wikipedia in your pocket

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Wikipedia in your pocketby PKM on April 19, 2008

Table of Contents

intro: Wikipedia in your pocket ...................................................................................................

step 1: Required materials ......................................................................................................

step 2: Find the CF card device ..................................................................................................

step 3: Partition and format the CF card ............................................................................................

step 4: Set up the filesystem ....................................................................................................

step 5: Install Kludged Linux ....................................................................................................

step 6: Install your Wikipedia dump ...............................................................................................

step 7: Put it together ..........................................................................................................

step 8: Set up Dillo ............................................................................................................step 9: Using Dillo ............................................................................................................

step 10: Optional: Text browser ..................................................................................................

step 11: You're done! .......................................................................................................... 1

step 12: in which the author solicits contributions ..................................................................................... 1

Related Instructables ........................................................................................................... 1

Advertisements ............................................................................................................... 1

Make Magazine Special Offer .................................................................................................. 1

Comments ................................................................................................................... 1
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intro: Wikipedia in your pocketaka. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, v1.0 :)

This Instructable will set out how to construct what I believe to be a unique implementation of Wikipedia in an offline, portable device. It involves installing a stripped-down distribution of Linux on a Psion 5mx handheld, and installing a static HTML version of Wikipedia for use with one of two browsers. Most importantly, you do nothave to be a Linux wizard to achieve this. I will assume a basic familiarity with computers, but you do not need experience with the intricacies of filing systems, compilsource code and the stuff that traditionally puts people off using Linux. Following the steps in this Instructable should let you create your own HHGTTG- I will explain wI am doing but also try to give as explicit instructions as possible.

(For this reason, seasoned linux hackers can take the "skip this step" instructions provided at the top of the steps involving partitioning the CF card and unpackingarchives to it)

Also, I apologise deeply for how dry this Instructable is. I have t ried hard to make the bulk of it readable without skimping on detail or being overly prolix, but explaininghow to partition a removable volume and unpack .tgz archives to it is diff icult to make amusing. Sorry.

Lastly, but by no means least, I could not have done this without the efforts of:

the people who ported Linux to the ARM,the OpenPsion (ne PsiLinux) community for porting Linux to the Psion,Adrian Wells for Kludged Linux, and of courseall the good folks at Wikipedia.

My hack pales into insignificance compared to any of these achievements. (This lengthy grovel is mostly lest anyone accuse me of taking credit for the work of othersemailed Adrian on the 22-04-2008 to ask if he objected to me reproducing his works here, but had no response)

Image Notes1. Wise advice.

step 1:Required materialsThe major sticking point for this Instructable is that you require a working Psion 5mx. These are comparatively rare, but by no means unobtainable- a quick ebay searcrevealed 16 on the first page of a search for "psion 5mx". They are not cheap, usually running to around 70, but you may well find one for less, or even free if a frienhas one they no longer use.The other parts can be easily obtained more cheaply- I spent about 15 for all the parts except for the Psion, which was a gift.

You will need: (with approximate cost)

- A working Psion 5mx PDA. Around 70 (ebay), or possibly free if you search enough attics.- A Compactflash card of at least 1GB- I recommend a 4GB card. 11 (ebay)- A Compactflash card adapter for your PC, either USB or PCMCIA. 4 (ebay)

- A PC running Linux. If you don't have it installed, I would suggest burning a live CD or making a bootable USB drive for a distribution such as Puppy.- The archives with which to install Kludged Linux on your Psion. These may be found at Adrian's site here, at the bottom of the page under "download". If his site shodisappear, let me know and I will provide my copies for download- Static HTML dump of Wikipedia.Text-only dump from 2003 (large file download)CD distribution of 4,500 good articles wi th thumbnail images (warning, 750MB file download)There is a static dump of the entire English language Wikipedia as of June 2008 here: http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/- A flask of weak lemon drink

Image Notes1. If you don't have access to a computer with Linux installed, a live CD such as Puppy will do fine. It does need fdisk, however.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1xjcyyuDM0http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/schools-wikipedia-small.zipftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/doc/wikipedia/wikipedia-terodump-0.1.tar.bzhttp://www.ajwells.uklinux.net/http://www.puppylinux.com/about.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://www.ajwells.net/http://www.openpsion.org/http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/



2. USB or PCMCIA CF card reader. 5GBP on ebay.3. Towel for added frood points.4. Not pictured- flask of weak lemon drink.5. Working Psion 5mx- find one where you can. This does not work on the 3 series.6. CF card- must be at least 1GB to be useful, I recommend 4GB or more. About 11GBP on ebay7. Also not shown, the Kludged Linux archives and off line Wikipedia dump, because they exist in some false pixelated metaphysical computer plane and cannot betouched and tasted and felt and smelt and seen.

step 2:Find the CF card deviceBefore you start, it goes without saying that you should back up any important information that may be on the Psion. It is also possible (although unlikely) to format youcomputer's hard disk during this step, but this should not be a worry if you take sufficient care during the formatting stage. Also, if you are using Puppy it shouldn't evemount your hard disk unless you explicitly tell it to.

