Project:Support desk/old

Common.js
When I try to edit Common.js in my own wiki, I get the following message:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "Title::getInterwikiLink". MySQL returned error "1267: Illegal mix of collations (cp1251_general_ci,IMPLICIT) and (latin1_swedish_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation '=' (localhost)".

--Andysoft 09:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved?

Error: HTML tags on page
Hi! I wish to make copy Wikipedia in a local network. Has established MediaWiki, some extensions, however some pages are displayed incorrectly. For example, as here. What expansion is necessary for establishing, that clause showed correctly? Whether there Is somewhere a list of extensions with which works Wikipedia?--82.200.96.1 23:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version

External link is rendered strangely in IE 6.
If an external link text span a line, the rendering of a tiny icon indicating external link seems to mess up. Anyone have the same experience? [http://www.mediawiki.org Here is the example of an external link which line wrap causes an external icon link to disapper ............. ............... ................ ............. .............. ............... ................... ...... ..................]


 * Yeah, I have the same on IE7. See if it's been reported in BugZilla - if not, go ahead and report it.

Memory Leak on Win2k?
I've just installed the latest version of MediaWiki on my Win2k server (please, no giggling) and was suprised to find that PHP started throwing "Fatal Error: Out of Memory" errors and delievering blank pages, not just on the Wiki site, but on all PHP pages on the server.

Now, I did some Googling around and found that a bunch of people banished this error by upping thier PHP memory_limit from 8M to 32M. This elicits nervous laughter from me, as I've had that nailed at half a GB for years now -- the hardware handles it fine. I'm running PHP 5.2.1 and the server has been faithfully serving fairly intensive PHP pages for years prior to the introduction of Wiki. Removing the MediaWiki software makes the problem vanish.

Anyone have any ideas here?


 * Has this been resolved?

Expiry question
When using protection expiry, how do you format the expiry field?

Thanks, Matt 71.126.156.74 22:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
 * GNU Date format (there are various options) - this is a common format: 2005-12-25 00:56:27 GMT

Problem of sending confirmation email through SSL
OS: Windows XP SP2 MediaWiki: 1.10.1 PHP: 5.2.3 (apache2handler)

extension=php_apc.dll extension=php_gd2.dll extension=php_mbstring.dll extension=php_mysql.dll extension=php_mysqli.dll extension=php_sockets.dll

PEAR install --alldeps mail

$wgSMTP = array( 'host'    => "smtp.gmail.com", 'IDHost'   => "username@gmail.com", 'port'     => 465, 'auth'     => true, 'username' => "username", 'password' => "password" ); SSL and 465 port are required by Gmail. Long time after I started sending the confirmation email, no result is returned. I looked into its network connection with netstat, finding that Apache did connect to a Gmail server (such as po-in-f109.google.com:465). Then of course, timed out, and a blank page is returned.

I've already searched for this at mw and meta with all kinds of methods, but no similar problem is found. So is there anyone to help me out? Sicaral 02:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you able to send via non-ssl, port 25 smtp? Also, have you tried using your hosting service's SMTP server rather than googles?

Moving the Logo
How do I move the logo to the left, eliminating that small margin between the left edge of the logo and the left edge of the page?


 * Has this been resolved?

How to keep sans-serif font when printing?
All mediawiki pages appear sans-serif eg. like Arial. But when I print a page either the standard or printable version, the print out uses a serif font, like Times Roman. How can I stop this? I want my printed page to look like it does on the screen. 220.244.88.206 05:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Edit the printing stylesheet, which can be found in skins/common/printable.css or similar. robchurch | talk 20:41, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks - but that doesn't seem to work. I edited skins/common/commonPrint.css, the only thing mentioning font type was the line span.texhtml { font-family: serif; } which I've tried changing to sans-serif as well as commenting it out.  Neither makes any difference.  I'm using Ctrl+Refresh on my page after each change.  I notice in the HTML source of the printable version of the page a line /*<![CDATA[*/ @import "/wiki/skins/monobook/main.css?7"; /*]]>*/ . Perhaps I need to change the media tag to something else?  I don't know how to change this though.
 * Are you still having problems w/ printable versions showing up in a serif font? Or has this been resolved?

MediaWiki & DB2 support
Hi,

I’ve been developing a plugin for the MediaWiki to support DB2.

