Manual talk:Installing on MoWeS Portable (Windows)

Download Link
CH Software Website seems to be down.

Question on Instructions:
Step three goes like this:

--- 3. The default for the apache web server is to listen on port 80 of the host machine. This is likely to cause problems if there's an existing server on your target machine. To change the port number, open the file apache2\conf\httpd.conf in a text editor like notepad.

Search for the line that says Listen 80 and change it to Listen 127.0.0.1:8080 Search for the line that says ServerName localhost:80 and change it to ServerName 127.0.0.1:8080
 * IANA Port Numbers:

o 80: World Wide Web (HTTP)

o 8080: HTTP Alternate

o 443: HTTP protocol over TLS/SSL (HTTPS)

o 49152 through 65535: Dynamic and/or Private Ports

o 1024 through 49151 should not be used on the Internet without IANA registration.

--- I've been very slow and deliberate and been very careful to do everything EXACTLY as described. And my question is when it starts into the "IANA port numbers... " um.... do you want me to DO something with those? there are no instructions to do anything about them, so I did nothing.

If someone is reading this, I also had to go into G:\Apache2\conf\httpd.conf and change all of the "c:" to "x:" to get it MORE working. You can find all of these by running the file "httpd" from "x:\Apache2\bin" it will give you an error message which helps point out where you need to change stuff.

You also may have to "x:\\wow\old.dir is not writable. WOS can not run correctly without writing this file." (x is your thumb drive) Check "archive" on that file and it works without the error message. But now after all of that, it says it's running Apache but NOT SQL. I don't know why.

When I run httpd it says (OS 10048)Only one useage of each socket address (protocal/network adress/port) is normally permitted. : make_sock: could not bind to address 127.0.0.1:8080 no listening sockets available, shutting down unable to open logs.

Error log is empty

httpdf.pid says "2736"

help! I am using VISTA 64 bit. --Eckre 13:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * On mine it reports the status of the DB incorrectly. Says MySQL is not running, when in fact it is running just fine. Not sure why.
 * So is your apache running OK or not? go to http://localhost:8080/ Do you get the WOS home page? Do you have link to phpmyadmin? Try it. See if you can do stuff with you database. Is it really not starting? -- Harry Wood 18:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Question:
The Hints describe saving space by deleting PHP4 or PHP5 folder, after selecting the one you want to use. I tried selecting 5 and deleted 4 and ended up broken. WOS would not start up until I restored the php4 folder.

Question:
When I set this up, it doesn't allow pages to be deleted, even if I log in as WikiSysop. The "delete" tab comes up, and it asks me to "confirm delete", but the "delete page" button does not delete the page - it just goes back to the "confirm delete" page.

Note: "move" page also doesn't work.

Answer: (I figured it out myself!)
You need to create a directory  if you are using php5, or   if you are using php4.

If you look in the W:\apache2\logs\error.log file (you made it in step 5, right?), it says:

Speed
My WoWoS seems to run slightly slower than wikipedia.org (on a busy day). What can I do to speed it up? Can I install memcached? Rich  Farmbrough 10:44 12  July 2006 (UTC).
 * INterestingly it seems to have sped up a bit "on its own". Rich  Farmbrough 12:22 27  July 2006 (UTC).

(I'm confused. Isn't your WoWoS on a USB stick, connected to your local computer? What does "on a busy day" mean when there should be no one but you accessing it.)
 * I think he means Wikipedia on a busy day, not his personal wiki.
 * Make sure you install on a USB2.0 drive, not a usb1.1 drive, and that you connect to a usb2.0 port. The difference is profound.

Question:
I have a working Wiki on a Stick, set up as described. However, the computer I plug the stick into also has a WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) wiki. It seems that the CH Software WOS will start up Apache properly, and it reports that MySQL Server is running, but I can't access the MySQL database. The error message is "Access denied for user 'mywiki'@'localhost' (using password: YES) (localhost))". If I stop the WAMP MySQL server, and restart the WOS MySQL server, then the Wiki on a Stick works, but the WAMP wiki has the same error message. (Checking services says that both Apache servers and both MySQL servers can run at the same time.)
 * You're probibly trying to run both MySQL servers on port 3306, which is the default MySQL port. However, when your Wiki on a Stick tries to access it's MySQL server it goes to the first one that was started on the machine, which in this case is the wrong one. Try changing the port for the MySQL server you have on your USB device to 3307, the setting for that can be found in your my.ini file in the MySQL server's root directory. Just look for the line that reads "Port=3306", without the quotations, and change it to 3307 or another port of your choice. Paul Barkley 18:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Does it work on a CD
Has anybody tried to install this on a CD-rom or DVD instead of a stick? is it possible?
 * Where would you save wiki edits? I would guess that RW media works.
 * You could use WOS Presenter ([www.chsoftware.net/en/products/wospresenter/])

Uniform Server will run on Win98/ME
CH Software requires Win2K/XP. Uniform Server will run on Win98/ME.-69.87.199.193 02:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Empty wiki 55 MB?
The manual says: "A complete WOS installation with an empty MediaWiki takes about 55Mb." On the download site however, when I check Apache2_SE, MySQL5_SE, PHP5_SE + MediaWiki 1.12.0 it says, that it will be 87.17 MB (extracted). It is quite a big difference for me, because I want to put it on 128MB stick. Q1: Which of the mentioned sizes is more close to truth. Q2: Can anybody give a hint, how many pages of wiki-text could be saved on the remaining cca. 30 MBs? --194.160.92.107 09:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Out of date install and set up instructions
The main page instructions are very out of date.