For Linux wizards- to skip this step, determine the device ID (eg /dev/hde or /dev/sdb) of your CF card, ready to partition in the next step

Open a console, and determine what device the CF card is mounted as. You can do this by typing:cd /devls -l > ~/devices1

Then plug the CF card adapter into your PC, and type:ls -l > ~/devices2cd ~diff devices1 devices2

You will see a line or two beginning with > with no matching line beginning with



t then 83 to make it type 83 (Linux)p again to make sure your partition table looks like picture ####.

w to write your changes to the card, then q to quit.

Now if you type ls /dev/XXX* again you should see XXX for the CF card, XXX1 for the DOS parti tion and XXX2 for the Linux parti tion. If this happens- congratulationsyou've done the most difficult part of this Instructable. Drink deeply from your flask of weak lemon drink to congratulate yourself on your victory of the machine.

Image Notes1. Incomprehensible rubbage we don't need to be overly concerned about2. The important part- we need to delete this partition and replace it with asmall DOS one and a larger Linux one

Image Notes1. Delete the partition on the card2. Create a new, 8MB primary partition 13. The filesystem type is wrong- fix this in the next step

Image Notes1. Who'd have thunk there were this many types of file system? We are onlyinterested in 4 and 83.2. Make partition 1 bootable, then set the file system type...

Image Notes

1. New primary partition 2...2. ... starting where the last one left off...3. ... filling up the remaining space.4. Make it type 83 Linux, i t doesn't want to be bootable.5. These space numbers may be different for your card, especially if it isn't 4GBbut the rest should look pretty much the same (except device letters if yours aredifferent from mine)



step 4:Set up the filesystemTo skip this step, create a DOS filesystem on partition 1, and an EXT2 on partition 2. Put a file on the DOS partition, then plug the card into your Psion andstart it up to make sure it is happy with the partitioned CF card

Type mkfs.msdos /dev/XXX1 and then mkfs.ext2 /dev/XXX2 . Now you are ready to make sure your Psion is happy with the CF card.

Type cd /mntmkdir psiondosmount -t vfat /dev/XXX1/mnt/psiondoscd /mnt/psiondostouch hello.txtto mount the card on your PC, and create a file on the DOS partition, thencd /umount /dev/XXX1to unmount the card.

Now plug the card into your Psion and turn it on. Use the button in the bottom left of the screen to navigate to the D drive- you should see your file hello.txt in the filemanager. If you do, then the Psion is happy with your card and you can proceed to install Linux on it. If not, either there was a problem with creating the filesystem in tprevious steps or your Psion does not recognise the card- try repeating the previous steps, getting a friendly Linux wizard to set up the file system for you, or (as a lastresort) try with a different CF card to see if you can find one that works.

Image Notes1. The D drive represents the CF card2. You won't have this at this stage, I took the photos out of order so this is part of the Linux installation3. More Linux installation stuff4. I give my test files silly names to avoid mistaking them for system files. Dave is a popular choice- I've never found an operating system component called Dave.

step 5:Install Kludged LinuxTo skip this step, untar the Kludged Linux archive ksf_.tgz to the Linux partition, and the contents of the files directory in the files.zip archive to the DOSpartition

Plug the CF card back into your PC, and repeat themount -t vfat /dev/XXX1 /mount/psiondos step.

Now typecd /mntmkdir psionlinuxmount -t ext2 /dev/XXX2 /mnt/psionlinuxto mount the second partition.

Now you need to unzip the contents of the files.zip archive, and copy the contents of the files directory into /mnt/psiondos. One way to do this iscd ~unzip /path/files.zip (where /path/files.zip is the path to where the zip archive is saved)cd filescp -r * /mnt/psiondos

Now you need to unpack the Kludged Linux distribution to the Linux partition. Typecd /mnt/psionlinuxtar -xzvf /path/ksf_.tgz (where /path/ksf_.tgz is the path to the Kludged Linux archive, eg , eg ~/downloads/ksf100807.tgz)

This will take a few minutes, so drink your flask of weak lemon drink while pondering life's imponderables.



