Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) 8.0 was released December 31, 2022 (changelog). NOTE: As of March 2023, IIAB 8.1 preview releases are a much better option.

Use it to “steal” the Internet’s crown jewels and craft your own LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA with a $35 Raspberry Pi computer, or an old laptop.

Install Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) 8.0 using its 1-line installer to transform an old PC/laptop into a “learning palace” for a developing world school, that urgently needs this today! Learn how easy it is to DIY (Frequently Asked Questions at FAQ.IIAB.IO) an amazing digital library for any school, clinic or community on this planet:

  🍓 download.iiab.io 🍓

Drag-and-drop the very best of the World’s Free Knowledge (Wikipedia in any language, thousands of Khan Academy videos, zoomable OpenStreetMap, E-Books, WordPress journaling, the new Sugarizer 1.5, Toys from Trash electronics projects, RACHEL Content Packs, Kolibri, Nextcloud, ETC) for those who are burning for learning — but just happen to be offline.

The crown jewels are all free, liberated — and open source too! Internet-in-a-Box is now used in schools, libraries and medical clinics in more than 20 countries. Why not DIY your own LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA with a $35 Raspberry Pi computer, starting today?

What’s New?

• Use the 64-bit OS Raspberry Pi OS (Lite or with desktop) which benchmarks “~48% faster” and allows schools to build up thoughtful e-book collections, e.g. if you run sudo apt install calibre (to install useful tools like calibredb and ebook-convert).
  • BONUS: Your 64-bit Internet-in-a-Box microSD card will work in $15 Zero 2 W computers (if you don’t overstress its 512MB RAM!)
  • Or use the original 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS, if you need your Internet-in-a-Box microSD card(s) to work in the older $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W.
• Support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 22.10 and Mint 21. _{PR #3189 #3307}
  • Preliminary support for Debian 12 Bookworm and Ubuntu 23.04 pre-releases, if you read Section 2. of IIAB Platforms. _#3399
  • Preliminary support for WSL 1.0.0 _#3377
• IIAB Maps for each continent/region are updated — and downloads are now dramatically faster! You can also now customize the highlighting of OpenStreetMap and Satellite Photo areas of interest. _#3077
• Install (or disable!) IIAB Apps a.k.a. services on-the-fly, using IIAB’s Admin Console Configure menu. Then click Save Configuration followed by Install Configured Options. _{PR iiab-admin-console#475}
  • App install speed is faster! _{PR #3272}
  • Uses skip_role_on_error: True to help you install any large set IIAB Apps without interruption. _{PR #3262}
• Learning Hotspot configuration magic:
  • http://10.10.10.10 = http://box = http://box.lan by popular demand — super-easy to type into every smartphone/tablet/laptop browser! _{PR #3299}
  • How many student Wi-Fi connections do you want your Raspberry Pi’s internal hotspot to offer? You can now set rpizerow_rpi3_wifi_firmware and/or rpi3bplus_rpi4_wifi_firmware in your IIAB’s /etc/iiab/local_vars.yml depending on your scalability-versus-features needs. _{PR #3103}
  • Hotspot (AP mode) capability detection, to help upcycle old laptops into brand new IIAB’s! _{PR #3222}
  • Honor country code if already set by Raspberry Pi OS. _{PR #3179}
• Matomo 4.13.0+ (changelog) is like Google Analytics, but emphasizes privacy and data ownership, with URL box/matomo _{PR #3304}
  • If you just want a quick statistical dashboard, also try AWStats, with URL box/awstats
• It’s now super easy to remotely support your IIAB using https://remote.it — see also “How can I remotely manage my Internet-in-a-Box?” _{PR #3161}
• If you clone your IIAB onto a larger microSD, disk, SSD or USB stick, you can make use of the entire space on the new media (if you create a file named /.expand-rootfs and then reboot the new IIAB, which will auto-expand its root filesystem). This also now works with external USB boot drives. Raspberry Pi OS is supported, with other OS’s possible later. _{PR #3137 #3325 PR #3336 PR #3337 #3362}
• Similar to the iiab-diagnostics command but far more concise: you can also now run iiab-summary to see a 20-25 line overview of your IIAB installation. _{PR #3267}

What’s Upgraded?

