RHEL7: How to install a Mediawiki service.

Presentation

MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia (source: Mediawiki website).

A wiki is a website that provides collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser. In a typical wiki, text is written using a simplified markup language (source: Wikipedia website).

Prerequisites

Start by installing a MySQL/MariaDB database.

You don’t need at this stage to create any database, user or tables, the web installation process will take care of it.

Installation Procedure

Install the EPEL repository:

# yum install -y epel-release

Install the following PHP packages:

# yum install -y php-xcache php-gd php-intl php-mysqlnd

Install the v1.23 Mediawiki package:

# yum install -y mediawiki123

Rename the /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf file:

# cd /etc/httpd/conf.d; mv welcome.conf welcome.conf.dist

Uncomment most of the lines in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/mediawiki123.conf file and get the following result:

# This is a sample configuration for a wiki instance located under
# /var/www/mediawiki123 and exposed as http://thishost/wiki123. Please
# read /usr/share/doc/mediawiki123-*/README.RPM on whether to use this
# instance or create copies of it.

# Remove this after installing.
Alias /wiki123/mw-config           /var/www/mediawiki123/mw-config

Alias /wiki123/index.php           /var/www/mediawiki123/index.php
Alias /wiki123/api.php             /var/www/mediawiki123/api.php
Alias /wiki123/load.php            /var/www/mediawiki123/load.php
Alias /wiki123/opensearch_desc.php /var/www/mediawiki123/opensearch_desc.php
Alias /wiki123/skins               /var/www/mediawiki123/skins
Alias /wiki123/images              /var/www/mediawiki123/images
Alias /wiki123                     /var/www/mediawiki123/index.php

<Directory /var/www/mediawiki123>
Options FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

Start and enable at boot the httpd service:

# systemctl start httpd && systemctl enable httpd

Add the HTTP service to the firewall configuration:

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Point your browser at http://servername/wiki123 to finish the configuration.

Configuration Procedure

In the web interface, select:

• your language,
• the wiki language,
• the database system (MySQL),
• the database host (localhost),
• your database name (my_wiki by default),
• the MySQL database prefix (keep empty if you don’t know),
• the database username (root),
• the database password (normally the same as specified in the MySQL/MariaDB installation tutorial),
• the database engine (InnoDB),
• the database character set (Binary),
• the name of the wiki (the name that you want displayed in the browser window),
• the project namespace (leave the default),
• your username,
• your password,
• your email address,
• the user rights profile:
  • Open wiki: this wiki model allows anyone to edit, without even logging in.
  • Account creation required: this kind of wiki provides extra accountability, but may deter casual contributors.
  • Authorized editors only: this wiki model allows approved users to edit, but the public can view the pages, including history.
  • Private wiki: this kind of wiki only allows approved users to view pages, with the same group allowed to edit.
• the copyright and licence (leave the default if you don’t know),
• if you enable outbound email or not,
• the return email address and some specific emails settings (leave the default if you don’t know),
• the settings for object caching (PHP object caching (APC, XCache or WinCache)).

At the end, you get a file called LocalSettings.php that you put at the root of your webserver structure (normally in the /var/www/mediawiki123 directory).

Finally, edit the /etc/httpd/conf.d/mediawiki123.conf file and comment out the following line:

Alias /wiki123/mw-config        /var/www/mediawiki123/mw-config

Reload the httpd service:

# systemctl reload httpd

You can now point your browser at http://servername/wiki123 and start using it.

Additional Resources

This tutorial is inspired by the Mediawiki website. The HowToForge website provides a tutorial about installing MediaWiki with Nginx on CentOS 7.