How to do a basic installation of MoinMoin on your system.

Contents

Before you can integrate MoinMoin into your web environment, you have to install the MoinMoin source code and data files using the standard Python distutils mechanism (setup.py). This page explains the steps you usually need to take to do this. For more details on the distutils installation process, consult the Installing Python Modules document in your Python documentation set.

The installation is similar on Windows and Linux (and other POSIX-type systems; for simplicity, we just say "Linux" in the docs).

• We use text such as > command arguments to show what you have to type at the command prompt (also known as shell, terminal, etc.). In our examples "> " is the prompt, you don't have to type it in, you have to type what comes after it. Lines that do not begin with "> " are the answers to the commands you have typed. Read them carefully.

Check if Python is working

MoinMoin needs Python to run, so the first step is to check if an usable version of Python is installed and correctly set-up. If this is not the case, you will have to fix that before you can proceed.

The CHANGES file in the MoinMoin archive mentions what versions are supported. Python 2.3 is the minimum requirement for MoinMoin 1.7, but we suggest you use the latest Python release version.

You can download Python at http://www.python.org/download/.

If you are pretty sure an acceptable version of Python is installed but the commands below do not work, this may be because your Python files are not in the search path. Correctly setting the search path is outside the scope of this document; please ask for help on your favorite Python, Linux, or Windows discussion board.

If you have shell access, checking if Python is working is very simple. Just type the following command, and look at the result:

> python -V
Python 2.4.4

If you don't have shell access, you can try using this pythontest.cgi script (it assumes that you are using a Linux kind of webserver). Upload the script to your cgi-bin directory, use chmod a+rx pythontest.cgi (or a similar command in your FTP program) to make it executable, and invoke it using your web browser.

If it doesn't display "CGI scripts work", well, then CGI scripts don't work. If it doesn't show one or more Python version numbers, then Python is not correctly installed. In both cases, before you can proceed, you will have to get in touch with the administrator of the server so that the problems get corrected.

Also be sure to read ../ApacheOnLinuxFtp after you've completed the ../BasicInstallation illustrated here.

Download MoinMoin

To download the distribution archive, go to the download page and fetch the latest archive.

The next step is to unpack the distribution archive (which you have done already if you are reading this text from your hard drive). If you read this on the web, the distribution comes in a versioned .tar.gz archive, which you can unpack as shown below.

• On Windows

  • You can use recent versions of programs like 7-Zip, WinZip, WinRar, and WinAce, which handle .tar.gz kind of archives.

  • At the command prompt, you can use GNU gzip and GNU tar for Windows.

• On Linux
  • You can use your favorite file manager -- it should be able to unpack them.

  • At any shell prompt, you can use the tar command.

The distribution archive will always unpack into a directory named moin-<version>, for example moin-1.7.0.

Here is how you would unpack the archive (using GNU tar) and enter the directory with the MoinMoin files:

> tar xzf moin-1.7.0.tar.gz
> cd moin-1.7.0

Install MoinMoin

You can install MoinMoin to either:

• a system location (if you have the necessary rights to do that -- on Linux you need to be root)

• some specific location, like your home directory (Linux) or C:\moin (Windows).

The installation to a system location is easier, so choose that if possible.

If you have several versions of Python installed, please use the same version for setup and for running the wiki. Usually, the latest Python version will get the best results.

Recommended installation command for Linux (and MacOs X)

As you have chosen to not use a preconfigured package for your system this time it is highly recommended that you do not install MoinMoin into the default location. This is because otherwise, if you later want to install a moin package of your distribution this will overwrite your existing installation. The most common path for your own installations is below /usr/local (this is called the PREFIX). A command that should be ok for most Linux distributions and also MacOS X is

> python setup.py install --prefix='/usr/local' --record=install.log

This will install the shared files to '/usr/local/share/moin' and the moin code to /usr/local/lib/python2.x/site-packages/MoinMoin/.

Debugging setup process

If you have problems with the setup.py install step, try using the command:

> python -v setup.py --quiet install --record=install.log

The additional -v flag should provide you detailed verbose messages every step of the way.

On Linux, if you get an error like Invalid Python installation: cannot find /usr/lib/Python2.x/config/Makefile, you may not have the python module distutils installed, it's usually a part of the Python development libarary (python-dev). Some Linux distributions may not have installed it by default. For example, on Mandrake you need to install the python-devel package, on Debian it's called python-dev.

Installing to the default system location

> python setup.py --quiet install --record=install.log

This installs MoinMoin to the default system location (typically the Python directory, for example on Linux, inside /usr/lib/python2.x/site-packages/MoinMoin and /usr/share/moin). Look at the install.log file to see what was installed, and where.

Installing in the home directory or another specific location

Linux example, installing in the home directory:

> python setup.py --quiet install --prefix=$HOME --record=install.log

Windows example, installing in the C:\moin directory:

> python setup.py --quiet install --prefix="C:\moin" --record=install.log

All MoinMoin files will then be installed inside those directories, see install.log to know which files were installed, and where.

Note: You will likely see the following warning:

• warning: install: modules installed to 'C:\moin\', which
  is not in Python's module search path (sys.path) -- you'll
  have to change the search path yourself

This means exactly what it says, you need to add your install directory to the search path of Python, or it won't find the MoinMoin code.

For example, if you are running using a webserver and standard CGI, edit moin.cgi and add your installation directory to the Python path, like this:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, 'C:/moin')

Test installation

As a final step, if you have access to the shell or the command prompt, you can check that everything is correctly installed and ready to run. Start Python and type import MoinMoin. Nothing should be displayed in response to this command. Example:

> python
Python 2.4.4 (...)
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import MoinMoin
>>>

If you get this instead:

>>> import MoinMoin
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named MoinMoin
>>>

then you have to tune your installation. Try modifying sys.path, as described above.

What has been installed

So, you have a ready-to-work MoinMoin installation now. Congratulations! Before you go on to configuring it, take a look at the various files and directories that have been installed.

It is important that you understand the different locations used in a MoinMoin setup, so read this carefully.

In the following descriptions, PREFIX is what you used with the setup.py command, or a default location if you didn't use the --prefix option. (Typical default values on Linux are /usr and /usr/local.) X.Y is the version of Python. Typically, this is 2.3, 2.4 or 2.5.

Look into install.log to find out about following important locations:

• MoinMoin directory, usually PREFIX/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/MoinMoin -- this is where the MoinMoin source code is located

• share directory, usually PREFIX/share/moin - this is where the templates are located

  • data directory (wiki pages, users, etc.) - only MoinMoin should access this

  • underlay directory (wiki pages) - only MoinMoin should access this

  • htdocs directory with html support files (images for the various themes, etc.) - the web server will need to access this

  • server - MoinMoin example startup files (like moin.cgi for CGI, and other files for other startup methods)

  • config - MoinMoin example configuration files (like wikiconfig.py)

• bin directory with some scripts that help you use the MoinMoin shell commands

We talk of templates in the share directory because you usually will not use those files at that location, but copy them elsewhere when you need them. This way, you can set-up several wikis without problems, and easily upgrade to new MoinMoin versions. Please see WikiInstanceCreation

After you have downloaded and installed MoinMoin, you will want to "have a wiki". As explained at the bottom of ../BasicInstallation, you have to copy several directories and files. This way, you can have as many wikis as you want, and you can easily upgrade MoinMoin: only the original files will be overwritten, not your copies.

