Installing Mediawiki?

Looking through the Fantastico section of the cPanel, I realised that MediaWiki wasn't included in the Wiki section, and I wondered why. When the most famous wiki of the current time is WikiPedia (which uses MediaWiki), I figured that it would be the one that the majority of people know how to use (not to mention the one I'm personally most familiar with).

It's free to use, and I believe that all of the requirements required to run it are met by the servers:

• Web Server such as Apache or IIS
• PHP version 5.0 or later (5.1.x recommended)
• Database Server
  

  MySQL 4.0 or later
  or PostgreSQL 8.1 or later (also requires plpgsql and tsearch2)
  or Ingres 2006 or later (SVN-Download)

• Some users find it helpful to install an additional software package such as phpMyAdmin (MySQL) or phpPgAdmin (Postgres) to help administer the database server.
• For image thumbnailing and TeX-support, additional programs are required.

Assuming that it's not going to be on the Fantastico list for whatever reason, would it be possible to install it myself, or have I done what I normally do and missed some basic flaw in my cunning plan?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Just create a MySQL or PostgreSQL database in your account, then just upload the MediaWiki files, and then just follow it's instructions to install it to your website. Shouldn't be too hard.

xboxrulz

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Of course, it is possible to install whatever you want, just download the files and upload to your server, create a database if needed, installs or configure it, then make some tests to check if every thing works fine and finally make it public.

Best regards,

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Installing with Fantastico is great for a first time trail of a package, to get a look and feel of the app and see if its for you.Then when familiar with the app then go and download the latest version and install it manually, mainly Fantastico apps are out of date versions by a level or three depending on the webhost and how often they update the packages.
Here at Asta we do have Fantastico, its very out of date, and its broken and has been for months, so I wouldnt bother with it cos it will cause you pain and time loss.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Thought as much, just wanted to make sure.



I didn't realise Fantastico was out of date, I must admit. That's probably because I've never used it before (or even heard of it, for that matter) so I figured it would be fairly useful. As for having a trial of an out-of-date package, I suppose that's alright in general. I wouldn't base my opinions of a piece of software on something that's a few versions off of the latest one, though, so I suppose it's only there to check it's the right kind of software (namely what its basic function is).

Thanks all!

EDIT: Just letting you know that installing MediaWiki worked an absolute treat.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Well, it seems that I've lost my touch. After uninstalling the previous MediaWiki software an age ago, I've decided I'd like to re-install it. Since then, version 1.11.0 has come out, so as I was attempting a fresh install I saw no harm in trying that one. After uploading it to where I wanted it, I went to configure it and got this lovely stream of messages as it checked whether I could install MediaWiki or not:



So it says I can install MediaWiki, despite having a whole stack of warning messages? Does that sound right to you?

Personally I'm not a fan of installing software if it's said that it has problems...reckon I should try going ahead with the install?

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

i would never want to install anything with fantastico anyway to be honest. they are usually out of date.

i would just download it then upload it my self. all u have to do is make a database and run the install script and your done (and enter the details it needs).

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Agreed, but surely if the install script is coming up with 101 warnings then something's up? Is there a way of making the horrid errors go away, or is it more of a problem with the software/hosting we have available? AstaHost definitely meets all of the minimum requirements that MediaWiki have got listed, but in which case how should I (if at all) get rid of the warnings before trying to install?

Cheers in advance.

Mordent

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I've installed MediaWiki a bunch of times on my home computers, but I've always had root access. The help pages over there give advice on how to deal with a system where you don't. Many warnings are like the one about gdiff3. That program is used by the software if two people simultaneously edit the same page. When the second person tries to save the page, he is presented with a 3-way diff that asks him what to keep and what to discard from among the original, his changes, and the 3rd party changes. If this program is not accessible, it simply doesn't present the merged 3-way differences, and the user has to look more carefully to figure out what to keep and what not to.

One reason that I am here is that I want to experiment with MediaWiki online. I make extensive use of the math formula package in MediaWiki. It requires several less-common packages, one of which (imagemagick [Am I allowed to use cameltext here?]) is mentioned on the home page of astahost [How about here?]. The other is convert which was also flagged in your error messages. As I recall, it is compiled from Object Caml. Having done it, I can tell you it will probably be better to compile it on a Local linux system and upload it to astahost, assuming they will let you change its permission to executable. A few years ago, there was an easier way to handle equations, but OCaml has been the "standard" in MediaWiki for at least a year. Convert and imagemagick together take input that is reasonably close to Latex text and generate a png image file from it.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Two quick questions: (1) Where is ImageMagick? (2) How does one tell PHP where it is?

This query is being posted here because this thread is one of the few places ImageMagick is discussed at AstaHost.

I have uploaded the php scripts for MediaWiki, phpBB and WordPress. Unzipped, the sizes are MediaWiki 24.5 MB, phpBB 7.7 MB and WordPress 4.3 MB. So all of them fit comfortably on the servers here.

I have previously installed MediaWiki and phpBB multiple times on various versions of SuSE Linux, but always with root access to the server. Does it appear that the installation will go easily via cPanel? Yes! The new File Manager makes it very easy to upload and unpack the scripts. All three responded to browser access without even being installed. Of the three, phpBB provides the most information about the server environment before installation. That is not surprising, since the developers have spent about 3 years rewriting it from the ground up! It actually finds significantly more of the necessary resources already available in the servers here, than it does on a current installation of openSuSE 10.2 on my home network. OpaQue gets high praise from me for the care he has taken in provisioning his servers!

There is, however, one thing the phpBB installer does not find. That is ImageMagick. phpBB reports: Cannot determine location. If you know ImageMagick is installed, you may specify the location later within your administration control panel. I know from the AstaHost home page that ImageMagick Support is here, but it appears that its location is not in the PATH environment variable, or for some other reason, PHP cannot find it. I know MediaWiki also needs ImageMagick for equation display, so I really want to find it.

This is where I would normally use shell access. Directory listings of the several common locations of executables would probably answer that question. On my SuSE installation, for example, the relevant executable is at /usr/bin/convert. I have no idea how, within the constraints of cPanel, to test whether that is the correct location.

If someone can answer that question, or provide the actual location, it would be very helpful. Along a similar line, MediaWiki uses a program called texvc to decode LaTeX scripts, and feed ImageMagick. The recommendation of MediaWiki is to get OCaml, and compile it on your computer. Again, this would require shell access. I have compiled it on my computer, but I have no idea whether it is safe to copy the executable from SuSE Linux 10.2 to the AstaHost server and put it where MediaWiki can execute it. I certainly do not want to do something that might freeze the server.

Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)