Manual talk:Newcomers guide to installing on Windows

Not sure what you mean by the "special folders section". More specifically, what are you refering to when you say "phpmyadmin code?"

Concerning "A very simple installation for Mediawiki on your PC"
Could anyone translate this into English? I'm no linguaphobe, but I think different languages are a bit out of place on a page that is english everywhere else. Kyouteki 19:45, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Search Engine Error
I have my mediawiki up and running on Apache2 using PHP5 and mySQL4.1 all on Windows 2k3.

When I try to use SEARCH, I encounter an error:

Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in C:\Apache\Apache2\htdocs\wiki\includes\SearchEngine.php on line 36

Can anyone suggest a starting point for discovering a resolution?

scott.holland@mch.crhc.org

A possible solution: you seem to be running a new version of PHP that inserts these error codes, along with an old version of mediawiki that does not know how to handle them. Are you running mediawiki 1.4? If so, upgrade to 1.5rc4, and see if that fixes the problem.

adavidso-AT-hmc-DOT-edu

Why tar and gz?
Why not zip? I know there's probably some über-technical reason for this. Do these extentions come pre-packaged with Linux or something? - Kookykman

my guess would be that a gz file can be compressed further into a tar. double compression = smaller file.

Skins only render in IE/Safari and not in Mozilla-based browsers
I've got an installation up and running perfectly on XP Home Edition, using OmniSecure as my webserver. There have been no problems with PHP or MySQL, and everything appears to be working as it should, though I haven't configured it to use memcaching. That said, in Netscape or Firefox, my wiki prints plain text with absolutely no formatting, regardless of whatever skin I set. It does render normally in IE and Safari, however.

Has anyone else encountered this, or have any idea why this might be happening? I'd really appreciate any answers, as I haven't yet found anything that mentions this kind of problem.

nephesh @ nephesh dot net

68.0.185.95 13:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Easier to write your own program
Dear readers / Wiki fans

One look at the documentation here and I see its a mess and over complicated. I think that its better to take the "concept" of Wiki and write a new program from scratch. The developemnt of Wiki seems to be a mess with squillions of components all clashing around.

Sounds like the Internet?

Maybe there should be a Wiki v2.0 just like there is a notion for internet v2.0.

Its also a disaster in terms of "common goals". The common goals of developers these days is to write cross platform compatible, COMPATIBLE programs that are portable too.

By the time all of those components have been downloaded / installed and tested (on a compatible server) 1000's of lines of code could have been written.

Sorry to be so negative - it was a shock to my system seeing the inner workings of Wiki are nothing like its pretty face, usability and concept.

Very dissapointed here...

dangibas@gmail.com




 * The obvious reply to this is that, although all the methods here assume some knowledge of the workings of PHP, MySQL, and so on, an ability to work through instructions and set these things up to run a Wiki does not indicate an ability to code new applications from the ground up.


 * Although I have used the EasyPHP approach to create a local-drive Wiki before, and successfully, I might add, I wouldn't even know how to begin writing a new program. Today I'm having trouble with PHP5 and SQL extensions since the versions have changed since I last used them, but I'm working through the problems.  Maybe there are some who'd suggest that I shouldn't be messing around with things I don't fully understand - but I've got time to spare at the moment and I can only learn from it.


 * To conclude, although I agree the instructions for the installation and the modular nature of the applications used is potentially confusing (especially for a know-nothing novice like myself), I don't see that that situation is going to be helped if dozens of people sit down and write even more individualised and non-standard code to add to the mix. - Fimbulvetr 09:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: Seems the process has been clened up a great deal since my post above. Nice to see the evolution. Thanks for your comments Fimbulvetr.

Apache/EASYPHP/MySQL/MediaWiki 1.5.7 Question
Hi,

I found the easyphp installation on my winXP system rather easy and effective. It only took me about an hour for the basic set-up and I was able to start working on the content. I had a much harder time setting up a dynamic dns (and that was not that bad either).

Anyway, my question: with the standard easy PHP solution, the mediawiki folder is in a www folder and when I access the wenserver, I first get to the www folder/page. Then I have to click on a little folder symbol to actually get to the mediawiki. Is there a way to set up the mediawiki or apache or whatever, so that the website root is directly the wiki? I tried setting the document root in apache's httpd.conf to // .com/mediawiki-1.5.5/ but that did not work. Any ideas?

Thanks, Andy 63.125.44.226 22:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

MySQL DB Config
When I try to configure the DB before I get to install it, I type in any user name and password and it tells me to check the username and password. So I change it to the wiki login and I get the same problem. I left the default, and same problem. I'm trying to install it on Windows XP Pro SP2. If anyone can help me, e-mail me at [mailto:piicklemaster21@aol.com Piicklemaster21@aol.com].