Image Notes1. Not much to show in pictures here, so have some weak lemon drink to tide you over until step 6

step 6:Install your Wikipedia dumpTo skip this step, unpack your dump of Wikipedia to somewhere sensible on the Linux partition, for instance /usr/Wiki

How you do this step will depend on which Wikipedia dump you are using. I wi ll show the process for the CD distribution.

You can just unpack the archive straight to the CF card, but in my experience there may be some teething troubles with the installation of Linux which require clearingand rewriting to the CF card, so in the long run it is more sensible to unpack to your hard disk and copy the completed dump to the CF card.

Create a directory for your dump to be unpacked into, for instance by typingcd ~mkdir wikidump

Unpack the archive into this directory:cd wikidumpunzip /path/school-wikipedia-small.zip

This will take a while, depending on the size of your dump and speed of your computer. I suggest you take this opportunity to refill your flask of weak lemon drink, addflavour enhancers such as ginger, lime juice or vodka to suit your taste. Once the archive has finished unpacking, find the directories you require- for the CD distributiothese are wpandimages. Copy these to the Linux partition in the /usr directory:cp images wp /mnt/psionlinux/usr/

This will take a long time- upwards of 10 minutes for the CD dump which is around a gigabyte in size. Take your flask of weak lemon drink to the brow of the nearest hand gaze towards the horizon, imagining the untold numbers of things you will do with your new Wikipedia-in-your-pocket, such as travelling the country hustling pubquizzes. Return from your dreamlike reverie and return to the computer to see your dump finish copying to the CF card. From the CD version you will also need to copthe index.htm file from the root of the archive:cp index.htm /mnt/psionlinux/usr/

You are now ready to put the card in the Psion and get going!

(Note: I used both the Terodump and the CD version, because the Terodump has a broad coverage of short text articles, whereas the CD version has more up-to-datedetailed articles with images about important topics, so the two together have both breadth and depth. Space constraints on your CF card may l imit your choice ofWikipedia dump, in which case you will need to choose the version that best reflects your desired usage.

If you are installing two different versions, I suggest putting each in its own directory, for instance /usr/terowiki and /usr/cdwiki). What you copy across will depend on twikipedia dump you are using- from a Terodump you basically want the "wikipedia" directory and everything in it, and maybe the "index.html".



Image Notes1. Bonus points for drinking your weak lemon drink at an altitude greater than 2,000m above sea level2. A nice spot to ponder while your CF card is filling.

step 7:Put it togetherYou are now ready to start using the Psion. Unmount the CF card:umount /dev/XXX1umount /dev/XXX2

Unplug the CF card and plug it into the slot on your Psion. Turn on the Psion, navigate to the D drive, and double click on arlo.exe to run it.

The Psion should present you with a boot menu- you can press 0 to boot up or wait 5 seconds for it to continue. You will then see a penguin logo and a lot of text scropast as Linux starts up. The boot sequence may complain of error in the filesystem- unless these are serious enough for the boot sequence to stop, they can usually bignored. You will eventually see a boot prompt sayingDebian GNU/Linux 3.1 tty1(Root password is "root")

Psion login:

Type root as username and password, and you will reach a command prompt (root@Psion: ~#). See image 1.

Congratulations- you now have a very small and quite underpowered Linux palmtop. Drink a toast to your success with the remainder of your weak lemon drink. Howethe command prompt is not a very useful place to be if you want to browse Wikipedia. Type xinit to start the X window system. You should see the screen turn blank fmoment, then a stippled pattern with a black X in the middle of it. If the screen remains blank for more than about 10 seconds, go to the bottom of this step to find the X startup" fix.

After the stipple background shows for a few seconds you should see a taskbar at the bottom of the screen- this consists of a CPU usage meter (useful for tell ing whe

the Psion is thinking hard or not) , a Menu button that holds the applications, and a clock (that will probably be wrong- ignore this).

See image 2

The parts below are for information purposes- if you are happy at this point in the install you can continue to the next step.