Every time you copy those files (and modify the configuration of your server accordingly), you create what is called a wiki instance. Each wiki instance is independent from the others, with a different configuration, different pages, different users, etc.

Some of the steps you need to take depend on which web server and which operating system you use. They are described on dedicated pages, which you should read (at least the beginning) before reading this one. Some other steps are common to every webserver and operating system (copying files around, setting permissions), and this is what is described here.

Linux users can download and use createinstance.sh (a bash script that creates the instance) instead of doing all steps manually:

1. If anything is unclear, just read the sections below for more hints.
2. Have a look into the script before running it, if all settings are correct for your setup:

   • If your system does not have /bin/bash. try /bin/sh (or whatever your shell is called) - see the first line in the script.

   • USER and GROUP should be the user and group used by your web-server for running moin.

   • SHARE is where the shared files were copied to, see install.log from the setup.py install step

3. Make the script executable (e.g. chmod +x createinstance.sh).

4. The script takes a single parameter: the location of your wiki instance (see "Choose a location" section below):

   # ./createinstance.sh /path/to/mywiki

5. Now continue in section "Tune configuration"

Read this first

Security warnings

Note to Windows users

All the commands below are Linux commands. The text descriptions that introduce them should be enough to help you understand what you need to do. Use the Windows Explorer, or the appropriate text-mode commands.

Choose a wiki name

Choose a unique name for the new wiki instance you want to create. It should be a short word, something that reflects what you intend to use the wiki for, like the name of your organization, of your team, of the project you are working on, etc.

The name "mywiki" is used as an example in the various commands below.

Choose a location

Choose a directory on your disk, it will contain all the files needed for your wiki instance. At the beginning, your wiki instance will use approximately 10 MB of disk space. Then of course, it will grow depending on the way your wiki is used. A personal wiki, even with many pages, might only use 30 MB or 40 MB of disk space. A popular wiki, or a wiki with many files attached to the pages, might use much more, of course.

If you are the administrator (or root) of the server, you can use anything you like or that makes sense to you, for example /usr/local/var/moin, /mnt/wikis, etc.

If you are a simple user, you will probably only be allowed to write in your personal, "home" directory. Choose a subdirectory that makes sense to you, for example the share/moin subdirectory.

Collect some important information

This is where the instructions differ according to the web server and operating system you use, and whether you are the administrator or a simple user. See the appropriate pages for your web server and operating system combination.

On Linux, the export command will be used to remember the collected information. Windows users should write it down carefully (maybe cutting-and-pasting in a Notepad window), or store it in environment variables if they use the command prompt.

• PREFIX is the prefix you used during the ../BasicInstallation

• SHARE is the name of the share directory, as discussed at the bottom of ../BasicInstallation

• WIKILOCATION is the name of the directory that will contain your wiki instance

• INSTANCE is the directory containing the wiki instance. It cannot be an existing directory readable through Apache, otherwise it will fail.

If you are an administrator, you also need to collect the following:

• USER is the user name of the web server

• GROUP is the name of the group to which the web server belongs

Now, Linux folks, let's store these settings in memory:

> export PREFIX=/usr                # this might be something else
> export SHARE=$PREFIX/share/moin   # this should be correct for most people
> export WIKILOCATION=$SHARE        # this is just an example
> export INSTANCE=mywiki            # this is just an example

Administrators also need the following two lines:

> export USER=www-data              # this is just an example
> export GROUP=www-data             # this is just an example

Copy the files

To create your new instance, you first need to create a directory named like your instance, inside the WIKILOCATION. Then you need to copy the data and underlay directories from your SHARE directory into your instance directory. Finally, you need to copy the wikiconfig.py file from the config directory into the instance directory.

Linux folks need to just type these commands:

> cd $WIKILOCATION
> mkdir $INSTANCE                   # make a directory for this instance
> cp -R $SHARE/data $INSTANCE       # copy template data directory
> cp -R $SHARE/underlay $INSTANCE   # copy underlay data directory
> cp $SHARE/config/wikiconfig.py $INSTANCE   # copy wiki configuration sample file

• Note that you just need to keep one underlay directory on your system if you are running multiple wikis (e.g. in a farm.)

Set permissions

Administrators

Administrators need to restrict the permissions of the files, so that only the web server (and the administrator of course) can read and write them. For maximum security, no other user on the machine should be able to read or write anything in the wiki instance directory. Don't forget that this directory contains sensitive information, notably the (encrypted) passwords of the wiki users.

On Linux, the following commands should be enough:

> chown -R $USER.$GROUP $INSTANCE   # check that USER and GROUP are correct
> chmod -R ug+rwX $INSTANCE         # USER.GROUP may read and write
> chmod -R o-rwx $INSTANCE          # everybody else is rejected

Normal users

Normal users, on the contrary, need to broaden the permissions of the files, so that the web server can read and write them. On recent Windows versions, and on some versions of Linux and other systems, access control lists can be used to that effect. They are, however, powerful and complicated, much beyond the scope of this document. Ask a knowledgeable person about them.

Without them, normal users have to allow everybody to access the instance directory. This is the only way the web server can enter it and do its work. This is, of course, VERY INSECURE, since any other user and program on the server can read the directory. You should not use such a setup for a wiki open to the public.

On Linux, the following commands will open the instance directory to the whole world:

> chmod -R a+rwX $INSTANCE

Note:

• it is also possible to put the web server and the normal user in the same group, and then only open the instance directory to the members of that group. This is a bit more secure (depending on who else is in the group), but you need the cooperation of the server administrator; he is the one setting up groups.

• the best other possibility is that the server administrator sets up suexec to execute CGI scripts in user directories under the user id of that user. You don't need to give world permissions that way, so it is a quite secure setup, but you also need cooperation of the administrator.

Tune configuration

Now, you need to tune the configuration of your web server and of your wiki instance. Look at the appropriate help page for your web server, then come back here to tune the settings of your wiki instance.

Edit wikiconfig.py. The default settings should work fine in most cases, but there are some things that you will probably want to change, like the name and logo of your wiki! Read the comments inside wikiconfig.py, they will guide you through this process.

HelpOnConfiguration contains all the details about all the options, in case the comments in wikiconfig.py are not enough.

This page describes the particular steps that need to be taken to create a wiki instance using MoinMoin on Linux with the Apache web server. You should have already performed the ../BasicInstallation. Installations on other Unices like FreeBSD are very similar.

On this page two installation scenarios are discussed:

1. You have Administrator Rights (you are user 'root' or may use sudo) for a server and are able to install and modify files almost anywhere on the machine, and notably able to modifiy the Apache configuration.

2. You are a Simple User, only able to write files into your home directory, and unable to alter the master Apache configuration file.