 * Want to say 'thanks' for the part of the article about setting up for MySQL. I had been getting the error 'Specified key was too long;

max key length is 1024 bytes' but I followed the instructions and got the problem easily fixed. 68.102.217.85

thank you
Thank you, it simply worked within minutes on my localhost. It gave me courrage to start it on LAMP.

1.6.7 installation error and fix
Just installed 1.6.7 from scratch on our server which already had apache/php/mysql configured and running. I ran into two small problems with relatively simple fixes.


 * Opening myurl/wiki/ in a browser resulted in two errors


 * Warning: main(include/SiteConfiguration.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ServerRoot\wiki\includes\DefaultSettings.php on line 31
 * Fatal error: main [function.require]: Failed opening required 'include/SiteConfiguration.php' (include_path='ServerRoot\wiki;ServerRoot\wiki/includes;ServerRoot\wiki/languages') in ServerRoot\wiki\includes\DefaultSettings.php on line 31

require_once( 'include/SiteConfiguration.php' ); to require_once( 'SiteConfiguration.php' );
 * Change line 31 of includes\DefaultSettings.php from

Then go to myurl/wiki/config/ in your browser and follow the instructions

Everything went seemlessly from there.

--OzBigBen 00:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Security
One question that does occur to me (as I mentioned above, I'm an ignorant fool meddling with the occult here) is the matter of security. If I've set up my server to run on a local drive (an external HD), presumably it's possible for someone with the right address details etc to access that server from the open net, assuming I'm connected while the server is running.

I don't know exactly what such an intruder could do, but I assume it'd be more than just editing my wiki. So with that in mind, what do you knowledgeable types think is the best way to monitor and block unauthorised access (bearing in mind that, as I said above, I'm capable of following instructions but I'm not a programmer)? Any suggestions appreciated. - Fimbulvetr 09:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Installing 1.8.2
I get the following error: " MediaWiki 1.8.2 Installation Don't forget security updates! Keep an eye on the low-traffic release announcements mailing list. Checking environment... Please include all of the lines below when reporting installation problems.

PHP 5.2.1-dev installed Found database drivers for: MySQL PHP server API is apache2handler; ok, using pretty URLs (index.php/Page_Title) Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support. PHP is configured with no memory_limit. Have zlib support; enabling output compression. Couldn't find Turck MMCache, eAccelerator or APC. Object caching functions cannot be used. GNU diff3 not found. Couldn't find GD library or ImageMagick; image thumbnailing disabled. Installation directory: W:\TPPF\Apache2.2\htdocs\mediawiki Script URI path: /mediawiki Environment checked. You can install MediaWiki. Warning: $wgSecretKey key is insecure, generated with mt_rand. Consider changing it manually. Generating configuration file...

Database type: MySQL Loading class: DatabaseMysql Attempting to connect to database server as root...success. Connected to 5.0.27-community-nt Database wikidb exists Creating tables... using MySQL 4 table defs...Query "CREATE TABLE `HWuser` ( user_id int(5) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, user_name varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default , user_real_name varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default , user_password tinyblob NOT NULL default , user_newpassword tinyblob NOT NULL default , user_email tinytext NOT NULL default , user_options blob NOT NULL default , user_touched char(14) binary NOT NULL default , user_token char(32) binary NOT NULL default , user_email_authenticated char(14) binary, user_email_token char(32) binary, user_email_token_expires char(14) binary, user_registration char(14) binary, PRIMARY KEY user_id (user_id), UNIQUE INDEX user_name (user_name), INDEX (user_email_token) ) TYPE=InnoDB " failed with error code "BLOB/TEXT column 'user_password' can't have a default value (localhost)". " I've installed MySql 5.0

Pls advice

Tnx in advance, 193.92.197.120 12:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)Takis

The solution to the above is to edit the "maintenance\tables.sql". You need to delete the [default default_value] from all (several) the column definitions of type blob or text.

MySql 5.0 manual defines that those types DO NOT accept default values.

193.92.197.120 13:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)Takis

Problem with encodings
Trying to install MediaWiki. Created base in MySQL for unicode (UTF8bin) support, but after saving configuration in MediaWiki, it says: Creating tables... using MySQL 4 table defs...Query "CREATE TABLE `categorylinks` ( cl_from int(8) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', cl_to varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default , cl_sortkey varchar(86) binary NOT NULL default , cl_timestamp timestamp NOT NULL, UNIQUE KEY cl_from (cl_from,cl_to), KEY cl_sortkey (cl_to,cl_sortkey), KEY cl_timestam p (cl_to,cl_timestamp) ) TYPE=InnoDB " failed with error code "Specified key was too long; max key length is 1000 bytes (localhost)".

How to overcome this problem? P.S. I want to use unicode. Latin for sure not for me because I have non-latin language :)