ALFIX

Alfix is an open-source web-based viewer for the eLearn workshop manuals for various Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Fiat cars.

Software requirements

This section lists the external software dependencies of this project.

First of all, you will need an eLearn CD or an image of of one. eLearn is proprietary software which you need to purchase yourself, don't ask me for a copy or help on finding one. At the moment only Alfa 156 eLearn has been tested. In theory others should work too but see the section on bugs, todo etc.

The rest is free software like Alfix. The versions noted in parentheses reflect what was used and tested during development on Fedora Linux. Other versions might work just as well or even better. Or not.

Setup

Software required only during setup:

• mdbtools (>= 0.7.1)
• innoextract (>= 1.6)
• dos2unix (>= 7.3.3)

Recommended:

• git (>= 2.7.4)

At this point in development there are no releases made and things can evolve on daily basis, so it is best to download the actual source code repository and update often. But if git is a problem for whatever reason, you can also download the source as a zip or tar archive from gitlab repository page.

Running

Software required for running the application server:

• python 3 (>= 3.5.1)
• lxml (>= 3.4.4)
• sqlite (>= 3.13.0)

Viewing

As Alfix is basically a custom web server for the eLearn content, it is technically possible to run it on a headless server and browse the contents on any arbitrary web client, including tablets, mobile phones, text-only clients and whatnot. At the moment it has been only tested with Firefox running on local computer so for anything else YMMV, and you'd have to modify the source to try it.

• a modern web browser (firefox >= 49)

Do not expose Alfix to the public internet! It is not written be secure in any way, and almost certainly you have no permission to share the eLearn content to anybody else.

Installation

Installing dependencies (Fedora)

On Fedora (>= 24) installing this should ensure you have everything needed to setup and run the software:

# dnf install git python3-lxml innoextract mdbtools sqlite dos2unix firefox

Installing Alfix

Replace <path-to-cd> with the path your CD or iso-image is mounted. For example, by default Fedora 24 mounts Alfa 156 eLearn CD at "/run/media/${USER}/Alfa Romeo 156"

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/pmatilai/alfix.git
$ cd alfix
$ ./setup.sh <path-to-cd>

The setup script will copy all the relevant content from the CD to the Alfix directory so the CD (or image) does not need to remain mounted after the initial setup.

Running

Once the setup has successfully completed (mind you it is not very error tolerant at this point), running the software is simply:

$ ./alfix.py

On startup it prints its address on standard output, which by default is http://localhost:8000/ - point your browser there and enjoy.

Bugs, todo and all

Bear in mind this is a very early version of the software and will have any number of bugs, unimplemented features and other rough edges.

It should not eat your data, kids or pets but do NOT blindly trust the information you get from it, there are various unimplemented features at the moment which might result in incorrect information shown in some points. And of course there might be other bugs. And finally, at best Alfix can only be as correct as the source data on eLearn. There are bugs, typos and other mistakes in it too. If you notice a problem then please make sure you're running the latest available version of the code before reporting it: do git pull and restart Alfix.

Some known issues and future plans are listed in the project TODO. Bug reports and other feature requests on the GitLab issue tracker are welcome, just keep in mind this is a hobby project done on my scarce free time and resources.

Authors

• Panu Matilainen pmatilai@laiskiainen.org