I was asked on Friday night if I could make a demo foswiki USB system, and given that its high time we did one, I started to look into it. Initially I thought this would be a great oportunity to try out the HTTPEngine work Gilmar has been doing, but we’re not quite there yet. And so, I started a quick perusal of the existing WebServer on a Stick systems. Ideally, I want to use Strawberry perl, apache, and have the server and a browser start up automatically when the USB stick is inserted into the computer.
MicroApache
Server2Go
XAMPP
MicroApache was the first thing i looked at, as the contact pointed out DokuWikiOnAStick, but that server doesn’t seem to have source, nor is the upstream web site there (last release seems to be 2007, so too old for Strawberry perl too) Server2Go looks nice, but as its not really free in the debian sense, I’ll pass on that unless nothing else works. XAMPP – unzipped it, foswiki and did some minor configurations. unziped, removed everything except apache, added strawberry perl, and wrote a systray icon and menu system for you to control it with. TADA! FoswikiOnAStick v0.1v0.3 (running foswiki 1.0.6). please try it out.
unzip it to the root of your USB key (or any drive)
start the systray app, web server and browser using start_foswiki.bat (goto http://localhost/ if the browser doesn’t start) (unblock / allow apache to get through the windows firewall)
before ejecting the usb key, you need to stop the webserver by running stop_foswiki.bat yes, thats all. Please report any issues or observations to me – SvenDowideit@fosiki.com
the web server runs at the standard port 80, so if there is already a web server running it will fail
when the web server starts, it will probably be blocked by Windows firewall – every time I’ve tested, a dialog pops up, and allows you to unblock it.
….
Warning
I have made no attempt (yet) to reduce the accesses to the disk – so it may use up all the blue smoke in your usbkey, cause your bits to turn green, or one of many other unforseen side effects which may or may not appear amusing if they happen to someone else. I’ve tested this on Windows7rc, Windows Vista, Windows2003server, and Windows XP – if it works for you, excellent :).
Now we have 2 possible icon sets to replace the very odd and aging DocumentGraphics topic – the only thing holding us back is a mapping from the old %ICON{}% names to new.
I’ll dig up the work I did last year some time and see if we can finish it 🙂
I’ve been working on expanding the use of Foswiki Applications and in the process began to build (using TML) a much more usable user interface for configuring and managing your Foswiki.
So – to the picture show 🙂
Easy to access over-view Quickly customise your Foswiki site.
Admin friendly selection of visual settings
Many of these features already do work in Foswiki 1.0.4 – by installing FoswikiApplications Contrib, but they are a work in progress – and getting more advanced every week.
