Hi @LTS_Tom
Can you please tell me if your are still maintaining the Self Hosted Media Wiki Debian VM from
https://www.lawrencesystems.com/using-a-self-hosted-mediawiki-as-a-private-documentation-server-with-visual-editor/
Il like to try it but wonder how much updating I’ll need to do.
Thank you
I have not had the time to make a new VM. I have not tested it but there is a docker version https://hub.docker.com/_/mediawiki
Hi Tom, thank you for the link.
You only need to search for upgrade guides from one version to the next, very few out there, because it’s a real pain. The irony with Mediawiki is their documentation on how to update, upgrade add extensions is really painful.
Installing it the first time is relatively easy in a vm, I’ve not tried the docker version maybe it’s easier to update/upgrade but now I have all my notes in a mediawiki vm.
Been working on this over the weekend, specifically with the MediaWiki (theWiki) VM Tom provided in 2018. This guide will be a multi part post as there seems to be a 2 link limit per post
That VM is a Debian 9 server with a MediaWiki v1.30 PHP 7.0.x and has parsoid installed to use the VisualEditor extension.
The current version of MediaWiki is 1.35.1 and VisualEditor is included in the “base” install
PHP 7.0 is no longer supported
PHP 7.3.x is supported and is the recommended version for MW 1.35.x
Below is how I was able to upgrade the MW VM from Tom. The upgrade requires
Upgrade PHP from 7.0. to 7.3
Upgrade MediaWiki from 1.30 to 1.35.1
Modify the LocalSettings.php configuration file
**** NOTE: The VM provided by Tom uses the root account so SUDO is not used for commands. If use a limited account, you will need to add sudo to each ot the commands below
First things - prep
Make a snapshot so you can roll things back if a mistake is made
if you have data in the MW server, suggest doing a backup of the DB
Update the OS and related packages
apt update && apt upgrade -yy && apt autoremove -y
NOTE: an error will appear when the update tries to pull from MediWiki update repos
the error can be ignored or removed with nano or vi (VIM)
Upgrading PHP from 7.0 to 7.3
systemctl stop apache2
php -v
dpkg -l | grep php | tee packages.txt
nano packages.txt
apt install gnupg gnupg1 gnupg2
wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
echo “deb Index of /php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main” | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php7.3.list
apt update
apt install php7.3 php7.3-common php7.3-cli
update-alternatives --set php $(which php7.3)
apt install -y php7.3 libapache2-mod-php7.3 php7.3-bz2 php7.3-curl php7.3-gd php7.3-mbstring php7.3-mcrypt php7.3-mysql php7.3-xml php7.3-zip php7.3-curl php7.3-json php7.3-opcache php7.3-readline php7.3-xml php7.3-apc php7.3-imagick php7.3-int php7.3-fpm
a2enconf php7.3-fpm
2enmod proxy_fcgi setenvif
php -v
apt purge php7.0 php7.0-common
apt update && apt upgrade -yy && apt autoremove -y
############ Upgrading MediaWiki from 1.30 to 1.35.1 ##################
systemctl stop apache2
cd ~
mkdir /var/www/mw
cd /var/www/mw
cp /var/www/html/LocalSettings.php /var/www/html/LocalSettings.php.old.bak
wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.35/mediawiki-1.35.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf mediawiki-1.35.1.tar.gz -C /var/www/html/ --strip-components=1
/var/www/html/maintenance/update.php
systemctl stop apache2
nano /var/www/html/LocalSettings.php
// OLD Options
//wfLoadExtension( ‘Cite’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘CiteThisPage’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘Gadgets’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘ImageMap’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘InputBox’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘ParserFunctions’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘Poem’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘Renameuser’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘MsUpload’ );
//require_once “$IP/extensions/Vector/Vector.php”;
//wfLoadExtension( ‘WikiEditor’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘OATHAuth’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘UserPageViewTracker’ );
//wfLoadExtension( ‘VisualEditor’ );
##############################################################################
##############################################################################
