Manual:Running MediaWiki on Debian or Ubuntu

This page explains how to install MediaWiki on an Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

This installation procedure requires knowledge of issuing commands from a terminal (i.e., installing applications), use of a text editor (graphical: gedit, kate; text interface:nano, emacs, or vi (see vi in 10 minutes to get started)).

When text editing is required it can be carried out on the graphical desktop by pressing Alt-F2 and typing gksudo gedit filename Alternatively, editing can be done from a terminal sudo nano filename Of course, kate could be used instead of gedit or vi instead of nano.

The steps tend to use terminal commands and editing with nano, but gedit can be used as well.

Ubuntu Up-To-Date
Double check that Ubuntu is up-to-date by running:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade

Install LAMP Stack
Ubuntu Server Edition makes LAMP (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) available for installation during the install process. During the installation step, make sure you choose to install a LAMP server. Alternately, you can install all of these packages from a normal Ubuntu installation using these commands:

sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server php5 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5

Opt. Useful Packages
These packages are not necessary but may be useful, depending on the installation: Example: sudo apt-get install php-apc php5-intl imagemagick phpmyadmin vsftpd php5-cli

Get MediaWiki
download the official tarball, and extract in your Web directory
 * Ubunutu 14+: /var/lib/mediawiki

tar -xvzf /pathtofile/mediawiki-*.tar.gz sudo mv mediawiki-*/* /var/lib/mediawiki


 * Ubuntu < 14: /var/www/

tar -xvzf /pathtofile/mediawiki-*.tar.gz sudo mv mediawiki-*/* /var/www/html

Regular Setup
This step is not necessary if you were prompted to create a mysql root password during MySQL installation.

First, set up a mysql root password. Remember not to use same password for system root and mysql root. This will also clear your command history so that other users cannot get to your password.

mysqladmin -u root password "" history -c

Remember this user (root) and password because you will need them when you configure MediaWiki.

Secure Setup
''Consider running mysql_secure_installation.
 * from man page:

Optional: Configure PHP
''These steps are optional and can be done post-installation. MediaWiki will still work without these changes.''

Edit your PHP configuration file, php.ini. For Ubuntu 14.x it is at. Depending on Ubuntu version it may be located at  or

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Maximum upload file size
Assuming that various files are going to be uploaded to the Wiki as content, the limit on the maximum size of an upload has to be adjusted. About one-half way down is the File Uploads section. Change: upload_max_filesize = 2M to at least 20M. You may have to adjust this again in the future if you want bigger uploads.

Memory limit
Some PHP scripts require a lot of memory to run. To increase the maximum amount of memory a script can use, page down to about 21%, and change the following entry, if found, from memory_limit = 8M to memory_limit = 128M If it is already 128M or more, leave it as is.

Extensions (Ubuntu 9.04 and lower only)
PHP MySQL support has to be enabled. Scroll down the page down a bit more (about 48%) and make sure the following line is uncommented: extension=msql.so

If you use the GD graphics library to do image resizing (instead of ImageMagick), also uncomment: extension=gd.so

Save and exit out of the editor and restart Apache: sudo apache2ctl restart or sudo service apache2 restart

Configure Apache
sudo nano /etc/mediawiki/apache.conf and un-comment this line: Alias /mediawiki /var/lib/mediawiki
 * Edit apache.conf file at /etc/mediawiki/apache.conf

Save and exit out of the editor. sudo nano /etc/apache2.conf look for this line. Add it if is not present: Include /etc/mediawiki/apache.conf sudo apache2ctl restart or sudo service apache restart
 * Verify that the Mediawiki configuration is in Apache. Edit the Apache2 configuration file
 * Restart Apache:

Configure MediaWiki
Navigate your browser to http://localhost/mediawiki, to http://localhost/mediawiki/config or to http://wiki.hostname.com/config and continue with the installation.

Pay close attention for "Checking environment..." in MediaWiki installation script. This can solve a lot of problems for your MediaWiki successful installation by specifically identifying the source of any errors. Fill out the configuration form and continue.

Under Database Config, you may change the database name and DB username to new values, but you must turn on "Use superuser account", name: debian-sys-maint giving the mysql root password you configured earlier.

Once configuration is done you'll need to move the created LocalSettings.php to the parent directory. The configuration page will have the exact directory/filename that must be moved: sudo chmod a+rwx /var/lib/mediawiki/config sudo mv /var/lib/mediawiki/config/LocalSettings.php /etc/mediawiki For added safety you can then remove the config subdirectory entirely: sudo mv config/LocalSettings.php. sudo rm -rf config

And navigate your browser to http://server_ip_address/mediawiki or to http://server_ip_address/mediawiki/index.php  http://localhost/mediawiki to see your new wiki.

Done! You now have a working Wiki

General information
Under Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10, MediaWiki is installed at /usr/share/mediawiki. However, configuration/customizations are actually installed in /var/lib/mediawiki.

Confusingly, links are created in both locations so all files appear to be in both places.

