Meta talk:Babel/Archives/2004

MediaWiki 1.3.0beta6 installation

Question:

I am getting following message when trying to install new MediaWiki. Can someone tell me what this means? ...ipblocks is up to date. ...already have interwiki table ...indexes seem up to 20031107 standards ...have linkscc table. ...linkscc is up to date, or does not exist. Good. ...have hitcounter table. Converting links table to ID-ID... Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server.

I am experiencing the same issue on a Mac installation, so the Windows solution below is no good. Would be helpful to know how to troubleshoot this - it creates the tables fine and then fails.

Answer:

This problem occurs when you try to access you MySQL server through PHP without installing the PHP_mysl extension.

If you happen to be running Windows, you can follow these instructions to install the extension:

1. In php.ini, uncomment "extension=php_mysql.dll" and "extension=php_mysqli.dll"(the second is an improved interface which mediawiki is not yet compatible with)
2. Copy "php_mysql.dll" and "php_mysqli.dll" from the "PHP\ext" folder into you "Windows" directory.
3. Copy "libmysql.dll" from your "PHP" folder into your "Windows/sytem32"

Regards, Ben Woosley

Thanks, but...

Thanks for the instructions, but they are for php 5. I'm running php 4.3.10, mysql 4.1.10, and mediawiki 1.4.2 now, and I'm receiving the same error message. In full:

Checking environment...

   * PHP 4.3.10: ok
   * PHP server API is apache2handler; ok, using pretty URLs (index.php/Page_Title)
   * Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
   * PHP is configured with no memory_limit.
   * Have zlib support; enabling output compression.
   * Turck MMCache not installed, can't use object caching functions
   * Couldn't find GD library or ImageMagick; image thumbnailing disabled.
   * Installation directory: C:\server\site\mediawiki-1.4.2
   * Script URI path: /mediawiki-1.4.2
   * Warning: $wgSecretKey key is insecure, generated with mt_rand(). Consider changing it manually.
   * Connected as root (automatic)
   * Connected to database... 4.1.10-nt; enabling MySQL 4 enhancements
   * Warning: $wgSecretKey key is insecure, generated with mt_rand(). Consider changing it manually.
   * Database mediawiki exists
   * There are already MediaWiki tables in this database. Checking if updates are needed...
   * Granting user permissions...
...linkscc table already exists.
...hitcounter table already exists.
...querycache table already exists.
...objectcache table already exists.
...categorylinks table already exists.
...logging table already exists.
...user_rights table already exists.
...have ipb_id field in ipblocks table.
...have ipb_expiry field in ipblocks table.
...have rc_type field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_ip field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_id field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_patrolled field in recentchanges table.
...have user_real_name field in user table.
...have user_token field in user table.
...have ur_user field in user_rights table.
...have log_params field in logging table.
...already have interwiki table
...indexes seem up to 20031107 standards
...linkscc is up to date, or does not exist. Good.
Converting links table to ID-ID...
Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server.

This is a new install. The database was already created from the first attempt to install. Any advice?

Got It

The problem had to do with the passwords in the newer mysql user table being incompatible with php 4's mysql extension. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/old-client.html

Specifically use:

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR
    -> 'some_user'@'some_host' = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd');

You can the re-run the config web page, you should see it work:

Converting links table to ID-ID...
Schema already converted
...image primary key already set.
Logging table has correct title encoding.
...cur_id covering index already exists.
Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace...
Clearing message cache...Done.

# Finished update checks.

Creating LocalSettings.php...

Success! Move the config/LocalSettings.php file into the parent directory, then follow this link to your wiki.

There' more...?

I have the same problem...occassionally. Usually refreshing/reposting fixes it, but it is very annoying, as it happens every other page transition. PHP (4) is compiled with-mysql=shared,/usr (Linux/Debian). It generally "works", but I suspect there's some odd problem with php-mysql. How can I diagnose this before bothering the sysadmin?

Links between pages

I cannot find the place for development proposals?

I suggest that there should be a possibility to add links between two wiki pages. I don't mean links from one page to another, I mean a link which appares on both page.

Example 1. "Tis is the opposite of". When i add such link it should be on both pages.

Example 2. "This is translation from english-to-french" On french Wiktionary page there should appare link "English:..." And on English wiktionary page there should appare link "French:..."

Example 3. These links should be categorized and searchable. I want to see all translations from english to french.

Using MediaWiki with some CI-Layout

I've installed MediaWiki 1.3.7 and everything works fine. But I have to adopt some CI-layout from my university which means custom header, footer and navigation bars. I planned using a custom CSS with the output of WikiMedia, keeping the PHP files unharmed. But i never got far.

I used my weekend for reading lots of pages and discussions, following every link, trying out and failing over and over again -- and i'm still as confused as before. Maybe someone of you can help me solving my problems:

• What ist the meant-to-be way of customizing the look and feel of MediaWiki? Is there a page out there dedicated to this problem? Everything I've read so far talks about Customization, but doesn't give a clue how to actually do it.

• How do I tell MediaWiki where to find my CSS document? LocalSettings.php seems to accept only the build-in style sheets. Any other value will be ignored or some PHP object error (in Users.php, line 486) occures.

• Is there any Interface Definition or something like that for the XML, XHTML or whatever MediaWiki generates? This is needed urgently for the adaptation of the CSS files. Further, is this output consistent at all? Using different skins seems to lead to different XML output!?!

• I have to rearrange, split and regroup most of the menues due to our CI-layout. There is this templates/xhtml_slim.pt PHPTal document which seems to have a major impact on this (still, im not absolutely sure, why?), but the file itself is quite cryptic and non-selfexplanatory. Is there any help on this?

• Further, I'd rather keep the original file templates/xhtml_slim.pt unharmed and diverge my own version with its own name. How do I tell MediaWiki to use my alternative PT file?

Any help, links or example documents are appreciated.

Thanks in advance. --131.234.64.101 16:51, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Basically, you need to create a new class which defines your new skin; the built-in skins do indeed create different HTML/XHTML output, since most are actually defined entirely by a block of PHP-code (PHPTal is a relatively recent addition to the code). Future versions of the software will make custom creation of skins, especially those using PHPTal, much simpler; but for now, you will need to observe and copy how the existing skins do it. The key class is in includes/Skin.php, from which the classes for all other skins inherit; there is then an includes/SkinPHPTal.php, which implements skins such as MonoBook, which uses the templates/xhtml_slim.pt file for its XHTML structure, plus some associated CSS. By modifying, copying, or inheriting from this, you should be able to create your own .pt template (basically, an XHTML file with some variable substitutions whose value is supplied by the software) and CSS rules, all wrapped up in a class called Skin<yournamehere> (note that the SkinMonoBook class, for instance, is defined within SkinPHPTal.php). Finally, there is a list of "allowed skins" in Skin.php, to which you will need to add your new skin - and don't forget to require_once() any new PHP files you create in includes/User.php, too.

I'm not an expert in this (or, really, any) part of the software, but I hope this is largely correct, and at least a little bit helpful. Good luck, and happy hacking! - IMSoP 22:53, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)