wfLoadExtension( ‘CategoryTree’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Cite’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘CiteThisPage’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘ConfirmEdit’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Gadgets’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘ImageMap’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘InputBox’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Interwiki’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘LocalisationUpdate’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘MultimediaViewer’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Nuke’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘OATHAuth’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘PageImages’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘ParserFunctions’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘PdfHandler’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Poem’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Renameuser’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘ReplaceText’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘Scribunto’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘SecureLinkFixer’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘SpamBlacklist’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘TemplateData’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘TextExtracts’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘TitleBlacklist’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘VisualEditor’ );
wfLoadExtension( ‘WikiEditor’ );
// Enable by default for everybody
$wgDefaultUserOptions[‘visualeditor-enable’] = 1;
//
// // Optional: Set VisualEditor as the default for anonymous users
// // otherwise they will have to switch to VE
$wgDefaultUserOptions[‘visualeditor-editor’] = “visualeditor”;#
//
// // Don’t allow users to disable it
$wgHiddenPrefs[] = ‘visualeditor-enable’;
//
// // OPTIONAL: Enable VisualEditor’s experimental code features
$wgDefaultUserOptions[‘visualeditor-enable-experimental’] = 1;
//
$wgVisualEditorEnableWikitext = true;
$wgDefaultUserOptions[‘visualeditor-newwikitext’] = 1;
$wgHiddenPrefs[] = ‘visualeditor-newwikitext’;
$wgDisableUploadScriptChecks = true;
$wgVirtualRestConfig[‘modules’][‘parsoid’] = array(
// URL to the Parsoid instance
// Use port 8142 if you use the Debian package
‘url’ => ‘http://localhost:8142’,
// Parsoid “domain”, see below (optional)
‘domain’ => ‘localhost’,
// Parsoid “prefix”, see below (optional)
‘prefix’ => ‘localhost’
);
$wgVirtualRestConfig[‘modules’][‘parsoid’][‘forwardCookies’] = true;
// End of Old Options
$wgFileExtensions = array( ‘png’, ‘gif’, ‘jpg’, ‘jpeg’, ‘doc’,
‘xls’, ‘xml’, ‘txt’, ‘mpp’, ‘pdf’, ‘ppt’, ‘tiff’, ‘bmp’, ‘docx’, ‘xlsx’, ‘db’, ‘key’,
‘pptx’, ‘ps’, ‘odt’, ‘ods’, ‘odp’, ‘unf’, ‘cfg’, ‘zip’, ‘xml’, ‘odg’
);
$wgMaxUploadSize = 50000000;
$wgUploadSizeWarning - 0;
$wgVerifyMimeType = false;
$wgMSU_useDragDrop = true; // Should the drag & drop area be shown? (Not set by default)
$wgMSU_showAutoCat = true; // Files uploaded while editing a category page will be added to that category
$wgMSU_checkAutoCat = true; // Whether the checkbox for adding a category to a page is checked by default
$wgMSU_useMsLinks = false; // Insert links in Extension:MsLinks style?
$wgMSU_confirmReplace = true; // Show the “Replace file?” checkbox
$wgMSU_imgParams = ‘400px’; // The default size for images inserted on the edit page
$wgEnableWriteAPI = true; // Enable the API
$wgEnableUploads = true; // Enable uploads
$wgAllowJavaUploads = true; // Solves problem with Office 2007 and newer files (docx, xlsx, etc.)
$wgGroupPermissions[‘user’][‘upload’] = true; // Allow regular users to upload files
$wgDefaultUserOptions[‘usebetatoolbar’] = 1;
End of automatically generated settings.
Add more configuration options below.
##################################################################################
systemctl restart apache2
systemctl status apache2
#################################################################################
@lo.voltage oh wow that looks pretty good. Have attempted to upgrade previously but failed miserably. thanks for posting
really hate the way mediawiki works with respect to data input / updating / extensions but reading or retrieving my notes … soooooo much better
@lo.voltage Thank you very much for taking the time to provide such a details write up.
I will give this a try this week. 
