Configuration

This page should help you with configuring an already installed MoinMoin wiki.

Character Set

Moin uses Unicode internally, and utf-8 for external output and input, like pages, HTML output and translation files. The external character set is defined in config.charset to utf-8. This setting is fine for all languages, as any character can be encoded in UTF-8. You should not change this value, although technically it is possible.

Certain options must use Unicode values. For example, the site name could contain German umlauts or French accents or be in Chinese or Hebrew. Because of this, you must use unicode strings for those items. Unicode strings are defined by prefixing the letter u to the string. Here are some examples:

    # Site name, used by default for wiki name-logo [Unicode]
    sitename = u"Jürgen's Wiki"
    # another example:
    sitename = u'הוויקי של יורגן'

Read the comments in the configuration file - they tell you which options must use Unicode values.

Notes:

International Setup

The default configuration file shipped with moin uses iso-8859-1 coding. This is fine for Latin languages like English or German, but not usable for non-latin languages. If you want to have non-latin characters in your configuration items, use utf-8 coding for the config file.

Set the first line of all configuration files to this line:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

Values using unicode strings can be recognized by their default value being u"...." or ur"..." (the u means unicode) or when the description explicitly tells [unicode].

For ready made configuration in your language, see ConfigMarket. Read also the section about unicode options.

Customization of user preferences

You can predefine, disable or remove several options in the user preferences, see HelpOnConfiguration/UserPreferences.

Configuring a single wiki

If you run a single wiki, you should not copy the file farmconfig.py into your configuration directory (remove it and the .pyc file, if it is there). Without farmconfig, moin uses the default wikiconfig.py.

wikiconfig.py can be located anywhere, you just have make sure it can be imported by moin - it is a good idea to add the directory where it resides as first element to sys.path (this is the list of pathes python uses when searching for importable stuff). sys.path setup is done early, usually in the server adaptor script you use (e.g. moin.cgi or moin.wsgi) - see the comments in the script for details.

General notes on wiki/farmconfig.py structure:

# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-

from MoinMoin.config.multiconfig import DefaultConfig

class Config(DefaultConfig):

    sitename = u'MyWiki'   # u means that it will be converted to Unicode
    interwikiname = 'MyWiki'
    data_dir = '/where/ever/mywiki/data/'
    underlay_dir = '/where/ever/mywiki/underlay/'
    
    # More settings follow...

Configuration of multiple wikis

The moinmoin wiki engine is capable of handling multiple wikis using a single installation, a single set of configuration files and a single server process. Especially for persistent environments like Twisted, this is necessary, because the Twisted server will permanently run on a specific IP address and TCP port number. So for virtual hosting of multiple domains (wikis) on the same IP and port, we need the wiki engine to permanently load multiple configs at the same time and choose the right of them when handling a request for a specific URL.

To be able to choose the right config, moin uses config variable wikis located in the file farmconfig.py - it simply contains a list of pairs (wikiname, url-regex). Please only use valid python identifiers for wikiname (to be exact: identifier ::= (letter|"_") (letter | digit | "_")* - just try with a simple word if you didn't understand that grammar rule). When processing a request for some URL, moin searches through this list and tries to match the url-regex against the current URL. If it doesn't match, it simply proceeds to the next pair. If it does match, moin loads a configuration file named <wikiname>.py (usually from the same directory) that contains the configuration for that wiki.

farmconfig.py in the distribution archive has some sample entries for a wiki farm running multiple wikis. You need to adapt it to match your needs if you want to run multiple wikis.

/!\ For simpler writing of these help pages, we will call such a <wikiname>.py configuration file simply wikiconfig.py, of course you have to use the filename you chose.

Of course you have already adapted the wikis setting in farmconfig.py (see above), so we only give some hints how you can save some work. Please also read the single wiki configuration hints, because it explains config inheritance.

We now use the class-based configuration to be able to configure the common settings of your wikis at a single place: in the base configuration class (see farmconfig.py for an example):

farmconfig.py:

# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-
# farmconfig.py:
from MoinMoin.config.multiconfig import DefaultConfig
class FarmConfig(DefaultConfig):
    url_prefix = '/wiki'
    show_hosts = True
    underlay_dir = '/where/ever/common/underlay'
    # ...

