Manual talk:Config script

What is 'chown'?
Near the end of 'Running the script' it states: Set stringent permissions on the LocalSettings.php file. ( chmod 600 and chown ) I'm not very technical, but I found the 'chmod' option in my shared host's control panel (Dreamhost), but can't find a 'chown' option. Is changing 'chown' still necessary if I've changed the 'chmod' setting to '600'? --89.243.248.40 13:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * chown changes file ownership, in this case setting it to the account that the web server runs under, since it will need access to the file. chmod without chown (or its equivalent on other systems) may specifically set the file as readable only by you, and not by the web server account. On the other hand, if you are running the web server under your own account (or in certain systems like Windows) then chown isn't usually necessary. -- IvoLucien 1 June 2008

If I change the right to 600, I get : Warning: require_once(/home/.../public_html/LocalSettings.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: Permission denied /home/.../public_html/includes/WebStart.php on line 113 My wiki is hosted on a shared webserver. The owner and group of each file is the subscriber of hosting account. I found no way to change the owner of any file. If I set the permission to 644, the wiki is right runing and my browser return This file is part of MediaWiki and is not a valid entry point  if I try to open LocalSettings.php. Is there a security flaw ? and can I fix it ? Jean-Louis Hens 08:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

What is the Database host
i have all the files of the wiki Site on there and i am configuring now but it says there is no connection.. and it says i need a database host.. where can i find the name of my database host? --22 June 2008

Empty Page
I have done everything exactly as described and after configuring my wiki pushed the install button and afterwards I moved and changed the ownership of the file LocalSettings.php. When I was done i tried to view my wiki and ended up with an completly empty page.

I'm running my webserver on my own pc. (OS - Fedora 9) (Wiki - 1.12.0) (Software - Apache 2.2.8, PHP 5.2.6, mysql 5.0.51a (all from fedora repo))

87.208.10.4 13 July 2008


 * I found the solution through this article Linkage --13 July 2008

LocalSettings.php
I moved the LocalSettings.php file to the parent directory but it kept showing a "Please set wiki first" and then it would send me back to the initial form. What am I doing wrong?--68.197.6.70 04:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Blank Page
I use x10Hosting for my webhosting. When I try to get to the config page, a completely blank page comes up. I need to fix this. Dagoth Ur, Mad God 10:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

backend config script
is there a configuration script i can run on the backend instead of filling out the web form? i run a server with a pile of wikis, and i'm trying to take the human component out of creating a new wiki. currently i have it scripted up until the point where the web form has to be filled out, the admin then has to manually fill out the web form, and then continue the script to complete the installation. the main thing i'm having trouble scripting around is generation of $wgSecretKey. everything else in LocalSettings.php is known and easily scripted.
 * CLI installer will be included in 1.17. Max Semenik 17:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * in case anyone is interested, i resolved this issue with the use of curl. my script pipes output to curl which fills in the form for me. Zeefreak 19:00, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could we have some info on the CLI installer please? --Robkam (talk) 09:20, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

copyright and compatibility with Wikipedia
"Copyright and Licenses	Three choices are available: No license metadata, GNU Free Documentation License 1.2, A Creative Commons license. Of these, only the GNU Free Documentation License is Wikipedia compatible." GNU was only compatible for a time, because of its excessive documentation requirements -- something like if you wanted to print something from Wikipedia on a shirt, you couldn't just print the web address on the shirt as the attribution, you'd have to print out a few pages of everyone who's ever modified the source. Isn't it Creative Commons that's compatible now?

Filling out the form fields
Isn't statement outdated? After the setup script has finished running successfully, a file called LocalSettings.php is created in the "config" directory. I'm suggesting to move this paragraph to the bottom of table --AndriuZ (talk) 18:33, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Translation
This doesn't harm:. If someone wants to work further on translation, though, this page needs more than a facelift. I wouldn't oppose removing all the parts/sections we're unsure about, if you want to translate those we are sure we want. --Nemo 06:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Session_start Error
Hi. I've successfully installed MediaWiki numerous times, but I'm getting a new error this time out with the latest 1.24.1 version. I was hoping to find it covered in the Configuration Errors section at the bottom of this installion guide, but no dice. I've Googled around for a solution, but I can't find anything definitive (and a lot of the discussion goes over my head).

Here's the error. When I go to the index page of the install, I see a screen that says "LocalSettings.php not found. Please _set up the wiki_ first." When I click that link, it goes to mw-config/index.php.

Error starting session: session_start: open(/var/lib/php/session/sess_ffba6lvlp2lqoref5rccvvs9d2, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13)

Following that, there's a stream of what looks like page errors:


 * [//www.mediawiki.org MediaWiki home] * [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Contents User's Guide] * [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Contents Administrator's Guide] * [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:FAQ FAQ] * Read me * Release notes * Copying * Upgrading

I'd appreciate any help, and perhaps if it's a common enough error, it should be covered on this guide. Thanks!

you can solve with : 'chmod 777 /var/lib/php/session'

seems like you are writing your project into a read-only repository. have you tried appending your commands with sudo?

Also, for this reason it's best to install packages etc locally and not globally on your pc as other dependencies will conflict and cause errors.

tools such as vent (python) or docker (like a virtual machine) are handy for this. but when you install what also works is putting --user behind it. also take a loot at your zshrc file or config file, and see if your repo is included in your $PATH