To turn it off:To quit X, press Ctrl-Menu-Backspace to return to the command prompt. To turn off the Psion (for instance to change batteries or add additional content to the CF cartype shutdown -r now at the console, and press Menu-Esc after the Psion beeps, while the screen is blank or displaying the boot menu but before the penguin appeaYou can now safely remove the CF card and batteries- when you want to use the Psion again, replace these and turn it on, and it will boot up Linux. Note that you do have to shutdown the Psion to turn it off- just press Menu-Esc to make it sleep, and press Esc or tap the screen to wake it back up. It is only necessary to shut it downreplace batteries or the CF card.

To go back to "being a Psion":To return to the Psion's EPOC operating system (but why would you want to when you have Linux?), turn the Psion off as above. Remove the CF card, and turn thePsion on. It will give three falling beeps, and return to the PSION Series 5 startup screen. To return to Linux, you will need to navigate back to arlo.exe on the D drive arun it.

No X startup?I have found that occasionally, especially if the Psion complains of errors in the file system, it will refuse to start the X window system. If the xinitmmand just shows ablank screen, press Menu-1 to get back to the console. If it says "Touchscreen not found" or something similar, shut down the Psion as described above and restart it-this fixed the probem every time it occurred for me. Also, since running e2fsk on the linux file system while teh CF card was mounted on my PC has stopped the Psioncomplaining of file system errors, and the "Touchscreen not found" bug has not reoccured. YMM, as always, V



Image Notes1. Inability to type on the tiiiny keyboard coupled with impatience and a slowprocessor.2. We have a Linux prompt!

Image Notes1. Yes, it's the reflection of my fingers on the shutter button. Yes, I'm hanging myhead in shame at this very moment.2. Applications. Dillo is the most important, although there is also a mean game oHangman3. Menu button4. Left to right: hide taskbar button, CPU activity graph (very useful) and clock(less so).

step 8:Set up DilloTap the menu button, and select Net -> Dillo from the menu that pops up. From this point onwards you will need patience, many GUI processes take quite a while runnon the slow Psion processor.

Dillo is just a lightweight web browser, so can be used like any otther (type an address in the address bar, click on links to activate etc.). To be useful on the Psionscreen, however, it requires a few tweaks.the V menu and select "Options...". This will take around 30 seconds to load, with little indication that it is happening other ththe CPU graph, but you will eventually reach an options screen. Tap the "Font" tab and set the font factor to around 1.4 depending on how large you want text to be (2gives very large, clear text, 1.2 gives smaller text but allows more to fit on screen).

If you can handle another lengthy-ish wait, tap the Color tab and the Link color block. After another pause you will see a color selection screen- I suggest setting the vslider to a low value to make links more visible on the LCD.

Finally, under the Network tab you will find the start page and home page addresses- I suggest setting both of these to the path of the index page of your Wikipediadump, as it will appear on the psion's file system, prefixed with file://because it is not a web address (For example file://usr/index.htm )

Once you are happy with the settings, click the Save button, quit Dillo and restart it from the menu. It should start up to your Wikipedia dump index page.

Image Notes1. Magnification factor of text on screen. Set to somewhere between 1.2 and 1.8 to trade legibiltiy against amount of text on screen.2. I didn't have the patience to wait for screenshots of these two, but the setup is fairly straightforward.3. More finger reflections- taking photos of LCDs is too difficult without shiny studio lighting.

step 9:Using DilloDillo is easy to use to browse Wikipedia with- the scrollbar on the right-hand side, home button at top left and links within pages are all you are likely to need. The toucscreen defaults to delivering a left-click. Pressing Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2 or Ctrl-3 will set it to deliver left, middle or right clicks accordingly, so pressing Ctrl-2 before clicking on alink will open the link ina new tab. (I don't recommend this, for the record, because the Psion is slow enough with one tab open!). Remember that these are persistentmodifiers, so after changing it every click will be a middle- or right-click until you set it back to left click with Ctrl-1.

/ or Ctrl-F can be used to search for text within a page, although if Dillo is running in full-screen mode the search term text box will not be shown. More on how to use can be found at their homepage here at www.dillo.org.

Now you can go to the index page, search for, for instance, lemons, to find out all about your favourite hobbyist's beverage.
http://www.dillo.org/http://home/instruct/deploy/instructables/id


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step 11:You're done!Congratulations- you now have an object of beauty, utility and massive geek bragging rights. Show it off to appreciative audiences of hackers and Douglas Adams fanTake it to a pub quiz and be ejected. Be the guy who has the answer to obscure and irrelevant questions.

And most importantly..