1) I’ve written a PHP program that converts the database from MySQL into DB2 (it creates tables identical to the tables in MySQL database and moves the data there)

2) I found that all connection to the database is done in the Database.php. I’m planning to use functions such as db2_connect (from PHP) as they are very similar to mysql_connect. I’ve also written my own functions using db2_connect… that have almost the same signature as mysql functions (I’ve done it in order to eliminate almost any differences between DB2 and MySQL in order to decrease number of changes in the current MediaWiki code. Basically I want to replace mysql function with function that I wrote without making any other Major changes in the MediaWiki code).

However, I’ve noticed that SQL statements in MediaWiki are build dynamically in many steps and placed in different files, which are very hard to track. And I’m not able to use MySQL statements directly as DB2 have slightly different syntax. For example it doesn’t accept a quoted integer in the ‘WHERE’ clause.

My question is there any particular structure how the SQL statements get build in the MediaWiki? I’ve tried to search the MediaWiki code, but I couldn’t find any consistency and I don’t want start guessing, because I need MediaWiki to be stable.

Please help!!!
 * Wouldn't it be more efficent to write a MySQL > DB2 SQL Cleaner function? And just preg_replace all the MySQL style stuff that conflicts w/ DB2?  How many syntax differences are there? Or is that crazy talk?

Several questions

 * Broken spanish text removed, see the diff for the original posting. -- :Bdk: 22:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

This comment has an approximate (but maybe not accurate) translation to english at the bottom. Excuse me for my bad english. --El Racionalista Prenihilista 20:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Where can i download a "user manual" about mediawiki
in order to edit the pages with greater theoretical knowledge, obtaining a better performance creating and editing those pages? If this manual doesn't exist, please do it as friendly as possible, for those of us whose have basic knowledge in programming. It would be rather to wikipedia it be this way, in order to expand its possibilities. --El Racionalista Prenihilista 20:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Doesn't exist in a document that you can download in a single document. Currently it is spread throughout the pages here in MediaWiki.org --Dr DBW 02:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

wikiversidad: Music Notation
i'm actually working on some projects in "wikiversidad" (yes, in spanish lol) and i need the ability to create the pages in music notation At a first glance, we have thought trying to convert the sheet music into images, after it then upload them in commons and make a link in the page to that image. Because the project is related to music, it is unavoidable to listen the music score, we'd have to do exactly the same way  for every music file; on the other hand, it is neccesary for all the users (and attending to the wiki policy) that editing the scores in the page from existing mistakes be possible... but because of they are in an image format the users should repeat all the process over and over. As it could be seen, this way could be easily turned into a mess. For that reason it is necessary that a code be implemented in order to write the sheet music directly in the page and this code also allow (just as lilypond or any music notation software does) to listen what is written in the page. I was reading about a language called "wikitex" or somethng like that; i tried to use the code according to this lenguage but it didn't work. I used the code according to lilypond especifications and nothing happened (well, it appeared as text in the page, lol), even so it was said in the wikitex page that we cand improve our articles by using that code. Summing up, it would be a good idea to implement a language, a tool, a code (or whatever it be the name that the developers give to it) that can do that functions just mentioned, this only if it's desirable to make wikiversity (wikiversidad) a real learning project. Another Suggestion is to have the ability to listen simultaneously to the sheet music we are just watching in the page. It will be an enormous learning tool. --El Racionalista Prenihilista 20:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * This the code / extension that allows music to be put into wiki pages Wikitex. It should work, may be ask the developers why yours is not. --Dr DBW 02:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

It is supposed to work....but it doesn't work. I mean, it work on the page of wikitex, but only in that page. :S --Johann 14:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you tell me how to embed the page "wikisophia.org" to partially fix the problem with the music notation??
Thank you for your answers --El Racionalista Prenihilista 20:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bug related to template-trascluding in MW 1.10.0 and 1.10.1?
I have several instances of MW running and there is a behaviour while inserting templates from a central pool I cannot explain myself. E.g. there is a central instance let's say foo1.bar.tld and another one let's say foo2.bar.tld. And now I want to use a template hosted by foo1.bar.tld using the designated way while foo1 is the right interwiki link. (yes, iw_trans is set and scary transcluding is turned on). So here is my problem:

Instances which are based on MW 1.10.0 include that templated but wiki markup within the template is ignored. Html markup works fine. Instances based on MW 1.10.1 show something like UNIQ1e69a7ad64e3f598-item140b0119235f4147 instead the included template.