Additional wiki configuration
The Wiki is configured by the LocalSettings.php file, usually found in /var/www/wiki. Manual:LocalSettings.php has detailed information that may be useful. The following are changes that appear to be universally helpful

To edit LocalSettings.php use

gksudo gedit /etc/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php or from a terminal sudo nano /etc/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

Enable uploads
By default, the Wiki will not permit images to be uploaded. To change this find $wgEnableUploads and change it from false to true.

Specifying uploadable file types
You may want to modify the list of accepted extensions, which is stored within the $wgFileExtensions array. For example, by default you will not be able to upload PDF files without making this change.

If $wgFileExtensions is not already in LocalSettings.php add it at the end (before the ?> line, if one exists in your LocalSettings.php file):

In addition to the $wgFileExtensions option, the following settings may cause files to be rejected (even if $wgStrictFileExtensions = false; is set):


 * $wgFileBlacklist, a list of file extensions that are not uploadable
 * $wgMimeTypeBlacklist, a list of forbidden MIME types.

Check includes/DefaultSettings.php

Image file uploads
The images directory must be writable: For Ubuntu 9.04 and newer, the command is: sudo chmod a+w /var/lib/mediawiki/images For older Ubuntu: sudo chmod a+w /var/www/wiki/images

Enable thumbnails
The |thumb option added to an image: tag will automatically generate a thumbnail version of a picture — if support has been enabled, as follows:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick
 * The ImageMagick package must be installed:


 * In LocalSettings.php, make sure the following settings are in place and not commented out. They are normally about 80 lines down in the file marked "To enable image uploads":

Changing the logo
The $wgLogo variable specifies the graphical logo that gets displayed on the top left corner by default. The variable $wgScriptPath contains the top directory of the wiki. There is no standard for the size of the logo image, but 135x135 pixels will fit most skins. If the logo it is oversized for a specific skin it will show from the top left corner and clip the bottom/right of the image.

(The $wgLogo variable is not present in LocalSettings.php by default; you need to add in manually to the bottom.)

Caution: Do not simply overwrite the default logo installed with MediaWiki (/skins/common/images/wiki.png); this file will be overwritten when you upgrade.

Standard Extensions
The new installer for mediawiki comes with a package of 15 or so of the most popular extensions, but there are literally hundreds more. Go to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions for a complete list.

A list of the other "standard" extensions included with Ubuntu can be found by just running this command: ls /etc/mediawiki-extensions/extensions-available

Standard extensions can be installed with the mwenext command sudo mwenext extensionname.php

Other extensions are added by following these two steps:
 * 1) Extensions are downloaded and stored in /var/lib/mediawiki/extensions
 * 2) The LocalSettings.php is edited to add a line reading

Confirm you have installed it properly, by going to the Special pages in your wiki (link on left side) and choosing Version. All installed extensions are listed with versions, authors, and links to their home pages.

Example: To install the standard ParserFunctions extension sudo mwenext ParserFunctions.php sudo apt-get install mediawiki-extensions
 * If this fails the standard extension package needs to be installed with

Once enabled, it should be listed as a symbolic link in /etc/mediawiki-extensions/extensions-enabled. You should now be able to go to http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Special:Version and see ParserFunctions listed there as an installed extension to your mediawiki.

Extensions from tarballs
Some MediaWiki extensions that are not available in the Ubuntu package system can instead be gotten in tarball (tar.gz) format and installed manually. Basically, you download the tarball, unpack it to the "extensions" directory (on Ubuntu: "/var/lib/mediawiki/extensions"), edit (what line in it?) your "LocalSettings.php" (Ubuntu: /etc/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php), and then go to http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Special:Version to verify that it worked.

A good list of extensions is available here: Category:Extensions in Wikimedia version control

For an example, let's take the relatively simple extension called MiniDonation. This extension lets you put a &lt;donationform&gt; tag in your wiki code, and it will display a link to paypal on the page. The site for MiniDonation is here: Extension:MiniDonation

Just follow the instructions on the page: Download the tarball (in Firefox it will probably end up in ~/Desktop), then do the following:

cd /var/lib/mediawiki/extensions sudo tar -zxvf ~/Desktop/MiniDonation sudo gedit /etc/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

Then check http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Special:Version, it should list MiniDonation there. Now edit a wikipage and add a &lt;donationform&gt; tag to it ... save the page and you should have a nice little paypal button on the screen.


 * Replacing extensions that are in Ubuntu's mediawiki-extensions package with newer versions

You can also "upgrade" one of the "standard" Ubuntu MediaWiki extensions (such as Cite.php) to a newer version if you need to. The important part is to remember to run "mwdisext ExtensionName.php" to disable it before you install the new version into /var/lib/mediawiki/extensions.

The pitfall is that some versions of extension will not work with certain other versions of MediaWiki (or with other versions of other extensions that they depend on). In this case you can get a "fatal error" when you try to pull up certain MediaWiki pages (including even when pulling the "Special:Version" page), or it might just give you a blank page, in which case you can look at /var/log/apache2/errors.log for a hint as to what is wrong.

Shorter URL
If you want /wiki/* instead of /wiki/index.php/* on Ubuntu, follow the recommended short URL guide using  as your script path instead of   and placing the rewrites in /etc/apache2/conf.d/mediawiki.conf.