[TW5] How to use singleexe Bob on a stick with linux and windows pc?

[Stefan Pfister]

Hi there,

I tested Bob as a single executable file and put it on a usb stick with Fat32. I copied all executable for win and for linux.

 I can now use the stick with win10 at work. But I'm working with linux Mint at home. On the fat32 stick there is no linux executable running because it is fat32. How can I access the bob wiki on my windows stick?

Should I run node manually? I don't know how. Thanks for all help in this case. A tiddlywiki with this function would be great for mobile working.

Greetings,

Stefan

[Stefan Pfister]

I found out: I can access the bobwiki on my harddisk with the linux exe. The bobwiki on the stick only with the windows exe. Maybe a sync with rsync could to the job. I synchronise the both bob-installations. 

Could this be a solid solution?

[Jed Carty]

The only way I was able to get anything to execute from a fat32 file system on my linux desktop was to manually put an entry into fstab. I think these were the instructions I followed when it worked: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=187203

A way that is probably simpler than setting rsync or something like that is to run the executable on your linux machine and set the wikis folder to the usb stick in the settings.

To do this open put the executable wherever you want it to live on linux (~/Bob is what I use on my desktop), then start it. In the index wiki open the control panel -> Bob Settings -> Manual Settings, one of the entries listed should say "wikisPath": "./Wikis", click on the text ./Wikis and replace it with the path to the wikis folder on your usb stick when it is mounted on your linux box, this will treat that as the default location for wikis instead of the usual ./Wikis location. You should be able to click the auto populate button to list all the wikis in the folder on your usb stick after listing the path and things should work like normal.

I am in the process of setting things up so that you can have Bob on multiple computers and have them do some simple syncing but I am not sure when I am going to be able to release it, I am running into a lot of bugs.

[Stefan Pfister]

I had no success with the manual settings. They have no "wikisPath". I tried to edit the json-file but no sucess either.

{

"excludePluginList": {


} ,
"includePluginList": {


} ,
"serverInfo": {
"host": "127.0.0.1" ,
"ipAddress": "192.168.1.105" ,
"port": "8080" ,
"wssPort": "8081"
 

} ,
"wikis": {
"LeeresWiki": "./Wikis/LeeresWiki"
 

} ,
"ws-server": {
"port": "8080" ,
"wssport": "8081"
 

}
 

[Stefan Pfister]

With "tiddlywiki myindexwiki --server" of the usual node-version I can open the Bob-Wiki on my USB-Stick but not write any tiddler. 

Warning: Plugins required for client-server operation ("tiddlywiki/filesystem" and "tiddlywiki/tiddlyweb") are missing from tiddlywiki.info file

 There is this error message at startup. Does this mean: I simply need the bob-node plugin on my linux system for accessing my Bob-Wiki on the USB-stick? This would be fine. But I don't understood the installation instructions on github for the manual installation.

I have on my stick:

"MyUsbFolder" with the executables in it and the folder "Wikis", "IndexWiki" with the usual content. How can I install the Bob-Node-Plugin and where to put the files? I have node installed. Works with normal node-wikis. Works on usb-stick too with normal node-wikis.

???

[Mark S.]

I vaguely recall that I had to take those two plugins out when testing Bob one time.

Does your tiddlywiki.info file have entries for the plugins? The typical plugin entry looks like:

...

   "plugins": [
        "tiddlywiki/tiddlyweb",
        "tiddlywiki/filesystem",
        "tiddlywiki/highlight"
    ],
...

You could try modifying tiddlywiki.info to point to these plugins. Of course, it might clash if you try running Bob again.

HTH

-- Mark

[Jed Carty]

Those plugins are automatically ignored by Bob, but you do need them listed to access the wikis using the normal node server.

Download the executable for your system, in your case I think it would be BobLinux from here https://github.com/OokTech/TW5-BobEXE/releases/tag/1.2.1

Put the executable in a folder on your computer running linux, not on the USB stick.

Start the executable that you downloaded, it should automatically open a browser with a wiki.

In that wiki open the control panel, then Bob Settings -> Manual Settings

Click on the bottom + button, in the smaller text entry box put wikisPath, in the larger text entry box put the path to the wikis folder on your usb drive.

[Stefan Pfister]

Heureka, it works. I have made a new index-wiki with boblinux. Your instructions were really necessary. The hint with "Click on the bottom + button, in the smaller text entry box put wikisPath, in the larger text entry box put the path to the wikis folder on your usb drive." was the missing bit.

This is better then rsync. ;) Now, I have fully functional multifile-wikis on my own usb stick and can change between linux and windows. I can store pictures and pdf-files in it and sort them like i want.

Thank you very much. You did a great job.

[Stefan Pfister]

Jed, are you planing to expand this concept? If I understood it right, then there is this index-wiki for administration tasks. The working data is in the other sub-wikis. You can  create and open these wikis in the actual working directory but on usb stick too, if you change the wikisPath. But then you have no access to your local harddisk.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a "open wiki" menu item, in order to switch the storage of the wikis or to change the wikis on the fly? I mean simply click on "open wikis" like in other progs to open a file somewhere in the file system. Some file manager options like "copy", "move" or "delete" for the sub-wikis would be really awesome. Just my two cents.

[Jed Carty]

The wikis folder is just a shortcut to listing wikis. The Wikis section of the manual settings shows the wikis that are listed and you can manually add to that with wikis from anywhere that is accessible.

And at the top of the available wikis tab there is an interface for adding wikis using a variety of methods, you can make a new one, add an existing node/Bob wiki, create a new Bob wiki from a single file wiki or create a new Bob wiki from a collection of tiddlers in existing Bob wikis.

The wikis folder part came after that because adding all of the wikis manually got annoying.

I guess the part that is missing right now is when you make/add a new wiki it is placed in the wikis folder by default.

There is no reason you have to have multiple wikis, or to just use the index wiki for administration tasks. There are a lot of simplifications used by default with the single file executable version of Bob that makes some of this less clear.

I can make some things to do the copy move and delete parts. At the moment you can copy a wiki by creating a new wiki with all of the same tiddlers, or by using it as an edition to make a new wiki, but having a 'duplicate this wiki' button would probably be useful. The big reason that I haven't made the move and delete parts, aside from time, is that they would make it easy to accidentally lose data and I want to come up with some way that would help protect against that.