Is there anyone out there who can explain that behaviour to me? --195.145.211.194 07:19, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved? If not, have you checked BugZilla for an existing bug report?

Can I be a "counselour" on the implementation of the music notation software?
If it is the case that i can't be a counselour or anything like that, I'd like to make the following suggestions:


 * 1.- Use exactly the same language that lilypond uses (not similar, the same). Being this way we don't have neither to learn new languages nor shift the way we are used to input music. It diminishes the difficulties in making new learning projects.


 * 2.- Allow the possibility of opening links in new pages according to the will of who is editing the project. This make possible many things about playing some kind of multimedia...and the ability to see different pages simultaneously makes some learning processes be easier, especially in musical matter.


 * 3.- Make the pupil able to listen to the music that is written at its own will. For example, if we want to show the sound of every note of the diatonic scale, the person who is learning it should have the option to play that sound at its own will and skill without loosing the view of the current page. He(or she)needs to listen and look simultaneously to learn properly.--Johann 16:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleting Page - Nothing Happens, Does not Delete
When logged in as a sysop user, the Delete link is there for the page, but when I click on the "Delete" button on the "Confirm Delete" page, nothing happens. It appears to just reload this "Confirm Delete" page and does not delete the intended article.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated

--216.86.181.69 08:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved?

Mediawiki in sub directory
Hi dear wiki-ers, I havce a drupal site, and I wanted to add a wiki. I've installed Mediawiki in my site under a subdirectory (i.e. public_htmp/wiki) and having trouble with enabling the "nice URLs. I can get the .htaccess to resirect mysite.com/wiki to go to the wiki so the browser actually returns http://www.mysite.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page when I acecss http://www.mysite.com/wiki . by for some reason, if I enable nice urls as described at here, the nice URL get rerouted to the drupal site. Thansk in advance, Udijw 13:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved?

Only registered users create and edit page
how can i do this ? just registered users can create and edit page ? i didnt see any page about this...

--85.102.216.150 14:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * See Manual:Preventing_access

a really blank page
Since a few days I have a tricky problem: It is impossible to save a page with special characters like äüöéè and so on ... After, I click "save page" the browser shows a white page. There is no content, nothing from mediawiki or other information. I can only see the browsermenu and the tapbar (firefox), that's all. Nice, isn't it?

My server is an opteron-system with openSuSE 10.2 and all patches. I have never installed own packages for apache, php, mySql, ...

Does someone have any idea?

--84.58.139.249 18:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)


 * A blank white page indicates a PHP error which isn't being printed to the screen. To force this, add the following lines to the LocalSettings.php file, underneath the &lt;?php:


 * You can also set a value for error_log in PHP.ini</tt> and read the PHP error log to find out what's going on. In some cases, PHP errors might also be recorded in the web server error log. robchurch | talk 21:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your hint. I got error-messages. In logfile: [Tue Jul 31 18:33:05 2007] [error] [client 192.x.x.x] ALERT - script tried to increase memory_limit to 62914560 bytes which is above the allowed value (attacker '192.x.x.x', file '/srv/.../LocalSettings.php', line 25), referer: http://.../index.php?title=New_test_page&action=edit [Tue Jul 31 18:33:05 2007] [error] [client 192.x.x.x] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 74 bytes) in /srv/.../includes/GlobalFunctions.php on line 1995, referer: http://.../index.php?title=New_test_page&action=edit The same error appears in the browserwindow: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 74 bytes) in /.../includes/GlobalFunctions.php on line 1995
 * It looks like, some functions of php or an other system have problems with memory if I try to store special characters. What can I do to find those problems?

--84.58.161.208 16:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm going to hazard a guess here that the additional memory usage is due to the use of a fallback function to count the number of multi-byte characters in a string. We would typically do this with the mb_strlen</tt> function, but where the multi-byte string functions for PHP haven't been compiled in or otherwise enabled, we provide a safe fallback which does the job, although it uses a slower method based on a dumb regular expression match.


