[Wikimedia Kenya] Mombasa Team

[Alex Wafula]

With the experience gained so far from the Kakamega pilot, here are some pointers for the Mombasa team:

-If possible, do get more flash disks for better speeds in copying the zim file to school computers

-Make use of networked computers by copying the zim file from one computer to another via the school network. School computers don't have dedicated servers so having Kiwix on other computers reading the zim file from one computer isn't viable due to speed and process constraints

-DVDs are best suited for distributing as backups but can also be used during your installation. Do encourage the schools to back up a copy on a hard disk or flashdisk where possible as we noticed the DVDs aren't that durable

-Almost all computers in schools run on Windows XP service pack 2 so viruses gave us major setbacks on the first day of the Kakamega pilot to the extent that one of the computers crashed

-We fixed the above by using fsutil to make our flashdisks read only so no viruses :) , I'll write a wiki with instructions on this. This is extremely important!!

-Travel with utility software and XP/Vista OS installations if possible, you might need them

-There's a problem when it comes to indexing the zim file on some comps. It's probably due to low memory/process though I'm looking into other possible causes for this, I have a feeling there's more to it so I'll raise a bug on Kiwix as well as post this on Openzim. Keep in mind that you can't use the search bar in unindexed zim files

This is just a summary of our experience in Kakamega for the Mombasa team to know what to expect. We'll write a more detailed wiki of the pilot and I hope it's going to be of great help to Kiwix, Openzim, guys who wish to undertake a similar project in other parts of the World as well as local pilot teams.

Cheers,
Alex.