Release notes/1.2

Not to be confused with MediaWiki 1.20

MediaWiki 1.2
No one should install these on new wikis – security updates for older wikis only.
 * MediaWiki Stable Releases 1.2.x


 * Full release notes

1.2.6

 * Released on: 2004-05-24
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.5

 * Released on: 2004-05-03
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.4

 * Released on: 2004-04-13
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.3

 * Released on: 2004-04-02
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.2

 * Released on: 2004-03-28
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.1

 * Released on: 2004-03-27
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

1.2.0

 * Released on: 2004-03-24
 * Download at:
 * Changes: Release Notes

= MediaWiki release notes =

Version 1.2.6, 2004-05-24

 * Spam blocker ( - refuses to save edits that match)
 * Updated documentation about
 * Ensure that searchindex table is created as MyISAM
 * Interwiki cache timeout (memcached)
 * Fix uploads on Windows with magic_quotes_gpc
 * Some config fixes for Windows (slashes etc)
 * Local interwiki URL redirects
 * Fixed obscure deletion problem in squid mode on corrupt entries
 * Language files updated to remove more hard-coded "Wikipedia" strings

Version 1.2.5, 2004-05-03

 * Fixed install problem with blank root password
 * Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
 * Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
 * Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 * Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
 * IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
 * Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack
 * Fix for moved pages in enhanced Recentchanges
 * Initial main page on new installs links to the online documentation

Version 1.2.4, 2004-04-13

 * Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
 * Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
 * Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
 * Backported optional open proxy blocker
 * Backported
 * option to force full case sensitivity in titles
 * Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
 * Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the  call to use)

Version 1.2.3, 2004-04-02

 * Fixed an in-place install bug with non-root MySQL user
 * Fixed history diff checkboxes bug on titles with ampersands
 * Fixed printable link bug on special pages with parameters
 * Fixed bug that broke IP blocking w/o memcached
 * Turns off E_NOTICE warnings if PHP settings have them on (you can grope in and turn this off if you like to debug)

Version 1.2.2, 2004-03-28

 * Fixed an upgrade bug introduced in 1.2.1.
 * Disabled, which feature is incomplete broken

Version 1.2.1, 2004-03-27
Installation, compatibility, security fixlets:
 * Detect use of PHP as CGI and disable  URLs
 * Try to auto-create math tmp & output directories if not present
 * Disable Asksql in default install
 * Better handling of  (apostrophe problems)
 * French localisation no longer hard-codes "Wikipedia" name

Version 1.2.0, 2004-03-24
This is the new production release; it is more or less in sync with what is running on Wikipedia right now. However this software is provided with NO WARRANTY of fitness for any purpose; there may be some interesting bugs, it may eat all your data, and documentation may not be up to date. New features in 1.2:
 * In-place web-based installation [experimental!] Note that maintenance functions are not yet available through the web install script.
 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat" may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop. (The exact details of this may change in the future)
 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
 * Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies (off by default in user preferences)
 * Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
 * It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki. An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat" privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install. Fixes and tweaks:
 * Now works with register_globals off!
 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set  to turn on the link cache table for a slight rendering speed boost.
 * Should work on PHP 5.0 beta (not thoroughly tested)
 * Works with short tags disabled.
 * rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or overwrite everything.
 * Some layout fixes for RTL languages.
 * Now includes arrow icons for enhanced recent changes.
 * Various bug fixes.

Behavior changes

 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
 * Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
 * Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you don't want the performance hit.

Database changes
An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters). Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table ( for manual updaters). The links tables have slightly stricter indexes. ('links' and 'brokenlinks' are not changed on existing installations.)

Known problems
The version 1.1.0 LocalSettings.sample file included the setting  this setting is for an experimental feature that _does not work correctly_. If you have it left over, turn it off or you'll see mysterious problems with vanishing links. There may be problems with session handling on some systems. Checking the "remember my password" box may help as a temporary workaround. If you receive "Cannot load input file" errors when trying to get at the wiki after installation, make the following changes: in LocalSettings.php change the line something like this: = "/wiki/index.php/$1"; to: = "/wiki/index.php?title=$1"; in index.php, remove these lines: if( isset( $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] ) ) { $title = substr( $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'], 1 ); } else { $title = $_REQUEST['title']; }

Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08
This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0 release. New features in 1.1: Internal changes: New translations:
 * New wiki table syntax: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
 * User-editable interface messages: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export (There is not yet an import function!)
 * "Magic words" Fixes and tweaks:
 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
 * Problems with  segments in section titles etc mitigated
 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
 * Various exciting new profiling options.
 * Debug log is off by default.
 * Various small bugs fixed.
 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value is not actually used so far.
 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree but disabled.
 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
 * fi - Finnish
 * ia - Interlingua
 * no - Norwegian
 * sk - Slovak
 * ta - Tamil

Database changes
"linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php), run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table. Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:

mediawiki-20031118

 * Image deletion fixed.
 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.

mediawiki-20031117

 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved password cookies.
 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 * Updates to some translations.
 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions, added compatibility functions that might or might not help No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.

mediawiki-20031107

 * Fixed various bugs!
 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 * New translations (see below)
 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when the db is locked or the page is protected.
 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)

Security note
Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration you can reenable uploads by putting:  into. Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged- in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed. As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory! You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie- stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:  # Ignore .htaccess files AllowOverride None # Serve HTML as plaintext AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml # Don't run arbitrary PHP code. php_admin_flag engine off # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too. 

Database updates
If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should be made automatically. To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory: archives/patch-ipblocks.sql archives/patch-interwiki.sql archives/patch-indexes.sql interwiki.sql To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add: wikipedia-interwiki.sql

Translations
New interface localization files are included for:
 * fy Frisian
 * ro Romanian
 * sl Slovene
 * sq Albanian
 * sr Serbian

Memcached
Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/ MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the UTF-8 conversion tables. MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with minimal overhead. To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is notin the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details. Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.) To enable this, set   and set  appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable when this option is turned on.

Online documentation
Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation License: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide

Mailing list
A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia wikitech-l list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

UseModWiki import script
A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but does function for the brave and pure of heart.

Test suite removed
The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.

mediawiki-20030829
First release under MediaWiki name.