How To Install MediaWiki on Linux

• Uninstall previous version of apache and mysql

 rpm -e httpd mysql

• Download and install RPM packages of MySQL's server, client and dynamic shared libraries from mysql.com.

At time of writing, these should all be version 4.0.x in order to ensure compadability with the PHP scripts powering MediaWiki.

• Do not opt to change the password on the MySQL database unless you know what you're doing.

 rpm -ivh MySQL-client-4.0.26-0.i386.rpm MySQL-server-4.0.26-0.i386.rpm MySQL-shared-4.0.26-0.i386.rpm

• Initialize mysql database after installation by typing..

 mysql_install_db

• Make sure /etc/ld.so.conf contains:

 /usr/lib

• Run ldconfig

 /sbin/ldconfig

• Download, unpack, and install Apache 2.0 from source at apache.org

 mv httpd-2.0.55.tar.gz /usr/local/; cd /usr/local/
 tar -xzvf httpd-2.0.55.tar.gz
 cd httpd-2.0.55
 ./configure --enable-so
 make
 make install

• Ensure Apache functions properly by starting it, testing, and stopping

 /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
 http://localhost/

 /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop

• Download, unpack, and install the newest 4.4.x version of PHP from php.net

 mv php-4.4.1.tar.gz /usr/local/; cd /usr/local/
 tar -xzvf php-4.4.1.tar.gz; cd php-4.4.1/
 ./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-mysql
 make
 make install

• Make some modifications to the httpd.conf file...

 LoadModule php4_module        modules/libphp4.so
 AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml     
 AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

• Download and unpack newest MediaWiki version available at mediawiki.org

 tar -xzvf mediawiki-1.5.1.tar.gz
 cp mediawiki /var/www/wiki

• Modify httpd.conf again, and restart the httpd ...

 DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php
 /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

• Test your accomplishments, and follow the web-based instructions through the configuration of your new MediaWiki server.

 http://localhost/