Question

A friend pointed me to Twiki. I downloaded the one for windows that came with apache, everything runs fine on my system.

However I'd like others to be able to run it from my computer but they can't. I've enabled file and print sharing, opened up the proper port. I'm not sure what else to do, how can other people access the twiki from my computer?

Environment

-- KevinLockley - 02 Jun 2008

Answer

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Unless there's a firewall on your network, and they are on the local network, normally they should be able to access it the same way you do, "http://your_machine_name.your_domain.com" (not localhost, obviously).

If not, it's usually best to start from the bottom up:

1. Can they ping your machine's IP address? If not, fix that first.
2. Can they ping your machine's name? If not, you'll need a DNS entry.
3. Can they telnet to port 80 (that checks if it's a browser issue)? If not, fix that.
4. What error messages are they getting?

-- SeanCMorgan - 03 Jun 2008

Thanks for the quick reply Sean!

1. Yes they can ping my machine's IP address. 2. Yes they can ping my machine's name. 3. When others try to telnet to my machine they get this error. - Could not open connection to the host, on port80: Connection failed. 4. Was just the general IE error, could not find page.

-- KevinLockley - 03 Jun 2008

Then here are some possibilities:

1. Your web server is actually listening something other than port 80. That's not likely, but can you still connect if you make it explicit in the URL (http://...:80/twiki/...)
2. You might have another process that's listening on the same port. To check that, stop the Apache server and the "LISTENING" line in the result of the following command should disappear (or change to another state): netstat -an | find ":80"
3. Have you checked the Apache error log? Apache may be rejecting connections except from your own address: Apache 2 is pretty locked down by default. You probably need something like "Allow From All" in the http.conf or twiki.conf file. Also see ApacheConfigGenerator, or my comments on WindowsInstallCookbookComments (12 Mar 2008).
4. Otherwise something on your network is blocking port 80. Can you check with your network administrators? Or maybe changing you web server port would help.

P.S. I see you're in Vancouver. Hello from Calgary

-- SeanCMorgan - 03 Jun 2008

I just changed the port from 80, to 8080 and presto, works!

Thanks for the help Sean. And yup I'm from Vancouver, though I was born and raised in Edmonton, Calgary's rival city.

-- KevinLockley - 04 Jun 2008

I'm glad that worked for you. I was at a place once that blocked all internal connections to port 80 because NIMDA and other viruses are hard-coded to use that port to propogate. Maybe it was something like that.

Enjoy your new TWiki server.

Cheers.

-- SeanCMorgan - 04 Jun 2008

Oh I have one last little problem. When people try to register they see this message.

Access check on Main failed. Action "redirect": unsafe redirect to http://pc0093:8080/twiki/bin/oops/Main/TWikiRegistration?twiki_redirect_cache=fb699b4a768c9d8d72ef9d1497ef18eb: host does not match {DefaultUrlHost} , and is not in {PermittedRedirectHostUrls}"http://PC0093"

I have a feeling somewhere the twiki is looking for http://pc0093 and now it is http://pc0093:8080

I can't seem to find a twiki config where I can set this.

-- KevinLockley - 04 Jun 2008

Oh nevermind I found it! Now just to figure out why they get an error message about my email....

-- KevinLockley - 04 Jun 2008

Hah nevermind again, he used a fake email and it spit out a huge error message at him... oh well off I go!

-- KevinLockley - 04 Jun 2008