Installation

This is described in detail under Manual:Installing MediaWiki, a short version follows.

Prerequisites

apt-get install httpd php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-gd php5-xcache           # Debian, Ubuntu
    dnf install lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi php-mysql php-gd php-pecl-apc # Fedora

pkgutil -i CSWlighttpd CSWphp5-mysql CSWmysql5 CSWphp5-session \        # Solaris
           CSWphp5-ctype CSWphp5-gd CSWphp5-apc

Tarball

wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.34/mediawiki-1.34.0.tar.gz{,.sig}
wget https://www.mediawiki.org/keys/keys.txt -O - | gpg --import

gpg --verify mediawiki*.sig
gzip -dc mediawiki*tar.gz | tar -C /var/www/ -xf -                      # Use GNU/Tar on Solaris systems!

See the Version lifecycle for its release policy.

Skins

Skin autodiscovery has been removed^[1] and additional skins have to be downloaded and activated:

git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/skins/MinervaNeue MinervaNeue-git
cd MinervaNeue-git
git archive --format=tar --prefix=MinervaNeue/ origin/REL1_34 | tar -C /var/www/mediawiki/skins/ -xf -

Add the following to LocalSettings.php

wfLoadSkin('MinervaNeue');

Backup

From Manual:Backing up a wiki:

cd /var/www/mediawiki
tar -cf ~/backup/wiki.tar extensions/ images/
mysqldump -u USERNAME --password       DATABASE > ~/backup/wiki.sql
mysqldump -u USERNAME --password --xml DATABASE > ~/backup/wiki.xml

Restore

cd /var/www/mediawiki
tar -xf ~/backup/wiki.tar extensions/ images/
mysql -u USERNAME --password -D DATABASE < ~/backup/wiki.sql

Upgrading

Update from the latest tarball:

wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.34/mediawiki-1.34.0.tar.gz{,.sig}

gpg --tofu-policy good 1D98867E82982C8FE0ABC25F9B69B3109D3BB7B0
gpg --trust-model tofu --verify mediawiki*tar.gz.sig

DOCROOT=/var/www/
cd $DOCROOT/mediawiki

umask 0022
sudo chown -R $USER . && chmod -R u+rwX .
tar --strip-components=1 -xzf ~/mediawiki*.tar.gz

Update the existing Mediawiki installation, including database updates:

script -a -c "date; php maintenance/update.php --conf `pwd`/LocalSettings.php" ~/mwupdate.log

Generate a fresh sitemap:

MW_INSTALL_PATH=`pwd` php maintenance/generateSitemap.php --conf `pwd`/LocalSettings.php \
     --fspath `pwd`/sitemap --server https://www.example.org/ \
     --urlpath https://www.example.org/mediawiki/sitemap --skip-redirects

Disable some cruft, allow only certain elements:

sudo chmod -cR 0 *
     chmod -cR a+rX LocalSettings.php api.php extensions img_auth.php includes index.php languages load.php resources skins thumb.php thumb_handler.php composer.json vendor

Fix permissions:

chmod -c  0750                   cache/ images/ sitemap/
sudo chown -cR www-data:www-data cache/ images/ sitemap/

Configuration

Permissions

 $ cat LocalSettings.php
 [...]
 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = true;
 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = true;

Email

 $ sudo apt-get install php-mail php-net-smtp
 $ cat LocalSettings.php
 [...]
  $wgSMTP = array(
    'host' => "foo",
    'port' => "25",
    'auth' => true,
    'username' => "bar",
    'password' => "baz"
   );

Misc settings

 $ cat LocalSettings.php
 $wgLogo                 = "/wiki/images/logo.jpg";
 $wgAllowExternalImages  = true;
 $wgShowExceptionDetails = true;
 
 $wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MAIN] = true;
 $wgAllowCopyUploads = true;
 $wgFileExtensions   = array_merge( $wgFileExtensions, array( 'pdf', 'txt', 'gz', 'bz2', 'deb' ));
 # $wgVerifyMimeType = false;
 # $wgDisableUploadScriptChecks = true;
 # $wgEnableProfileInfo = true;
 # array_push( $wgUrlProtocols, "file://" );