The following options are not mentioned here:

• using suEXEC

• using FastCGI (see ../FastCgi)

• using mod_python (see ../ApacheWithModPython)

• setting up a Root Wiki (see HelpOnConfiguration/ApacheVoodoo)

• For more advanced configurations and some tricks see also HelpMiscellaneous.

Table of contents

Administrator Scenario

The exact location of the various Apache configs varies - often used locations are: /etc/httpd/, /etc/apache/ or /etc/apache2/. You should have at least some know-how of how to set up and deal with Apache, especially when it comes to virtual host setup. If you do not know what we are talking about, please read about Configuration Files and Apache Virtual Host documentation in the Apache documentation.

On Apache2 it is quite usual to have a directory (like /etc/httpd/conf.d) for virtual hosts. So every file ending with .conf will be included into the main Apache configuration file. To look if this is true for your configuration, search for the word "Include".

Create a wiki instance

Creating a wiki instance involves copying files around and setting appropriate permissions. Before you can proceed, you need to know what user and group your Apache server runs as. The easiest way to know this is to issue this command:

> egrep "^User|^Group" /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
User wwwrun
Group nogroup

This shows a typical result: "wwwrun.nogroup". Other common results are "nobody.nogroup", "apache.apache" and "www-data.www-data". You can of course use your own. What matters is that you know which ones are in use, because you will need them to set file permissions.

Once you have gathered this information, read ../WikiInstanceCreation and follow the steps described there.

Install moin.cgi

There is one last file you need to copy, the bridge between Apache and MoinMoin: the CGI script that Apache will call every time a wiki page is requested, and that will in turn invoke all the MoinMoin components to handle the request. You can actually put this script anywhere you like (all the paths to the files MoinMoin needs can be configured to match your filesystem layout), but for the sake of simplicity and security, we suggest you follow the instructions below, unless you think you know better.

We will create a cgi-bin subdirectory in the instance directory. Using the environment variables defined in ../WikiInstanceCreation, run the following commands:

> cd $WIKILOCATION/$INSTANCE
> mkdir cgi-bin
> cp $SHARE/server/moin.cgi cgi-bin
> chown -R $USER.$GROUP cgi-bin
> chmod -R ug+rx cgi-bin
> chmod -R o-rwx cgi-bin

Configure moin.cgi

When moin.cgi is launched, it imports a MoinMoin module that in turn imports other modules and the configuration file. While the MoinMoin modules should always be found in a properly configured system (as described in ../BasicInstallation), it is likely that the configuration file will not be found. Edit the moin.cgi script to correct that. Add these lines near the top of the file:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '..')

An even better way is to use the absolute path name of the directory that contains the wikiconfig.py file instead of '..'.

Configure Apache

Now that every file is in place and properly locked down (as far as the filesystem is concerned), we need to configure Apache so that it offers access to the right files, and no others. However, since the default Apache configuration varies a lot depending on the distribution you use, and since administrators often make important additions and changes to it, we cannot give exact instructions that cover all cases. Instead, we will first describe roughly what needs to be done, and then give a few specific lines that you should add at the appropriate place in your Apache config.

Your Apache should be set up so that:

• Access to your instance directory is denied (sane Apache installations should actually deny access to the whole server, and then only allow a few specific directories).

• An Alias is set up to redirect requests from /moin_static160/ (in the URL - see also url_prefix_static configuration variable) to the htdocs directory (in the share directory, as discussed at the bottom of ../BasicInstallation). Please note that url_prefix_static will change with every moin release!

• A ScriptAlias is set up to redirect requests from whatever you want (we suggest you use your instance name, for example /mywiki) to the CGI script you just copied.

The following commands will add two lines at the bottom of your Apache config file. These lines only cover the last two items listed above. You have to check the first one by yourself (there is too much variation in Linux distributions). Note that you may have to move the two lines to the appropriate place in your config file -- maybe near other similar lines.

> echo "" >>/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
> echo "Alias /moin_static170/ \"$SHARE/htdocs/\"" >>/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
> echo "ScriptAlias /mywiki \"$WIKILOCATION/$INSTANCE/cgi-bin/moin.cgi\"" >>/etc/httpd/httpd.conf

So this would add two lines like the both below to a config file (possibly you use one for each virtual server):

Alias /moin_static170/ /usr/local/share/htdocs/
ScriptAlias /mywiki /usr/local/share/moin/mywiki/cgi-bin/moin.cgi

You only need to define the Alias for htdocs once, no matter how many wikis you run with the 1.6.0 version of moin. You need to define a different script alias for each wiki instance you intend to run. So you could also define the Alias in a central Apache configuration file and only define the ScriptAlias in virtual host configurations.

Configure MoinMoin

Finally, check that the wikiconfig.py file in the instance directory contains correct paths for:

• url_prefix_static (static stuff like css/img/js)

• data_dir (the instance data directory) and

• data_underlay_dir (the instance underlay directory).

You can use relative paths for the directories, but note that they are relative to the CGI script, not the configuration file! Better use absolute paths, and save yourself some headaches.

Here are the settings you should have in the config file if you followed all our suggestions:

    data_dir = '../data/'  # better use absolute path
    data_underlay_dir = '../underlay/'  # better use absolute path
    url_prefix_static = '/moin_static160' # depends on moin version

There are other settings you will likely want to alter, look at the bottom of ../WikiInstanceCreation for more details about them.

Test the wiki

Everything should work fine now. It is time to restart the Apache server (usually with "/etc/init.d/apache restart", sometimes with "apachectl restart") and perform the following steps:

• Access your new wiki with the URL "http://127.0.0.1/mywiki/" (or the name and port you have defined in the Apache configuration file). You should see some wiki page - read it.

• Then go to the WikiSandBox page.

• Try to edit it and save your changes.

• If that works, see if your edit is reflected on the RecentChanges page.

• If you see them, congratulations, your new wiki works!

If something goes wrong, have a look at Troubleshooting, at the bottom of this page.

Simple User Scenario

On machines shared by many people, simple users typically have no access to the root account, cannot modify the httpd.conf file, and cannot copy files into the system-wide cgi-bin and htdocs directories. In that case, Apache can be set up so that each user can host a web site in the home directory of his or her shell account, using the UserDir directive. If the machine administrator decides to use it, all URLs that start with "/~username" will be redirected to a directory in the users' home directories, where they have write permission and can install MoinMoin.

As an example, we will consider the case of a user named "mm". Of course, wherever you see "mm" below, you will replace it with your own username.

Make sure /~username works

The home directory installation can only work if the administrator (root) has allowed it. So, the first step is of course to check that it works. Typically, Apache is set up so that the public_html subdirectory in the home directory is used as the web site root. So, the first first step is to check if that directory exists.

> ls -ld ~/public_html
drwxr-xr-x   2 mm       users        4096 Nov 30 00:29 public_html

If the directory does not exist, create it, and be sure it can be read and entered by the web server.

> mkdir public_html
> chmod a+rx public_html
> ls -ld ~/public_html
drwxr-xr-x   2 mm       users        4096 Nov 30 00:35 public_html

Now, check if the "/~mm" URL works:

> lynx -error_file=/dev/stderr -dump http://localhost/~mm/ >/dev/null
URL=http://localhost/~mm/ (GET)
STATUS=HTTP/1.1 200 OK

If you get a "200 OK" response code, then it works, and you can go on to the next check. If you get a "403 Forbidden" or a "404 Not Found" response, then maybe something is wrong with your directory, or maybe the whole thing has not been enabled by your administrator.