--Stuart Halliday 11:49, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I've got it working with:
 * Apache2 (Version 2.2.9)
 * PHP5 (Version 5.2.5)
 * MediaWiki (Version 1.13.1)
 * PHPMyAdmin (Version 3.1.1)
 * MySQL5 (Version 5.0.67)

Basically I selected the full 5 items listed above as a package from the CH Software website and installed them on a 8GB USB stick. I then used PHPMyAdmin to import most of my mysql databases into MySql (I had to manually import my main one as the PHPMyAdmin has a upper limit). I then took a backup of this new mediawiki directory before importing from my FTP client the directories and contents from my online Wiki into this directory. I then took the original LocalSettings.php made by MoWeS Portable II and altered: $wgDBuser          = "root"; $wgDBpassword      = ""; and put it into the mediawiki folder. This allowed me to see the contents of my pages. I then slowly added the extensions back in by copying and pasting from my original LocalSettings.php into the new one.

As I was simply using the MoWeS to view my Wiki offline, I had no need to set up any extra mysql users, so I took any mediawiki extensions that had extra mySQL user and passwords and set them to user root and null password. This at least got them working quickly. :-)

This was a good exercise as it gave me a feel of what is involved in doing a full restore if I had a catastrophic failure of my online wiki.


 * backup/restore of mysql databases
 * How mysql user privileges work

Tip: Don't use Notepad.exe to edit php files, it can corrupt them. WordPad or NotePad++ is better.

--Stuart Halliday 11:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Transfer an online-wiki to a USB-stick
Copying database and files to the Wiki installed by MoWes did not work for me. So I installed only Apache,PHP,MySql and PhpMyAdmin on the stick by Mowes. Then backed up the Onlinewikis Database as an SQL File, WWW-folder and the Images-Folder (was not included in the www-folder but on a different HDD). Then copied Folders to the stick, putting the images-folder back to www-folder. Afterthat I created a empty database and user exactly like the online wikis' and imported the Wikis Database with phpMyAdmin. Further there was nothing to do then changing the paths for Upload-Files in LocalSettings.php. So that worked from the start while the whole mediawiki including extensions and configuration was copied from the server. For security I changed the Wikiusers database-password in DB and localsettings.php on th stick. 92.79.145.130 14:04, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Old unsupported version 1.16 of MediaWiki - how to upgrade to 1.19?
Hi, guys! I've tried the Uniform Server installation too but both have old versions of MediaWiki, which are not supported any more (Uniform 3.5 (provided as a download link in this wiki) has also an extremely outdated MySQL (something that's at least not a problem in MoWeS). Can someone please update the info in the wiki. A simple Copy-Paste of the mediawiki-1.19.0 archive onto the mediawiki-folder, installed with the MoWeS simply doesn't work. Is it even possible to installe MediaWiki not as a package (PCK-file) from MoWeS?

Greetings and thanks in advance!

MoWeS Portable has been discontinued
Since MoWeS Portable has been discontinued, perhaps this could be rewritten for XAMPP or another package software? This guide helped me, at the time that MoWeS Portable was available. I think it's a good addition for first-time MediaWiki-ers who don't have server access. --Inops (talk) 15:25, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Manual:Installing MediaWiki on XAMPP --Robkam (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Some help, please
Step 1 of this guide (the MoWeS mixer site) no longer exists. And so, I don't know what I have to do to get MoWeS running; simply unzipping it and running mowes.exe doesn't work because it complains that Apache and MySQL aren't installed (specifically, I get the error message "The file [...]\mowes_portable\apache2/conf/httpd.conf does not exist. MoWeS cannot run correctly without this file."

I have no idea how exactly I'm supposed to install them (which files and where). The guide says that "MoWeS will continue to automatically install all packages", but it seems that it won't do that unless one used the MoWeS mixer site to set things up, which is now impossible.

Any help would be much appreciated. Esn (talk) 09:43, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Mowse no longer exists. CH Software discontinued business activities on November 7, 2012; See Manual:Wiki on a stick instead. --Rob Kam (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Last version of article prior to being blanked for a redirect
For historical purposes, see this revision from February 2014 Jim Grisham (talk) 17:56, 16 August 2022 (UTC)