I’m due to make a presentation next month, and I’ve recently been looking for some way of taking a web server with me without resorting to lugging a laptop around (might be awkward in the pub afterwards!). I’ve spent the last week or so looking at various types of live CD, which is a full GNU/Linux distribution that runs from a single disc.
The trouble with a Live CD is that, being on CD, you can’t write to it. Also, as the CD contains a compressed filesystem, it’s not like you can use a CD-RW either. This lead me to the painful realisation that I was going to have to recompile my own customised Live CD.
This was a lengthy process, and it left me very frustrated. I was using the excellent Ubuntu distro (that’s geek for ‘distribution’), which had concise and easy to follow instructions for compiling your own version of the Ubuntu Live CD. I was able to install Apache, MySQL and PHP - the Holy Trinity of Open Source webbery - and configure them as necessary. The only problem? I wanted to run my presentation from a USB drive, and due to some GNU/Linux permissions perculiarities, you cannot run PHP scripts from that kind of device. Grrr!
I was about ready to hang up my mouse, when I discovered Apache Mobile. Quite frankly, it saved the day. While it’s not a complete operating system, it allows you to install Apache and PHP on a USB flash drive, and since it’s treated like a hard disk, you can edit the files and configuration to your heart’s content.
To run the server, just plug in your USB device, run the startup batch script, and the server is set to the localhost domain. The only limitation is that you need to be running Windows 2000 upwards. Need more disk space? Just edit the httpd.conf file and point the DocumentRoot to the local hard disk or another storage device. Need an extra PHP module? Edit php.ini and uncomment the relevant line.
Hats off to Apache Mobile’s creator, 17-year-old Belgian, Jorge Schrauwen.
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