Don't panic!

step 12:in which the author solicits contributionsFirstly, thanks to everyone for your positive comments! It means a lot to hear people "sass" my work :)

Secondly, it has come to my attention that a fair few people have different hardware they would like to try this on, but can't get their hands on a 5mx.

Using a Psion makes it difficult.

The original Psion operating system was no good because it didn't have the ability to display HTML files, which ultimately are what Wikipedia is made of, so installingLinux was necessary to get this feature. There are plenty of modern PDAs and smartphones that already have a browser, some even running Linux out of the box, thawould make great bases for a similar project.

If your PDA or smartphone has a browser, all you have to do is get a large memory card that your device can read from, and unpack a static wikipedia dumto it.

If you have a Nokia 9300, you don't need to install Linux- it already has a browser with the Symbian OS i t's running, so all you should have to do is plug in a memory cwith the wiki dump on it.

If you have your own device and are thinking of doing something similar, I would love to see photos or screenshots of it running- if you're happy for me toso I will add them to this Instructable and credit you



Image Notes1. Now that's what I call a 'tache.

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Comments

50 comments Add Comment view all 148 commen

natcrazz says: Oct 22, 2008. 2:58 PM REPWhat other devices can I use for this? Is it anything that will run linux? Would it work on a blackberry? I'm not very experienced with this type of work withcomputers.

PKM says: Oct 23, 2008. 3:23 AM REPMy instructions are largely geared towards doing this with linux on the Psion. It will work with any device that has a browser and enough internal orexternal storage for the wikipedia dump. If you have a device that already f its those requirements, you just need to unpack the wikipedia dump onto thememory card (see steps 2, 3, 4 and 6).

I have resisted the temptation to get a Blackberry so I'm not sure how it would work on one of those, but I don't think they have web browsers so itprobably wouldn't. If you have a Blackberry and i t does, feel free to correct me.

kelseymh says: Oct 15, 2008. 12:44 AM REPVery nicely done. The platform-specific level of detail is quite appropriate to Instructables (there are nore than enough newbies at any given time to justify tover-explanations). At the same time, the capture and installation of a static Wikipedia is sufficiently platform-independent that a non-newbie ought to be abto adapt your I'ble to their platform with no trouble at all. 4.5 stars :-)
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Ward_Nox says: May 12, 2008. 8:53 PM REPwikipedia really is like the guide if think about it its a e-book writen by millions of people

Nesagwa says: May 13, 2008. 9:24 AM REPThere are more similarities. Much like in the novel, Wikipedia is moderated by the worst possible people in the universe and most people dont like them

Ward_Nox says: Oct 15, 2008. 12:14 AM REPyea Douglas Adams probably would have let them call it the hitchhikers guide to earth if he'd been alive to ask when it started

killerjackalope says: May 15, 2008. 3:57 PM REPAlmost as bad as youtube users...

upriverpaddler says: Jun 13, 2008. 2:56 PM REPI have an HP 660lx that could run Jlime. I'm googling my butt off to do something similar. I came across this for you Psion users.

http://www.pscience5.net/PGG.htm

jornada660 says: Oct 11, 2008. 7:04 AM REPHow to install jlime - linux on hp palmtop 660lx

http://fz.hobby-site.org/hp660lx/jlime-stable/

http://fz.hobby-site.org/hp660lx/jlime-winter/

Re ards

abadfart says: Oct 9, 2008. 2:53 PM REPhow much did you spend?

PKM says: Oct 9, 2008. 4:10 PM REPAs the first step says, the parts I needed to actually buy only cost me 15. I was lucky to get the Psion free- they are the major expense, usually 70-8or even more on ebay. (For US$ multiply by about 2 then subtract a things-are-cheaper-in-the-states fudge factor).

Klappstuhl says: Oct 5, 2008. 1:42 PM REP

Compliments on your incredible Instructable! I'm so going to do something similiar to the Plastic Logic Reader once it comes out!

PKM says: Oct 5, 2008. 2:51 PM REPThanks! The PLR certainly looks like a nice bit of kit, and if it has a non-crazy price and reads open format (HTML, PDF) then it might be the ebookreader I've been looking for. I've steered clear of the Kindle because although technically you can read plain text and get them to convert your richdocuments, it still smells a bit too much like vendor lock-in for my free-software sense of "fair play".

superquack11 says: Sep 26, 2008. 6:12 PM REPha ha cool hitch hikers uide to the alaxy

MostlyHarmless says: Sep 9, 2008. 8:33 PM REPKudos to PKM on the instructable, if it weren't for the requirement of a Psion 5mx I'd be doing it right now.

