Project:Support desk/Sections/Miscellaneous

__NEWSECTIONLINK__ = Miscellaneous (unsorted) Issues =

Extend the searchbox with text messages
I have to extend the search portlet with some links and text. For the beginning, I've put some hard coded text in myskin.php (yes, it's evil... ;-)) Now I have to make it multilanguage-capable, so I try to fix this hack. But how? I'd like to get a variable in the skin which I can trigger by a system text from the MediaWiki namespace. Something like msg('foo') ?> that can be replaced by MediaWiki:Foo. Thanks für any hints (I'm more the php copy/paster, so please be merciful ;-)) --Elya 10:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.0rc1
 * PHP version: 5.2.6 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67-community
 * URL: N.A.

MATH

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.6
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67
 * Windows XP SP3
 * URL:

I will activate the tag MATH. In the procedure I read : '''Run 'make' (or 'gmake' if GNU make is not your default make). This should produce the texvc executable.'''

I have downloaded MinGW but I don't know what I must do ! What meant "run make...".

—217.136.13.239 16:34, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem after xampp update

 * MediaWiki version: used to be 1.8.2.
 * PHP version: was 5.0.4, now 5.2.4
 * MySQL version: was 4.1.13, now 5.0.45
 * URL: intranet only

Hello,

we used to have an wiki in our companys intranet. After we had to update our server to a newer xampp version (from 1.4.15 to 1.6.4) our wiki doesn't start. I do have the complete old xamp on a different drive, so all data should be save. The Error Message shown is: Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'dewiki' (localhost) When I run the old xampp locally, I get following error when trying to access the wiki: 

Can I import the old database into the newer sql-database? How is this done, since I can't run the old wiki anymore?

Is it easier to install an all new Mediawiki 1.13.x and import an old export we made a couple of weeks ago? Is this export compatible to the new Mediawiki version?

Thank you for your help. Greetings --195.145.82.17 13:18, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Different pages, different skins

 * MediaWiki version: 1.12.0
 * PHP version: 5.2.5 (cgi)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51a-community-log

I am trying to include pages with a dramatically different theme into my main wiki. (My main wiki has a fantasy skin and the pages I want to include are futuristic.) I'd like a different skin specific to those pages and which will load only for those pages. I don't want to simply install a new wiki for the futuristic-themed pages because there will only be a few of them.

Is there a way to set a specific skin on any individual page that is different from the wiki's default skin? —Iceofwolf 07:29, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Creating archive of wiki project
Can I create an archive of my wiki project, e.g., CDROM or ohter meida for storage and documentation purposes? If so, how?

—63.80.243.2 21:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Question, Language Dictionary

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.6 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51b-community-nt-log
 * URL: testing at localhost

Hello MediaWiki Team, I just started to use MediaWiki software last week. I have basic of PHP and MySQL. I want to make my own Language Dictionary Online for myself and my friends and hope it will be helpful when we live abroad. I see this site is making so good: http://tratu.baamboo.com/ They have: English-Vietnamese, Vietnamese-English, Vietnamese-French, French-Vietnamese ... Their links are: I also asked them how-to's but they did not respond me. If I want to do by their way, for each dictionary I have to upload MediaWiki software to each folder: like bolded texts up (en_vn, vn_en ... ) ? I hope you will help me. Thank you very much —Thanhdat 22:16, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * http://tratu.baamboo.com/dict/en_vn/special:allpages
 * http://tratu.baamboo.com/dict/vn_en/special:allpages
 * http://tratu.baamboo.com/dict/fr_vn/special:allpages
 * http://tratu.baamboo.com/dict/vn_fr/special:allpages

Is there a way to force a group of pages in our wiki to have a particular skin?

 * MediaWiki version: 1.12.0
 * PHP version: 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.1 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51a-3ubuntu5
 * URL: not publicly available (is on company intranet)

I hope this is the appropriate place to post this question. (if not, my apologies!)

I'd like to find out if there is a way to force a group of pages in our wiki to have a particular skin.

The reason I am keen to do this is that we have a wiki which works great, but I would like to store help pages for an application we have in the wiki and link to those pages direct from the app. Although we wouldn't have concerns with people seeing the non-article stuff when viewing the pages from the rest of the wiki, for it to be streamlined when viewed from the application I thought it would be ideal if I gave it a simplified skin which I would design.

