Personal Knowledge Container

Personal Knowledge Container

This project, PersonalKnowledgeContainer, abbreviated as PKC, provides an automated process coded in up.sh that streamlines the installation of a MediaWiki microservice in a network environment of your choice. After the installation, it can operate on your own machine with or without Internet connection.

Context

After microservice technologies become ubiquitous, it is possible to organize personal knowledge using a personally operated MediaWiki services that could work even the computer is not connect to the Internet. This off-line capability will enable anyone to enjoy the power of open source software without worrying your data might be leaked to the public. However, to make sure that your own data will always be accessible to you, users of this self-operated service must have a simple procedure to perform data backup and restoration, so that data may continue to work after one switch to a different computer. Moreover, individuals shoud also be able to read their own data even the software for displaying them hasevolved to a new version that doesn't work with data stored with previous versions. This project intend to resolve this challenge by giving everyone the choice to run their own chosen version of MediaWiki software, given that all the images that have proven to work has publicly available images, so that even if the software has been abandoned, one may use Application virtualization technologies to continue operate the software.

The design of PKC is to reduce information asymmetry in this data-driven era. It aims at solving the following three aspects of challenges.

Participatory Design:

PKC, short for Personal Knowledge Container, is an open source technology platform primarily built using Docker Container, MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki. It is aimed at enabling Participatory Design by minimizing the technical hurdles, and maximizing user-friendly features for organizations of any size to own and exchange data assets using hyperlinked web pages. It invites users with access to web browser-enable user interfaces to get involved with the publishing workflow of digital content.

Data Sovereignty:

PKC allows data to be collected and annotated, using MediaWiki software as a "Data dictionary" substrate, and enables the same format of data dictionaries to be hosted by the broadest possible range of computing devices and network environments. Most importantly, allowing individuals and small organizations to possess this symmetric data processing capability on their own networks or personal computing devices, such as laptops and personal computers, and allow them to publish these content globally when they see fit. Currently, PKC has been tested on Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms, and allows the mixture of running instances of PKCs in both isolated private networks, or publicly connected networks with a consistent data asset naming convention. This universal abstraction of data asset representation and network access partitioning strategy allows users to collect and use data in a consistent creative workflow with a unifying asset accounting system. This asset accounting system leverages existing data content version control technologies and cryptographic signature processing mechanisms to ensure data sovereignty.

Enlightened Metrics:

The success metrics of every instance of PKC is defined by user statistics in witnessed spacetime. The quality of data content is measured by a function composed of three foundational factors: 1) number of witness accounts, 2) the length of page history, and 3) and the linkages of other wiki pages pointed at the data content annotated in a PKC-compliant wiki page. Without losing generality, the trust-worthiness of all linked data elements can be computationally interpreted based on the linkage structures, and therefore provides a traceable mechanism to investigate and compare the meaning of possible interpretations. By presenting humanly processable data content (web pages) in a unifying linkage data standard, while distribute the same data linkage standard across scalable and federated network mediums, such as TCP/IP, Virtual Private Networks, and other means of data distribution technologies, PKC will allow many independent data sources to reach a broad range of interpretation by maintaining linkages to grounding evidence that fuel the reasoning activities of potentially enlightened minds.

Goal

Create a basic set of services, files, and page content that help individuals to operate a MediaWiki website on any machines of their choosing, and allow them to continuously work with their own data set, independent of future changes.

Success Criteria

1. Allow Individuals to install an instance of MediaWiki service by reading this REAME.md file. 2. Make all textual content, executable software images, installation scripts in the public domain, so that everyone can share and use them at will. 3. Provide instructions to learn about how to use PKC in the initial MediaWiki's database, so that people can start learning to use PKC through their own instance of MediaWiki.

Implementation Process

The following text shows the required resources and action items for PKC installation.

Required Resources

1. A computer that you have access to its "root" or "administrator" previledge.
2. Operatng Systems that support Docker: Windows 10, Mac OS X Big Sur 11.2.3 and Linux.
3. Under Windows 10 Environment, some VPN software might interfere with [Docker]'s Windows Subsystem for Linux, a.k.a. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), you will need to remove VPN software before installing [Docker]. In case you don't want to remvoe your VPN software, or your Docker and Bash have compatibility issues, please try to [VirtualBox PKC] solution.
4. Access to the Internet during intallation time. Please try to perform the installation on a network with 10Mbps+ to the Internet. After installation, this system can operated without access to the Internet.