 * Probably the best solution here is to make the multi-byte string functions available (see http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mbstring.php), or convince the server administrator to do this on your behalf if you're unable to do so. Typically this can be done by recompiling PHP using --enable-mbstring</tt> under Unix/Linux, or by enabling the php_mbstring</tt> extension module under Windows. robchurch | talk 20:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

SessionPath
When i tried to install MediaWiki the first time, there was a report: "Your session save path appears to be invalid or is not writable. PHP needs to be able to save data to this location in order for correct session operation. Please check that session.save_path in PHP.ini points to a valid path, and is read/write/execute for the user your web server is running under."

I checked session.save_path in php.ini (i've got root access to the server) and in was pointing to /var/lib/php/session/. I've set chmod for /var/lib/php/session/ to 777. Then i tried to install MediaWiki again. Installer reported me the same.

--85.141.91.40 23:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved? 777 on the session.save_path should definately take care of it.

CSS Mediawiki with no Logo
i made my one Skin based on Monobook, but i dont find the line were i can put the Navigation up. I clean the p-logo line in "monobook.php" an the CSS but the Navigation would not come up.

--91.17.123.33 20:33, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Has this been resolved?

"offline" off server use of MediaWiki or similar possible?
From what is available about MediaWiki on en.wikipedia.org, that is currently not possible, but...
 * 1) Is it being planned in the future version?
 * 2) What are some wiki softwares that can be used off line and have similar editing syntax, wikiTeX like MediaWiki, etc?

--Organizex 17:38, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "offline" and off server? As long as you can install a webserver (usually Apache2), MySQL, and PHP Supoprt, you should be able to get it going.  Do you want to use it in an internal netowrk?  Or like locally just on your own computer?


 * Yes, that is correct. Organizex 08:43, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Which? Local Network?  Or just Your Computer?

XAMPP Installation Problems
I recently setup XAMPP and extracted the mediawiki fodler into the proper location according to the setup instructions. When i goto http://localhost/mediawiki im gettin the 403 message Access Forbidden! Anyone know what i should look for to correct this? Thanks

--74.128.1.3 22:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * So this is the folder you copied the MediaWiki files to?
 * C:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\mediawiki </tt>
 * and inside the mediawiki folder, you see LocalSettings.php and all the other files?

Edit thumbnails php files
Can someone can tell me where the GD functions are in mediawiki 1.10? I don't find them anymore in Image.php :s

Sorry for my bad english :$ --217.112.179.120 12:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * [wikiroot]/includes/media/Bitmap.php

How to handle nested XML tags
Hello there,

my name is Matteo and I'm writing from Italy.

I tried to find an answer to this question, always unsuccessfully, that's why now I'm posting here.

I'm writing an extension that should handle XML text created editing MediaWiki pages.

I registered an hook just like $wgParser->setHook( "mytag1", "renderer" ) where I would like to parse the entire XML and return the appropriate output.

The issue comes with nested tags, i.e. if I write:

This is just a test

the input passed to my hook function is only "This is just a test" without and the same happens for every other nested tags.

How can I solve this problem?

Many thanks in advance,

Matteo. --83.103.98.38 11:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You must parse the 'inner' sections by yourself i.e. MediaWiki can't help you here, at least not directly. Check out Extension:XML_Class for some inspiration. Jean-Lou Dupont 15:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It should all be passed to your function just fine - you want the wiki page to "display" those tags on the screen, you have to do like return htmlspecialchars( $input );</tt> to escape the special characters (like angle brackets).

Table of contents
Sorry for the stupid question, but how do I create table of contents in articles? FAQ describes how to hide them, but I can't even see them! -217.10.43.49 15:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Use the  magic words. Jean-Lou Dupont 15:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! But is it possible not to type this every time I need a TOC? Like in Wikipedia or even here (I guess). 217.10.43.49 16:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Not without an extension that would foul the parser. Check 'Parser::formatHeadings' method to see for yourself. Jean-Lou Dupont 16:25, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You could use Extension:RegexNamespaceContext and create yourself an 'header page' for each namespace you require TOC to be present. Jean-Lou Dupont 16:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Local Installation Question
I am looking for the instruction on how to install mediaWiki locally. If you know where to find it, Please give me the link to it. Thank much - —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Phungho2000 (talk • contribs) 12:16, August 3, 2007. Please sign your posts!


 * Installing locally is the same as installing for any other architecture. You simply access the page via http://localhost/ instead. See Manual:Installation

Updating
I am running MediaWiki 1.6.8, can I update to the current version or will I have to update step by step i.e. 1.6.8 to 1.6.9 to 1.6.10?

thanks for any help --70.67.167.157 01:38, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Updating straight from 1.6.8 to 1.6.10 should be fine.