I have already found out that URLs can have the useskin= added (e.g. as is done in the Preview Skin page within the User Preferences pages), but following the links will revert you to your normal chosen skin.

Is there perhaps some way to adjust the skin, so that all the links contain useskin=? (I think this might have issues, since you appear to need the full pagename for useskin to work (e.g. ..../w/index.php?title=blah....&useskin=cologneblue as opposed to the short URLs).

If this isn't a smart way to go, I could consider different approaches (I run the box the wiki is on and could create a distinct wiki perhaps, although there might be disadvantages to this, such as needing to combine the user tables and maybe this would still pick up the user's preferred skin unless I re-coded things).

Any sensible suggestions gratefully received! Let me know if there's any more info you might need or if I need to clarify any points about my objective.

Many thanks, Neil —NStoker 12:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Slowness

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.6 (cgi-fcgi)
 * MySQL version: 5.1.29-rc-community
 * URL: intranet

We have installed MediaWiki on a Windows 2003 Server with IIS. Every time we access WikiMedia on it (locally or via another network computer) it takes a long time before it shows up. You can instantly see the title bar at the top showing the correct name, but it looks like it's waiting for something to continue. After about 10 seconds it shows the page. When you then go to another page it works perfect.

So, only when first accessing it will it take about 10 seconds to show the page.

Hopefully there's a solution for this.

—193.173.57.41 12:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

FAQ functionality support?
My question is: Does MediaWiki support FAQ functinality with a set of files (PHP) for the host to receive and answer questions from end user.
 * MediaWiki version:
 * PHP version:
 * MySQL version:
 * URL:

Or is this support desk function is the only one available?

Thanks! —204.64.79.29 16:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Restoring Help Pages

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.5
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51a
 * URL: (local)

I transfered my existing phpwiki to MediaWiki using a third party perl script and it seems to have deleted all of the MediaWiki help pages. What is the best way to restore them?

—24.46.115.83 15:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Clearing Spam out of Database

 * MediaWiki: 1.5.7
 * PHP: 4.4.8 (cgi-fcgi)
 * MySQL: 4.1.21-log
 * Extensions:
 * Other: ConfirmEdit, Simple captcha implementation, by Brion Vibber
 * Extension functions: confirmEditSetup
 * URL: http://www.handicappedpets.biz/wiki

I am a Novice:

I've noticed that my database has filled up with 50 megs of Junk/Spam. They don't appear on the wiki - buy they are in the database.

The only way I can see to clear these entries out is one-by-one -- and that can take forever. Is there a method or extension that will let me clear out unwanted entries.

I do have direct access to the sql database with MyPHPAdmin if that helps. Thank you Mark C. Robinson HandicappedPets.com

—70.20.42.13 15:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Viewing an image uses in excess of 100MBytes of memory.

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.4
 * URL: http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Image:Electrolux_5995500930-011.png

Viewing an image uses in excess of 40MBytes of memory.

I had to increase the PHP memory to 80M in order to avoid the 'unable to allocated memory' error. Yes I have over 100K images. I have a significant number of images left to upload and would like to make sure the the memory image does not grow again. If you need I can open my firewall temporarily. Please let me know what I can do to help.

—24.6.151.162 16:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So what's the problem? —Emufarmers(T 20:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

How much memory do you think a PHP script should use? It is recommended in this site that you should set the maximum PHP memory to 32MB not 80MB. Should I expect to increase the memory base on the number of images I have?


 * Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation wikis all have a memory limit of 80MB. One article on this site says to raise the memory limit: it gives 32MB as an example, not a rule. —Emufarmers(T 08:17, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The PHP script just exceeded 80MB.. I would consider this an issue with the script.

>> Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 83886080 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 86 bytes) in /usr/share/mediawiki/includes/filerepo/LocalFile.php on line 249


 * I did a little research on the issue. Because of the nature of the content I have on my wiki there are one or two images that are duplicated many times with different names. This is not a problem for me as the images are very small. What I discovered is that the image view page searches and lists all of these duplicates. The resulting page is very large causing the memory issue. Can the scripts be modified to only list the first 100 or so?

