Do we have to buy a domain to serve Bugzilla?

Question

I tried putting my IP from whatismyip.com in the urlbase of Bugzilla but it did not work. I wasn't able to create a new account for my team mate, and he wasnt able to access the server by typing the my ip address in his browse. And surely, when I connect again, my IP address will change. Do we have to buy a www address to host Bugzilla?

Answer 1

You can setup a dynamic dns service, for example via http://www.dyndns.com or http://www.no-ip.com or http://freedns.afraid.org to solve the changing ip problem without buying a domain (or buying a domain as well, but it's not a requirement).

But the real problem is that your team mate cannot access the server via the current IP address which points to either a misconfiguration of the webserver (listening only on localhost?), to a firewall in between, or most likely, that port forwarding isn't set up in your router for requests coming to your external IP address to be forwarded to the machine where you have Bugzilla set up. Additionally, you must set the urlbase to your local IP address, not to the external IP address, as blak3r says.

Check http://www.portforward.com for instructions on how to do port forwarding. But don't forget that everything mentioned has to be working:

• Web server listening to outside requests: This can be tested from the same internal network via the local network IP address (what you see typing in a command line console ipconfig in Windows and ifconfig in Linux). If you can connect from a different machine on the same network via the local IP address, this is solved.
• Firewalls (in router and the webserver machine) accepting connections to the web server port: For firewalls in the web server, the same test as above covers it.
• Port forwarding so the router forwards the requests received on the web server port to the web server machine: This gets tested in the same way as firewalls in the router, that is, you must have your friend (or yourself from the house of your friend) try to connect to the dyn dns name set up or to the external IP as reported by whatsmyip.org.

This is all assuming your test mate is not on your same network, if he is, just using the local IP address (shown via ipconfig or ifconfig) instead of the external IP address and making sure the first step is covered (web server listening to outside requests) should be enough and nothing else is needed!

Answer 2

You most likely do not have your port 80 forwarded to your machine which is the reason he cannot connect when using the IP that was returned from whatismyip.com.

Assuming you're on a windows box... do

  Start->Run->cmd then type 
  ipconfig

If your address starts with 192...* or 10...* this is your Local Area Network (LAN) IP. If this is the case, then your isp provided you with a router. Look for a setting called port forwarding or "application setting" which allows you to forward all incoming traffic on your router to a particular IP address. Go into your router's configuration settings and make sure port 80 (and maybe 443 if you're using ssl are forwarded to your local ip).

The other problem you mentioned is you do not have a static IP. This is a common problem and no you do not need to buy an address. There are several sites which can provide you a free dynamic dns host. Try no-ip.org.