Install a MediaWiki codebase

Install a MediaWiki codebase Organic Design procedure

This article describes installing a new version of the MediaWiki software itself. This is a framework which can be thought of as a class which provides the interface structure and database schema for any instances of the software which are separate evolving databases. This process is also useful for creating a duplicate of an existing codebase for experimentation.

File structure

# Shared extensions dir primarily from OD extensions svn repo then others added from wikimedia etc
/var/www/extensions

# Database dumps used as initial templates for new wikis
/var/www/empty-1.15.1.sql
/var/www/empty-1.16.sql

# Tools and system-wide OD/Wikia configuration from the OD tools svn repo
/var/www/tools

# Installed MediaWiki codebases
/var/www/mediawiki-1.6.7/
/var/www/mediawiki-1.9.3/
/var/www/mediawiki-1.10.0/
/var/www/mediawiki-1.11.0/
/var/www/mediawiki-1.15.1/
/var/www/mediawiki-1.16alpha/
/var/www/mediawiki-svn/

# Example of template filesystem Symbolic link to common MediaWiki instance
/var/www/wikis/template/wiki -> /var/www/mediawiki-svn/

Download

Download a version of MediaWiki to the server you want to install it on. Using wget on a server to download a version e.g.

cd /tmp
wget --proxy http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.2.tar.gz
tar -zxvf mediawiki-1.19.2.tar.gz  
mv /tmp/mediawiki-1.19.2 /var/www

Or if you prefer, obtain the current development version from the Subversion repository:

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 /var/www/mediawiki-svn

You may like to checkout the source tree of the latest skins:

svn co http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/skins /var/www/skins-phase3-trunk

Installation steps

1. Unpack the tar.gz distribution into /var/www leaving the directory name of the version untouched. The config directory must be set to chmod a+w config
2. Set the /var/www/domains/setup.organicdesign.co.nz symlink to point to the new codebase. If it is a local installation /var/www/domains/setup.localhost and include setup.localhost in your etc/hosts: 127.0.0.1 localhost setup.localhost
3. A symlink needs to be added in the codebase during initial setup called wiki which points to it's parent, the codebase dir e.g. ln -s /var/www/mediawiki-1.11.1/ wiki
4. Go to http://setup.organicdesign.co.nz/wiki/mw-config in your browser and run through the install the db user bender, and any template db name (but please note, you must use a table prefix with trailing underscore for add-db to work with it as a template!). Use your own account for sysop rather than "WikiSysop". If it is a local installation http://setup.localhost
5. Download the LocalSettings.php offered by the installer and copy into the main /wiki directory
6. Edit the LocalSettings.php file, remove the db user, password and prefix and append to the end of the script: require_once('extensions/wikia.php');
7. Add symlinks for any required extensions from the shared repository into the codebase's extensions directory.
8. Run make in the wiki/math directory
9. Add the DPL DB update shown at DPL:DPL:Manual - Source and Installation (after we figure out why it's not working!)
10. Create a template database for major releases of MediaWiki (either copy and upgrade an existing template, or add to the base install)

mysqldump -u user -p db-name > /var/www/empty-x.xx.sql

Note: see section below for DB user details

Wiki Database Details

Note that the wiki DB settings are now managed and set from /var/www/tools/wikid.conf, see the wikid.conf.sample file for an example. The wikia.php file which is automatically included in all wikis in the wikia will extract the DB details from the wikid.conf file.

Next

• Install a new wiki

See also

• Talk:Install a MediaWiki code-base for a overview BASH script
• OD:OD/Wikia
• MW:Installation
• MW:Manual:Wiki_family
• MW:Category:Upgrading