BobEXE 1.7.4 Spooky Time (Update to TiddlyWiki 5.3.1)

WARNING: I have not had time to work on this much and there may be lots of bugs. As always back up your wikis! The easiest way to do this is to compress the Wikis folder and save that somewhere as your backup.
Also if you aren’t already using it, it is a good idea to enable backups within Bob, go to the $:/ControlPanel, then the Bob tab then Backups and check Enable Backups.

This is mostly a release so that people using BobEXE can use the newer updates to TiddlyWiki, so the big change is updating to use TiddlyWiki 5.3.1.

I have not had a lot of time to work on any of this in a while so there may be bugs caused by Bob development not keeping up with changes to TiddlyWiki.

The releases are available here:

https://github.com/OokTech/TW5-BobEXE/releases/tag/1.7.4b1

6 Likes

Thanks @inmysocks I will install and test this week. My current instalation is giving me problems so I will start with a fresh install.

  • I am however keen to install bob so it is listening one either a custom local host address eg 127.1.4.1 and/or a valid LAN address I allocate eg 192.168.1.12 (an additional address on my computer). This will allow me to move bob to another computer as I move the IP address with it.
    • I have other services that grab 127.0.0.1 and every other server etc… wants to use it.
    • I know how to do this with regular node, but something to do with the server config in bob breaks this. With bob.exe I do not seem to have access to the node listen command (understanble, its in the exe).
  • Your Bob.exe deserves to be at the leading edge of LAN team instalations, and a lot of people now VPN into their organisation and can access bob solutions on the LAN if this config was possible.
    • I wonder if this would be easier with a node install + bob plugin?

Thanks again for your contribution.

Windows 11 I run BobWin.exe and it unpacks and runs in a terminal;

Snag_1b45e480

However the address for the server never appers, 127.0.0.1:8080/ is not responding. I will continue to try debug. This was happening in the earlier verson, and why I am not using it.

Thank you very much @inmysocks for your effort and dedication with Bob.

Wish you all the best.

1 Like

Hello @inmysocks.

I have found two problems with Bob, I have checked him three times and the same thing happens to me.

1-The first problem occurs when I try to open a wiki that I had in the previous version of Bob. What I do is copy the wiki folder and put it in the new installation.
When I open it I get an error message that says: Java internal error. Uncaught TypeError: $tw.Bob.Shared.sendMessage is not a function. And at the bottom of the wiki I get a message in red that says: WARNING: The connection to server hasn’t been established yet.

2-The second problem I have found is that it doesn’t let me delete wikis. I’ve tried several times but it doesn’t do anything. Create them if you let me, although in the previous version of Bob I got three messages from the server when I created a new wiki and now I only get one.
I have never had any problems with Bob, I use Windows 10.

All the best.

I found some problems with the way that messages get sent to the browser and I am working on them and should have a working fix in the next few days.

4 Likes

I made an update, I got kind of carried away with tweaks on the back-end so it took a bit longer than I had hoped and there may be new bugs hiding somewhere.

One thing that I am still looking into is it can sometimes take a while for a wiki to connect to the back-end, usually it is almost immediately but I have had it take 30+ seconds. Hopefully I will find why and fix it in the next version.

here is the new release:

4 Likes

@inmysocks I’m very excited that you came back to update this!

I’ve been trying to test this today, and haven’t had luck. Whenever I try click the button to setup for local network (really the only reason I use BOB), in the console it just says:
WebSocket error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'wiki' of undefined

That said, I went back and tried some old versions that I used to use and while I don’t get that message, and it successfully keeps the 0.0.0.0 there, it won’t give me a 10.X.X.X address, so that’s not working for some other reason either. I doubt they’re related issues, but listing just in case that means something.

I’m going to keep trying some other things, but don’t have another computer to try at the moment. I’m on Windows 11 Home 64-bit and have tried Edge browser and Chrome browser.

@stobot thanks for the feedback, I completely forgot about sharing on the local network. I update it when I have time to track down the problems.

@stobot I just pushed out more updates. it should address the problems with sharing on the local network. And a lot of the other cleanup and some problems caused by my overzealous updates.

The new one to test is here:

1 Like

Hello @inmysocks.
Thank you very much for the effort you have had to put into updating BoB. When I have some time I’ll try the new version, it sure works great.