• Check the permissions for your home directory (~) and your public_html directory. The first one should at least end with "--x", and the second one, as we saw above, with "r-x".

• It also possible that the administrator has set up another name for the personal web site directory. "public_html" is just the usual default, but anything can actually be used. There is no way to know, you have to ask the administrator (root).

• Finally, if the personal web site feature is disabled, maybe you can ask the administrator to enable it?

Once you have checked you can read the files in the directory, you need to check that you are also able to execute CGI scripts in that directory. Use the following commands to create a simple CGI script in the appropriate location:

> mkdir -p ~/public_html/cgi-bin
> cat > ~/public_html/cgi-bin/test.cgi
#!/bin/sh
echo Content-Type: text/plain
echo
echo "CGI scripts work"
<CTRL-D>
> chmod a+rx ~/public_html/cgi-bin/test.cgi
> lynx -dump http://localhost/~jh/cgi-bin/test.cgi
CGI scripts work

If you get anything else than "CGI scripts work", then something went wrong. Check the directory permissions as above, try other names (or ask about them). The sad truth might be that you are not allowed to execute CGI scripts. You would then have to ask the administrator (root) for that permission.

Once you get it, you can set up your wiki instance in the public_html directory.

Create a wiki instance

Creating a wiki instance involves copying files around and setting appropriate permissions. Read ../WikiInstanceCreation and follow the steps described there.

Install the htdocs files

The web server needs to access these files, so we need to copy them into the "public_html" directory. Just use this:

> cd ~/public_html
> cp -R ~/share/moin/htdocs moin_static170
> chmod -R a+rX moin_static170

Install moin.cgi

There is one last file you need to copy, the bridge between Apache and MoinMoin: the CGI script that Apache will call every time a wiki page is requested, and that will in turn invoke all the MoinMoin components to handle the request. You need to put this file in a directory for which CGI scripts execution is enabled. By default, this should work:

> cd ~/public_html
> mkdir cgi-bin
> cp $SHARE/server/moin.cgi cgi-bin
> chmod -R a+rx cgi-bin

Configure moin.cgi

When moin.cgi is launched, it imports a MoinMoin module (that in turn imports other modules and the configuration file). Since everything has been installed in your home directory, it is likely none of these will be found. Edit the moin.cgi script to correct that. Add these lines near the top of the file:

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/home/mm/lib/python2.4')
sys.path.insert(0, '/home/mm/lib/python2.4/site-packages')
sys.path.insert(0, '/home/mm/share/moin/mywiki')

Of course, you need to adapt the paths to your situation. The first two lines should help locate the MoinMoin modules, the last one should help locate the wikiconfig.py file.

Note: You might also need to edit the first line of the file, to point to the correct version of Python. The default should be fine, but a line like "#! /usr/bin/python2.4" might help you if the default does not work.

Note 2: If you are using mod_rewrite (rather than ScriptAlias) to change the wiki URL, you need to add a properties = {'script_name': '/mywiki'}  line to this file where indicated in the comments. This will let MoinMoin generate URLs that start with /mywiki and not the path that the webserver passed to MoinMoin. For example:

     # Properties
     # Allow overriding any request property by the value defined in
     # this dict e.g properties = {'script_name': '/mywiki'}.
     ## properties = {}
     properties = {'script_name': '/mywiki'}

If you're serving the wiki from the root URL, use  { 'script_name': '/' } .

Configure MoinMoin

Finally, check that the wikiconfig.py file in the instance directory contains correct paths for url_prefix_static (the htdocs directory), data_dir (the instance data directory) and data_underlay_dir (the instance underlay directory). You can use relative paths for the directories, but note that they are relative to the CGI script, not the configuration file! It is better to use absolute paths, and save yourself some headaches.

    data_dir = '/home/mm/share/moin/mywiki/data/'
    data_underlay_dir = '/home/mm/share/moin/mywiki/underlay/'
    url_prefix = '/~mm/moin_static170'

Test the wiki

Everything should work fine, now. It is time to perform the following steps:

• If it worked, try to access your new-born wiki with the URL "http://127.0.0.1/~mm/cgi-bin/moin.cgi". You should see some wiki page - read it.

• Now go to the WikiSandBox page.

• Try to edit it and save your changes.

• If that works, see if your edit is reflected on the RecentChanges page.

• If you see them, congratulations, you have a new wiki!

If something goes wrong, have a look at Troubleshooting, below.

Troubleshooting

See also ../TroubleShooting for generic stuff.

The first thing to do when your wiki does not work as expected is to issue the command "tail /var/log/httpd/error_log" to display the most recent errors. Usually, you will get a hint on what went wrong, like missing file system permissions.

Adding permission to serve the htdocs directory

In some (sane) Linux distributions (like SuSE 9.0) serving directories other than the document-root "/srv/www/htdocs" with Apache is switched off by default for security reasons in "/etc/httpd/httpd.conf" (or for Apache2 "/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"):

# forbid access to the entire filesystem by default
<Directory />
  Options None
  AllowOverride None
  Order deny,allow
  Deny from all
</Directory>

To allow Apache to serve directories outside of the document root you have to add these lines to "/etc/httpd/httpd.conf" (in SuSE it is recommended to create a new "http.conf.local" and include this file in "/etc/sysconfig/apache2"):

Alias /wiki/ "/usr/share/moin/htdocs/"
<Directory "/usr/share/moin/htdocs/">
   Order deny,allow
   Allow from all
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /mywiki "/usr/share/moin/mywiki/cgi-bin/moin.cgi"
<Directory "/usr/share/moin/mywiki/cgi-bin">
   Order deny,allow
   Allow from all
</Directory>

Of course, you need to adapt the paths to your particular situation.

FastCGI is a method which enables a web server to communicate with long-running scripts. This has the advantage that the script is only started and initialized one time, and that data could be cached in memory from request to request, enhancing the performance of the CGI application.

• Follow the basic installation for your operating system as described in other parts of the MoinMoin installation documentation. This is HelpOnInstalling/BasicInstallation and HelpOnInstalling/WikiInstanceCreation, or HelpOnInstalling/ApacheOnLinux in most cases.

Using MoinMoin with FastCgi

For more general information:

• http://fastcgi.com - FastCGI Homepage

• FastCGI — The Forgotten Treasure (introduction)

Deploying on Apache

To deploy MoinMoin using FastCGI you need an apache with mod_fastcgi. Please refer to the documentation of mod_fastcgi ( mod_fastcgi homepage ).

Don't forget to install the fastcgi Apache module (e.g. libapache2-mod-fastcgi). Then in places where the documentation refers to moin.cgi you use moin.fcg instead. Be sure that .fcg is handled by the FastCGI module (AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcg in your apache config).

