Topic on Project:Support desk

Upgrade, or don't use External Link Search in 1.18.0

Hello all. I have a mediawiki install running and when I try to use the External Link search, in the SPecial Pages (can be seen here):

http://vvikipedia.co/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch

I get the following cryptic cryptic message:

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

The LocalSettings.php file has been altered but I have no idea how to debug the installation, I am very much a front end user. Does anyone know what could be causing this error?

Thank you very much.

You say the LocalSettings.php file has been altered. I'll assume you altered it and changed it back because the "Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true;..." message is there now.

When you add the line

 $wgShowExceptionDetails = true;

as the last line in your LocalSettings.php file, what do you see? Can you paste the debug information here?

Ah. Thank you. OK So I took the # off the last line and this was the result that I got when clicking External Link Search under Special Pages:

Call to undefined method LinkSearchPage::getLanguage

Backtrace:
#0 .../includes/specials/SpecialLinkSearch.php(82): SpecialPage->__call('getLanguage', Array)
#1 .../includes/specials/SpecialLinkSearch.php(82): LinkSearchPage->getLanguage()
#2 .../includes/SpecialPageFactory.php(458): LinkSearchPage->execute(NULL)
#3 .../includes/Wiki.php(226): SpecialPageFactory::executePath(Object(Title), Object(RequestContext))
#4 .../includes/Wiki.php(626): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#5 .../includes/Wiki.php(533): MediaWiki->main()
#6 .../index.php(57): MediaWiki->run()
#7 {main}

I hope this helps. Thank you for your time, expertise and help. It is highly appreciated.

I just noticed that you're running a very old MediaWiki. You should upgrade to at least the LTS which is MediaWiki 1.23. The version you're running (1.18) is unsupported.

If you don't want to upgrade, you can see if moving to a later version than 1.18.0 has fixed this bug.

Thanks for checking this out for me. So what you're telling me is that this bug is inherent to the software? The only option is to upgrade my version? Do I have any other options?

Thank you for your time. Just wary of upgrading.

I understand you're wary of upgrading. I still recommend doing it.

But, yes, that is a bug and your only options are

• to upgrade from 1.18.0,
• find the offending code and fix it yourself, or
• never use that page.

You should be more wary of having an unmaintained and unpatched MediaWiki installation that could have open vulnerabilities