@LTS_Tom did you removed the VM from your website?
@fred974 It’s not that difficult to setup Mediawiki from a clean install (much harder to upgrade). The latest Mediawiki now has the visual editor included in case that is what you are looking for.
@neogrid so In order to get a simila version of what @LTS_Tom is provide is it just a case of installing Mediawiki on a VM and copy the settings from LocalSettings.php?
Just like Tom, I want to restrict the app to authorised user only via VNP access behind pfSense
I had this and this bookmarked, I’ve installed mine in a vm on headless debian 10. If you can setup LAMP, there are numerous guides on the web then it’s relatively painless.
During the install (I don’t fully recall) somewhere you need to ensure you don’t have an open wiki, so that you need a username and password to access the site. Once setup you can also enable 2FA from the wiki.
The last step you need to copy over the localsettings file that mediawiki generates. I use webmin which is a GUI for a headless machine that runs in a browser, which make it a bit easier to see the file structure.
All - hope you find the info usable. Posting it here was a challenge as the way I format my build/upgrade notes is interferes with the way the board software allows post to be formatted. Basically, I am old school and use Text editor as I don’t like anything messing with my ingrained ways of doing things. My raw notes use the same items used in mark down language. The other thing is I make sure to include in my build notes URL links for reference and in many cases to cite my references, and because I forget, so I’m not pulling things out of my @$$ lol. The URL links had to be removed. In the future for things like this, namely my build sheets, will consider posting my raw notes to something like pastebin.
While there is a lot of info here, it really doesn’t take long to do. It took longer to post the steps by a factor of 4 then it did to actually preform the upgrade.
If something is broken, please let me know and I will do my best to either correct it or help you work thru it.
@LTS_Tom Thanks for everything you do, was on the live chat this past Thursday. Giving back for all the things you have given us.
Yes the “documentation” on the MediaWiki website is a mess. Spent a few whole days sifting thru everything last year trying to understand the info to build my own MW server from scratch. I did reverse engineer Tom’s build to see how it was constructed. Combined what I knew about building Invoice Ninja instances and others into creating my own MW server from scratch on Debian 10.
You are correct that the MW VM is (at this moment) no longer available. In recent videos, Tom says they have moved the web host in house (IIRC). I have the image and could post it from Google Docs. Maybe @LTS_Tom will put the old one back up?
In the coming days I want to post my build sheet for constructing a new Debian 10 server MediaWiki build from scratch. Building the MW server from scratch is not too bad, just need edit out my swearing, clean up the formatting, grammar and spelling a bit.
@neogrid The LocalSettings.php can be edited with Webmin. It can be done with Nano or Vi (VIM) in the terminal as outlined in the steps above. Being I’m a Linux shop, I use SFTP to grab the file and modify it with Geany if I really needed too. I think WinSFP for Windows based users would work too. Configuring the “open wiki” happens during the first run of a new instance, during the setup wizard.
Enjoy!
There is a turnkey solution from Cloudron I have been previewing. Its a pretty sweet system and the bar to entry for both business and personal are very affordable. Its is a paid thing but does have a free version that supports 2 apps. Looking at this being one of our small business solutions especially for new businesses
For Docker Devs
Seems to be professionally run, is actively supported and seems to have a polish that similar offerings do not have. Also they have an online live demo
@lo.voltage Thank you very much for taking the time to provide this information. I had a quick look and it seem to be a neat system. I will give that a try as soon as I can
Completed a guide for applying minor revision updates to MediaWiki
It is here on the forums at MediaWiki - Applying Minor Revision Updates
Thanks for that it’s really helpful. Not done an upgrade as yet but it’s on my to do list.
MediaWIki version 1.36.1 has been released and I have posted a new guide on updating from 1.35.xx to 1.36 here at
https://staging-forum.lawrencesystems.com/t/mediawiki-applying-major-revision-updates/10281
MediaWiki release info here at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/mediawiki-announce@lists.wikimedia.org/message/YR3X4L2CPSEJVSY543AWEO65TD6APXHP/