Normally Apache will start CGI scripts with its own user and group, or with the user and group of the VirtualHost if you are using the suexec wrapper. To enable this with FastCGI you need to use FastCgiWrapper On in your Apache config (check your distributions and/or FastCGI Documentation).

Be sure to restart your Apache after you changed py files (i.e. the config) for a running FastCGI server, or you won't see any changes!

Script options

No matter how and where you install or how you configure, you can add some options (in Apache config or as self-running process). Here is a list of some options.

FastCgiExternalServer

-host [hostname:port]     - The port and on what host name to respond.
-idle-timeout [seconds]   - The number of seconds of inactivity allowed before request is aborted.

FastCgiServer

-port [port]              - The port the application will use for communication with the web server.
-idle-timeout [seconds]   - The number of seconds of inactivity allowed before request is aborted.

Example for Apache2 on Debian

Edit the /etc/apache2/conf.d/your_wiki:

<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
   AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi .fcg
   FastCgiServer /your/path/to/moin.fcg -idle-timeout 60 -processes 1
   ScriptAlias /your_wiki "/your/path/to/moin.fcg"
</IfModule>

• number of processes depends on your hardware..

Expand the Apache installation:

apt-get install libapache2-mod-fastcgi
a2enmod fastcgi
apache2ctl graceful

Now, your wiki should respond a little faster.

Running as an external application and/or on Windows

(see also ../ApacheOnWin32withFastCgi for a Windows-specific how-to)

MoinMoin can be run as an external application that answers FastCGI request via a local TCP/IP socket. This works on Windows as well. All you need to do (after having installed mod_fastcgi and a working MoinMoin instance) is this:

1. Select a port number for the internal communication. It should be larger than 1023. For this example, we chose 8888 (just for fun).

2. Add the following lines to your httpd.conf:

   Alias /moin.fcg "/your/path/to/moin.fcg"
   FastCgiExternalServer "/your/path/to/moin.fcg" -host localhost:8888

3. Edit moin.fcg. Replace

   fcg = thfcgi.FCGI(handle_request, max_requests=max_requests, backlog=backlog, max_threads=max_threads)

   with

   fcg = thfcgi.FCGI(handle_request, 0, 8888, max_requests=max_requests, backlog=backlog, max_threads=max_threads)

4. Start the file moin.fcg manually like a Python script:

   python moin.fcg

5. Start Apache.

Fallback to CGI if FastCGI is not available

Install and test MoinMoin according to HelpOnInstalling/ApacheOnLinux. Then make and test the changes to run mod_fastcgi. If you are satisfied, you can add the following block to your apache config:

<IfModule !mod_fastcgi.c>
    ScriptAlias /mywiki "/your/path/to/moin.cgi"
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
    AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcg
    ScriptAlias /mywiki "/your/path/to/moin.fcg"
</IfModule>

Now Apache will use mod_fastcgi if available and otherwise use the slow cgi script.

Deploying on lighttpd

This is about running a wiki under "/" URL with lighttpd.

The moin.fcg processes will get spawned by lighttpd automatically (thus, if you want to restart moin, just restart lighttpd).

It will also take care about handling robots.txt and favicon.ico correctly.

First add fastcgi and rewriting support to your lighttpd.conf (if you don't already have it):

server.modules              = (
                                "mod_access",
                                "mod_rewrite",      # <--- IMPORTANT!
                                "mod_status",
                                "mod_fastcgi",      # <--- IMPORTANT!
                                "mod_accesslog",
                                "mod_redirect",
                                "mod_auth",
                                "mod_expire",
)

Then configure it to run moin.fcg for your wiki site and also serve the static stuff:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^(www\.)?example\.org" {
    url.rewrite-once = (
        "^/robots.txt" => "/robots.txt",
        "^/favicon.ico" => "/favicon.ico",
        "^/moin_static161/(.*)" => "/moin_static161/$1",
        "^/(.*)" => "/wiki-engine/$1"
    )
    server.document-root        = "/srv/org.example/htdocs/"
    $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/wiki-engine/" {
      fastcgi.server = ( "/wiki-engine" =>
        (( "docroot"   => "/",
           "min-procs" => 10,
           "max-procs" => 10,
           "max-load-per-proc" => 2,
           # allocate successive port numbers for each process, starting with "port"
           "bin-path"  => "/srv/org.example/bin/moin.fcg",
           "host"      => "127.0.0.1",
           "port"      => 3060,
           "check-local" => "disable",
        ))
      )
    }
}

Finally adapt moin.fcg:

class Config(FastCgiConfig):
    loglevel_file = logging.INFO
    logPath = '/srv/org.example/logs/moin.log'
    max_requests = 1000
    properties = {'script_name': '/'}  # <--- IMPORTANT!

Using HTTP Authentication

lighttpd mod_fastcgi does not add the AUTH_TYPE variable to the cgi environment, which will cause http auth in moin to fail. See http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/ticket/889 for more information, and an attached diff file to correct to issue.

MoinMoin Startup script

Here is a startup script for Mac OS X, using DarwinPortsStartup system. It is probably useful for other unix like platforms.

# Start and stop multiple moin fast cgi instances runnings on PORTS

NAME="moin"
DIR="/www/org.mywiki/bin"
FCGIAPP="./moin.fcg"
PREFIX="/usr/local"

# List of ports to start moin instances on, separated with whitesapce
# Keep in sync with fastcgi.server in lighttpd.conf
PORTS="1080 1081"

start_on_port () {
    # Start moin instance on port, leaving pid file
    port=$1
    
    cd "${DIR}" && sudo -u www "${PREFIX}/bin/spawn-fcgi" \
        -f "${FCGIAPP}" \
        -p $port \
        -P "${NAME}-${port}.pid" \
        > /dev/null
}

kill_on_port () {
    # Try to kill process using pid in pid file, then remove the pid file
    pidFile="${DIR}/${NAME}-$1.pid"
    kill `cat "$pidFile"` && rm -f "$pidFile" > /dev/null 
}

start () {
    for port in $PORTS; do start_on_port $port; done 
}

stop () {
    for port in $PORTS; do kill_on_port $port; done
}

case "$1" in
start)
    # XXX starting twice will break pid files (bug in spawn-fcgi)
    start && echo -n " $NAME"
        ;;
stop)
        stop && echo -n " $NAME"
        ;;
restart)
    stop
    start && echo -n " $NAME"
        ;;
*)
        echo "Usage: `basename $0` {start|stop|restart}" >&2
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Mac OS X: Adding MoinMoin startup script

With this script, moin instances will be started automatically on startup.

1. Install darwinports

2. Install DarwinPortsStartup package:

   sudo port install DarwinPortsStartup

3. Copy moin.sh into /opt/local/etc/rc.d:

   sudo cp moin.sh /opt/local/etc/rc.d

Why Use mod_python

mod_python embeds the python interpreter into the apache server. This saves initialization time and the need of forking cgi scripts. It doesn't have the ability to run as different users. It will always run as the main apache user and group. Be sure that your wiki data files are accessible and writable by your apache server.

