Browsing Whonix Documentation Offline

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Based on Kicksecure Documentation VFAQ Previous page: Based on Kicksecure Index page: Documentation Next page: VFAQ Browsing Whonix Documentation Offline

Reading documentation without internet connection.

Installation

Install package(s) git following these instructions

1 Platform specific notice.

• Non-Qubes-Whonix: No special notice.
• Qubes-Whonix: In Template.

2 Update the package lists and upgrade the system.

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

3 Install the git package(s).

Using apt command line --no-install-recommends option is in most cases optional.

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends git

4 Platform specific notice.

• Non-Qubes-Whonix: No special notice.
• Qubes-Whonix: Shut down Template and restart App Qubes based on it as per Qubes Template Modification.

5 Done.

The procedure of installing package(s) git is complete.

mkdir ~/Downloads/

cd ~/Downloads/

Use git to download the Whonix wiki documentation.

git clone --depth=1 https://gitlab.com/whonix/whonix-wiki-html.git

Usage

x-www-browser ~/Downloads/whonix-wiki-html/Documentation.html

Advantages

• Very fast to browse once installed.
• Higher privacy.

Warnings

Warning: For users who intend to avoid internet connections.

No special measures were taken to enforce not using the internet. When clicking external links, the internet will be used. Browsing offline documentation pages might result in external internet connections. If external content must not be loaded, disable networking of the virtual machine or the host computer.

Offline documentation will likely be older than online documentation. For time critical issues such as version numbers refer to the online version.

Limitations

• Some links might be broken.
• Large image view is broken.
• Simple code boxes. One has to manually select the contents of a code box for copy and paste.
• Boxes for "click on Expand on the right" are already expanded by default.
• Layout, tables look a bit different.
• Other imperfections.

Forum Discussion

https://forums.whonix.org/t/offline-documentation-discussion/413/89

Wiki Database Dump

Being able to make use of wiki database dumps requires skills in installation and running MediaWiki. This is unspecific to Whonix and unsupported.

A) Whonix wiki as mediawiki XML database dump not including full history dumpContent.xml but including all wiki images

• Using git, on gitlab.
• Ugly binary file.
• Restoration possible in new mediawiki.
• rsync://whonix.org/whonix/developer-meta-files/wiki-backup-dump-content-current

B) Whonix wiki as mediawiki XML database dump including full history but not including wiki images dumpContent.xml

• dumpContent.xml.sha512sum
• Not using git because file size to big.
• Ugly binary file.
• Restoration possible in new mediawiki.
• rsync://whonix.org/whonix/developer-meta-files/wiki-backup-dump-content-full

Hints:

• Best to combine the two downloads above (full history A + all wiki images B).
• Possible to rsync from whonix.org.

Recommended steps to restore in a new mediawiki installation:

1) Restore full wiki history.

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/w/maintenance/importDump.php --uploads --dry-run /path/to/wiki-backup-dump-content-full/dumpContent.xml

• Path to mediawiki maintenance script importDump.php will likely be different.
• drop: --dry-run
• Probably also drop (likely broken) --uploads (not important)

2) Restore all wiki images.

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/w/maintenance/importImages.php /path/to/wiki/wiki-backup-dump-content-current/mediafiles

• Path to mediawiki maintenance script importImages.php will likely be different.
• Check permissions. Folder to import from must be readable by user www-data. To test, run: sudo -u www-data cp -r /path/to/wiki/wiki-backup-dump-content-current/mediafiles /tmp/delete or so.

Alternative Wiki Backup Formats

These alternative wiki backup formats are for archives and developers only.

• C) Whonix wiki as mediawiki markdown
  • Nicer looking database format (markdown instead of XML ("binary") database dump).
  • No automated path to restoration in MediaWiki. This would probably have to be automated using [1] or similar.
  • rsync://whonix.org/whonix/developer-meta-files/whonix-wiki-backup

• D) Whonix wiki as HTML
  • No automated path to restoration.

Forum Backups

For archives and developers only.

• https://github.com/Whonix/whonix-discourse-html-backup

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