OSX Lion, open a local port so people on my network can access it

I'm running django's simple HTTP server (using python manage.py runserver). It's currently running on port 8000.

How can I open a port on my macbook and allow network traffic to visit my host on port 8000?

2 Answers

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Advanced.

Add a new entry with the +. Since you're running an executable, you can search for python, or you could add an entry using the port via command-line and ipfw.

More info here:

python manage.py runserver 

The above command will permit access by localhost only. If you want to permit access by other network devices you must serve on 0.0.0.0:

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 

For those running from PyCharm, you set the Host field to 0.0.0.0 in the Run Configuration.

Once I did this, I got the OS X firewall popup asking: Do you want the application “Python.app” to accept incoming network connections.

Then you can access via mac-name.local:8000 or via the Mac's ip address.

Incidentally, I'm running Python 3.4, built and installed by MacPorts on OS X El Capitan 10.11.2.