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Installing MediaWiki on Linux – CentOS

In this post we will learn how to setup a MediaWiki on CentOS. MediaWiki requires Apache web server, a database server (we’ll use MySQL), and PHP version 5.  I will explain step by step process of installing these required components.

1. Install MySql server and mysql-php module

   yum install mysql-server mysql php-mysql
   /sbin/chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
   /sbin/service mysqld start
   

2. Change 'root' user password for mysql; Create mysql wiki database and user

   mysql
   

   mysql> USE mysql;
   mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpassword') WHERE user='root';
   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   mysql> CREATE DATABASE wiki;
   mysql> CREATE USER 'wikiuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'wikipassword';
   mysql> GRANT ALL ON wiki.* TO 'wikiuser'@'localhost';
   mysql> exit
   

3. Download the mediawiki, http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki 1.15.1.tar.gz

   wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.15/mediawiki-1.15.1.tar.gz

4. Untar the mediawiki to /var/www/html and give write permissions for config folder (Assuming that /var/www/html is the DocumentRoot)

   tar -xvvf mediawiki-1.15.1.tar.gz
   mv mediawiki-1.15.1 /var/www/html/wiki
   

5. Change the ownership of the wiki directory and grant write permissions to the config directory.

   chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/wiki
   chmod a+w /var/www/html/wiki/config
   

6. Restart the apache server.

   /sbin/service httpd restart
   Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
   Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
   

7. Go to http://localhost/wiki/config/index.php
   • Configure Wiki Admin username/password
   • Configure MySQL  database/username/password
   • Click Done
8. Move the config/LocalSettings.php file to the parent directory

   mv /var/www/html/wiki/config/LocalSettings.php /var/www/html/wiki
   

9. Access wiki http://localhost/wiki