Basic MediaWiki Installation

Preparations

In the following, we'll assume you already have the following packages installed and configured:

• Apache2
• MySQL-server
• PHP5 (including php5-mysql)

Furthermore, you have the following credentials (name and password) or equivalent rights:

• root (for installation)
• MySQL root (for database creation)

Update your APT sources, and run

apt-get install mediawiki

This installs all mediawiki files, including a default configuration. For your convenience, we've created a MediaWiki directory structure map. If you run Apache2 (as we recommend), then that is automatically configured (for the most part) as well. By the way, you can reconfigure MediaWiki with dpkg-reconfigure, but that will only ask you for which web servers you'd like to generate a default configuration (those web servers being apache, apache-ssl, apache2 and cherokee). To get Apache2 to serve the Wiki on the default alias /mediawiki, edit /etc/mediawiki/apache.conf. Uncomment the alias line, so that the top of the file looks like this:

# Uncomment this to add an alias.
# This does not work properly with virtual hosts..
Alias /mediawiki /var/lib/mediawiki

Then restart or reload Apache2:

invoke-rc.d apache2 reload

Now the MediaWiki instance is being served on your webserver; you should be able to visit http://yourserver.lan/mediawiki, and see the friendly MediaWiki sunflower, and a link to "Please set up the wiki first". Clicking this link will bring you to a single, long web page, that'll help you to actually create the Wiki instance. The first section contains the result of an environment check. It should end with the sentence "Environment checked. You can install MediaWiki.". If not, then you'll first have to fix whatever is holding back your MediaWiki installation.

The rest of the page is one long form. You'll have to provide all data to define your wiki. Questions are a.o.:

• The Wiki name: Must not be blank or "MediaWiki" and may not contain "#". Preferably a short word without punctuation, i.e. "SaruWiki".
• Contact e-mail: Displayed to users in some error messages, used as the return address for password reminders, and used as the default sender address of e-mail notifications.
• Language: determines the wiki interface localization. We only have experience with "en - English" but the pulldown list reveals an impressive list of languages, from "nl - Nederlands" to "jut - Jysk" and from "ak - Akan" to "yo - Yorùbá".
• the Copyright/license: you can have your Wiki display the GNU Free Documentation License, a Creative Commons license (that you'll have to select in a page under a hyperlink), or no license metadata at all. Think careful what you want with the materials that you and others create in your Wiki instance!
• an Admin username and password: the proposed default is WikiSysop
• Email address authentication: if this is enabled, then users have to confirm their e-mail address using a magic link sent to them whenever they set or change it, and only authenticated e-mail addresses can receive mails from other users and/or change notification mails. Setting this option is recommended for public wikis because of potential abuse of the e-mail features just above this particular question.
• Database type: You can choose from a list of one, being MySQL :-).
• Database host: can be localhost, if you've installed MySQL on this same machine, but can also be an IP address or a DNS name to a remote MySQL server
• Database name: Here you choose under what name the database will be created in the MySQL server. The default is wikidb.

Will appear as the namespace name for "meta" pages, and throughout the interface.

The installation also creates a