Manual:Installing on WOS Portable (Windows)

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WOS Portable is one easy way of running MediaWiki as a wiki on a stick. This package is provided by chsoftware

WOS Portable does not need an extra drive letter and it is ready to run instantly after unzipping; just plug a USB stick in any Windows computer and the wiki webserver starts up in your browser.

[edit] Space requirements

WOS packages a complete Apache/PHP/MySQL webserver with a wrapper that automatically configures and starts the servers; the Small Edition takes only 20 Mb. The complete package occupies less than 60Mb with an empty wiki. The SQL cache adds another 10Mb or so, in addition to the contents of your wiki. You can zip the WOS folder that contain your Wiki if you have limited space on your thumbdrive. After zipping the folder the size will shrink about 60% to 70%.

[edit] Installation

For best results you should always install and run WOS from the root directory of a drive. The first time it's run, WOS configures the paths for the servers based on the current directory. Each time it's started after that, it changes the drive only, so it's a pain to change directories later.

  1. Start by going to the MoWeS mixer site to download the software.
    • If you're just starting, you "do not have a MoWeS Portable II package".
    • Select Apache and PHP versions * The option to use a "Small Edition" should work fine, as should either PHP4 or PHP5, with MediaWiki. Select MediaWiki along with any other "application software" you might want to try out!
(*) This procedure has been tested with
MediaWiki 1.6.1, WOS Portable SE] 1.1.1 (Apache] 2.0.5, PHP 5.1.2 and 4.4.1, MySQL 4.1.18-nt)
MediaWiki 1.7.1, WOS 1.1.2 (Apache 2.2.0, PHP 5.1.2, MySql 5.0.18-nt)
MediaWiki 1.9.2, WOSX (with WOS 1.1.2)
MediaWiki 1.10.1, Apache 2.2.4, PHP 5.2.3, MySQL 5.0.41
...however the best approach is to use the latest versions available, indeed WOS mixer only offers packages of more recent versions than those listed here.
It is possible to add MediaWiki as a package later, but this may be more difficult.
  1. Go to the drive where you are installing it. Usually you'll be selecting your USB drive, but if you'd like to install to your hard disk, you could create a virtual disk using the subst command:
    subst W: "C:\Temp\MyWikiOnAStick"
  2. Unzip the distribution files. Unzip WOS into the root directory, and MediaWiki into a subdirectory of www. It's convenient to rename the subdirectory to "w". The configuration I'm working with looks like this:
    W:\
    W:\apache2
    W:\mysql
    W:\php4
    W:\php5
    W:\www
    W:\www\w
  3. Run the wos executable.
  4. The default for the apache web server is to listen on port 80 of the host machine. This is likely to cause problems if there's an existing server on your target machine. To change the port number, open the file apache2\conf\httpd.conf in a text editor like notepad.
    1. Search for the line that says Listen 80 and change it to Listen 127.0.0.1:8080
    2. Search for the line that says ServerName localhost:80 and change it to ServerName 127.0.0.1:8080
    • IANA Port Numbers:
      • 80: World Wide Web (HTTP)
      • 8080: HTTP Alternate
      • 443: HTTP protocol over TLS/SSL (HTTPS)
      • 49152 through 65535: Dynamic and/or Private Ports
      • 1024 through 49151 should not be used on the Internet without IANA registration.
  5. Create the directory W:\apache2\logs\ and create a file error.log in there.
  6. Run "start.exe" or "wos.exe" from the root directory.
    1. Choose your language, then click through the Terms of Use (which is actually small enough to fit on a dialog box without scrolling!)
    2. WOS starts up and displays the WOS Portable - Status dialog. You should see:
      Apache is running
      MySQL is running
    3. WOS will open the welcome page in your web browser.
      If you changed the port number as recommended above, you'll get a 404: Not Found error. Don't worry.
      • Open the WOS Portable Options tab and change the value for "Use the following URL in the browser" from http://localhost/start/ to http://localhost:8080/start/ (or whatever port you assigned above).
      • You can either shut down and restart WOS or just copy the address to your browser.
      • You should now see the WOS startup page.
        Apache 2.0.55 is running
        PHP 5.1.2 works
        MySql 4.1.18-nt is running
        Document Root is: W:/www
  7. Review the other WOS options; most of the defaults work fine for MediaWiki, except:
    • You must clear or uncheck the tick the Delete InnoDB log and tempfiles after stopping WOS checkbox, or put CleanInnoDB=false in wos.ini.
  8. Shut down and restart WOS by doing the following 2 steps:
    • Click End, then wait until it closes.
    • Run "start.exe" and verify that it starts up properly.
  9. Run MediaWiki web configuration. Using the directory and port settings above, the address is http://localhost:8080/wiki/config or http://127.0.0.1:8080/mediawiki/config for 1.10.1.
    1. If you want to use a Creative Commons license, you should select it first. Scroll down to the Copyright/license section, click on Creative Commons license - choose, and select your license.
    2. Fill in the site config information
      • Name your wiki
      • Assign a WikiSysop password
      • You can disable all the email options for a tiny wiki
      • Assign a wikiuser password for the Database config
      • If you've changed the root password, enter it here; otherwise, you must clear the Superuser password, because by default WOS runs with the superuser account root with no password.
    3. Click Install MediaWiki! After a short delay you should see the MediaWiki 1.6.1 Installation success screen.
    4. Move the W:\www\wiki\config\LocalSettings.php file to W:\www\wiki
    5. Click on "then follow this link to your wiki" and after a short delay you should see the MediaWiki home page.
      • Open the WOS Portable Options tab and change the value for "Use the following URL in the browser" from http://localhost:8080/start/ to http://localhost:8080/wiki/ (or whatever port and directory you assigned above).
  10. You're not quite done yet. If there's any problem with any of the configuration files (especially if you moved the WOS directory), MediaWiki will behave normally, but the data may be lost when you shut the server down.
    1. Shut down WOS - click End, then wait until it closes.
    2. Run "start.exe" from the root directory.
    3. If you see the MediaWiki home page, you're done.

