Installing and configuring standalone server for a personal wiki

The standalone server is especially made for local wikis because it does not need a web server installed. Only Python and Moin are necessary!

First do ../BasicInstallation and ../WikiInstanceCreation (home dir setup). Then copy moin.py to your wiki directory, where your wikiconfig.py is.

Configuring moin.py

System path configuration

If you did a standard install, and you are not a developer, you probably want to skip this section. If not, you might want to add the path to moin and config file, like that:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/moin')
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/wikiconfig')

Config class options

If you did a standard install, the default options might be just what you need. Check and change what you like:

Option

Default

Comment

docs

'/usr/share/moin/wiki/htdocs'

Path to moin shared files

user

'www-data'

If you run as root, the server will run with as this user

group

'www-data'

If you run as root, the server will run with as this group

port

8000

Port to serve. To serve privileged port under 1024 you will have to run as root

interface

'localhost'

The interface the server will listen to. The default will listen only to localhost. Set to '' to listen to all.

logPath

'moin.log'

Log file. Default is commented.

profiler

commented python code

Useful only if you are a moin developer.

Configuring wikiconfig.py

The sample config file should be just fine.

Option

Default

Comment

url_prefix

'/wiki'

You should not change this, or images and css file will not be available to the wiki!

Starting the server

Run moin.py from the command line:

$ ./moin.py
Serving on localhost:8000, documents in '/usr/share/moin/wiki/htdocs'

Test your wiki at http://localhost:8000/

On Windows, you can double click moin.py to start the server. A new terminal window will be opened. Close the window or press CTRL + Pause to stop the server.

On Unix, interrupt the server with Control + C in order to shut it down.

Serving port 80 on Unix

On GNU/Linux, Mac OS X or other Posix like OS, you can serve the standard port 80 used for web serving, but you must run as root for this.

Set port to 80, and verify that user and group exists on your system. If not, set them to an existing user, meant for web serving. If needed, chown your wiki dir to this user and group.

Run moin.py as root:

$ sudo moin.py
Password:
Running as uid/gid 70/70
Serving on localhost:80, documents in '/usr/share/moin/wiki/htdocs'

Test your wiki at http://localhost/

HelpOnInstalling/StandaloneServer (last modified 2005-03-12 23:29:00)