The configs of your individual wikis then only keep the settings that need to be different (like the logo, or the data directory or ACL settings). Everything else they get by inheriting from the base configuration class, see moinmaster.py for a sample.

moinmaster.py:

# -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-
# moinmaster.py:
from farmconfig import FarmConfig
class Config(FarmConfig):
    show_hosts = False
    sitename = u'MoinMaster'
    interwikiname = 'MoinMaster'
    data_dir = '/org/de.wikiwikiweb.moinmaster/data/'
    # ...

Overview of Configuration Options

The following table contains default values and a short description for most configuration variables. Most of these can be left at their defaults, those you need to change with every installation are listed in the sample wikiconfig.py that comes with the distribution.

(!) You can also have a look at MoinMoin/config/multiconfig.py, class DefaultConfig for further information (that file has the builtin default configuration).

Access control lists

ACLs control who may do what, see HelpOnAccessControlLists.

Variable name Default Description
acl_hierarchic False True to use hierarchical ACLs
acl_rights_after u'' ACL that is processed after the on-page/default ACL
acl_rights_before u'' ACL that is processed before the on-page/default ACL
acl_rights_default ... ACL used if no ACL is specified on the page
acl_rights_valid ... Valid tokens for right sides of ACL entries.

Mapping of attachment extensions to actions

Variable name Default Description
extensions_mapping ... file extension -> do -> action

Authentication / Authorization / Security settings

Variable name Default Description
DesktopEdition False if True, give all local users special powers - only use this for a local desktop wiki!
SecurityPolicy None Class object hook for implementing security restrictions or relaxations
actions_excluded ... Exclude unwanted actions (list of strings)
allow_xslt False if True, enables XSLT processing via 4Suite (Note that this is DANGEROUS. It enables anyone who can edit the wiki to get read/write access to your filesystem as the moin process uid/gid and to insert arbitrary HTML into your wiki pages, which is why this setting defaults to False (XSLT disabled). Do not set it to other values, except if you know what you do and if you have very trusted editors only).
auth [MoinAuth()] list of auth objects, to be called in this order (see HelpOnAuthentication)
auth_methods_trusted ... authentication methods for which users should be included in the special "Trusted" ACL group.
password_checker _default_password_checker checks whether a password is acceptable (default check is length >= 6, at least 4 different chars, no keyboard sequence, not username used somehow (you can switch this off by using `None`)
secrets None Either a long shared secret string used for multiple purposes or a dict {"purpose": "longsecretstring", ...} for setting up different shared secrets for different purposes. If you don't setup own secret(s), a secret string will be auto-generated from other config settings.
superuser [] List of trusted user names with wiki system administration super powers (not to be confused with ACL admin rights!). Used for e.g. software installation, language installation via SystemPagesSetup and more. See also HelpOnSuperUser.

Backup settings

These settings control how the backup action works and who is allowed to use it.

Variable name Default Description
backup_compression 'gz' What compression to use for the backup ("gz" or "bz2").
backup_exclude ... Function f(self, filename) that tells whether a file should be excluded from backup. By default, nothing is excluded.
backup_include [] List of pathes to backup.
backup_users [] List of trusted user names who are allowed to get a backup.

Datastruct settings

Variable name Default Description
dicts ... function f(cfg, request) that returns a backend which is used to access dicts definitions.
groups ... function f(cfg, request) that returns a backend which is used to access groups definitions.

Editor related

Variable name Default Description
edit_locking 'warn 10' Editor locking policy: None, 'warn <timeout in minutes>', or 'lock <timeout in minutes>'
edit_rows 20 Default height of the edit box
edit_ticketing True
editor_default 'text' Editor to use by default, 'text' or 'gui'
editor_force False if True, force using the default editor
editor_ui 'freechoice' Editor choice shown on the user interface, 'freechoice' or 'theonepreferred'
page_license_enabled False if True, show a license hint in page editor.
page_license_page u'WikiLicense' Page linked from the license hint. [Unicode]

Mail settings

These settings control outgoing and incoming email from and to the wiki.

Variable name Default Description
mail_from None Used as From: address for generated mail.
mail_import_pagename_envelope u'%s' Use this to add some fixed prefix/postfix to the generated target pagename.
mail_import_pagename_regex '\\[\\[([^\\]]*)\\]\\]' Regular expression used to search for target pagename specification.
mail_import_pagename_search ['subject', 'to'] Where to look for target pagename specification.
mail_import_subpage_template u'$from-$date-$subject' Create subpages using this template when importing mail.
mail_import_wiki_addrs [] Target mail addresses to consider when importing mail
mail_login None 'username userpass' for SMTP server authentication (None = don't use auth).
mail_sendmail None sendmail command to use for sending mail (None = don't use sendmail)
mail_smarthost None Address of SMTP server to use for sending mail (None = don't use SMTP server).