The basic configuration is suitable for mod_python 3.1.3 and later. If you use older version, see the section "Older mod_python versions"

mod_python will cause your apache processes to increase their memory requirements considerably - especially as apache runs many separate processes which will each need to have their own copy of the python code and data in the process memory space. You may find that FastCGI, as detailed in HelpOnInstalling/FastCgi is rather more efficient in this respect.

Basic configuring

1. Install mod_python
2. Set up a wiki instance

3. Edit wikiconfig.py

4. Changes to Apache httpd.conf

5. Restart Apache

The sample configurations below are for a wiki instance called mywiki installed in a directory /var/www/moin/mywiki with the main MoinMoin installation installed in python's default site library path. The wiki appears as URL /mywiki under the server - ie http://my.ser.ver/mywiki. You will need to change these to reflect your installation.

Install mod_python

Most people will just add a mod_python package to their current operating system installation. If you are building from source then you should consult the mod_python documentation.

The mod_python installation should have added some lines to the Apache configuration file - either in the file itself or in an included configuration file (for example on Red Hat or Fedora linux the mod_python configuration is in /etc/httpd/conf.d/python.conf).

Make sure you have this line in httpd.conf or mod_python will not work:

LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so

After this restart Apache and make sure that it starts successfully, and that the error log has a line similar to this:-

[Sat Jan 01 15:40:49 2005] [notice] mod_python: Creating 4 session mutexes based on 150 max processes and 0 max threads.

You may need to change some environment variables on (eg) FreeBSD - this is detailed in the port installation message.

Set up a wiki instance

This is done as shown in WikiInstanceCreation. Its recommended to first configure the wiki with cgi and check that it works, then change the configuratin to use mod_python. This allows you be sure that any problems are in the mod_python transition rather than the basic MoinMoin installation.

1. Copy moin.cgi into your wiki directory

2. Configure httpd.conf as cgi first (the shown Alias is for moin version 1.6.0):

   • Alias /moin_static160/ "/usr/share/moin/htdocs/"
     ScriptAlias /mywiki "/var/www/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi"

Restart Apache and make test that your wiki works.

Edit `wikiconfig.py`

Make sure you use only absolute paths - relative paths will not work!

data_dir = '/var/www/moin/mywiki/data/'
data_underlay_dir = '/var/www/moin/mywiki/underlay/'

If you do not want to use absolute paths, you can use Python's os module to construct the relative paths: {{{import os data_dir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(file), 'data/') data_underlay_dir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(file), 'underlay/') }}}

Test that the wiki works after this change.

Changes to Apache `httpd.conf`

After your wiki is running as cgi script, convert it to run with mod_python.

If you run your wiki as cgi as we recommended before, remove or comment the ScriptAlias directive:

#ScriptAlias /mywiki "/var/www/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi"

Add a Location directive:

<Location /mywiki>
    SetHandler python-program
    # Add the path of your wiki directory
    PythonPath "['/var/www/moin/mywiki'] + sys.path"
    PythonHandler MoinMoin.request.request_modpython::Request.run
</Location>

If you have multiple MoinMoin instances then add one location directive for each one (changing the paths as appropriate) and add a line with the directive PythonInterpreter mywiki to each Location section. With this directive different subinterpreters with completely separate namespaces will be used for each wiki (see here for details).

If you did not install MoinMoin in the default location, you will have to add the path to MoinMoin to the system path:

    PythonPath "['/var/www/moin/mywiki', '/prefix/lib/python2.x/site-packages'] + sys.path"

Restart Apache - everything should now work correctly.

Solving problems for non-root-mounted wikis

• If your wiki does not have a root URL (like http://www.example.com/FrontPage), then you might need to follow the next steps:

On some installations, mod_python hands MoinMoin incorrect script_name and path_info. It usually happens when using the Apache Location directive, with a wiki in an arbitary path:

<Location /farm/mywiki>
    ...
</Location>

This will not work, because its not clear what is the script name, since with location setup, there is no real script.

To solve this problem, use a PythonOption directive:

<Location /farm/mywiki>
    # Location value must match the Apache Location value!
    PythonOption Location /farm/mywiki
    ...
</Location>

Configuring root wiki

You may wish to have your wiki appearing at the root of your webserver - for example so that http://wiki.example.com/ will map to your wiki rather than having to use http://wiki.example.com/mywiki/. This requires a slightly different form of configuration using mod_rewrite - this is a standard module of recent Apache distributions, and is often enabled by default.

You need to set up your wiki instance as described above, and also copy moinmodpy.py from the Moin installation directory to the wiki instance directory (/var/www/moin/mywiki in these examples).

The Apache configuration needs mod_rewrite enabled - so the line

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

should appear in the first part of the httpd.conf configuration file.

The wiki and virtual host configuration should look like this (Alias is for moin version 1.6.0):-

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin postmaster@example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html
  ServerName wiki.example.com
  Alias /moin_static160/ "/usr/share/moin/htdocs/"

  # Rewrite urls
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteLogLevel 0
  # map /wiki static files to Moin htdocs
  RewriteRule ^/moin_static160/(.*)$ /usr/share/moin/htdocs/$1 [last]
  RewriteRule ^/robots.txt$ /usr/share/moin/htdocs/robots.txt [last]
  RewriteRule ^/favicon.ico$ /usr/share/moin/htdocs/favicon.ico [last]
  # map everything else to server script
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /var/www/moin/mywiki/moinmodpy.py$1

  <Directory "/var/www/moin/testwiki">
    # Modpy stuff
    AddHandler python-program .py
    # Add the path to the wiki directory, where
    # moinmodpy.py and wikiconfig.py are located.
    PythonPath "['/var/www/moin/mywiki'] + sys.path"
    PythonHandler MoinMoin.request.request_modpython::Request.run
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Apache should be restarted, and the FrontPage of mywiki should now appear at http://wiki.example.com/.

Other ways of handling root level wikis with Apache are detailed in the appropriately named HelpOnConfiguration/ApacheVoodoo.

Older mod_python versions

mod_python versions 2.7.10, 3.0.4 and 3.1.2b have a bug in apache.resolve_object. This bug was reported to the mod_python maintainers and has been fixed in the 3.1.3 release. The best fix for this is to update to the current release. However if you are unable to do this there are 2 possible solutions:

Use a wrapper script

MoinMoin come with a moinmodpy.py wrapper script, and this could be used by changing the PythonPath and PythonHandler directives as shown in the moinmodpy.htaccess file.

Fix mod_python

mod_python has a small resolver bug in versions 2.7.10, 3.0.4 and 3.1.2b. The method resolve_object in mod_python/apache.py checks the wrong object, and so the lookup for RequestModPy.run fails.

To fix it you need to change the method resolve_object (around line 551 for mod_python 3.1.2b) from

        if silent and not hasattr(module, obj_str):
            return None

to

        if silent and not hasattr(obj, obj_str):
            return None

Troubleshooting

Page access gives apache error::

• PythonHandler MoinMoin.request::RequestModPy.run: OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'data/user' This appears to be caused by you not having an absolute path for data_dir in moin_config.py. There are several other lines of error traceback preceding this one in the apache error log. Fix the path in moin_config.py.