I wanted to ask you a question. It has already happened to me a lot of times that when I try to import a tiddler that has the style sheet tag and set the tiddler type to text/css it doesn’t matter to me well. It generates a tiddler with a remote link but its content does not matter.
I don’t know if it’s a problem with how I have it configured or if it has happened to other people, but it happens to me.

It’s not much of a problem for me because I don’t usually import that type of tiddlers and I solve it quickly by deleting the label and the type of tiddler from the json file. But someone who imports many tiddlers does have a problem because they are not going to realize that some are not going to be imported well.

Greetings and thanks again.

@inmysocks Thanks again for your efforts here. I love the BOB functionality. I got one step further, but not there yet.

Some notable things… Top line of the console
Warning: Cannot find plugin 'OokTech/TWederBob'

When looking in the main wiki, I see these two unchecked, and no amount of adding them in seems to work. I think I need these.

Trying the local network button looks like this:

Warning: Cannot find plugin 'OokTech/TWederBob'
NodeSettings - Parsed raw settings.
TiddlyWiki version 5.3.1 with Bob version 1.7.5b3
Bob saver server running on 127.0.0.1:61192
Serving on 127.0.0.1:8080
(press ctrl-C to exit)
Wrote settings file
Trying to log into a wiki that doesn't exist!
new connection from  RootWiki
{
  port: 8080,
  host: '0.0.0.0',
  autoIncrementPort: 'false',
  servePlugin: 'yes',
  servePluginWithoutLogin: 'yes',
  pathprefix: ''
}
Here at save settings
Wrote settings file

And then after restarting it, I can see that the “Serving on” does change.

Warning: Cannot find plugin 'OokTech/TWederBob'
NodeSettings - Parsed raw settings.
TiddlyWiki version 5.3.1 with Bob version 1.7.5b3
Bob saver server running on 127.0.0.1:61192
Serving on 0.0.0.0:8080
(press ctrl-C to exit)
Wrote settings file
new connection from  RootWiki

On the new one you pushed, despite all of those errors, it does say it’s working (“available”)

image

So some part of it is working, but I believe i’m expecting a 10.X.X.X address, not a 192. one right?

I’ve gone back to “Christmas Cookies” to see how that looks, and I don’t have the error messages, but I can’t get the 10.X address either. I’ll keep playing, but let me know if anything looks obvious.

Using BobWIN.exe on a 64-bit Windows 11 machine. Also have tried with another 64-bit Windows machine, same thing on that one.

The new BobWin.exe is reported as a virus in Microsoft Defender

@stobot why would it need to be a 10.x.x.x ip address? Most of the networks I have been on have used the 192.168.x.x address space. I have only encountered 10.x.x.x used in large networks like corporate environments or universities. Does using the 192.168.x.x address not work on your network?

@jvdb I do not have a windows signing key, or a windows computer to test on, so I am not surprised. While I would like to be able to sign everything correctly I don’t know if I will ever get to it.

@Xabrina Thank you for the bug report. I will try and replicate the problem you are encountering. It sounds like it is caused by the modified import setup that Bob uses to save media on the harddrive instead of embedding it in the wiki.

1 Like

Aha - it appears to be working now. I was testing from home before and it wasn’t working, but here in the office today it is working (and generating a 10.x.x.x as it used to before). It still gives me the Warning: Cannot find plugin 'OokTech/TWederBob' when I run it which seems like an error, but I guess that’s okay to ignore as it seems to be working.

Yes, my use-case with Bob is a shared, multi-author knowledgebase. I use it with my team at the corporation I work at that spans multiple countries, so I set this up while we’re all on company VPN and it works over 10.x.x.x. Thanks again for this valuable software!

If you listen to 0.0.0.0 on a network, that means that the program can listen to every ip address available to your computer. That’s good for testing but for production you should bind the program to only 1 IP.

If you do not know the IP of your computer, on windows you should be able to use ipconfig command line program to get your computer info – or


With the GUI – Windows-button + I → Should open the Win11 Settings window. There should be an Ethernet tab

If you open the Ethernet Details section you should get the real IP of your machine. This one can be used instead of 0.0.0.0

It can either be a 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x – which depends on your internet router manufacturer – or company network settings

Ah, great info, thanks @pmario !

In addition to my “productive” use cases, I’ve actually gone down the road of developing a couple simple games using only wikitext and BOB. They’re not quite ready to share quality yet, but I created something “inspired by” the board games Wavelength and Codenames - which lend themselves to this kind of setup. This was useful especially during the lockdown where we could continue our gamenight but over the network using BOB.