K’s Weblog

For those of you who have a burning desire to have a wiki that you can take with you anywhere, anytime Wiki on a stick is for you!  The wonderful folks at WikiMedia have put together this article which describes how to load up a memory stick or USB Flash drive (known to some as a memory pencil) with everything you need to run a wiki.

The setup looks pretty clean, a full installation of:

• Apache 2.x
• PHP 5.x
• MySQL 4.x
• phpMyAdmin 2.6.x
• ActivePerl 5.x
• MediaWiki 1.5.x

When I started writing this I hadn’t intended to try it out… but my curiosity got the best of me and I gave it a shot on my iPod(!) this evening, and within 10 minutes I had the Uniform Server up and running.

Once I got in to the admin screen, after stopping IIS (duh), I was impressed with the amount of control provided in the web-based interface.  The interface gave control over all the components of the server (apache, php, phpMyAdmin) and had several other add-on tools as well (version checker, download manager, migration tools, error log viewer).

After running through the installation directions in the Wiki on a stick article, I had everything configured and my PocketWiki was born!

Now that I got it… what do I do with it?!

The wiki on a stick implementation has lots of possibilities:

• Portable Training Documentation
• Group Collaboration Platform
• Personal Documentation
• Kiosk (Used with CD-based WinPE/BartPE for a hard-diskless solution)
• The list goes on…..

Also, the installed package is completely portable.  You can pick it up and transfer it to another drive, a PC or even (like I did) your iPOD!

Admittedly most wikis will make use of the Internet for collaboration purposes, but if you need a small, self-contained easy-to-deploy wiki solution, check this one out!

Key Techie Tidbits…

• Total Disk Consumption (no articles): 33.3MB
• Total Install time: 10-15mins
• Current Version(s): Apache 2.x, PHP 5.x, MySQL 4.x, phpMyAdmin 2.6.x, ActivePerl 5.x, MediaWiki 1.5.x
• Supported OS: Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003
• OS Note: Should work with other systems as well, but the packages above are the Win32 implementations of the server components (i.e. PHP, MySQL, Perl)
• Supported Environment: Any valid FAT or NTFS partition including removable media.  Could be paired up with a Windows-PE instance for a no-hard-drive solution.

Sources: WikiMedia Meta

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