Debian/Ubuntu

The Debian package, which is also found in Ubuntu, does some odd things to MediaWiki to fit in with the odd things Debian does to Apache.

This page should list those changes, for the benefit of end users coming from using a tarball.


 * pkg-mediawiki-devel list at Debian

Status
Distro packages have previously been regarded as unsupported and not recommended by WMF. Despite this people have been installing the distro versions anyway, and ending up with an insecure, outdated and unsupportable installation. So WMF is now actively working with distros to get the distro packages into a supportable condition, on the package mailing lists and on mediawiki-distributors.

To this end, specified versions will be maintained as LTS, with support from WMF and the distro packagers. The first release so blessed is 1.19, which should make it into Debian wheezy.

Debian changes to Apache
/etc/apache2/README details much of what you need to know.


 * httpd conf in /etc/apache2
 * htdocs in /var/www
 * logs in /var/log/apache

Sysadmins coming from using Apache tarballs should read this page.

If you install MediaWiki from tarball anyway
Installing the distro package anyway can be very handy for pulling in prerequisites.