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Offline reference: an encyclopaedia, a dictionary and the ICS forms on the laptop

When the network is down the questions keep coming: what an acronym in a passed message means, how to treat an injury, how a part works, what the agency's communications plan form wants. The reference profile puts the answers on the laptop first: Kiwix books you choose (Wikipedia, WikiMed, WikEM, Amateur Radio Stack Exchange and others), a dictionary server with an English dictionary, a thesaurus, computing terms and acronyms, and FEMA's ICS forms. hammunition reference serve shows all of it on one page in a browser, on this machine only.

The decision behind this is D-066 in docs/DECISIONS.md; the method the books use is D-049's offline-data layer.

What you need first

  • A choice of books. Nothing is chosen for you. hammunition reference books lists the 27 the catalog offers, with each one's size and licence.
  • Disk space for the books you choose. A book is counted twice while it installs: the checked download, then the installed copy (the download is deleted once the copy is in place). See Sizes.
  • A network connection at install time, and only then.

1. Choose your books

hammunition reference books

Each book has an id: Kiwix's own file name without its date. A book in several flavours has one id per flavour: maxi has pictures, nopic has none, mini keeps each article's introduction only. Choose by id, comma-separated:

hammunition station set --reference-books ham.stackexchange.com_en_all,wikipedia_en_medicine_nopic,wikem_en_all_nopic

That replaces the whole list. An id the catalog does not list is refused as you type it, with the command that lists them. The ids are saved in ~/.config/hammunition/station.yml with your other station values, and hammunition station show prints them: which books you read is not where you are, so unlike map regions they are named.

Why only the catalog's list: the ZIM files do not say what licence they are under (of nine read, one did), and the plan has to print each book's licence before you confirm. The list carries the publisher's own licence line for each book. A book not on it can be added to catalog/data/kiwix-books.yaml with its licence, and the pins regenerated (scripts/gen_kiwix_pins.py); or you can open any ZIM you have with the readers directly.

2. Look at the plan, then install

hammunition install reference --dry-run
hammunition install reference

The plan names each book with its date, size and licence before anything downloads, for example:

Fetch reference book ham.stackexchange.com_en_all (2026-08, 75.9 MB, CC BY-SA)

Each book is checked twice: against the size and sha256 the catalog pinned when it was downloaded, and again when it is copied into /usr/local/share/hammunition/data/kiwix-library/. With no books chosen, kiwix-library is deferred by name and the readers, dictionaries and forms install anyway.

From a LAN mirror. Books are the largest data the catalog fetches, and the one a LAN mirror saves most on: with hammunition station set --mirror http://bunker.lan:8080/, each book is asked of <mirror>/kiwix-library/<book id> first and of Kiwix second, checked against the same pinned size and sha256 whichever answers, and the plan line says so (— the LAN mirror first, then the publisher; the sha256 is checked either way). A mirror holding an older date of a book fails that check and Kiwix is asked instead. For a mirror to hold your books, give them to it: hammunition artifacts --units kiwix-library --reference-books ham.stackexchange.com_en_all,wikipedia_en_medicine_nopic is the listing Hammunition Bunker keeps (D-070).

3. Open it: hammunition reference serve

hammunition reference serve

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8480/ in a browser. The page lists every installed book (click one to read it; Search every book searches them all), every ICS form, and how to use the dictionaries. Ctrl-C in the terminal stops it.

It listens on 127.0.0.1 only. The books are served by Kiwix's own kiwix-serve on the next port (8481), which the engine always starts with -i 127.0.0.1: left to itself kiwix-serve listens on every network address of the machine and announces its LAN address. If you run kiwix-serve by hand, give it -i 127.0.0.1 yourself. --port N moves the page (Kiwix takes N+1); it never widens the address. To read the books from another machine, forward the ports over SSH (ssh -L 8480:127.0.0.1:8480 -L 8481:127.0.0.1:8481 <laptop>) rather than opening a listener.

The desktop reader, kiwix, opens the same files by name from /usr/local/share/hammunition/data/kiwix-library/, if you prefer a window to a browser tab.

The same page carries the offline map when osm-pmtiles is installed (D-071): http://127.0.0.1:8480/map/ draws your map regions in the browser, and shows your position while the GPS tether runs (the hammunition-gps-tether login service, section 11 of the navigation guide, or hammunition maps gps-tether by hand). The page's Map section links to it, or says what to install. Offline navigation describes it. The server answers only requests that name 127.0.0.1 or localhost, so another site cannot read which regions you carry.

4. Dictionaries

dictionaries installs dictd with four databases: GCIDE (English), WordNet (definitions and synonyms), FOLDOC (computing) and VERA (acronyms). In a terminal:

dict dipole
dict -d vera ICS
dict -D

dictd listens on 127.0.0.1 port 2628 only, because Debian's own configuration says so; nothing is changed. goldendict-ng is the desktop look-up: add the local dictd (127.0.0.1) as a DICT server among its dictionary sources once. Where that setting sits in its current menus has not been checked on a desktop here yet.

Translation dictionaries are not installed: Debian has 253 dict-freedict-* packages, 32 from English. Choose the ones for the languages you serve (apt search dict-freedict-eng).

5. The ICS forms

ics-forms installs the 39 PDFs FEMA publishes as the ICS forms, under /usr/local/share/hammunition/data/ics-forms/: the 205 incident radio communications plan and 205A communications list, the 213 general message, the 214 activity log, the 201 briefing and the rest, with FEMA's instructions and the NIMS forms booklet. They are fillable in a PDF reader that fills forms, and on the reference page under ICS forms. FEMA publishes no checksum for them; each is checked against a sha256 Hammunition measured on 2026-09-29.