For anybody wondering about Wikipedia's Database Dumps and related informationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

keastes says: Sep 23, 2008. 9:13 AM REPnot quite sure how it was managed to get the dump on a card if I could figure that out I could port it to palm (antique m505 owned and used as an ebooreader nice repurpose no?)one thought that occurred to me: import to ereader (or one of its ilk) and use that

PKM says: Sep 23, 2008. 10:28 AM REPGetting the dump onto the card was done in the rather impenetrable steps 2, 3, 4 and 6. The dump comes as a huge zip file full of HTML files, whicare unzipped onto the card. I did it all using command line because I figured the instructions would apply to the most people in that way, but you caprobably find graphical tools to do most of those steps.

You are right, this is reinventing the wheel somewhat as people have already put wikipedia dumps in ebook format for a number of popular readersGoogling around for "wikipedia ebook (your ebook reader name here)" should find it if someone has for your particular format. Bear in mind that the
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machine you use needs several gigabytes of storage, though, so you will need a large memory card that f its your m505.

juicebarjoseph says: Sep 9, 2008. 8:01 AM REPI recently found something similar for the DS which I'm currently in the process of downloading.

link: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=144827

PKM says: Sep 9, 2008. 8:36 AM REPInteresting! DSs seem to be a little more widespread than 5mxs (slight understatement) but how much storage space do they have? Surely the wikimarkup can't be that much smaller than the HTML of the pages?

Anyway, if you download this and get i t working, I'd love to see screencaps and I'll add them to the Instructable i f you like.

keastes says: Sep 18, 2008. 2:22 PM REPNDS roms are 64 MB you can buy rewriteable cards and readers somewhere....

juicebarjoseph says: Sep 9, 2008. 8:58 AM REPApparently it'll all fit on a 4 Gb micro SD card... I don't have one yet, so am trying it on an emulator... hopefully if it works, I'm gonna enlist the help oa friend of mine who does computer science and cybernetics to build a crawler to get an updated version of wikipedia without all the user pages, tapages and article stubs, which should hopefully cut down on fi le size... just got a 2 day download left :S

PKM says: Sep 9, 2008. 9:20 AM REPI thought of that when I was first planning this- Wikipedia explicitly forbid crawling the entire site. For one thing, at one page per second it wouldtake you weeks to download the whole thing, but anyway I believe they make a dump available that doesn't include talk pages etc- check out th

wikipedia offline downloads page.

juicebarjoseph says: Sep 9, 2008. 9:55 AM REPI would try downloading the dump and compressing it myself into a file readable by the software, but that sort of thing is way beyond myscope. The 'guide' to do it is at this link:http://forum.palib.info/index.php?PHPSESSID=eeb49af14cbd4f9920accbc59b2484a0&topic=5616.msg38330#msg38330but the while thin makes no sense to me at all.

scorcher says: Sep 11, 2008. 5:30 AM REPnice instructable but....you had to use that pic now didnt you!?

Istarian says: Sep 6, 2008. 8:58 AM REP

I'm sure this has been asked before, but the comments are quite endless. I can't seem to download the latest wikipedia dump. For some reason I get a filenamed like the dump, but it is only 7KB rather than the whole 14G (note that it takes less than a second to get that file). I have had no problem in the pastdownloading up to several GB at a time. Is there a way around this? I am using Firefox 2 but I do have IE 7 as well. Also, do you think this a size of filedownload issue or some other problem?

PKM says: Sep 6, 2008. 9:44 AM REPFirst question (apologies if you aren't a noob and this seems obvious to you), were you clicking on the link to get to the index page, then downloading ttar.7z file, ratehr than right-clicking on my link and selecting save as?

Secondly, if you were actually downloadinghttp://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/wikipedia-en-html.tar.7zthen I'm not sure. I just tried it and I got the first few megabytes, FF told me I had 1 day and 9 hours to wait so I guess it had the complete file. Are youbehind a firewall, proxy or other restrictive layer that might prevent your download? It's worth trying to open the file you get- it might be an HTML filesaying "To stop you using all our bandwidth, you aren't allowed to download this file- talk to your network administrator" or words to that effect. Similarlyyou are using a connection with a restrictive bandwidth cap, AOHell or something similar- I can't speak for any of those.

If none of these apply to you, I can only suggest you try to find the file through Wikimedia in case they have moved it somewhere recently and I'm findinthe UK mirror service copy or somethin weird like that.

lifelong-newbie says: Sep 4, 2008. 1:52 PM REPFound my self double taking at the title of step 9. But then again i'm wrong in the head.

