Profiles Reference

Profile: reference

An offline library -- Wikipedia, WikiMed, ham Q&A, dictionaries and the ICS forms -- on one local page

Stage: post-1.0

Who it is for

Anyone who wants Wikipedia, ham Q&A, dictionaries and FEMA's ICS forms to work with no network, on one local page.

At a glance

Stage	post-1.0
Units	6
Disk	readers and dictionaries about 50 MB; each book from 27 MB up
Hardware	None. The books are the disk cost.
Consent	none
Install	hammunition install reference

What it installs

kiwix-tools, the Kiwix reader and server hammunition reference serve runs, and kiwix, the desktop reader; the Kiwix books you choose, pinned and checked (kiwix-library); dictd with GCIDE, WordNet, FOLDOC and VERA acronyms on 127.0.0.1 (dictionaries) and goldendict-ng to look words up on the desktop; and FEMA's 39 ICS forms (ics-forms).

Disk footprint: Readers and dictionaries from the archive: kiwix-tools about 11.4 MB with its dependencies, the dictionaries about 32 MB, kiwix and goldendict-ng mostly their WebEngine (not yet measured). The ICS forms 8 MB. Books as chosen, from 27 MB (Simple English Wiktionary) and 76 MB (Amateur Radio Stack Exchange) to 127 GB (English Wikipedia with pictures); each is counted twice while it installs.

Why these belong together

They are the questions that do not stop when the network does: what a word or an acronym means, how to treat an injury, how a circuit works, what an agency's form wants. Readers without books are empty and books without a reader are files, and hammunition reference serve puts all of it on one page on the laptop.

Packages (6)

kiwix-tools, kiwix, kiwix-library, dictionaries, goldendict-ng, ics-forms

What it deliberately excludes

wikiHow (no current Kiwix file, CC BY-NC-SA), the zimgit prepper collections (no licence stated anywhere), energypedia (licence not verified), the whole of Project Gutenberg (221 GB; one class of it is offered), video-channel ZIMs and MedlinePlus (mixed licences), ARRL and ARES material (ARRL copyright), a sigidwiki ZIM (none exists; artemis carries the signal database), and Debian's Direwolf manual (Debian's package strips the PDFs; upstream's direwolf-doc repository is the route, not yet measured). Translation dictionaries (dict-freedict-*) are left for you to choose by language.

Install it

Read the plan first. It changes nothing and prints every package, build, file and system change, and every consent gate you will meet:

hammunition show reference
hammunition install reference --dry-run

Then do it. The engine asks for your sudo password once, near the start, and shows the same plan again before it asks you to confirm:

hammunition install reference

A member your machine cannot take is deferred by name and the rest installs (D-039); the plan lists each under Will NOT happen, with the reason and the command that fixes it. Installation explains how to read every part of the plan.

What you configure by hand afterward

Choose books first, by id, for example hammunition station set --reference-books ham.stackexchange.com_en_all,wikipedia_en_medicine_nopic (hammunition reference books lists the 27 with sizes and licences); with none chosen, kiwix-library is deferred and everything else installs. Then hammunition reference serve and open http://127.0.0.1:8480/. goldendict-ng needs the local dictd added once as a DICT server (127.0.0.1).

Your first ten minutes

1. See the books and their sizes and licences: hammunition reference books.
2. Choose by id: hammunition station set --reference-books ham.stackexchange.com_en_all,wikipedia_en_medicine_nopic, or your own selection. With none chosen the book unit is deferred and the rest installs.
3. Read the plan: hammunition install reference --dry-run. Each book's size and licence is printed before the confirmation.
4. Install: hammunition install reference.
5. Serve it: hammunition reference serve, then open http://127.0.0.1:8480/. It binds loopback only.
6. In goldendict-ng, add the local dictd once as a DICT server on 127.0.0.1.
7. Offline reference covers the page, the books and what was measured.

Take it off again

hammunition uninstall reference --dry-run
hammunition uninstall reference

This removes what Hammunition itself installed and nothing else. It does not remove dependencies apt pulled in, group memberships or configuration files it wrote; the plan says so and the transaction log records them (D-004).