Manual:AdminSettings.php

Overview
The requirement for  (along with supporting file  ) was removed in MediaWiki 1.16. Prior to MediaWiki 1.16,  was used to store database authentication credentials for maintenance scripts and to control the availability of.

Upgrading
If upgrading from a pre-1.16 version of MediaWiki to version 1.16 or later, the variables set in  file can be safely removed. is no longer needed. If it still exists, it will be loaded by maintenance scripts to retain backward compatibility.