{"id":1241,"date":"2025-10-06T18:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2025-10-07T12:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T10:41:37","slug":"offline-wikipedia-wlan-access-point-with-raspberry-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/?p=1241","title":{"rendered":"Offline Wikipedia Hotspot on Raspberry Pi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, I pondered what would happen in case of a black out \/ internet outage and noticed that I would not even have that much material to read, as books are less and less common, including encyclopedias. Luckily, I discovered the Kiwix<\/a> project, which I really like. It allows downloading full dumps of all Wikipedia articles<\/a> in many languages and serve them in the local network. Other wikis\/sites<\/a> are available as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As large power banks, laptop batteries and other sources of energy are nowadays available in large quantities, I explored the idea of using a Raspberry Pi as a low power consumption WLAN access point that serves Wikipedia dumps with kiwix-tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, I’m using a Raspberry Pi 3 with only 1GB of memory. I inserted a 256GB SD card that can easily contain a dump of the English and German Wikipedia including images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to set up your own hotspot & Wikipedia server, use the following procedure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Download the .zim files you like, for example wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2025-08.zim<\/a>.
    mkdir wikipedia
    cd wikipedia
    wget     https:\/\/www.mirrorservice.org\/sites\/download.kiwix.org\/zim\/wikipedia\/wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2025-08.zim<\/a><\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Install the kiwix-tools package and also dnsmasq:
    sudo apt install kiwix-tools dnsmasq tmux<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Create a Kiwix Library and add the downloaded ZIM file:
    kiwix-manage lib.xml add wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2025-08.zim<\/code>
    You can add additional files, if you like.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. To set up a WLAN hotspot with NetworkManager, run sudo raspi-config<\/code> and select NetworkManager to manage your network config.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Add a usable domain to the \/etc\/hosts file, for example wikipedia.local. Replace the IP address with the IP address of your Raspberry Pi. AFAICT NetworkManager will use 10.42.0.1\/24:
    sudo bash -c 'echo \"10.42.0.1 wikipedia.local\" >> \/etc\/hosts'<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. NetworkManager internally uses dnsmasq as a DNS server when configuring a hotspot. However, it will not use the \/etc\/hosts file to serve local domain names. Therefore disable the internal dnsmasq by adding the line dns=none<\/code> in the [main]<\/code> section of the \/etc\/NetworkManager\/NetworkManager.conf<\/code> file.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Start and enable dnsmasq:
    systemctl start dnsmasq.service
    systemctl enable dnsmasq.service<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Start the hotspot:
    nmcli device wifi hotspot ssid wikipedia.local password \"YOUR_SECRET\"<\/code>
    This command prints a UUID, which you need for additional configuration. You can later always retrieve the UUID with nmcli con show --active<\/code>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Optionally: if you want to make the Hotspot available to neighbors, you can disable the WLAN security\/password. Additionally, you can (should) disable routing into your private LAN, if the Pi is connected via network cable.
    sudo nmmtui-edit
    <\/code>\"Use
    If you want to always start the WLAN network, check the “Automatically connect” option.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Start the hotspot with
    nmcli connection up $(nmcli con show --active | grep wifi | awk '{print $2}')<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. Create a systemd service for Kiwix and start it. Run sudo nano \/etc\/systemd\/system\/kiwix.service<\/code> and add the following content:
    [Unit]
    Description=Kiwix Serve
    After=network-online.target
    Wants=network-online.target
    [Service]
    ExecStart=\/usr\/bin\/kiwix-serve --port 80 --library \/home\/pi\/wikipedia\/lib.xml
    Restart=always
    RestartSec=15
    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. Start and enable the service:
    systemctl daemon-reload
    systemctl start kiwix.service
    systemctl enable kiwix.service<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    You should now be able to connect to the wikipedia.local hotspot and open http:\/\/wikipedia.local (not https!) in any device that has a browser (for example smartphone).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Worth noting: kiwix.org sells ready to use hotspots<\/a>, which probably directly supports the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Recently, I pondered what would happen in case of a black out \/ internet outage and noticed that I would not even have that much material to read, as books are less and less common, including encyclopedias. Luckily, I discovered … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sven-seeberg.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}