Installing Mediawiki using SQLite Database in GNU/Debian

NOTE: These article commands have been tested in GNU/Debian Sid. They should also work in Ubuntu flavours.

First we need to install php, apache and SQLite if they are not installed. This command will do the trick:
#apt-get install php5-sqlite

Following mediawiki recommendation we add some extensions to php for SQLite to work:
Edit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Add these two lines in that file:

extension=php_pdo_sqlite.so
extension=php_pdo.so

To solve servername warning when launching apache daemon:
#echo "ServerName localhost" >> /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

We start apache web server:
#apache2ctl start

DOWNLOAD MEDIAWIKI SOURCE CODE

#cd /var/www

We get latest mediawiki source code tarball (current one when writting this article is 1.15.1):
#wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.1.tar.gz

Uncompress it:
#tar xvfz mediawiki-1.15.1.tar.gz
#cd mediawiki-1.15.1
#ln -s mediawiki-1.15.1 mediawiki

We set writting permissions to config directory so we will be able to configure our wiki:
#chmod a+w config

CONFIGURING THE WIKI

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Backing and Restoring Mediawiki in Ubuntu

We are going to learn how to back up and restore our Mediawiki installed on a Ubuntu system.

To acomplish that we will execute some wiki maintenance commands.
These maintenance commands will be accesible after configuring AdminSettings.php file.

CONFIGURING AdminSettings.php FILE

AdminSettings.sample from the Mediawiki examples documentation will serve us as a model file to start.

We copy it into mediawiki configuration directory in /etc and assign the correct owner and permissions.
$sudo cp /usr/share/doc/mediawiki1.10/examples/AdminSettings.sample /etc/mediawiki1.10/AdminSettings.php
$sudo chown root:root /etc/mediawiki1.10/AdminSettings.php
$sudo chmod 600 /etc/mediawiki1.10/AdminSettings.php


Now we are going to edit AdminSettings.php file
$gksudo gedit /etc/mediawiki1.10/AdminSettings.php

Change these two variables using the parameters you used when creating the wiki database: e.g: wikiuser and its password.
$wgDBadminuser = 'DB user name'
$wgDBadminpassword = 'DB password'

Now that AdminSettings.php file is properly configured we are gonna back up and restore the wiki.

BACKING UP THE WIKI

dumpBackup.php command will back up our wiki:
$cd /var/lib/mediawiki1.10/maintenance
$sudo php dumpBackup.php --current > ~/foo_backup.xml
NOTE: --full option backups history of pages, not only last version as --current does.

RESTORING THE WIKI

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Installing and Configuring Mediawiki on a Ubuntu Gutsy Desktop System

Mediawiki is the web based tool (wiki software) that Wikipedia uses to manage, store and serve its contents.

Mediawiki is written in PHP, and in this installation we will use MySQL as database management system (although it can be configured to use PostgreSQL)

Mediawiki is ditributed under the GNU GPL license.

INSTALLING MEDIAWIKI

First step is installing MySQL:
$sudo aptitude install mysql-admin mysql-server

It will ask you for MySQL root password. Then choose a secure password and type it.


Now we install Mediawiki itself:
$sudo aptitude install mediawiki

It will automatically check for apache and php dependencies.

Current mediawiki version is 1.10.


At installation I get this warning:
apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

There is some info in this thread at ubuntu forums.

To get rid of the error:
$gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

httpd.conf file is usually empty, and then we add this line:
ServerName localhost

After saving the file we check if the error is gone executing this command:
$sudo apache2ctl restart

SETTING MEDIAWIKI URL ALIAS

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