Installing CKAN on Windows XP (Unsupported) - KSP-CKAN/CKAN GitHub Wiki

Please note: Windows XP is not officially supported by the CKAN team, you may have luck getting support through IRC but please do not post issues on GitHub when using the method described below, for all we know it may format your computer or trigger Skynet. Caution advised!

Due to Windows XP's old .NET stack, CKAN cannot run on Windows XP by default. This is a workaround that uses the Mono project instead of Microsoft's .NET stack. This guide was kindly provided in a forum post by @tjanke42 (github)/wreckreation (ksp forum).

  • Download and install Mono 3.2.3
  • Add the Mono install directory to your system PATH variable
  • Import trusted root certificates from Mozilla into Mono's certificate store
mozroots --import --ask-remove

  • The latest version of Mono available for Windows XP is 3.2.3 and it has a configuration bug. A couple of lines in a config file are missing the qualifier os = "!windows" which causes Mono to go looking for library files it doesn't need, and to crash when it can't find them.

  • The fix is trivial - edit the Mono config file \etc\mono\config (e.g. c:\program files\mono-3.2.3\etc\mono\config)

Down near the bottom are the two offending lines:

<dllmap dll="gdiplus" target="/tmp/install/lib/libgdiplus.so"/>
<dllmap dll="gdiplus.dll" target="/tmp/install/lib/libgdiplus.so"/>

Change them to:

<dllmap dll="gdiplus" target="/tmp/install/lib/libgdiplus.so" os="!windows"/>
<dllmap dll="gdiplus.dll" target="/tmp/install/lib/libgdiplus.so" os="!windows"/>
  • Download the latest CKAN version
  • Add the CKAN install directory to your system PATH variable
  • You should be able to run ckan.exe now on your Windows XP installation, or double-click the program icon.