Statistics
With the code : Special:Statistics I can see automaticly how many pages there are on my wiki. Is there also a code to see how many pages has been vitites totally on my wiki ? Thanks...

—82.173.153.235 08:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Custom Login Page & Passing Login Info

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.6
 * MySQL version: 5.0.62
 * URL: Currently its development site

Hi. I'm currently working on mediawiki on my company's project. I like to know is there any reference on creating custom login page? also I like to send logged in user from our secure page to (our)mediawiki site, so they are automatically logged in. Please advice.

—12.17.95.135 15:25, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

PHP shell for Windows Server 2003?
I have downloaded php shell; however, it claims to be for Linux and I don't think it will work on a windows server 2003 system. I can't run any of the maintenance scrips. Nothing else that claims to work for Linux has worked for me yet. Is there a way to just make the maintenance scrips work without the benefit of the php shell? Any suggestions? —Coop 05:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.5
 * MySQL version: 4.1.22
 * URL: http://mysticdragonorb.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Can I require more information in "Create Account" Page?
Besides ID and password,I would like to require more information, such as birthday, when a user wants to register. Also, can I define which field is required and which one is not? Thank you!
 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.2.6
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67
 * URL: N/A

—Coulomb 23:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)Coulomb

Manual:Skinning is outdated
The article Manual:Skinning is outdated. Don't supports the categories. What I must do? Do I must include some template in the article?Eloy 13:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Fatal Error...
I got this on a free webserver (so I don't have an access to it), after trying to save the page or to log in:

Fatal error: session_start [function.session-start]: Failed to initialize storage module: files (path: ) in /mnt/md1/public/d/o/dob/includes/GlobalFunctions.php on line 2453 What should I do now? :-D

Drkazmer

character above the logo

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: 5.1.6 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.45
 * URL: local

I got a character above the logo "<" and I don't know what is generating it

and it is always there when I use the rich editor "disabling the rich editor doesn't help"

also with every preview it appends one more character as follow

< < one more thing

viewing page source I find that character before <!DOCTYPE..

<<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC .....

looks like something is appending that character "<" to the (output stream) How to debug such behavior?

FireFox error console shows



what could be generating that character "<"?

Created arricles by a user
Is there any way to see all the pages (articles) created by a user in a wiki?--117.196.166.166 08:01, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And 10:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC) You should have "my contributions" in the "personal tools" toolbox (or top right, depending on your skin) - this links to Special:Contributions/User.Name and you can just change the user name accordingly. However, this shows all pages that the user has edited as well as created, so it's not exactly what you need, but it's the closest I know of.
 * The Special:NewPages function allows you to specify a user name, seeing all new pages that user has created recently. I think it only goes back to whatever you have the $rcMaxAge (IIRC) variable set to. --Greg (68.49.33.97 20:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC))

(RESOLVED) MediaWiki for Mac?
do you have any mediawiki download available for MacIntosh users?

Birgit Birgit.Woelker@ncc.edu —72.89.79.27 18:47, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki is cross-platform software, and it runs well on *nix systems as MacOS X is one :-) So there are no different download options for different OS. -- :bdk: 22:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

How do I get a main table of content for my wiki??
MediaWiki version: 1.13.2 PHP version: 5.1.6 MySQL version: 5.0.45 URL: local

Hello, I really need to get a table of content (A-Z index) on my main page or the portal page. I search the whole day but I didn't find it; hop it's quite easy... [mailto:info@ks68.de] --IP 12 January 2009


 * Reply
 * How to edit a page

add the heading between == heading 1 == == heading 2 == == heading 3 == == heading 4 ==
 * --IP 12 January 2009


