Create your own Wikipedia

I was trying to find a tool to keep track of my activities (mainly), work activities. I’ve given a chance to some “diary” software but I was not convinced. I was lingering on using text files but it was not a solution. So I decided to try Mediawiki. And it was perfect!!!
Now I’m going to describe the installation on an Ubuntu 11.10 with the repos packages.

Packages installation

First, install

• mediawiki
• Apache2
• mysql-server
• mysql-admin
• mysql-common
• mysql-client
• php5
• Imagemagick
• Latex, if you want to display math

with Synaptic, Aptitude or whatever you want. In principle installing mediawiki all the rest will be installed as a dependence (except for Latex). Once you have installed all the packages you need to modify

/etc/apache2/conf.d/mediawiki.conf

removing the comment (#) before

Alias /mediawiki /var/lib/mediawiki

and then to restart Apache with

Database

Start a root mysql prompt with

mysql -u root -p

and create a database for your wiki:

CREATE DATABASE dbname;

Then create a user with permissions for this database

GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

(pay attention to the “‘”).

Wiki installation

Go to http://localhost/mediawiki and follow the instructions!:)
To be able to upload files and images you have to modify values in /etc/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php.

XML dump

To obtain a XMP backup of your wiki you can run:

php /var/lib/mediawiki/maintenance/dumpBackup.php --full > $bck_path/$(date +"%F")-wiki_bck.xml

Note that dumpBackup.php works if you write into the database login where required.

Main references:

• http://framaulo.blogspot.com/2008/06/installare-ed-utilizzare-mediawiki-su.html
• http://www.ealmuno.com/2009/11/06/creare-database-in-mysql/
• http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/MediaWiki_tips