Winlink users have ICS-213 and its siblings in pat's forms already. The ICS 309 communications log is not among the 39 FEMA lists, so it is not here.

6. Keeping the books current

hammunition update
hammunition update --upstream

Offline, update says whether each chosen book's pinned file is installed. --upstream asks Kiwix (about 3 KB per book) whether the pinned file is still its newest. Kiwix keeps only the two newest dated files of each book, so a pin dies about two publications after it was made:

  • newer upstream: Kiwix has published a newer file. Yours still works and can still be installed, but the pinned file goes at the next publication.
  • pin expired: the pinned file is gone. An install refuses that book, naming scripts/gen_kiwix_pins.py, and never quietly takes the newer file: nobody has measured its sha256.

Either way the fix is in the catalog: the weekly pin review flags a pin that has gone, and regenerating is scripts/gen_kiwix_pins.py; pull the catalog once it has been regenerated, and install again. An installed book keeps working whatever happens upstream.

Sizes

Measured 2026-09-29 from Kiwix's own metadata. hammunition reference books prints the current pin for every book.

Book Size
Simple English Wiktionary 26.5 MB
Amateur Radio Stack Exchange 75.9 MB
WikiMed, introductions only (mini) 163 MB
WikEM, no pictures 347 MB
Wikivoyage, no pictures 272 MB
Appropedia 582 MB
WikiMed, no pictures 862 MB
Simple English Wikipedia, no pictures 1.09 GB
WikiMed, with pictures 2.22 GB
iFixit 3.57 GB
Army Publishing Directorate 8.23 GB
English Wikipedia, introductions only 14.4 GB
English Wikipedia, no pictures 52.7 GB
English Wikipedia, with pictures 127 GB

At these sizes a LAN mirror is worth having before a rebuild: see A LAN mirror for offline data.

The readers and dictionaries are small (kiwix-tools about 11.4 MB with its dependencies, the dictionaries about 32 MB); kiwix and goldendict-ng are mostly their web engine, not yet measured. The ICS forms are 8 MB.

Licences

The plan prints each book's licence line, and hammunition reference books lists them. Hammunition states them and does not judge what you do with the content:

  • Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, WikiMed: CC BY-SA 4.0 for text; media are licensed individually.
  • Stack Exchange sites: CC BY-SA.
  • Appropedia, WikEM: CC BY-SA 4.0. MDWiki: CC BY-SA. OpenStreetMap wiki: CC BY-SA 2.0.
  • iFixit: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, non-commercial.
  • Ready.gov, the Army Publishing Directorate, the FAS military-medicine mirror, and the ICS forms: US federal works, public domain (17 USC 105). For the three scraped sites this is the class of the publisher, not checked page by page.
  • Project Gutenberg's military-science class: public domain in the USA, with Project Gutenberg's licence on the ebook files.

What is not carried, and why

  • wikiHow: Kiwix has no current wikiHow file (the archive holds frozen 2023 copies), and its content is CC BY-NC-SA.
  • The zimgit-* prepper collections (post-disaster, medicine, water, knots, food preparation): no licence is stated anywhere, in the files or by their publisher. They are a documented gap until one is.
  • energypedia: its licence could not be verified on the day.
  • The whole of Project Gutenberg: 221 GB. One class of it, military science, is offered; others can be added to the list the same way.
  • Video-channel ZIMs (prepper channels) and MedlinePlus: mixed licences (MedlinePlus includes A.D.A.M. content that is not public domain).
  • ARRL and ARES material, including ETC's ARRL band chart: ARRL copyright.
  • A sigidwiki ZIM: none exists. artemis carries the signal database offline already.
  • Direwolf's user guide: Debian's direwolf package strips upstream's PDFs. Upstream publishes them in the wb2osz/direwolf-doc repository, which is the route, and has not been measured here.

Removing it

hammunition uninstall kiwix-library ics-forms

removes the books and the forms (their data directories, whole). The readers and dictionaries are apt packages and come out with hammunition uninstall kiwix-tools kiwix dictionaries goldendict-ng. The library file reference serve builds is in ~/.cache/hammunition/reference/ and can be deleted at any time.

Troubleshooting

  • "not in the catalog's book list" when setting books: the id is not one the catalog offers. Ids use Kiwix's spelling: wikipedia_en-simple_all_nopic has a hyphen in en-simple. hammunition reference books lists them.
  • "answered HTTP 404" at install: the pin has expired upstream (see Keeping the books current). Nothing was changed.
  • reference serve says kiwix-serve or kiwix-manage is not on the PATH: hammunition install kiwix-tools.
  • "cannot listen on 127.0.0.1 port 8480": something else has the port, or another reference serve is running. --port 8490 uses 8490 and 8491.
  • A book opens with no pictures: you chose a nopic or mini flavour. Choose the maxi id too, if the disk has room.

What has not been measured yet

  • A real hammunition install reference on a target: the fetch, check and install of one book (76 MB) and of the 39 forms ran through the engine's own code on the development host on 2026-09-29, and reference serve ran there against the archive's kiwix-tools 3.7.0 unpacked from its .deb, with both listeners on 127.0.0.1 only and Ctrl-C stopping kiwix-serve. It has not run on the field laptop, and no page has been opened in a desktop browser there.
  • reference serve against Ubuntu 24.04's kiwix-tools 3.5.0: the flags it passes (-a, -M, --library) were measured on 3.7.0 only. If 3.5.0 lacks one, kiwix-serve exits at start and the page stops with its exit code; it cannot start listening wider.
  • goldendict-ng's DICT-server setting and the Kiwix desktop reader on a desktop session.
  • The installed sizes of kiwix and goldendict-ng on a desktop that lacks their web engines.