PKM says: Sep 4, 2008. 3:35 PM REPI just read that and went "What was step 9? .... No, I totally see how that happened."

Maybe I'm wrong in the head as well.

who am I kidding "maybe" I've known that for ages
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lifelong-newbie says: Sep 5, 2008. 12:46 PM REPThere's no organisation for us though. Wrong in the head anonymous?

puffyfluff says: Aug 11, 2008. 8:15 PM REPYeah! I just finished extracting it! Now to get the psion...

perlpower says: Jul 28, 2008. 8:55 PM REPCurrent Wikipedia Dump:http://static.wikipedia.org/downloads/2008-06/en/

It's 14GB thou h

puffyfluff says: Aug 11, 2008. 8:15 PM REPI used a friends' broadband internet to download it. It only took five hours.

alinome.net says: Jul 26, 2008. 9:57 AM REPCongrats for the good article. I'm a Psion 5mx user since 2002 and I'm fully satisfied with it. The EPOC OS is great. Last weeks I've been tinkering withinstalling GNU/Linux in one of these machines (I own several), an old plan of mine. It's great seeing a Debian running on an old good 5mx!

But I was astonished by these words in the article:

"The original Psion operating system was no good because it didn't have the ability to display HTML f iles, which ultimately are what Wikipedia is made of, sinstalling Linux was necessary to get this feature."

I'm afraid the author never used a Psion 5mx. The true is that there are two web browsers for Psion (I use them a lot):1) All Psion 5mx are bundled with a web browser called... Web. It's in the PsiWin CD. You have to install it. It's not the fastest browser on Earth and hasmany limitations, but works fine. The last version is 2.00 (1999).

2) There's an Opera browser for EPOC! It's version 5.14. It's much faster and powerful than Web and more advanced than the current versions of Dillo. Yocan get it at Opera's public FTP.

Both browsers are very easy to install.

Thanks again for the interesting instructable.

Cheers,

--http://alinome.net

PKM says: Jul 26, 2008. 3:28 PM REPHi alinome,

I have used a "vanilla" Psion, but I had no idea the Psion came bundled with a browser! I was given mine by a friend without any of the cables, CD andother accessories so I only saw what was on the machine "out of the box". I don't count the Opera for EPOC as it's an external add-on piece of softwarbut it seems I'm guilty of not doing my homework sufficiently. I will amend the Instructable when I get a chance (I'm on holiday at the moment)

I'm quite annoyed because I managed to break the screen on my Psion, so I'm wondering whether to get a replacement one and plug the CF cardstraight into it, or try the v2.0 with something like a Nokia internet tablet.

alinome.net says: Jul 27, 2008. 10:50 AM REPHi, your instructable is very good and i t encouraged me to install Debian in one of these marvellous machines, but your wrong premise made mesuposse you are a Linux fan who got a 5mx and immediately decided to install Debian in it, but never used the computer.

I'm a Debian user since the 90's, but I couldn't do without my Psion, its many good apps and some programs I wrote for it. I use a German Psion 5mPro with a Spanish EPOC. I love to write, to program and to travel by bike. That's why this machine is still unbeatable for my needs. I hope I will useboth EPOC and Debian in my Psion soon.

I don't understand what you mean with "I don't count the Opera for EPOC as it's an external add-on piece of software"... Do you mean you would usonly the apps bundled with the Psion? There are many good third party apps for Psion; now almost all of them are free (as in free beer)abandonware, and many are --free (as in f ree speech) :-) Why not to use them? Also Dillo and the whole Debian are "external add-on pieces ofsoftware"...

I suggest you to update the article to include and compare all the alternatives:EPOC + WebEPOC + OperaDebian + DilloDebian + Lynx

And there are more:Debian + ELinks (my favourite browser)Debian + LinksDebian + Links2Debian + w3m
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but those console browsers are not bundled with the Adrian's distro. I will explore how to install them, especially ELinks.

Anyhow I think Opera is the best option for your goal, in all aspects.