Using MoinMoin with Twisted

Twisted is an event-driven networking framework for many kinds of applications. For MoinMoin Twisted is used as a web server that just imports MoinMoin persistently. This has the advantage that the Python interpreter and all Python scripts (including Twisted itself and also MoinMoin) is only loaded and initialized one time, and that data can be cached in memory from request to request, enhancing the performance of MoinMoin.

• First do ../BasicInstallation and ../WikiInstanceCreation.

Besides the general installation you need 3 files:

1. the script /path/to/cgi-dir/mointwisted (see "Starting the server" below)

2. the webserver script file like mointwisted.py (which needs to be in the same directory where your working directory is).

3. the configuration file like /path/to/wikiconfig-dir/wikiconfig.py

Install Twisted

First, install Twisted (see URL above). Many Linux distributions have Twisted packages. Please refer to the documentation of Twisted for installation information.

Configuring the Twisted server

Copy the file wiki/server/mointwisted.py to your wiki directory. Edit and adapt the settings to your needs.

System path configuration

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

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:

Configuring wikiconfig.py

The sample config file should be just fine.

Don't change url_prefix_static as the default value is hardcoded in the Twisted server.

Starting the server

on Unix

On GNU/Linux, Mac OS X or another POSIX-like OS, copy wiki/server/mointwisted to your wiki directory. You might want to adapt PYTHONPATH and the path to twistd.

Start the server with ./mointwisted start and test your wiki at http://localhost:8080/. Stop the server with ./mointwisted stop.

For more options run ./mointwisted without arguments.

If you want to start the server via initscript make sure mointwisted finds montwisted.py on startup!

on Windows

Copy wiki/server/mointwisted.cmd to your wiki directory. You might have to change the path pointing to the python-scripts directory.

Double click mointwisted.cmd to start the server. It will create a new terminal window. To stop the server, close the terminal window.

A windows service runner written in Python

I have written a service runner to help configuring a windows service to run, because I prefer to run moin using Twisted.

Usage:

1. install pywin32
2. download servicerunner.py
3. modify the "mointwisted" and "mointwisted_dir" according to your system
4. run "servicerunner.py install" on the command line

servicerunner.py

Installing and configuring standalone server

See also: HelpOnConfiguration/IntegratingWithApache

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

The quick way

See DesktopEdition.

The flexible way

Instead of just running it like described above, you can of course move stuff to different places (see ../BasicInstallation, ../WikiInstanceCreation).

You can then invoke the moin standalone server using the moin scripting command:

# for details and other options, see: moin server standalone --help
moin --config-dir=/etc/moin server standalone --docs=/usr/share/moin/htdocs

Of course you have to give correct values that match your setup:

• --config-dir gives the directory that contains your wikiconfig (or farmconfig).

  • wikiconfig points to other important pathes, e.g. data_dir and underlay_dir

• --docs gives the directory where moin finds the static files (css, imgs, etc.)

If it does not find the moin command:

• if you used setup.py it should have copied it to /usr(/local)/bin - check your PATH.

• if you don't want to use setup.py just write your own moin command script:

  #Fix and uncomment those 2 lines if it doesn't find the MoinMoin package:
  #import sys
  #sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/moin_code')
  from MoinMoin.script.moin import run
  run()

If it crashes and tells it can't import MoinMoin, then just uncomment and fix the sys.path stuff you see above.

Now point your browser at http://localhost:8080/ (or whatever moin tells you).

If you want to run the moin process as a daemon, have a look at the --start, --stop and --pidfile options.

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 start moin as root for this or redirect a port as root.

1st method (recommended)

Run standalone on port 8080 as described above and using iptables redirect all traffic from port 80 to 8080, assuming your external ip adress is 10.0.0.1:

-A net_dnat -d 10.0.0.1/32 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.0.0.1:8080

2nd method (not recommended)

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.

Standalone Server configuration

Alternatively to giving parameters by commandline options, you can also have a wikiserverconfig.py and specify your stuff in a Config class there. See the example file in the toplevel directory.

• There may be more options useful to moin developers, see the comments in moin.py

Configuring wikiconfig.py

The sample config file should be just fine.

The default value of url_prefix_static is hardcoded into the standalone server script, do not change it or it won't work!

Using the secure standalone server

The standalone server supports SSL when using the SecureThreadPoolServer server class. The SSL support is provided by the TLSLite library. All wiki traffic is forced to SSL when using the SecureThreadPoolServer.

Two additional configuration options are required when using the SecureThreadPoolServer. First, ssl_privkey must point to the server's private key. Second, ssl_certificate must point to the server's certificate.

TLSLite does not support a password protected private key unless additional libraries are used. Consult the TLSLite webpage for more information.

Typically a certificate would be purchased from an certificate authority, such as Thawte (http://www.thawte.com). However, since the suggested usage of the standalone server is for personal use, a self signed certificate may be appropriate. For more information on how to generate a server private key, and a self signed certificate, see the openssl HOWTO pages.

For example, to create the server's private key, run the following:

openssl genrsa -out privkey.pem 2048

To create a self signed certificate for the newly created private key, run the following:

openssl req -new -x509 -key privkey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 1095

moin.py then needs to be told about the generated files privkey.pem and cacert.pem. For the example above, the following lines would need to be added to moin.py:

    ssl_privkey = "/secure/path/to/privkey.pem"
    ssl_certificate = "/secure/path/to/cacert.pem"

Using a self signed certificate will cause your browser to generate a warning that it cannot verify the identify of the wiki server. This is because the certificate was not signed by a recognized certificate authority (CA). In order to get rid of this warning, you must purchase a certificate from a CA.

Serving Port 443

A secure standalone server may be run to listen on port 443, but this requires root to start the server. An alternative, is to use iptables to run a secure standalone server on an unprivileged port such as 8081 but redirect traffic through privileged port 443 (setting iptables requires root):

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8081
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -o lo -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8081

It is also necessary to indicate that the https scheme is to be used instead of http. In the wikiserverconfig.py configuration (see above), a property must be set as:

    properties = { "is_ssl": 1 }

These instructions will walk you through, step by step, setting up Moin on Mac OS X

• Apple's latest operating system, 10.5 Leopard, packs enough under-hood changes that, rather than a bunch of if/then instructions, going forward this page will be updated only for Leopard. If you have an older system (Tiger or Panther) you can click 'info' and view revision 45 for hints for those operating systems.

System Requirements & Preparation

MacOS 10.5 Leopard includes the latest version of Python, version 2.5.1. (Older versions 10.4-Tiger and 10.3-Panther include the minimum required versions of Python to run Moin without updating, 2.3.5 and 2.3 respectively).

MoinMoin installation requires the use of the Terminal and assumes you have a basic familiarity with commands and syntax. When you read commandline mentioned below, assume that you will enter these commands using the Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

Make sure Apache is started ('Apple' menu > 'System Preferences...' > 'Sharing' panel > and check "Personal Web Sharing")

Installation

Installing MoinMoin

1. Download MoinMoin

   • The most current version is here: MoinMoinDownload

2. Expand the archive

   • Double-click to expand the moin-X.X.tar.gz archive.