OpenID Server

These settings control the built-in OpenID Identity Provider (server).

Variable name Default Description
openid_server_enable_user False If True, the OpenIDUser processing instruction is allowed.
openid_server_enabled False True to enable the built-in OpenID server.
openid_server_restricted_users_group None If set to a group name, the group members are allowed to use the wiki as an OpenID provider. (None = allow for all users)

OpenID Relying Party

These settings control the built-in OpenID Relying Party (client).

Variable name Default Description
openidrp_allowed_op [] List of forced providers

Special page names

Variable name Default Description
page_category_regex ... Pagenames exactly matching this regex are regarded as Wiki categories [Unicode]
page_dict_regex u'(?P<all>(?P<key>\\S+)Dict)' Pagenames exactly matching this regex are regarded as pages containing variable dictionary definitions [Unicode]
page_front_page u'LanguageSetup' Name of the front page. We don't expect you to keep the default. Just read LanguageSetup in case you're wondering... [Unicode]
page_group_regex u'(?P<all>(?P<key>\\S+)Group)' Pagenames exactly matching this regex are regarded as pages containing group definitions [Unicode]
page_local_spelling_words u'LocalSpellingWords' Name of the page containing user-provided spellchecker words [Unicode]
page_template_regex ... Pagenames exactly matching this regex are regarded as pages containing templates for new pages [Unicode]

Paths

Variable name Default Description
cache_dir None Directory for caching, by default computed from data_dir/cache.
data_dir './data/' Path to the data directory containing your (locally made) wiki pages.
data_underlay_dir './underlay/' Path to the underlay directory containing distribution system and help pages.
docbook_html_dir ... Path to the directory with the Docbook to HTML XSLT files (optional, used by the docbook parser). The default value is correct for Debian Etch.
plugin_dir None Plugin directory, by default computed to be data_dir/plugin.
plugin_dirs [] Additional plugin directories.
session_dir None Directory for session storage, by default computed to be cache_dir/session.
shared_intermap None Path to a file containing global InterWiki definitions (or a list of such filenames)
user_dir None Directory for user storage, by default computed to be data_dir/user.

Session settings

Session-related settings, see HelpOnSessions.

Variable name Default Description
cookie_domain None Domain used in the session cookie. (None = do not specify domain).
cookie_httponly False Use a httponly cookie that can only be used by the server, not by clientside scripts.
cookie_lifetime (0, 12) Session lifetime [h] of (anonymous, logged-in) users (see HelpOnSessions for details).
cookie_name None The variable part of the session cookie name. (None = determine from URL, siteidmagic = use siteid, any other string = use that)
cookie_path None Path used in the session cookie (None = auto-detect). Please only set if you know exactly what you are doing.
cookie_secure None Use secure cookie. (None = auto-enable secure cookie for https, True = ever use secure cookie, False = never use secure cookie).
session_service web.session.FileSessionService() The session service.

Anti-Spam/Leech/DOS

These settings help limiting ressource usage and avoiding abuse.

Variable name Default Description
antispam_master_url ... where antispam security policy fetches spam pattern updates (if it is enabled)
hosts_deny [] List of denied IPs; if an IP ends with a dot, it denies a whole subnet (class A, B or C)
surge_action_limits ... Surge protection tries to deny clients causing too much load/traffic, see HelpOnConfiguration/SurgeProtection.
surge_lockout_time 3600 time [s] someone gets locked out when ignoring the warnings
textchas None Spam protection setup using site-specific questions/answers, see HelpOnSpam.
textchas_disabled_group None Name of a group of trusted users who do not get asked TextCha questions.
textchas_expiry_time 600 Time [s] for a TextCha to expire.
ua_spiders ... A regex of HTTP_USER_AGENTs that should be excluded from logging and are not allowed to use actions.
unzip_attachments_count 101 max. number of files which are extracted from the zip file
unzip_attachments_space 200000000.0 max. total amount of bytes can be used to unzip files [bytes]
unzip_single_file_size 2000000.0 max. size of a single file in the archive which will be extracted [bytes]

Style / Theme / UI related

These settings control how the wiki user interface will look like.

