Port 8080 fail using TiddlyWiki5 and Node on a Raspberry Pi

The Problem

There seem a ton of ways to get TiddlyWiki running. I thought I would try the Node.js version on a Raspberry Pi. I wanted a set-up so I could leave the Pi online and access the TiddlyWiki on the rest of my home LAN. After following the instructions I got to the last line:

tiddlywiki mynewwiki --listen

And I had TiddlyWiki running on the Pi, but couldn’t access on the rest of the LAN. Which I wasn’t expecting. It turned out there were two problems:

• Raspberry Pi comes with ports closed by default and
• The default version of TiddlyWiki node needs a specific flag

Always more difficult when you have two problems, as you solve one and when it doesn’t work, you think you’ve done something wrong; as opposed to realising you are half way there…

Solution follows.

Enable the port on Raspberry Pi

At the terminal on the Pi:

sudo apt install ufw
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw allow 8080

The second line is only required if you are using ssh to remote into your Pi, if you aren’t leave it out. Hint - if you are using a keyboard connected to your Pi, then you aren’t using ssh…

This installs Uncomplicated Firewall onto your Pi, enables it and then allows the port that your TiddlyWiki will be listening on.

Set the host flag when running TiddlyWiki5

First we have to find the IP address of your Raspberry Pi. Let’s assume you’ve done that and it is 192.168.0.12. You now have to start the TiddlyWiki with the following command:

tiddlywiki mynewwiki --listen host=192.168.0.12

You should now be able to access the TiddlyWiki using the address http://192.168.0.12:8080 from the rest of your network. You won’t be able to reach your TiddlyWiki from the external internet without further steps however (which suits my use case).

Further reading

Run your Node.js application on a headless Raspberry Pi was pretty helpful.