   • You should then have a folder such as moin-x.x where "x.x" is the current release number. This folder will contain a setup.py file in addition to several other files and subfolders. Optionally, you may want to move the expanded moin-X.X folder to a location more convenient to work from, like into a temp folder the root of your hard drive.

3. Run Setup.py from the commandline

   • Open Terminal.app and enter the commands:

     sudo -s
     password:

   • Now you have root privileges in this shell (note: the prompt will change from a $ to a #). To install, type:

     cd /temp/moin-1.6

   • Important: Now you have to decide where you want to install your Moin wiki installation; this will be your wiki root folder. Unix traditionalists will install this into /usr/local because of long standing unix conventions. However, on Mac, this and other unix folders are typically hidden from the Finder. So, you may want to install outside this folder where you can more easily manage the files (such as drag-copy backups, editing config files using TextEdit.app, etc). In the examples below, Moin is installed in a folder on the root of your hard drive named /moinwiki. If you want to follow unix conventions, simply substitute /usr/local for /moinwiki in all the examples below.

     python setup.py install --install-data='/moinwiki'

   • The --install-data='/moinwiki' argument tells the setup script where to put the data. In this case, it will create a folder on the root of your hard drive called 'moinwiki'.

   • Note: 'moinwiki' may seem like an odd name, but there are a number 'moin' folders created, so I use 'moinwiki' to distinguish this folder from the others. You can of course name it anything you like.

   • Security warning: Your wiki should not be in the "Sites" folder of your home folder, or in the /Library/!WebServer/Documents (Apache root) folder. Do not put your wiki folder where the web server can access it!

4. Add yourself access privileges for moinwiki

5. Apple tightened security in 10.5 Leopard. We want to add our username to the moinwiki folder so that it's easier to work with.

   1. right-click (control-click) on the moinwiki folder, and select "Get Info...".
   2. click the lock icon in the lower-right corner, enter your password to unlock.
   3. click the + icon to add a new user, from the dialog select your username.

   4. change your privileges to "Read & Write"

   5. click the gear icon and select "Apply to enclosed items".

The installation portion is now finished.

Configuration

You are now ready to create a wiki instance! The following instructions will create a wiki called "mywiki". You may replace the name mywiki with almost any name you wish, but do not use wiki because that is used by MoinMoin for loading standard images and style sheets. Although this can be changed later, the name you choose for mywiki will become part of the url used to access your site, e.g. http://server.myorganization.org/mywiki/FrontPage.

Creating a Wiki Instance

We now want to create our own wiki instance and copy in a default set of templates and files. Do these commands:

cd /moinwiki/share/moin
mkdir mywiki
cp -r data mywiki
cp -r underlay mywiki
cp server/moin.cgi mywiki
cp config/wikiconfig.py mywiki

You can repeat these steps for creating multiple instances, run these same commands again, substituting mywiki2 for mywiki.

Configuring Apache httpd.conf

Apple upgraded Apache to 2.2 in Leopard, which (among other things) brings tighter security controls than previous versions.

1. Add yourself access privileges for apache2 (alternatively, if you're comfortable with commandline (Terminal.app), you can bypass these steps and use sudo and pico instead)

   1. From the Finder, under the 'Go' menu, select "Go to folder..." and type /etc.

   2. right-click (control-click) on the apache2 folder, and select "Get Info...".
   3. click the lock icon in the lower-right corner, enter your password to unlock.
   4. click the + icon to add a new user, from the dialog select your username.

   5. change your privileges to "Read & Write"

   6. click the gear icon and select "Apply to enclosed items".

2. Edit Apache's configuration file, httpd.conf

   1. From the Finder, under the 'Go' menu, select "Go to folder..." and type /etc/Apache2. Drag the httpd.conf file onto TextEdit.app.

   2. Go to the end of the Aliases section and edit like the example below:

          Alias /moin_static160/   "/moinwiki/share/moin/htdocs/"
          ScriptAlias /mywiki      "/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi"

      Add the following to allow Apache to access your moinwiki directory (see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options for more help):

      <Directory "/moinwiki">
          Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
          AllowOverride None
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
      </Directory>

   3. Save changes
   4. Restart Apache -
      • open System Preferences, go to the Sharing page, select "Personal Web Sharing" and click "Stop" then "Start".

      • Alternatively, from Terminal.app, type apachectl graceful.

Configuring moin.cgi

The moin.cgi file essentially tells Apache to run all the moin wiki pages through the python interpreter.

1. Edit the moin.cgi file at the following path /moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi (click-drag the file onto TextEdit.app). Change the line that points to your wikiconfig.py file, like in the example below.

   sys.path.insert(0, '/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/wikiconfig.py')

What to do if you get an "Internal Server Error"
This most likely means that the pathname above is not correct.

You can test your pathname by opening Terminal.app and pasting in the above line without the shebang #! statement (using the above example, /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/Python. If the path is correct, you should see output indicating your Python version as well as sample commands such as "help", "copyright", "credits", etc. If you get the error "Bad executable (or shared library)" or "No such file or directory" then the path is likely wrong, and you will need to correct. I've also noticed that it helps to point directly at the "python" executable, rather than the alias or symlinks found in the upper directories.

Configuring wikiconfig.py

Open wikiconfig.py (click-drag the file onto TextEdit.app) and read the comments. The wiki you created is a new "Untitled Wiki", using the default configuration. You want to give a better name and setup some configuration values.

• Note that the file belongs to user and group www:www. You can edit the file as root, or change the group of the file to yourself with chown www:username wikiconfig.py.

Edit /moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/wikiconfig.py and change the sitename to the name of your wiki:

    sitename = 'My Mac Wiki'

Additionally, set data_dir and data_underlay_dir to the absolute paths of the particular directories. You can use relative paths for the directories, but note that they are relative to the CGI script, not the configuration file! Better to use absolute paths, and save yourself some headaches:

    data_dir = r'/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/data'
    data_underlay_dir = r'/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/underlay'

Uncomment the url_prefix_static line:

    url_prefix_static = '/moin_static160'

For a public installation, you'll normally want to forbid some of the more dangerous actions. Add a line like this to wikiconfig.py:

    actions_excluded = ['AttachFile', 'DeletePage', 'RenamePage', ]

Additional configuration details can be found in HelpOnConfiguration.

Setting Permissions

You have to make the web server the owner of the files in your wiki. Navigate to /moinwiki/share/moin/ and run the following commands:

chown -R www:www mywiki
chmod -R 744 mywiki

Testing Your New Wiki

In a web-browser surf to the site: http://localhost/mywiki You should see the FrontPage of your new wiki.

Now run the unit tests, to make sure everything is fine. Go to this address: http://localhost/mywiki?action=test

• Contents

  1. System Requirements & Preparation
  2. Installation
     1. Installing Apache
     2. Installing Python
     3. Installing MoinMoin
  3. Configuration
     1. Creating a Wiki Instance
     2. Configuring wikiconfig.py
     3. Configuring moin.cgi
     4. Configuring Apache httpd.conf
  4. Troubleshooting
  5. Next Steps
     1. Authenticating MoinMoin Users Against a Domain Controller
     2. Simple Windows MoinMoin Backup
     3. FastCGI with Windows