Variable name Default Description
changed_time_fmt '%H:%M' Time format used on RecentChanges for page edits within the last 24 hours
chart_options None If you have gdchart, use something like chart_options = {'width': 720, 'height': 540}
date_fmt '%Y-%m-%d' System date format, used mostly in RecentChanges
datetime_fmt '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' Default format for dates and times (when the user has no preferences or chose the "default" date format)
edit_bar ... list of edit bar entries
history_count (100, 200, 5, 10, 25, 50) Number of revisions shown for info/history action (default_count_shown, max_count_shown, [other values shown as page size choices]). At least first two values (default and maximum) should be provided. If additional values are provided, user will be able to change number of items per page in the UI.
history_paging True Enable paging functionality for info action's history display.
html_pagetitle None Allows you to set a specific HTML page title (if None, it defaults to the value of sitename)
interwiki_preferred [] In dialogues, show those wikis at the top of the list.
interwikiname None unique and stable InterWiki name (prefix, moniker) of the site [Unicode], or None
logo_string None The wiki logo top of page, HTML is allowed (<img> is possible as well) [Unicode]
navi_bar ... Most important page names. Users can add more names in their quick links in user preferences. To link to URL, use u"[[url|link title]]", to use a shortened name for long page name, use u"[[LongLongPageName|title]]". [list of Unicode strings]
packagepages_actions_excluded ... list with excluded package actions (e.g. because they are dangerous / questionable)
page_credits ... list with html fragments with logos or strings for crediting.
page_footer1 '' Custom HTML markup sent before the system footer.
page_footer2 '' Custom HTML markup sent after the system footer.
page_header1 '' Custom HTML markup sent before the system header / title area but after the body tag.
page_header2 '' Custom HTML markup sent after the system header / title area (and body tag).
page_iconbar ... list of icons to show in iconbar, valid values are only those in page_icons_table. Available only in classic theme.
page_icons_table ... dict of {'iconname': (url, title, icon-img-key), ...}. Available only in classic theme.
show_hosts True if True, show host names and IPs. Set to False to hide them.
show_interwiki False if True, let the theme display your interwiki name
show_names True if True, show user names in the revision history and on RecentChanges. Set to False to hide them.
show_rename_redirect False if True, offer creation of redirect pages when renaming wiki pages
show_section_numbers False show section numbers in headings by default
show_timings False show some timing values at bottom of a page
show_version False show moin's version at the bottom of a page
sistersites [] list of tuples ('WikiName', 'sisterpagelist_fetch_url')
sitename u'Untitled Wiki' Short description of your wiki site, displayed below the logo on each page, and used in RSS documents as the channel title [Unicode]
stylesheets [] List of tuples (media, csshref) to insert after theme css, before user css, see HelpOnThemes.
supplementation_page False if True, show a link to the supplementation page in the theme
supplementation_page_name u'Discussion' default name of the supplementation (sub)page [unicode]
supplementation_page_template u'DiscussionTemplate' default template used for creation of the supplementation page [unicode]
theme_default 'modernized' the name of the theme that is used by default (see HelpOnThemes)
theme_force False if True, do not allow to change the theme
trail_size 5 Number of pages in the trail of visited pages

URLs

Variable name Default Description
notification_bot_uri None URI of the Jabber notification bot.
url_mappings {} lookup table to remap URL prefixes (dict of 'prefix': 'replacement'); especially useful in intranets, when whole trees of externally hosted documents move around
url_prefix_action None Use 'action' to enable action URL generation to be compatible with robots.txt. It will generate .../action/info/PageName?action=info then. Recommended for internet wikis.
url_prefix_fckeditor None used as the base URL for FCKeditor - similar to url_prefix_local, but just for FCKeditor.
url_prefix_local None used as the base URL for some Javascript - set this to a URL on same server as the wiki if your url_prefix_static points to a different server.
url_prefix_static '/moin_static194' used as the base URL for icons, css, etc. - includes the moin version number and changes on every release. This replaces the deprecated and sometimes confusing url_prefix = '/wiki' setting.

