GeneWeb - Create a CD-ROM

This chapter explains the minimum steps to manage to do it. This installation has the advantage that the user has nothing to install in his hard disk, neither the software, nor the database.

Here are the operations to do:

1. Do a deep cleanup of your database. If you have gwsetup, use it: look at its "main menu". You can also do that with the commands gwu and gwc (gwu extracts the database as source text and gwc recreates it).

   Remark: this step is not absolutely mandatory but allows to distribute a database which is optimized in memory space and in access speed. However, if your database comes from a GEDCOM file or from a GeneWeb source file and if you made no changes in your database, it is un-useful.

2. If you want that the consanguinities be displayed in the personal pages and in the relationship computings, run the program of initialization of consanguinities. Under gwsetup, see the "main menu". Interactively, this can be done with the command consang.

   Remark: step also optional. If you don't do it, the relationship work even so but the consanguinities are not displayed.

3. Enter in your database and do any relationship computing, for example between a father and his son.

   Remark: this is also an optional step to optimize the access to the database. Indeed, the first relationship computing builds a file (named fstab) in the database which allows the future relationship computings to go faster. If this file was not created, it will not be possible in the CD-ROM and the relationship computings will be slower.

4. Create a directory for the items that you are going to put in your CD-ROM. This directory is named "destination" for the following explanation.

5. Transfer your database in the destination directory: your data base is a directory ending with ".gwb". For example, if your database is named "xyz", the directory is "xyz.gwb". This directory is located in the databases directory (depending on your installation: Windows, MacOS X, Unix, Linux rpm, Linux Debian...)

6. Add a configuration file in the destination directory. If you have some which fits you, use it, otherwise create it. The configuration file is a text file ending by ".gwf": if your database is "xyz", the file is "xyz.gwf". If this file already exists, it is also in the database directory.

   In this file, add a phoney "wizard" password, by adding the line:

        wizard_passwd=a
   

   Remark: this operation is optional but it allows to avoid that it proposes a "update" in the personal pages, updating which would not work anyway on a write-only support. Warning: if you create a configuration file, check that the extension ".txt" is not added like some OS badly do automatically: the extension must be .gwf and nothing else.

7. Copy the executable "gwd" in the destination directory. In some systems, it has the extension ".exe". Warning: there may be several files named "gwd" in your GeneWeb installation. The good one is a rather big file (more thab 1 Mb). It is generally under a directory named "gw".

8. Copy in the destination directory the directories "lang", "etc" and "images" (and their contents) which must be located in the same directory as the one where you found gwd.

   Remark: the presence of these directories is mandatory. They contain files used by gwd, in particular for all languages and for the displaying of some pages.

9. In the directory "lang" of the destination directory, edit the file named "start.txt" and delete the group of lines which contain the links for the "wizard" access. They start with something like:

      <td align=center>[
      af: <a href="%sw=w"><em>Medewerkers</em></a> toegang<br> (password)
      ca: accés <a href="%sw=w"><em>administrador</em></a><br> (clau)
   

   and end with:

      pl: <a href="%sw=w"><em>"Wizard"</em></a> dostęp<br> (hasło)
      pt: Entrada <a href="%sw=w"><em>feiticeiro</em></a><br> (palavra chave)
      sv: <a href="%sw=w"><em>Uppdaterings</em></a> tillträde<br> (passord)
      ]<br></td>
   

   This step is not mandatory but avoid that the welcome page proposes a wizard access which would not work, anyway.

10. Important step. The executable gwd builds files in its current directory. If it cannot do it, it can block its operation (in particular, under Windows, it will not work certainly). An option must be indicated in order that it uses the hard disk (note: these files are not big, are temporary and destroying them explicitely or by mistake will not perturbate gwd).

    For that, create a text file named "gwd.arg" (warning: not "gwd.arg.txt" but just "gwd.arg") and write inside:

       If you prepare a CD-ROM for Windows:
              -wd
              c:\temp\geneweb
       If it is for Unix or MacOS X:
              -wd
              /tmp/geneweb
    

11. If your database has images, put them in the directory images, sub directory holding the name of your database ("images/xyz" if your database is named "xyz").

12. After all these steps, you have a minimum installation, obliging the user to launch gwd himself and open the URL address to access the database. You can improve that by providing HTML files and/or scripts (shell, batch) which launch all that. You can also put several data bases, other HTML files and so on.

    Don't ask me how to make a CD-ROM which launches all of that automatically when you insert it in its support: there is probably tricks to do that but I don't know.

    Remark: if you want that your database be readable under other Operating Systems than the one you use, you can create a directory for each OS and put the version of gwd inside. Of course, you must have downloaded the versions of GeneWeb for all these systems. You have also to look at the files "gwd.arg" (one by gwd file) and in particular ask them to indicate the access path to the database (options -hd and -bd of gwd).

13. Before engraving your disk, do a test. For that, change the access rights of the destination directory and all its files and directory: make them no-writable. Then launch the command gwd (by double-click or by an interactive command). Open in your Web navigator the address http://127.0.0.1:2317/xyz (if your database is named xyz) and check if it works.

14. If it is Ok, create your CD-ROM with the destination directory and its contents.