Meza

Manual on MediaWiki Tools

Release status: stable
Implementation	Database
Description	Setup and maintain an enterprise MediaWiki server with simple commands
Author(s)	James Montalvo Daren Welsh Greg Rundlett Rich Evans and others
Latest version	43.x (2025-10-08)
MediaWiki	1.43.x
PHP	Meza installs PHP 8.1.33
License	MIT
Download	GitHub: project page git repository URL [help ] commit history Installation guide RELEASE NOTES

"MediaWiki E-Z Administration"

Meza is a free and open-source Ansible software project developed and maintained by NASA that is designed to provide reliable "push button" installation, upgrade and configuration of everything required to operate a fully-featured MediaWiki farm on a Red Hat derived base systems. More About.

Why Meza?

Setup and maintain an enterprise MediaWiki server with simple commands

• Enterprise-Grade Deployment Automation
• Enterprise-Grade Security & Scalability
• Complete, Out-Of-The-Box, Secure, Production-Ready MediaWiki Application
• Operational Excellence
• Multi-Wiki Architecture
• Time to Value

Features

• Free and Open Source
• Current MediaWiki Long-Term Support (LTS) version
• ~100 Expertly Curated Extensions
• Automatic Database Backups
• Automatic File Backups
• Easy Software Updates
• Infrastructure as Code
• Idempotent
• Support for deployment tiers

What Meza Installs and Configures

Logo	Software	Version	Why it's part of Meza
	Ansible-Core	2.16.3	Enables Meza to run and do what Meza does
	Python	3.12.11	Required for Ansible to run
	jinja	3.1.2	Used by Ansible to generate configuration files dynamically based on variables, facts, and other data.
	OpenJDK	1.8.0_462	Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for ElasticSearch to run
	Haproxy	1.8.27	Used by MediaWiki for Secure Application Front-End SSL/TLS Terminator/Load Balancer
	Apache	2.4.37	Webserver for MediaWiki
	MediaWiki	1.43.x LTS	Base Wiki Application
	~100 Configured MediaWiki Extensions		Enables MediaWiki to function as more than just a wiki.
	SemanticMediaWiki	6.0.0	Used by MediaWiki to store and query RDFa compliant structured data in MediaWiki pages
	PHP/php-fpm	8.1	Used by MediaWiki to run
	plus many essential php packages		As required by MediaWiki and MediaWiki Extensions
	ICU	74.2
	MariaDB	10.3.39	Used by MediaWiki to store content
	Elasticsearch	7.10.2	Used by MediaWiki to index and search content
	Lua	5.1.5	Used by MediaWiki to do programming in Modules
	Pygments	2.19.2
	ImageMagick	6.9.13-25 Q16	Used by MediaWiki to generate thumbnails
	Composer	2.8.4	Used to install and update MediaWiki Components

Who is using Meza?

• NASA GRC (Glenn Research Center) Armstrong Test Facility
• NASA JSC
• various independent individuals (ask in Elements)
• Meza users, please add yourself to this list. Thank you!

Join the conversation

• Meza developers use a FOSS messaging platform called Elements to stay connected.
• We invite you to join us in the Meza channel on app.element.io to ask any questions you may have.

How to contribute

• https://github.com/nasa/meza/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

Meza's Requirements

1. System Hardware Requirements:
   1. RAM: ≥ 8GB
   2. Disk Space: ≥ 40GB available
2. System Software Requirements:
   1. OS: Rocky Linux 8.9 (RHEL 8 equivalent)
   2. SELINUX: Permissive Mode
   3. FIPS Enabled: False

Note - These requirements can be met on Mac, Windows and other Linux Distributions using a hypervisor (i.e. VirtualBox).

Install

• How to install Meza for the first time

Upgrading

• How to Upgrade Meza on an existing Meza site

Usage (Simple)

After install you'll have a fully functional MediaWiki wiki farm. With your new installation, you can do the following:

• Deploy and re-deploy at will using the meza deploy command.
• Add and Delete wikis to your wiki farm using the meza create/delete wiki command
• Install additional extensions by modifying MezaLocalExtensions.yml

See Meza/Commands⁣ for all available commands and their directives, including the Ansible playbook command and its associated tags.

Usage (Advanced)

• Setup SAML authentication if you have single sign-on using SAML
• Meza/Importing data
• Meza/Rebuild SMW data and search index
• Meza/Scripts

Configure Meza

• Meza/Variables a system of overrides
• Meza/Public config
• Meza/Secret config
• Meza/Configuration options
• Meza/per site access and read permissions
• Configuration File version control
• Periodic Cron jobs
• Meza/Ensuring users get the latest file
• Meza/Setting up a common uploads wiki
• Meza/Setting up a Cross-Site Notifications

Report and Track Issues

All issues in meza are currently being tracker by user Freephile on his form of meza. See: Issue tracking (GitHub).

Here are some quick links to Freephiles issues

• Current Known Bugs
• Requested Enhancements

The name

Meza was originally named for David Meza, who was Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA JSC and granted access to the first Linux-based server used for MediaWiki at JSC. It has since come to also stand for "MediaWiki E-Z Administration".

Miscellaneous Meza Pages

The following section contains links to various pages that are not officially maintained, however, they still contain useful information and are retained here for completeness.

Search within Meza subpages

• Meza/All sub pages
• Meza/All talk sub pages
• Meza/Development
• Meza/Directory structure - A helpful overview of directories, including what files are modified by sysadmins and what are deployed by the Meza application.
• Emulate the Travis CI test setup for development purposes
• Table of Enterprise MediaWiki User's Enterprise Requirements
• Meza/FAQ
• Meza/Glossary
• Meza/Notes on Implementing a Pywikibot
• Meza/Version history
• Meza/Short procedure on how to submit a PR to Meza
• Meza/Software Bill Of Materials
• Meza/Playbook Summary
• Meza/Roles Summary or Meza/role architecture
• Meza/Tag Summary
• Run Ansible Playbook Grapher against Meza

History

2025

• 2025-09-16 - NASA GRC-ATF updates Meza main branch to MW.1.43.x (LTS) and various other improvements via WIkiWorks and Greg Rundlett

2024

• 2024-06-?? - Branch: GRC-ATF - Used by NASA GRC-ATF - Actively maintained - contact User:Revansx for questions

2023

• 2023-07-08 - Common Meza Test Environment (CMTE) defined for GRC-ATF branch
• 2023-07-01 - Meza updated to provide MW 1.35 on Rocky Linux 8
• 2023-05-10 - Meza officially becomes an official NASA Open Source project (NTR) and git project at: https://github.com/nasa/meza

2022-2019 - various attempts to upgrade from 31.x to

• 2020-12-29 - REL_35
• ????-??-?? - MW 1.34 (ref: freephile's QB fork)
• ????-??-?? - MW 1.32 (various)

2018

• 2018-09-21 - tag 31.0.0
• 2018-04-19 - tag 30.0.0
• 2018-04-16 - tag 27.0.0

2017

• 2017-06-03 - tag v1.0.0-alpha

2015

• 2015-06-12 - initial commit by James Montalvo.