 # Auto Logout is controlled
 # by the session.gc_maxlifetime variable, which in turn is honored by the /etc/cron.d/php5 cronjob:
 # grep ^session.gc_maxlifetime /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini 
 session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400

CategoryPage.php

I wanted to have my category pages to show its members in columns rather than in an endless bulletpoint list. A similar problem lead me to do this:

--- mediawiki/includes/CategoryPage.php.orig    2010-04-26 02:06:39.508995407 +0200
+++ mediawiki/includes/CategoryPage.php 2010-04-26 02:01:16.998997496 +0200
@@ -358,7 +358,7 @@
         * @return String
         * @private
         */
-       function formatList( $articles, $articles_start_char, $cutoff = 6 ) {
+       function formatList( $articles, $articles_start_char, $cutoff = 3 ) {
                if ( count ( $articles ) > $cutoff ) {
                        return $this->columnList( $articles, $articles_start_char );
                } elseif ( count( $articles ) > 0 ) {

I don't think this (hardcoded?) parameter can be set in LocalSettings.php, though :-\

Short URLs

Short URLs^[2]^[3] for our MediaWiki installation:

 $ cat LocalSettings.php
 [...]
 $wgScriptPath  = "/mediawiki";   # This will be the real (relative) path, don't touch this!
 
 $wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";     # This will be the rewritten (relative) path and 
                                  # must be different from the real pathname (wgScriptPath)
 $wgUsePathInfo = true;

Apache

When using Apache, one can put mod_rewrite rules in .htaccess files. Be sure to set AllowOverride to at least FileInfo and Options:

$ cat $DocumentRoot/.htaccess
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^w/(.*)$ /wiki/index.php?title=$1 [PT,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^w/*$ /wiki/index.php [L,QSA]

Lighttpd

Lighttpd solution:

url.rewrite-once += (
    "^/w/([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?" => "/wiki/index.php?title=$1&$2",
    "^/w$"                   => "/wiki/index.php",
)

As an alternative we could use url.rewrite-if-not-file to check if the virtual path exists on the filesystem:

url.rewrite-if-not-file += ( 
    "^/w/(mw-)?config/?"     => "$0",
    "^/w/([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?" => "/wiki/index.php?title=$1&$2",
    "^/w/([^?]*)"            => "/wiki/index.php?title=$1" 
)

Nginx

Nginx solution:

  location /w {
      index index.php;
      rewrite "^/w/([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?" /wiki/index.php?title=$1&$args last;
      }

SVG

To use SVG images, an SVG converter is needed:

apt-get install librsvg2-bin

This will install a bunch of nasty dependencies:

libatk1.0-0 libavahi-common-data libavahi-common3 libdbus-1-3 libavahi-client3 libcups2 
libgsf-1-common libgsf-1-114 libgtk2.0-common libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxi6 libxrandr2
libgtk2.0-0 librsvg2-2 librsvg2-bin

...unfortunately, we might be unable to forcefully deinstall any of these:

$ ldd `which rsvg-convert` | wc -l
38

`MediaWiki:Common.css`

→ Edit MediaWiki:Common.css

 /* prevent ugly horizontal page expansion */
 pre { overflow: auto; }

Automatic horizontal scrollbar in <pre> on mediawiki.org?

De-Orphan

Not needed/used any more, but here it goes:

Special:LonelyPages
sed 's/^ */* \[\[/;s/$/\]\]/'

SQL: `module_deps`

After moving the webserver's document root to another place, the module_deps table needs to be cleared, otherwise the websever may look for images (e.g. skins/common/images/sort_down.gif) in their old (cached?) places.