Misunderstanding
What I mean is can I update from 1.6.8 to 1.10.1 or will I have to go in order. --70.67.167.157 16:04, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You can directly upgrade from 1.6.x to 1.10.x. See Manual:Upgrading_MediaWiki, and more importantly, once you download the latest release (1.10.1), examine the UPGRADE document.  This provides a solid overview of your options and what you need for the upgrade.

Separate read/write databases for MediaWiki
Hi Everyone,

Is there native support for replication (writes to one master db but read from multiple slave db) with MySQL in the current Mediawiki (1.10.1) revision? Googling shows an explanation that Wikipedia uses something like this, but does not give any specifics. I've tried searching for a plugin, as well as the install/admin docs. $wgDBservers looks like it might be the config info for read-only databases, but doesn't specifically say so.

Thanks much! -Frank

-64.142.42.56 01:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Update - How do I mark a DB in wgDBservers as either DB_MASTER or DB_SLAVE?

Hosting
What site is good for hosting MediaWiki? --Hye 04:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I use www.siteground.com. -Virtualtoychest 13:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I find that *most* hosts can do the job. some need less wrestling than others.  The last one that I setup was on a GoDaddy Econo-Linux plan - I had to set the .htaccess file to make *.php process w/ PHP5 and the ImageMagick path is non-standard.  These are common problems w/ cheap hosts.

Technical problems in the Latin Wikipedia
Since yesterday we are having technical problems in the Latin Wikipedia. Some/many talk pages are not displayed, I mean, they are displayed blank, there is not even a navigation on the top. See http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicipaedia:Taberna#Blank_talk_pages.

To whom should we report this problem? Thanks! -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Roland2
 * Looks like they're all working now, right?

game server folder
what file do i put in game server folder so pr maps so on BFCC —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.205.52.103 (talk • contribs) 03:16, August 4, 2007. Please sign your posts!
 * Could you rephrase the question? I'm not sure what you're asking - did you possibly post your question on the wrong Wiki?

is there a tool for testing skins
I am not sure if this is the right place for this question, so I apologize if it is inappropriate here. The only way that I know how to test skins that I am creating is to upload them to my server. This is a real hassle as I make my fair share of errors and constantly have to upload the files. Is there a way to test them locally? (When I make an html file I can load it in my browser without uploading it.)

Also are there any other resources on the net for creating skins other than the skinning page, and the other users files?

-Virtualtoychest 13:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, the only way to test the skin is to actually have the PHP intrepreter do it's thing. So if you want to test locally - Install MediaWiki on your computer.  Then you can test at http://localhost/wiki or whatever and then upload when you're done.  Also, I haven't seen much in the way of other "skin tutorials" or assistance - certainly the best referance I've used is other people's skins/code.

Load html file dynamically to Wiki page ?
Several html pages (they are hierarchically organised and with hyperlinks between them) are edited via svn at the moment and displyed as statis htmls on intranet (intranet web directory is a sandbox of this svn repository). We want users continue to use svn to update the files but want to upload these file new viersions automatically to wiki which is used as main intranet now. What we would need is something like put a link to html file to wiki page and that this html file is uploaded again each time it is updated in the svn repository is updated. Is this possible and how ? -89.212.41.151 14:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * See Extension:Include

help
i wanna be an admin on a wiki but the only admin hasnt edited in four months. the wiki is wikinorth24.109.218.172 17:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You have to get in contact with the existing Wiki admin or find someone who has access to the webserver that the wiki is hosted on. You can't simply usurp someone's Wiki.  ;-)  If he/she set a catchall forward on his hosting account, you can usually email admin@theirdomain.com and it should forward to them (hopefully).  Good Luck!

wiki free hoster?
Is there any good or free (I know, they don't come together) hoster to install wikimedia on?. -66.130.120.174 22:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Error in my_thread_global_end: 1 threads didn't exit
I have just installed MediaWiki into a Win2k3 environment and have the above error message on every page I view. The system seems to function but I have an aversion to error messages.

Environment Windows 2003 Server MediaWiki 1.10.1 MySql 5.0.24 PHP 5.2.3

I am a Wiki newby, I have looked in the forums and not been able to find a similar error. Can anybody point me in a direction to resolve...

TIA

John

-203.97.248.13 08:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)