MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free and open source wiki software written in PHP, originally developed for Wikipedia. It also powers this wiki.
Contents
Installation
To run MediaWiki you need three things:
- the mediawiki package
- a web server – Apache, Nginx or Lighttpd
- a database system – MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite
Optionally install imagemagick or php-gd for thumbnail rendering and php-intl to handle Unicode normalization.
Configuration
The steps to achieve a working MediaWiki configuration involve editing the PHP settings and adding the MediaWiki configuration snippets.
PHP
First, adjust the open_basedir
in /etc/php/php.ini
to include the mediawiki data directory (/var/lib/mediawiki
by default):
/etc/php/php.ini
open_basedir = /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/share/webapps/:/var/lib/mediawiki/
Then, also in /etc/php/php.ini
, uncomment the following lines: (in the Dynamic Extensions
section)
extension=gd extension=intl extension=iconv
- If you would like to use MariaDB as database, also uncomment
extension=mysqli
. - If you would like to use PostgreSQL as database, also uncomment
extension=pgsql
. - If you would like to use SQLite as database, also uncomment
extension=pdo_sqlite
.
Second, tweak the session handling or you might get a fatal error (PHP Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize storage module[...]
) by finding the session.save_path
path. A good choice can be /var/lib/php/sessions
or /tmp/
.
/etc/php/php.ini
session.save_path = "/var/lib/php/sessions"
You will need to create the directory if it doesn't exist and then restrict its permissions:
# mkdir -p /var/lib/php/sessions/ # chown http:http /var/lib/php/sessions # chmod go-rwx /var/lib/php/sessions
Web server
Apache
Copy /etc/webapps/mediawiki/apache.example.conf
to /etc/httpd/conf/extra/mediawiki.conf
and edit it as needed.
Add the following line to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
:
Include conf/extra/mediawiki.conf
Restart the httpd.service
daemon.
/etc/webapps/mediawiki/apache.example.conf
will overwrite the PHP open_basedir setting, possibly conflicting with other pages. This behavior can be changed by moving line starting with php_admin_value
between the <Directory>
tags. Further, if you are running multiple applications that depend on the same server, this value could also be added to the open_basedir value in /etc/php/php.ini
instead of /etc/httpd/conf/extra/mediawiki.conf
Nginx
To get MediaWiki working with Nginx, create the following file:
/etc/nginx/mediawiki.conf
location / { index index.php; try_files $uri $uri/ @mediawiki; } location @mediawiki { rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php; } location ~ \.php5?$ { include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php5; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; try_files $uri @mediawiki; } location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ { try_files $uri /index.php; expires max; log_not_found off; } # Restrictions based on the .htaccess files location ^~ ^/(cache|includes|maintenance|languages|serialized|tests|images/deleted)/ { deny all; } location ^~ ^/(bin|docs|extensions|includes|maintenance|mw-config|resources|serialized|tests)/ { internal; } location ^~ /images/ { try_files $uri /index.php; } location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; }
Ensure that php-fpm is installed and started.
Include a server directive, similar to this
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
server { listen 80; server_name mediawiki; root /usr/share/webapps/mediawiki; index index.php; charset utf-8; # For correct file uploads client_max_body_size 100m; # Equal or more than upload_max_filesize in /etc/php/php.ini client_body_timeout 60; include mediawiki.conf; }
Finally, restart nginx.service
and php-fpm.service
daemons.
Lighttpd
You should have Lighttpd installed and configured. "mod_alias" and "mod_rewrite" in server.modules array of lighttpd is required. Append to the lighttpd configuration file the following lines
/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
alias.url += ("/mediawiki" => "/usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/") url.rewrite-once += ( "^/mediawiki/wiki/upload/(.+)" => "/mediawiki/wiki/upload/$1", "^/mediawiki/wiki/$" => "/mediawiki/index.php", "^/mediawiki/wiki/([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?" => "/mediawiki/index.php?title=$1&$2" )
Restart the lighttpd.service
daemon.
Database
If the database server is already set up, MediaWiki can automatically create the database (provided that the database root password is supplied) during the next step. Otherwise the database needs to be created manually, see upstream instructions.
LocalSettings.php
Open the wiki url (usually http://your_server/mediawiki/
) in a browser and do the initial configuration. Follow upstream instructions.
The generated LocalSettings.php
file is offered for download, save it to /usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php
. This file defines the specific settings of your wiki. Whenever you upgrade the mediawiki package, it is not replaced.
Tips and tricks
Mathematics (texvc)
Usually installing texvc and enabling it in the config is enough:
$wgUseTeX = true;
If you get problems, try to increase limits for shell commands:
$wgMaxShellMemory = 8000000; $wgMaxShellFileSize = 1000000; $wgMaxShellTime = 300;
Unicode
Check that php, apache and mysql uses UTF-8. Otherwise you may face strange bugs because of encoding mismatch.
VisualEditor
The VisualEditor MediaWiki extension provides a rich-text editor for MediaWiki. Follow mw:Extension:VisualEditor to install it.
You will also need the Parsoid Node.js backend, which is available from the AUR as parsoid-gitAUR.
Adjust the path to MediaWiki in /usr/share/webapps/parsoid/api/localsettings.js
:
parsoidConfig.setInterwiki( 'localhost', 'http://localhost/mediawiki/api.php' );
After that enable and start parsoid.service
.
Alternatively, one may also use the parsoidAUR package, and configure the service via the yaml file, where the following lines should be present:
/usr/share/webapps/parsoid/config.yaml
uri: `'http://localhost/mediawiki/api.php'` domain: 'localhost'
The matching part in the mediawiki settings:
/usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php
$wgVirtualRestConfig['modules']['parsoid'] = array( // URL to the Parsoid instance // Use port 8142 if you use the Debian package 'url' => 'http://localhost:8000', // Parsoid "domain", see below (optional) 'domain' => 'localhost', // Parsoid "prefix", see below (optional) 'prefix' => 'localhost'
After configuration, the parsoid
service may be started (restarted) and (if not done yet) enabled.