If you have read this blog before (and I am pretty sure at least one person has) you will know that I am a big fan of
RISC OS on Raspberry Pi.
RISC OS is an operating system that has the 'look' of Linux and the 'feel' of the BBC microcomputer. I have delved into
various aspects of RISC OS Pi before.
Whilst looking for
web server solutions for RISC OS, I recently discovered
WebJames. WebJames is a server with an integrated PHP interpreter. It is available in the PackMan package manager and it is really easy to use. In this post I will show you how to set it up (really easy) and get going as a hoe server.
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| Once you have finished installing from PacMan, all you need to do is provide a folder called 'Site' and you are good to go. |
Packman installs WebJames into
:0.$.Apps.Web, however, you can easily move it to any location you like. As most of my files are stored on a removable USB stick, I've put WebJames there. This has got to be the simplest web server ever. No complex configuration; no mucking about with Linux; simply launch the server and point it at some HTML files. As long as WebJames is running on the pi it will dutifully listen on port 80 for any requests.
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| PackMan (not Pac-man) |
There is also an example code package which is worth exploring.
I've only just scratched the surface of what we can do with WebJames, but I am certainly glad it exists.
The first thing you might want to do is create a test site. Here I have provided a new HTML file called index and placed it in the 'site' folder. The test page has a single link that opens a folder called 'files' (useful for grabbing files from the pi onto another machine).
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| The index test page is shown in StrongEd for RISCOS (although I actually wrote this in qedit for DOS under DOSBox for that extra geekiness). |
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| My first test page running on my Samsung Galaxy Note. Not very exciting, just a link to a folder. |
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| Directory listing of files on the server. |
To view your web server test page on your home network, simply point your browser at
http://your IP address, for example, mine is
http://192.168.1.218
To view your page on your Raspberry Pi instead, try
http://127.0.0.1
Well, that's all for today. We have only dipped our feet into the RISC OS server waters. I hope somebody found this a useful guide. I am certainly looking forward to doing more with this software. In fact, the Apache web server I have running on my second Pi is the only reason I actually have a second pi running at all. WebJames really makes RISC OS more and more attractive as an operating system. Oh, and did I mention that you can use BBC BASIC as a server-side scripting language?
If you enjoyed this post, then there is a slim chance you will enjoy this post about
my experience of RISC OS on Raspberry Pi, or that time
I installed DOSBox on Raspberry Pi, or even
something completely different.