User Preferences related

Variable name Default Description
email_subscribed_events_default ...
external_creation_check None Name of external program to call for checking new account creation.
jabber_subscribed_events_default []
quicklinks_default [] List of preset quicklinks for a newly created user accounts. Existing accounts are not affected by this option whereas changes in navi_bar do always affect existing accounts. Preset quicklinks can be removed by the user in the user preferences menu, navi_bar settings not.
require_email_verification False Require verification of new user accounts.
subscribed_pages_default [] List of pagenames used for presetting page subscriptions for newly created user accounts.
tz_offset 0.0 default time zone offset in hours from UTC
userprefs_disabled [] Disable the listed user preferences plugins.

Users / User settings

Variable name Default Description
user_checkbox_defaults ... Defaults for user preferences, see HelpOnConfiguration/UserPreferences.
user_checkbox_disable [] Disable user preferences, see HelpOnConfiguration/UserPreferences.
user_checkbox_fields ... Describes user preferences, see HelpOnConfiguration/UserPreferences.
user_checkbox_remove [] Remove user preferences, see HelpOnConfiguration/UserPreferences.
user_email_unique True if True, check email addresses for uniqueness and don't accept duplicates.
user_form_defaults ...
user_form_disable [] list of field names used to disable user preferences form fields
user_form_fields ...
user_form_remove [] list of field names used to remove user preferences form fields
user_homewiki u'Self' interwiki name of the wiki where the user home pages are located [Unicode] - useful if you have many users. You could even link to nonwiki "user pages" if the wiki username is in the target URL.
user_jid_unique True if True, check Jabber IDs for uniqueness and don't accept duplicates.
user_transient_fields ... User object attributes that are not persisted to permanent storage (internal use).

Various

Variable name Default Description
bang_meta True if True, enable !NoWikiName markup
caching_formats ['text_html'] output formats that are cached; set to [] to turn off caching (useful for development)
config_check_enabled False if True, check configuration for unknown settings.
default_markup 'wiki' Default page parser / format (name of module in MoinMoin.parser)
html_head '' Additional <HEAD> tags, see HelpOnThemes.
html_head_index ... Additional <HEAD> tags for some few index pages.
html_head_normal ... Additional <HEAD> tags for most normal pages.
html_head_posts ... Additional <HEAD> tags for POST requests.
html_head_queries ... Additional <HEAD> tags for requests with query strings, like actions.
language_default 'en' Default language for user interface and page content, see HelpOnLanguages.
language_ignore_browser False if True, ignore user's browser language settings, see HelpOnLanguages.
log_remote_addr True if True, log the remote IP address (and maybe hostname).
log_reverse_dns_lookups True if True, do a reverse DNS lookup on page SAVE. If your DNS is broken, set this to False to speed up SAVE.
log_timing False if True, add timing infos to the log output to analyse load conditions
mimetypes_embed ... mimetypes that can be embedded by the EmbedObject macro
mimetypes_xss_protect ... "content-disposition: inline" isn't used for them when a user downloads such attachments
refresh None refresh = (minimum_delay_s, targets_allowed) enables use of #refresh 5 PageName processing instruction, targets_allowed must be either 'internal' or 'external'
rss_cache 60 suggested caching time for RecentChanges RSS, in second
search_results_per_page 25 Number of hits shown per page in the search results
siteid 'default'

Xapian search

Configuration of the Xapian based indexed search, see HelpOnXapian.

Variable name Default Description
xapian_index_dir None Directory where the Xapian search index is stored (None = auto-configure wiki local storage)
xapian_index_history False True to enable indexing of non-current page revisions.
xapian_search False True to enable the fast, indexed search (based on the Xapian search library)
xapian_stemming False True to enable Xapian word stemmer usage for indexing / searching.

Some values can only be set from MoinMoin/config/__init__.py (part of the moin code and thus GLOBALLY changing behaviour of all your wikis), but not from the individual wiki's config - you should only touch them if you know what you are doing:

charset

'utf-8'

the encoding / character set used by the wiki <!> Do not change config.charset. It is not tested and we can't support this.

lowerletters

ucs-2 lowercase letters

Lowercase letters, used to define what is a WikiName

smileys

[...]

a list of smiley markups moin supports - image and image sizes are defined in the theme code.

umask

0770

umask used by moin, the default gives rights to owner and group, but not to world.

upperletters

ucs-2 uppercase letters

uppercase letters, used to define what is a WikiName

url_schemas

['http', 'ftp', ...]

URL schemas you want to have recognized