MoinMoin, make sure you have the necessary infra-structure in place, namely the Internet Information Services webserver (any version should be OK), and a Python installation (version 2.3 or higher is recommended, don't run 2.0/2.1 without a compelling reason).

In the following description, we assume that you have installed or will install things to these locations:

• IIS to its default location

• C:\Python - the Python interpreter

• C:\Moin - MoinMoin itself

Quite often, you might want to install things elsewhere, which is no problem at all; you just have to adapt any paths that appear in a command or config file to the locations you have chosen.

This installation procedure was tested with IIS 5 for Windows running on Windows 2000sp2, and using Python 2.2.

Preparation

Installing IIS

You currently need an external webserver to run MoinMoin.

From Microsoft: (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/iis/)

Make sure that your webserver runs without problems before you start to install MoinMoin; problems with your webserver installation are not in the scope of this document.

Installing Python

Download Python 2.3.2 and install it. Python installation is done via a standard Windows installer program.

For file locking, you will also need to download and install the Win32 extensions for Python (aka win32all). Choose the version matching the Python version you are using.

Installing MoinMoin

Before creating a wiki instance, you have to download and install the basic MoinMoin software. We assume you already have downloaded the distribution archive to the "C:\TEMP" directory¹.

Open a console window and enter the following commands:

C:
cd \temp
unzip moin-1.1.zip
cd moin-1.1
python setup.py install --prefix=C:\Moin --record=install.log

This will install all necessary files to the "C:\Moin" directory, and create a "install.log" file listing all the files that are created there.

Creating a Wiki Instance

You could run your wiki directly using the sample wiki created in "C:\Moin", but this is not recommended for two reasons:

1. updating your wiki is more complicated and more dangerous.

2. creating a second wiki instance, even if you currently don't plan for one, is much easier.

So, enter these commands in a console window:

cd \Moin
md mywiki
md mywiki\data
xcopy share\moin\data mywiki\data /E
copy share\moin\cgi-bin mywiki
copy share\moin\htdocs\index.html mywiki\default.htm

"mywiki" is the name of your wiki instance, you might want to chose a different name best fitting the intended use of this instance; just don't name it simply "wiki", because that would result in problems later on.

We have to make sure that moin.cgi can find the MoinMoin directory, so that "import MoinMoin" will work. You can either setup a PYTHONPATH environment variable which includes the installation path, but sometimes it can be tricky to make sure the variable will be set in the CGI environment. The easiest way to make sure MoinMoin can be imported is to append to sys.path within moin.cgi.

You can change the first two lines of code in moin.cgi to something like this:

  1 
  2 

import sys
sys.path.append(r'C:\Moin\Lib\site-packages')

Next, you'll need to create two virtual directories in IIS. One for the shared data, and one for this specific wiki instance.

Go to Control Panel => Administrative Tools => Internet Information Service. Open up the tree to Default Web Site.

Right click on Default Web Site and choose New => Virtual directory. This will bring up a wizard with the manditory useless first screen, hit next. Enter "wiki" for the alias name and hit next. Browse to "C:\Moin\share\moin\htdocs" and hit next. Leave the Access permissions at their defaults and hit next. And now you're done, hit finish!

Now follow the same steps, but set the alias to "mywiki" and the path to "C:\Moin\mywiki".

Now you need to setup the 'mywiki' alias so that it will run Python to interpret .cgi files. Right click on your new 'mywiki' alias and choose Properties. On the first tab (Virtual Directory), click the Configuration button. The first tab is the App Mappings tab, which defines which programs to use for each file exetension. Click Add. Browse to your python.exe (probably something like c:\pythonXX\python.exe). Then add -u %s %s after the Python executable path. The Executable line will look something like this: C:\Python22\python.exe -u %s %s. In the Extension box enter .cgi with the begining period. Confirm that the Check that file exists option is not checked (if it is, MoinMoin won't be able to display sub pages). Ok, you're done with the alias configuration, click OK several times to get back out of all the dialog boxes.

If you add another wiki instance, you'll only need to setup the reference to its folder, they can safely share the "wiki" alias which points to static files only.

That is all, try to access your new-born wiki with the URL "http://127.0.0.1/mywiki/". You should see the FrontPage, try to edit and save it, and if that works, see if your edit is reflected on the RecentChanges page.

Finally, edit "moin_config.py" and at least change "sitename" and "logo_url" to some personal values:

sitename = 'My Wiki'
logo_url = '/images/mywiki-logo.gif'

For a personal or intranet installation, you'll normally also add the line

allowed_actions = ['DeletePage', 'AttachFile']

IIS 6.0 (Windows.NET Server 2003)

The instructions below also apply to IIS 6.0 but the more aggressive security settings in newer version of IIS disallow the usage of unknown CGI extensions. That means you will always get a 404 error unless you do this:

1. Open "Internet Information Services (IIS)" in the control panel.

2. Go the the "Web Service Extensions" folder.

3. There you will see "All Unknown CGI Extensions" is probably set to "Prohibited". Make it "Allowed" and Moin Moin should now work.

At the time I'm writing this, I'm running Windows.NET Standard Server 2003 _RC1_. It may be different in later version. But if you get a 404 error on moin.cgi after following the regular steps, double-check that setting. -- FrancoisDenisGonthier

Enabling "All Unknown CGI Extensions" can be a security hole. To just enable Python CGI scripts, add and enable a new web service extension where the 'required files' exactly match the path plus arguments as described above (e.g. C:\Python22\python.exe -u %s %s). You cannot have any spaces in the path to python.exe. There are also permission issues related to the user executing the moinmoin code (access to cmd.exe) which I have not yet sorted through. -- mb

Troubleshooting

If you see an error like "ImportError: No module named MoinMoin", it means that python cannot find MoinMoin. See above for how to set your PYTHONPATH or add to sys.path.

Immutable page (last modified 2004-05-24 21:15:45)

Or try one of these actions: AttachFile, DeletePage, LikePages, LocalSiteMap, SpellCheck