• Calibre-Web 0.6.19+ (changelog, docs) with customizable URL’s box/books, box/libros, box/livres
• Kiwix 3.4.0 (changelog), based on libzim 8.1.0 (changelog) and libkiwix 12.0.0 (changelog), with URL box/kiwix _{PR #3391}
• Kolibri 0.15.9+ fixes peer importing of channels from “Local network or internet” (changelog, blog). And IIAB now installs Kolibri with the PPA method, making it easy to upgrade using apt update etc. Use Kolibri with URL box/kolibri _{#3227 PR #3327}
• MediaWiki 1.39.0 LTS (changelog), with URL box/wiki _{PR #3431}
• Moodle 4.1 LTS (announcement, release notes / changelog, docs) with URL box/moodle (NOTE that IIAB attempts to install the latest weekly pre-release of Moodle 4.2 if a bleeding-edge OS with PHP >= 8.2 is detected.) _{PR #3430}
• Nextcloud 25.0.2+ (changelog, schedule) with URL box/nextcloud _{PR #3208}
• WordPress 6.1.1+ (6.1 field guide, 6.0 field guide, 5.9 field guide, 5.8 field guide, 5.7 field guide, 5.6 field guide) with URL box/wordpress _{PR #3210}
• Sugarizer 1.6.0 (changelog) using Sugarizer Server 1.4.0 (changelog) with URL box/sugarizer (using MongoDB 3.0 or 4.4 for older CPU’s, and optionally MongoDB 5.0/6.0 for modern CPU’s) _{PR #3099 PR #3241 PR #3380}
• Minetest 5.3.0+ is like Minecraft, but open source! _{PR #3426}
• Node-RED 3.0.2+ (changelog, docs) with URL box/nodered _{PR #3248}
• AzuraCast 0.17.6+ (changelog, releases, docs) for radio-style MP3 streaming, with URL box:12080 _{PR #2946 PR #3384}
• Gitea 1.18.0+ (changelog, blog), lightweight self-hosted “GitHub” version control system, to learn to code collaboratively, with URL box/gitea _{PR #3451}
• Asterisk 19 and FreePBX 16 telephony server (IIAB doc) with URL box/freepbx (NGINX) or box:83/freepbox (Apache) _{PR #3229}
• Lokole 0.8.2 for rural/community email, with URL box/lokole _{PR ascoderu/lokole#593 PR #3276}
• Node.js 18 (changelog) across all apps _{PR #3186}
• PHP 8.1 support, for OS’s like Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, Mint 21 and Debian 12 _{PR #2832 PR #3382}
• phpMyAdmin 5.2.0 (changelog) for remote administration of MySQL _{PR #3218}
• ansible-core 2.14 as implemented by scripts/ansible _{PR #3432}
• “Power Off” button is properly concealed for schools that do not want disruption _#3109

What might future versions bring?

• “Fieldback” Community Analytics
  • 1. Friendly for village librarians, (2) Actionable for IT implementers, (3) Thorough for education/medical researchers _#1268
  • Charts showing usage hourly/daily/weekly/monthly _{PR #2511}
  • Matomo for usage analytics, alongside some careful re-thinking of how IIAB teachers and content contributors can learn from users’ needs. _#1762
• IIAB out-of-box guided discovery
  • Automatic installation of “Learning Bouquets” during IIAB installation (up to 64 GB or 128 GB typically, “I want what she has!”) so new implementers can pick a language — then hit the ground running. _#1958
  • Updating & Versioning Infra for:
    1. Learning Bouquets, Content Packs, Kolibri Channels (and Student Portfolios?). Peer catalogs, relating to torrenting/mirroring below? _{#857 #2553}
    2. IIAB Apps “Registry” (might coordinate with point releases?) _{PR #2533}
    3. IIAB software (effectively point releases like 7.2.1?)
  • Torrent-like content interchange between IIAB’s (“Maps might be enough for starters…possibly also including Satellite Photos?”) as the Sneakernet-of-Alexandria grows more real! _{PR #2572}
    
  • Better support for Raspberry Pi Imager for effortless installs of prefab IIAB images _#2338
  • Enhanced HOW-TO Videos (old view) for enterprising implementers, teachers and students, with actionable subtitles in common languages. Building upon IIAB’s YouTube channel. _#1975
  • Out-of-box experience/guidance on our most popular OS (Raspberry Pi OS With Desktop) ? _#1979
• Local Search Engine across most/all IIAB Content _#2429
• See also the Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) 8.1 Milestone

Credits

Thank you e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e for building your own DIY Library of Alexandria. To serve One & All.

Building on this software and designs contributed by Mohamad Abu-ElHaggag, Carl Wivagg, Nzolantima Swasisa, Nathan Koops, Shanti Bhardwa, Mir Rodríguez Lombardo, Mitra Ardron, Kurt Maier, T.K. Kang, Eric Nitschke, César López-Natarén, Joshua Kanani, Josh Dennis, Arky R., Matt Johnson, James Heilman, Sam Zidovetzki, Reno McKenzie, Anish Mangal, Mikko Kotila, Avni Khatri, Blondel Mondésir, Evelyn Fitzgerald, Denis Lafontant, George Hunt, Tim Moody, Jerry Vonau, Adam Holt — among many other contributors !

Not just in your own community — but by keeping in touch with our global volunteer community network (http://OFF.NETWORK) each of you are providing the lifeblood “fieldback” — that keeps us motivated enabling Internet-in-a-Box’s quality content collaborations across ALL communities!

Frequently Asked Questions: FAQ.IIAB.IO

Known Issues

• JupyterHub and Calibre-Web require wheels / cryptography (and Rust >=1.48.0) which are currently missing from 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS, as of 2022-11-10: PR #3421 PR #3422
• The sudo iiab-network command doesn’t cleanly recognize Wi-Fi routers (or Access Points) that you attach to IIAB with an Ethernet cable, with recent OS’s like Ubuntu 22.04. Manual workarounds can help: #3330 #3385 (comment)
• Lokole (rural/offline email) needs to be installed “twice” as explained at: #2833 (comment). Lokole’s requirements.txt file needs to be updated upstream (ascoderu/lokole#585), so in the meantime IIAB has implemented a temporary workaround patch (PR #3149). Progress is coming, likely in Q4 2022: PR ascoderu/lokole#593 PR #3276
• A few residual issues may remain at: https://github.com/iiab/iiab/milestone/8