Self hosted OWIN and urlacl

Question

I\'ve created a self hosted Nancy/SignalR application self-hosted in OWIN using Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener and Microsoft.Owin.Hosting

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Answer 1

I spend many hours solving similar issue on Windows 8.1.

    StartOptions options = new StartOptions();

    options.Urls.Add("http://localhost:9000");
    options.Urls.Add("http://127.0.0.1:9000");
    options.Urls.Add("http://192.168.0.102:9000");
    options.Urls.Add(string.Format("http://{0}:9000", Environment.MachineName));

    WebApp.Start<Startup>(options);

I could not listen or was getting 503 error...

If you want to listen on several IP addresses, each address needs its own urlacl record:

Does NOT work:

    netsh http>add urlacl http://+:9000/ user=EveryOne    

OK:

    netsh http>add urlacl http://localhost:9000/ user=EveryOne
    netsh http>add urlacl http://127.0.0.1:9000/ user=EveryOne
    etc.

After adding reservation for each address individually, everything works fine.

Answer 2

Thanks to the info that @kay.one provided I was able to access my self-hosted Web API 2.2 (OWIN/Katana, console app) from the same machine via IP address. However just consolidate it into a simple step-by-step:

1. In Main of Program.cs (for console app): WebApp.Start<Startup>("http://*:8080");
2. From Windows Command Prompt (run as Administrator) enter netsh http add urlacl http://*:8080/ user=EVERYONE
3. Go to Windows Firewall with Advanced Security and add an Inbound Rule that opens up TCP port 8080

You should then be able to access from another machine using IP address or computer name.

Disclaimer: I'm not a security expert so I don't know the security implications of doing this.

Answer 3

so it turns out you need to pass in a url into StartOptions in the same format as the urlacl.

Changing the start options to the code below fixed the problem. now the app is accessible across the network.

  var options = new StartOptions("http://*:8989")
  {
      ServerFactory = "Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener"
  };