Start collaborating online in 5 minutes

2021-09-21, 18:07

There are many real-time document collaboration services available on the Internet but none of them give you the fuzzy feeling of having full control of the fruit of your labor.

You can work on a document from your desktop/laptop by running Etherpad in a virtual machine and make it available for collaboration over Internet using PageKite.

The steps:

• Download & unzip the Etherpad Lite virtual applience from TurnKey Linux. (First download option.)
• Download, install & run VirtualBox.
• Create a new virtual machine, select Linux as OS, Debian as Version and use the Etherpad Lite vmdk disk image as Startup disk.
• Run the VM, create root & mysql passwords. Note that once PageKite is configured, it's possible to remotely log in to the machine with ssh using the root credentials.
• Press enter on the next two options. The former skips configuring backups and the latter installs security updates.
• Press Esc to quit the Configuration Console and login as root.

• Run the following commands:

  git clone https://github.com/nifgraup/pagekite-tklpatch
  apt-get install tklpatch
  tklpatch-apply / pagekite-tklpatch/
  confconsole
  

  • Now you are back in the Configuration Console with PageKite enabled. Select the PageKite menu and enter your PageKite account details. Sign up if you don't have a PageKite account.
  • Point your browser to https://NAME.pagekite.me and create a document. Share the URL with your friends and start collaborating!

Your document is off the Internet the minute you turn off your virtual machine. Turn it back on and continue from where you left off.