Extensions

# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi
require_once("$IP/extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi-git/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi.php");

#
# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit
#
require_once("$IP/extensions/ConfirmEdit-git/ConfirmEdit.php");
#
### FancyCaptcha
# $ sudo apt-get install python-imaging
# $ python extensions/ConfirmEdit/captcha.py --font=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf \
#       --wordlist=/usr/share/dict/words --key=s3cr3t --output=cache/FancyCaptcha/ \
#       --count=100 --dirs=2 --verbose
require_once("$IP/extensions/ConfirmEdit-git/FancyCaptcha.php");
$wgCaptchaClass     = 'FancyCaptcha';
$wgCaptchaDirectory = "$IP/cache/FancyCaptcha";
$wgCaptchaDirectoryLevels = 2;
$wgCaptchaSecret    = "s3cr3t";

### ReCaptcha
# https://www.google.com/recaptcha
# require_once("$IP/extensions/ConfirmEdit-git/ReCaptcha.php");
# $wgCaptchaClass        = 'ReCaptcha';
# $wgReCaptchaPublicKey  = 'xxx';
# $wgReCaptchaPrivateKey = 'yyy';

# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RSS
# require_once("$IP/extensions/RSS-git/RSS.php");

# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PdfBook
# $ sudo apt-get install htmldoc
# require_once( "$IP/extensions/PdfBook-svn/PdfBook.php" );
# $wgPdfBookTab    = true;
# $wgPdfBookFormat = "single";

# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Piwik_Integration
# require_once("$IP/extensions/Piwik-svn/Piwik.php");
# $wgPiwikURL = "www.example.com/piwik/";
# $wgPiwikIDSite = "4";

# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageSecurity
# require_once( "$IP/extensions/PageSecurity/PageSecurity.php" );
# $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
# $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
# $wgWhitelistRead = array( "Main Page", "Special:Userlogin", "-", "MediaWiki:Monobook.css" );
# $wgShowIPinHeader = false;
# $wgFeedClasses = array();
# $wgEnableParserCache = false;
# $wgCachePages = false;

Special Pages

Sitemap

With generateSitemap.php it is possible to generate a sitemap for the wiki:

mkdir 0770 sitemap
sudo chgrp www-data sitemap
sudo -u www-data MW_INSTALL_PATH=`pwd` php ../../maintenance/generateSitemap.php \
        --conf `pwd`/LocalSettings.php \
        --fspath /var/www/example.com/wiki/sitemap \
        --server https://example.com \
        --urlpath https://example.com/wiki/sitemap \
        --identifier mywiki \
        --compress yes

Reference Tooltips

Reference Tooltips are little JavaScript popup windows when hovering over citation references. To install, we need to do the following:

0. Install Extension:Gadgets

require_once( "extensions/Gadgets-git/Gadgets.php" );

Create MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.css
Create MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js
Create MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition with the following content:

ReferenceTooltips|ReferenceTooltips.js‎|ReferenceTooltips.css

With all that in place, Gadgets should appear under Preferences

Links

Bugs
OpenSUSE setup
Fedora setup

References

[1] MediaWiki 1.25: reaking changes

[2] MediaWiki ShortURL Builder

[3] Manual:Short URL

[1]

[2]

[3]

Mediawiki

Contents

Installation

Prerequisites

Tarball

Skins

Backup

Restore

Upgrading

Configuration

Permissions

Email

Misc settings

CategoryPage.php

Short URLs

Apache

Lighttpd

Nginx

SVG

`MediaWiki:Common.css`

De-Orphan

SQL: `module_deps`

Extensions

Special Pages

Sitemap

Reference Tooltips

Links

References

Navigation menu

Mediawiki

Installation

Prerequisites

Tarball

Skins

Backup

Restore

Upgrading

Configuration

Permissions

Email

Misc settings

CategoryPage.php

Short URLs

Apache

Lighttpd

Nginx

SVG

MediaWiki:Common.css

De-Orphan

SQL: module_deps

Extensions

Special Pages

Sitemap

Reference Tooltips

Links

References

Navigation menu

Search

`MediaWiki:Common.css`

SQL: `module_deps`