 * Three suggestions (dunno what exactly you want to achieve):
 * For a "normal toc" add the TOC magic word to the page in question (only works well if you already have at least one heading on the page); but a toc is automatically displayed if there are at least four headings (like ==A== to ==Z==), see en.wikipedia help).
 * For an "A-Z index" include Special:Allpages by adding  to a page – this will be displayed differently, depending on the total amount of articles in your wiki (either really all pages, or subsection links).
 * A neat alternative could be Extension:CategoryTree (if you have categorized all articles and have a main category).
 * -- :bdk: 02:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much until now but this is not exactly what I need: I want to have a A-Z index on my main page. It's a special content in our wiki and if there is no table of content directly on the first page, people don't know which for which articles they should search. – Like in a book: index at the beginning. I don't want the users seachr for "all pages"... I will search through the "how to edit". which is a super-useful page I didn't find before – just starting. --IP 14 January 2009
 * http://www.boehmkobayashi.de/wiki/index.php/B%C3%B6hm_Handelszentrum


 * Well, I can only see 8 "articles" in your wiki at the moment. Why not choose option 2 then?
 * Please note, that Special:Allpages (default: main namespace) actually is MediaWiki's built-in A–Z index. I do not know of any other automated way to do what you want obviously.
 * Another very basic option would be, of course, to simply edit your main page and manually add the pages in question with ordinary A–Z headings … -- :bdk: 12:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Email notification on deleted watched pages says "page created"

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.2
 * PHP version: PHP 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch 0.9.6.2 (cli) (built: Nov 25 2008 22:10:31)
 * MySQL version: Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.51a, for debian-linux-gnu (i486) using readline 5.2
 * URL: not a public wiki

I have configured a wiki working just fine, with email notifications activated - working great! However, when watching a page being deleted (and not being the user deleting the page, which would not generate a notification) the page is reported as being "created". That is a little misleading as least :)

Users set to be notified OnAllChanges gets the same message when a page is deleted: "created". I've been looking into the code and I guess the problem may be that "created" is selected when $this->oldid is unset, which probably also is true when pages are being deleted.

Thanks for a great project!

Regards

Rikard Mathisson, Senior Software Engineer —62.95.110.200 14:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Filed as bug 17016. Thanks for reporting! —Emufarmers(T 06:44, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

(RESOLVED) Problem with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)
I am posting this even though I've fixed the problem, in case anyone else encounters it.
 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.0
 * PHP version: 5.2.6 (apache2handler)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67
 * URL: n/a (it's internal anyway!)

With the above configuration, which worked well on Solaris 10/Apache 2.2.6 with IE6, Safari, Chrome and Firefox, when I went to the site using IE7, I never reached it - the status bar flickered away for ever and analysis of the traffic showed that etags were being bounced back and forth between the client and server. I installed Apache 2.11.0 no_ldap (from Sunfreeware) and the problem disappeared.

—And 10:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

External authentication

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.6
 * MySQL version: 5.0.51b
 * URL:

My company uses a web based authentication for webpages. In a nutshell, a webpage would redirect to this authentication page which handles all userid/password input, etc. and then returns to the sending page with cookies. It's then up to the page owners to decide how they want to use that information. Is it possible to change the MediaWiki login code (easily, not rewriting MediaWiki) to perform this redirect and call my own .php code to handle the cookies? If so, any help would be appreciated. What files do I need to modify? What cookies/variables/etc do I need to set so MediaWiki knows who and what permissions the user has? etc. Thanks! —72.77.231.3 15:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Page Language Selection
Hi, Im very intrested to Language Selection's method used on Mediawiki.org. I tryed to install it on my wiki. I created the 2 templates Template:Language and Template:Language/Lang, and installed Extension:ParserFunctions. I created Page called like MyPage for default and MyPage/en for English. It seems to work when the page with default language is loaded, but if i load another page with different language, it seems that the Template is not able to recognize the language and the Template is not working.
 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.8 (cgi)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.68-log
 * URL: http://lnx.gestioneacquario.org/wiki/

Can you help me? There is an example on my site on Main Page.

