MediaWiki
Contents
Installation
You need to have a web server, such as Apache installed, configured to be able to use PHP.
Install the php-gd, php-intl and mediawiki, all available from the official repositories.
You will also need a database, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or sqlite (php-sqlite and sqlite).
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.so extension=intl.so
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 lines to /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Include conf/extra/mediawiki.conf
Restart the httpd.service daemon.
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?title=$1&$args;
}
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 $uri @rewrite;
}
location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
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 the nginx.service daemon.
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.
LocalSettings.php
Open the wiki url (is http://your_server/mediawiki/) in a browser and do the initial setup to create LocalSettings.php. Then save it to /usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php.
Tips and tricks
Mathematics (texvc)
Usually installing texvc and enabling it in the config are 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
After following this instruction on how to install the VisualEditor, you need a backend nodejs application on your server, called Parsoid, to get it finally working.
Simply install parsoid-git from the AUR and adjust the path to your MediaWiki in following file:
/usr/share/webapps/parsoid/api/localsettings.js
parsoidConfig.setInterwiki( 'localhost', 'http://localhost/mediawiki/api.php' );
After that simply enable and start parsoid.service.
Other Extensions
Usually extensions are located in /usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/extensions
and managing them manually may, over time, be more work than creating a package in AUR.
See mediawiki-ext-confirmaccount-git[broken link: package not found] and mediawiki-ext-usermerge-git[broken link: package not found] for examples.