Kiwix: A Resilient Library of Offline Websites

In changing times, our servers can provide archives of useful information for our local communities. When they are connected together with LoRes Mesh we can see what information is available on nearby servers, and find it in an emergency.

The front of a Grand building, with a sign saying Library of Everything. We see many people walking in and out, some with tools and objects, or taking cargo by bike or cart. — The Library of Everything - by Sean Bodley CC BY-SA 4.0

Our goals

Welcome back Node Steward. If you’re here, you should already have completed the Initial Setup section.

Now that you have a running LoRes Node, it’s time to add your first application. For that, we recommend installing Kiwix a tool for browsing archived websites, like Wikipedia, so that we can provide important information to our local community in an emergency.

Is this useful? We think so. LoRes Mesh is all about providing local resilience in the face of the worsening climate crisis. Even if you live somewhere where the internet has always been reliable, storms, heat waves, fires and floods are going to be more and more likely in the coming years and this does mean you could lose internet access or power.

With that in mind, our goal is to get a working low-power computer on your local network serving up a copy of wikipedia, which you can browse to on your local network even if the internet is down.

What you’ll need

In addition to the Lores Node you setup in section 1, you’ll need the following:

A USB flash drive. Any size will work for getting set up, but for context, a full copy of Wikipedia in English needs about 120GB, so a big drive is handy.

Alright, let’s dive in.