OpenWetWare:Administration/Installation

Ilya 18:08, 1 May 2006 (EDT): I've started this page to follow up on the discussion at today's Steering Committee Meeting. Below are some of my notes I have collected while installing/upgrading/moving OpenWetWare.

Ilya 18:02, 25 September 2006 (EDT): These instructions are for installing the latest MediaWiki version (1.7.1 as of today) with Apache on RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 and are specific to OpenWetWare.

Adapted from Sysadmin hub @ mediawiki.org

Prerequisites

• Install PHP5
  • Need to compile PHP with the following options at minimum:
    • --with-curl
  • Installer from tar file will add LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so into /etc/httpd/conf.httpd.conf. Move this line to /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf and comment out the corresponding PHP4 line.

Installation

The idea is to have the OpenWetWare customizations separate from the MediaWiki software installation by placing them in two different directories (/data/web/openwetware and /data/web/mediawiki respectively) with appropriate symlinks setup between them.

• Download the latest version of MediaWiki (downloading via SVN may be easier that using the tar file)
• Change DocumentRoot in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf to /data/web/mediawiki
• Create wiki folder in DocumentRoot:

$ sudo mkdir /data/web/mediawiki

• Create a group that would have write access to the wiki folder:

$ sudo /usr/sbin/groupadd www

• Change ownership of the folder:

$ sudo chown -R root:www /data/www/html/openwetware
$ sudo chmod -R g+ws /var/www/html/openwetware

• Extract mediawiki code into wikifolder or follow SVN instructions
• Make config folder writeable by the webserver for setup:

sudo chown apache ./config

• Create a VirtualHost entry in Apache configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)
• Visit your wiki site/config and answer configuration questions
  • Wiki name
  • License
  • DB user
  • Sysop account name (e.g., Administrator)
• move LocalSettings.php from config folder to main wiki folder

sudo mv ./config/LocalSettings.php ./

LocalSettings.php

• Add extensions after require_once( "includes/DefaultSettings.php" );
• Specify access rights (to be added)
• Set PHP memory limit to 64MB (increase needed to allow import of multiple wiki pages):

ini_set( 'memory_limit', '64M' );

• To allow easier file uploads

$wgFileExtensions = array('png','gif','jpg','jpeg','ogg','doc','xls','ppt','sxc','pdf');
$wgStrictFileExtensions = false;

• Warn if uploaded files are larger than this (use this to prevent default warning about uploads larger than 100k)

$wgUploadSizeWarning = 10485760;  #10M

• To enable image uploads, make sure the 'images' directory is writable, then uncomment this:

$wgDisableUploads = false;

• Top enable image manipulation:

$wgUseImageResize = true;
$wgUseImageMagick = true;
$wgImageMagickConvertCommand = "/usr/bin/convert";   # may need changing: /usr/X11R6/bin/convert

• If you have the appropriate support software installed you can enable inline LaTeX equations:

$wgUseTeX           = true;
$wgMathPath         = "{$wgUploadPath}/math";
$wgMathDirectory    = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/math";
$wgTmpDirectory     = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/tmp";

• To install LaTeX support (OCaml software package required):

cd ./math
make

Optional

• time zone fix to use local time (if hwtime is set to UTC)

$wgLocalTZoffset = date("Z") / 3600;

• custom wiki logo (upload the logo image and provide a path to it here)

$wgLogo = "$wgStylePath/common/images/newlogoname.jpg";

• Copyright info
• Google search
• Wikitex

End

• Disable interpretation of PHP in the upload directory (./images):
  • create .htaccess file and with the following two lines:

php_value engine off
AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml

• Set permissions

sudo chown -R root:wiki wikifolder
sudo chmod -R g+w wikifolder
find ./ -type d -exec chmod g+s '{}' \;

• make config file read-only by the webserver, readable and writeable by wiki group and not accessible by anyone else (contains mysql user password)

sudo chown apache:wiki ./LocalSettings.php
sudo chmod 460 ./LocalSettings.php

• make upload directory writeable by the webserver

sudo chown apache:wiki ./images
sudo chmod -R g+w ./images
sudo chown root:wiki ./images/.htaccess

• create/move favicon.ico file in/to the wikifolder
• add commands to daily backup script to dump the wiki database - IMPORTANT

Server-wide config

(to be done once per site)

• You may wish to turn register_globals off, because some programs may be insecure using that mode. See http://php.net/register_globals for how to disable it.

File uploading

(maximum file size)

php.ini

(changing this file requires Apache restart)

upload_max_filesize = <Number>M

where <Number> is the limit in MBytes.

post_max_size =<Number>M

httpd.conf

(/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf for Apache2 on Linux)

• Some versions of Apache2 have an additional limit which is enforced by default for PHP scripts (Content-length limit in Apache2).

LimitRequestBody 524288

• Sometimes php.ini file is ignored by Apache; workaround in httpd.conf or /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf

PHPIniDir /usr/local/pkg/php-5.1.2/etc

SpecialImport.php

This MediaWiki file has a hardcoded MAX_FILE_SIZE on the form that you may need to increase manually.

MySQL user priviliges

• SHOW DATABASES, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON *.*
• SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, CREATE, ALTER ON 'wikidbname'.*

Miscellaneous

Locking database: read-only mode

• From Lock the database: since mediawiki 1.5 you can set $wgReadOnly to a string describing the reason for read-only mode, instead of creating a file. (Usual wiki markup is allowed in this string).
• Read-only lock file: create a file in an upload directory (must be writeable by the web server user), error message with the contents of the file will show up (e.g., "/var/www/html/openwetware/images/lock_yBgMBwiR").
• From Help on special pages:
  • Lockdb: Developer only. Puts the wiki in read only mode.
  • Unlockdb: Developer only. Puts the wiki in read/write mode.

Resources

• Installation Help
• Upgrading MediaWiki
• Running MediaWiki on Linux
• Running MediaWiki on Mac OS X
• Uploading files