[edit] Troubleshooting

WOS Portable is freeware, and there is no official support.

Here's how to deal with some of the ways I've messed up the installation:

  • Verify the paths in the configuration files apache2\conf\httpd.conf and mysql\my.ini. If you changed the WOS directory, then some of the paths may be pointing to the old directory. Changing the drive only is OK.
  • If you see an error message like A database error has occurred ... Can't open file: 'user.ibd',
    make sure you have cleared the WOS Portable Options Delete InnoDB log and tempfiles after stopping WOS checkbox [by doing what?]. If it isn't cleared, you'll need to rebuild the MediaWiki database by doing the following:
    1. Shut down WOS (WOS has a little pop-up screen as long as it's running, with a "Start/Stop server" and "End" buttons. Click "End" to stop WOS).
    2. Delete the W:\mysql\data\wikidb directory and contents
    3. Delete or rename W:\www\wiki\LocalSettings.php
    4. Start WOS again by double-clicking "start.exe", go to http://localhost:8080/wiki/config, and reinstall the wiki [by doing what?].

it appears that doing steps 2 and 3 are not sufficient to rebuild the database. (Step 4 can't be completed).

  • MediWiki should work with both PHP4 and PHP5. Any custom extensions you have may not.

If you still have a problem, try the troubleshooting hints on the WOS Wiki.

[edit] Hints

A complete WOS installation with an empty MediaWiki takes about 55Mb. If you're really tight for space, you can delete some files:

  • Make a backup of the complete installation first!
  • PHP4 is about 4.3Mb and PHP5 is about 3.6Mb. You can delete the one you're not using.
  • If the MediaWiki setup has trouble with the passwords, be sure you enter a blank root password if it is still blank by default, or if you have changed the root sql password be sure they match.
  • The MediaWiki languages subdirectory is about 4.25Mb. You can get it down to 150Kb by deleting all of the Language??.php and Messages??.php files you're not using (but don't delete LanguageUtf8.php).

You can (and should!) back up your installation by making a complete copy of the WOS directory tree.

[edit] References

[edit] Revisions

  • April 7, 2006 - Eric Hartwell - MediaWiki 1.6.1, WOS Portable Small Edition 1.1.1
Retrieved from "http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_on_WOS_Portable_(Windows)"
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