Installation Procedure

1. Installation must be conducted by a person who possess the root password of the target machine. When it starts installing, root password needs to be provided in a command line interface (CLI).
2. Install [Docker], the Installation instructions and downloadable files can be found here: https://docs.docker.com/get-started/
3. Go to a [command line], or so called [terminal] application, move your working directory using the command cd", meaning change your working directory, to a directory in your file system that you keep your working files. For Mac OS X and Linux operating systems, Terminal applications are bundled during installation. For Windows 10, we recommend you to use [Git Bash], when you install [git] for Windows, [Git Bash] is included the installation process.

Assume the directory you keep your working files is called: Workspace. Your terminal application/command line interface (CLI) should present a prompt in the following format:

 <machine_name>:Workspace <user_name>$

Download the entire package using git. You may copy the instruction as follows:

 <machine_name>:Workspace <user_name>$ git clone https://github.com/benkoo/PersonalKnowledgeContainer.git

1. After the git clone instruction copied relevant data to your working directory, using the command cd to the **PersonalKnolwedgeContainer** directory that contains the script up.sh, and type: ./up.sh to execute the script.

 <machine_name>:Workspace <user_name>$ cd PersonalKnowledgeContainer
 <machine_name>:PersonalKnowledgeContainer <user_name>$ ./up.sh

1. Open a browser: type the following URL to the browser's URL field: http://localhost:9352 or http://127.0.0.1:9352
2. Read the instructions in the Main Page.

Outcomes Expected

1. Every 30 minutes, all the changes you made to this local instance of MediaWiki will be automatically backed up to the directory's "backup/" sub-directory.
2. The textual content stored in MediaWiki's database can will be stored in an XML file: XLPLATEST.xml
3. All the uploaded files, assuming the file names are accepted by the host operating system, will be dumped to the "backup/MediaFile/" sub-directory.

Boundary Conditions

1. We do not warrant any reliability, completeness, and accuracy of this installation procedure. **Any action you take upon this information and execute this script is at your own risk**, We will not be liable for any losses and damages in connection to the use of the actions and software prescribed here.
2. We have only tested on a small number of machines and configurations, your mileage may vary.
3. Do not remove any of the files in the directory with "*backup/*", such as "*docker-compose.yml*" and the "*LocalSettings.php*". These files are the configuration files for [Docker] and [MediaWiki] respectively. Missing them, this system will stops to work.
4. For the sake of reducing typos, the project has moved from https://github.com/xlp0/PersonalKnowledgeContainer to https://github.com/xlp0/PKC. For the current implementation of Github, these two git repository names point to the same source. When GitHub change this practice, it will change. We recommend you to use the shorter version.

References

[PersonalKnowledgeContainer]: https://github.com/xlp0/PersonalKnowledgeContainer [container-virtualization]:https://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/definition/container-containerization-or-container-based-virtualization [command line]:https://www.osc.edu/supercomputing/unix-cmds [terminal]: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/28747/mac-terminal-mac-os-x#:~:text=The%20Mac%20Terminal%20is%20a,OS%20X%20versions%20through%20Lion.&text=Terminal%20allows%20users%20to%20modify,graphical%20user%20interface%20(GUI). [PKC]: https://github.com/xlp0/PersonalKnowledgeContainer [VirtualBox PKC]: https://github.com/xlp0/VirtualBox_PKC [cd]:https://www.minitool.com/news/how-to-change-directory-in-cmd.html [microservice]: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/microservices-architecture/ [Docker]: http://docker.io [MediaWiki]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki [Main Page]: http://localhost:9352/index.php/Main_Page [WSL]: https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/wsl/ [up.sh]:https://github.com/xlp0/PKC/blob/main/up.sh [git]:https://git-scm.com/ [Git Installation]:https://git-scm.com/ [Git Bash]: https://gitforwindows.org/ [git clone]:https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/setting-up-a-repository/git-clone#:~:text=git%20clone%20is%20a%20Git,copy%20of%20the%20target%20repository.