Thread:Project:Support desk/Database error after updating MediaWiki from 1.5.2 to 1.6/reply

Fixed my own issue. I'll post the fix in case anyone else is having similar problems. I'm on Ubuntu, BTW.

I entered admin mode on the console with "sudo su", which logged me in as the user "root". In LocalSettings.php, $wgDBuser and $wgDBadminuser were set to "wikiuser". By changing them to "root" and running "sudo php5 update.php" I was able to complete the update and fix the database error.

The update manual should really include this!