Topic on Project:Support desk

My in-house wiki for a game I'm developing was randomly blank, so I contacted my server admin, and got this response :

We are sorry for the inconvenience. However, the outdated MediaWiki installed on your account is not compatible with any new versions of PHP that is currently running on your server - those are PHP 5.3, 5.4 or 5.5. Please note that we have removed the outdated php 5.2 from our server. You'll need to upgrade Mediawiki to the latest version to resolve the issue. Please refer http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading

After following the instructions there, nothing seemed to work. I didn't even have a mw-config folder. Eventually I read that you have to upgrade from 1.14 to 1.15, and THEN upgrade to current. However, since the first botched attempt, updating to 1.15 now also fails.

I asked my admin to do some poking around himself, and he came to the same results I did:

I have also tried to update the MediaWiki manually and it ends up on blank page with the following error logs; [25-Jul-2014 20:05:42 America/New_York] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'Namespace' (T_NAMESPACE), expecting identifier (T_STRING) in /home/bavnbzjp/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52 [25-Jul-2014 20:06:23 America/New_York] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'Namespace' (T_NAMESPACE), expecting identifier (T_STRING) in /home/bavnbzjp/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52 [25-Jul-2014 20:06:26 America/New_York] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'Namespace' (T_NAMESPACE), expecting identifier (T_STRING) in /home/bavnbzjp/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52 So, I have restored the original wiki folder as you left and copied the upgrade tried folder as "wiki-tried-update"

I am also not getting a solution for the same from mediawiki forums for this. I would suggest you to submit the issue to MediaWiki support at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_desk for the suggestions from them.

Is there a way to COMPLETELY reinstall mediawiki and then point to my old database? What do you guys suggest? As it stands now, my wiki is simply showing a blank white page : wiki.arcknight.com

This post was posted by Johs~mediawikiwiki, but signed as Johs.

Hi Johs!

The upgrading page, which the support linked you to, is exactly the correct page. Follow the descriptions on that page to update MediaWiki.

A few notes on your case: Make sure that you have a working backup! If things break, it might be hard to recover, if you have none.

You basically can update to MediaWiki 1.23 in one step - when you upload MediaWiki 1.23 to your server make sure that really all files are present. It e.g. does contain a mw-config/ folder.

The error message you get has already been dealt with here: Thread:Project:Support_desk/PHP_and_Mysql_was_upgraded_on_my_server_and_now_I_get_a_blank_white_page. Answer: Update to the newest MediaWiki version - this one will then also be compatible with PHP 5.3.

I see many wikis showing this error. :(

When I was spidering the wikis, from WikiApiary, I saw this on a lot of wikis. Well, several, anyway. We should probably file a bug.

If anyone wants/plans to do so: How to report a bug

in /home/bavnbzjp/wiki/includes/Namespace.php

I'm wondering here. Namespace.php isn't in the actual release, it was replaced by MWNamespace.php, iirc. Can you check, if you _really_ uploaded all new files (you said you used a new directory, right?

If that's the problem, be also sure that you unpacked the new installation files on a new and empty folder and not over the old files. Remaining old files are a source of some obscure errors on upgrade.