Sorry for your broken screen. I suffered it too some time ago. That's why the last years I bought spare Psions on eBay. They are very cheap and I sdo prefer a Psion than any modern tablet or PDA. Only 350 g, a good keyboard and 20-30 working hours with two AA standard rechargable cells aunbeatable features. Happily I don't need color or videos or music... :-) But I miss Ethernet, USB... :-(

Cheers,

--http://alinome.net

ajwells says: Jul 22, 2008. 11:03 AM REPI,m very happy someone has found my Kludged linux useful. I also appologise for missing the E mail PKM sent me asking for permission to reproduce mywork. I do not object at all that he has done this. I have recently produced an updated Kludged linux, based on Debian linux 4.0 (Etch), This has only a textbrowser included, ans so for anyone following this instructable I shall keep the version of kludged linux used here available on the downloads page on myweb site. If anyone is interested in linux, kludged and a psion provide a great cheap portable way to learn this wonderful operating system.My best regards to allAdrian Wells

DaNerd11 says: Jul 9, 2008. 8:25 PM REPhave you read all the hitchhikers books?

PKM says: Jul 10, 2008. 4:23 AM REPYes, except if you count Salmon Of Doubt. I've read the first five. I think it's fair to say they were a slight inspiration for some bits of the Instructable ;)

DaNerd11 says: Jul 10, 2008. 7:13 AM REPlol, yeah, im on life, the universe and everything. they are good books but they are so confuzzling! and also, question, how can the question to theuniverse be 9*5 (or is it 9*6? i forget) and the answer be 42?

wrs715 says: Jul 12, 2008. 5:18 AM REPThe question is "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?". The answer, as we count, is of course "56". If you work in Base 13 (think "13fingers instead of the ten we are familiar with"), though, i t's actually "42". I understand that Douglas Adams didn't intend any math tricks, though

(I've read the first four about 15 times each and the last only five. I've read "Salmon of Doubt" too.)

DaNerd11 says: Jul 12, 2008. 7:36 AM REP

....... base 13???? lol, no idea but ok, ill take ur word for it.

wrs715 says: Jul 12, 2008. 7:02 PM REPSure. This is how it goes:

We count in what Mathematicians call "Base 10". We have ten digits in our number system, 0 through 9. When we write a number, theright-most value is the number of "ones" (or 100), the next (moving to the left) is the number of "tens" (or 101) , then "hundreds" (or 102)and so-on.

When we deal with other number systems, the theory works the same way. In octal (a commonly used number system on old mainframecomputers), also known as "Base 8", the right-most digit is the number of "ones" (80), the next digit (again, moving left) the number of"eights" (81), then "sixty-fours" (82), etc.

Consider the number that got us into this mess, "42".

We look at it and assume a "regular" way of counting, which for us is Base 10. There are 2 ones and 4 tens.

With Base 13, the rightmost value is the number of ones (that's the "2") and the next to the left is the "thirteens", the "4".

We can convert this to "regular" numbers easily enough, once we get what's going on: 4 thirteens plus 2 ones (4x13 + 2x1) is 52+2, or 5

If it helps, I'm just strange enough that I do algebra when I'm bored. :)

DaNerd11 says: Jul 12, 2008. 7:18 PM REPlol, i got that after u explained what bases are, im pretty good with math for an 8th grader.
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16/16

PKM says: Jul 13, 2008. 6:02 AM REPTom Lehrer (in the song New Math, I highly recommend it although it's a little outdated now) describes base 8 as

"Don't worry, base 8 is just like base 10, if you'remissing two fingers."

wrs715: my old maths teacher used to give the people who finished their work early strange, obscure bits of maths that were offthe syllabus but still interesting. One of the ones I remember was strange bases- first the usual (10, 16, 8, 2), then some abstrusones (base 5, 9 and 11 IIRC), then the very weird base 0.5 (only good for fractions between 0 and 2 :P) and the possibly moreweird base minus 2.

Numbers 0 to 10 in base -2 go:01-10

111100101-111011011-1000-1011-1010

If you want some head bendin , try that.

DaNerd11 says: Jul 13, 2008. 9:01 AM REPlol, k, did u like major or minor in math?

PKM says: Jul 13, 2008. 3:35 PM REPWe don't do major/minor the same way in the UK, but I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science which is fairly maths-heavy.

DaNerd11 says: Jul 13, 2008. 4:59 PM REPnice, im want to major in mechanical engineering which is also math heavy.

wrs715 says: Jul 12, 2008. 5:20 AM REPI can't multiply this morning. 6x9 is 54, not 56. It still works out, though. :)

PKM says: Jul 10, 2008. 3:40 PM REP

If we knew that, the universe would reset and the question would become harder :)

DaNerd11 says: Jul 10, 2008. 10:05 PM REPinteresting................... lol

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wikipedia in your pocket

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