Thanks

Marco

—195.103.112.184 15:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

(RESOLVED) ED
Hi, I would like to ask that you remove the page

encyclopediadramatica.com/Krystole

from your documents. These are all lies taken from some over dramatic loser who has no better then to belate others on their life. The pics are illigally optained from a private collection and are not for public viewing. It is sick what you let people blog about on your pages. These lies should not be aloud to be published due to the slander effect it could have on her. So i ask again for you to please remove this page from your archives. Thanks

Shawn Hele Shawnhele@hotmail.com —24.235.202.190 20:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki is free software and can be used by everybody for whatever content. We here at mediawiki.org are not responsible neither for third party uses of MediaWiki nor for content that third parties add to their website (content issues are independent of the engine that is used to run a site), and we can't help with respective problems. – Please contact the actual owner (or contributors) of the site you're concerned about.
 * In this precise case you might want to have a closer look at this article on Wikipedia first. I hope this helps. -- :bdk: 12:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

x64 support

 * MediaWiki version: mediawiki-1.13.2
 * PHP version:5.2.6-2ubuntu4
 * MySQL version: MySQL 5.0.67-0ubuntu6

does the engine work on x64 system? I have the following message on my x64 ubuntu instead the main and other pages

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 20971520 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24 bytes) in /home/deda/Docs/Sites/wiki/includes/SpecialPage.php on line 161

On my x32 system MediaWiki works properly.

The parameter memory_limit is same in both systems (it's equal. 16M). I tryed to enlarge it in 64x to 25M but the bug is still recreated.

Daniil


 * MediaWiki should work fine on x64 machines. Increase the memory limit until PHP stops running out of memory.  If the error isn't changing, then your memory limit is probably being overriden in LocalSettings.php or an .htaccess file; the error you pasted indicates that the memory limit was 20MB, but you just said it was 16MB. —Emufarmers(T 09:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll try it. Error above is from one intermediate result

Percent-encoding parentheses in links

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.8 (cgi-fcgi)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67
 * URL: http://www.charlibar.com/wiki/Accueil

Links that have some parentheses get percent-encoded (in the above URL, Test (1) is linked to Test_%281%29, which is ugly. Wikipedia sites do not show the problem. How to configure MediaWiki to not percent-encode these links? —Charlesb 13:48, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia uses aliases instead of mod_rewrite. —Emufarmers(T 05:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thamks for the answer, but I don't see what is has to do with url rewriting? I'm talking about the hrefs of wiki links, so for me the percent-encoding is made at page generation.


 * My server is down, so I reformulate my problem here:


 * the following wiki markup  Test (1) </tt> is rendered in the article page as  <a href="/wiki/Test_%281%29" title="Test (1)">Test (1)</a> </tt>. On wikipedia, it is rendered as  <a href="/wiki/Test_(1)" title="Test (1)">Test (1)</a> </tt>


 * So when the link is followed, on my site the user gets those percents in the adress bar, but not on Wikipedia. Sounds like a detail, but I'm curious
 * --Charlesb 07:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I should have stated the connection: my testing indicates that wikis that use rewrite rules have parentheses encoded in links, while wikis that use aliases don't. —Emufarmers(T 13:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I trust you, but I think that there is something else. Alias or RewriteRule don't change the hrefs in page links, do they? Did you really test on the same server/config, switching from Alias to RewriteRule, and saw the difference? --Charlesb 23:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I was lazy. I checked two unrelated wikis that I knew used rewrite rules and found that they both had encoded parentheses in links, and then I checked two unrelated wikis that I knew used aliases and found that neither had encoded parentheses in links.


 * I can't resist a challenge, though, so I went ahead and duplicated one of my wikis and changed its configuration to use rewrite rules. Parentheses in links remained unencoded. (I could have saved myself the trouble if I had thought more carefully about what you said and realized that my theory made no sense :)).  Then I had an insight and did some more testing and determined that parentheses get encoded in 1.13.3 but not in 1.14/1.15.  For confirmation, I checked the 1.14 patchnotes and found 'Unescape more "safe" characters when producing URLs, for added prettiness'. —Emufarmers(T 13:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

HTTP/500 when trying to edit a page

 * MediaWiki version: 1.13.3
 * PHP version: 5.2.6 (CGI)
 * MySQL version: 5.0.67-community
 * URL: protected/no external address

Summary: When I try to edit a page, I get a 500 Internal Server Error. Steps to trigger: Go to Main Page, click edit, press Save. Details: I have installed MediaWiki several times, and have never had this issue before. I am not certain if this has anything to do with the problem, but PHP has a lower memory limit than usual (this is not under my control). Also, I believe PHP is running as CGI.

Thanks ahead of time!

- Ben —69.249.106.162 02:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)