MoinMoin: HowTo/Debian8

About this HowTo

MoinMoin versions

1.9.8

Platforms

Debian 8

Detailed guide for setting up MoinMoin on Debian 8. This was tested on the Jessie release but should also work on testing/unstable. It used a python virtual environment, uwsgi, and nginx. I have simply created this as a basic setup so performance changes will need made to suit the particular server and environment this is being run on.

Preparing the server

First we need to get the current MoinMoin release from https://moinmo.in/MoinMoinDownload which at the time of writing is 1.9.8 as well as install the supporting applications.

Note: You can use the uwsgi package from apt if preferred but it will not be as updated as the pip install

wget http://static.moinmo.in/files/moin-1.9.8.tar.gz
tar xzvf moin-1.9.8.tar.gz

apt-get update && apt-get install -y nginx python-pip python-dev build-essential
pip install uwsgi virtualenv

useradd -r -s /sbin/nologin -d /srv/moin moin

Next we setup a specific account for moin and start to setup permissions on the needed directories. During this phase we also install the MoinMoin software from the tarball downloaded previously. This is done with a virtual environment to isolate the required version of Python to avoid conflicts.

mkdir -p /srv/moin /var/log/moin
chown -R moin /var/log/moin

virtualenv /srv/moin/pythonenv
source /srv/moin/pythonenv/bin/activate

cd moin-1.9.8
python setup.py install --record=install.log
deactivate

Now that we have MoinMoin installed we should make a copy of the config rather than modifying the defaults. This provides easy rollback and will consolidate them into one location for the uwsgi configuration. We also want to ensure that the directory is owned by our moin user and group for security.

cp -r wiki/ /srv/moin
cd /srv/moin/wiki
cp config/wikiconfig.py ./ && cp server/moin.wsgi ./

chown -R moin:moin /srv/moin

Finally we need to tell MoinMoin where our new application and configuration files are in order for it to properly run. Simply open moin.wsgi in your favorite text editor and add the indented lines below under the commented out lines that are similar.

vim moin.wsgi
    sys.path.insert(0, '/srv/moin/pythonenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/')
    sys.path.insert(0, '/srv/moin/wiki/')

Configuring uwsgi

Navigate to your wiki directory and simply copy and paste the below into uwsgi.ini. Ensure the path to moin.uwsgi and the uid matches the user created previously if it does not match 'moin' per this article. The group should be set to match nginx in order for nginx to read and write to the socket to communicate with uwsgi.

vim /srv/moin/wiki/uwsgi.ini

[uwsgi]
plugins = python
master = true
uid = moin
gid = www-data
processes = 1
logto = /var/log/moin/moin.log
socket = /var/run/moin/moin.sock
chmod-socket = 660
wsgi-file = /srv/moin/wiki/moin.wsgi

MoinMoin systemd service file

Create the following file using your favorite text editor to allow the MoinMoin wiki application to run as a service during boot. The group must be www-data for nginx to be able to read and write to the socket necessary for communication with uwsgi. If you do not specify this then nginx will not have access to the socket in /run/moin

vim /etc/systemd/system/moin.service

[Unit]
Description=MoinMoin wiki application
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/uwsgi --ini /srv/moin/wiki/uwsgi.ini
ExecReload=/usr/local/bin/uwsgi --ini /srv/moin/wiki/uwsgi.ini --reload
ExecReload=/usr/local/bin/uwsgi --ini /srv/moin/wiki/uwsgi.ini --stop
Restart=no
RuntimeDirectory=moin
User=moin
Group=www-data
KillSignal=SIGQUIT

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

nginx configuration

Create a new virtualhost in nginx and copy and paste the below configuration for a basic setup. This is very simple and adds no security and uses a generic domain name.

vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/wiki.example.com.conf

server {

    server_name wiki.example.com;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/wiki.example.com_access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/wiki.example.com_error.log;

    location / {
        include uwsgi_params;

        uwsgi_pass unix:///var/run/moin/moin.sock;
        uwsgi_modifier1 30;
        }
    }

Final steps

Simply enable the moin and nginx services and boot and start the applications.

systemctl enable moin nginx && systemctl start moin nginx

Now just navigate to the IP of your server in a browser and you should see the setup page for MoinMoin.

Use BasicAuth for MoinMoin users

Add the following lines to wikiconfig.wsgi.

from MoinMoin.auth import GivenAuth

# add to security section
auth = [GivenAuth(autocreate=True)]

Then add the following to the nginx virtual host file in the location block after the include statement. Substitude the auth_basic string and user file as appropriate to your environment.

auth_basic "Authorized users only";
auth_basic_user_file .htpasswd;

uwsgi_param REMOTE_USER $remote_user;

Restart both services and users listed in a .htpasswd file will be used for user authentication.