Flying Meat: FlyStash

FlyStash & Boomerang

FlyStash is a lightweight cgi script written in python that acts as a very simple wiki. While it doesn't support nearly as many features as most wikis, it does have a couple of redeeming qualities. It's very simple to install and use, and it works with Boomerang as a document store.

Boomerang is a Mac desktop application which connects to FlyStash servers to retrieve, edit, and synchronize pages. You would use Boomerang to edit pages when you are in situations where you can't connect to the internet, or just because it's a nicer experience than editing in a web browser.

WARNING:

FlyStash and Boomerang are very much alpha products. They have bugs in there- nasty bugs with sharp teeth. And they like to bite... and they really enjoy the taste of important documents, like your thesis. Or that really amazing meat loaf recipe you have been working on.

So whatever you do don't rely on these applications to store important information. They are currently provided for testing purposes and to gather feedback.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Download: Boomerang beta 1.

How to install FlyStash on Mac OS X:

To run FlyStash alongside Mac OS X's default install of Apache, we've supplied some quick commands you can execute from the Terminal.app (located in the /Applications/Utilities folder) to get up and running. Make sure Apache is running on your mac- you can turn it on in the "Sharing" panel of your System Preferences. It's the service marked "Personal Web Sharing". You will need to be logged in as a user with administrator privileges to turn it on, and to run the following commands.

Ok, so with that out of the way open up the Terminal and past in these commands to install FlyStash:

    # move to the cgi directory
    cd /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/
    
    # download the FlyStash files
    curl -O http://flyingmeat.com/download/flystash.tgz
    
    # extract the files
    tar xvfz flystash.tgz
    
    # change the permissions of the directory that the files are stored in,
    # so the webserver can write to it:
    sudo chown www flystash/data

If you didn't get any errors, you should now be able to visit http://localhost/cgi-bin/flystash/flystashweb.cgi to see the scripts working. The "RPC URL" you would then enter in VoodooPad is: http://localhost/cgi-bin/flystash/xmlrpc.cgi . You can substitute "localhost" for your ip address if you know what it is.

Advanced Stuff

Want another space on your FlyStash instance?
Edit the file conf.py and change the line:
config['allowAddSpaces'] = False
to:
config['allowAddSpaces'] = True