Installing old version of Mediawiki

[regoarrarr]

A few months ago, I switched webhosts. I am now on Dreamhost.

At my old place, I had manually installed Mediawiki. It looks to be version 1.6.9.

I would like to install it on my new host, and upgrade to the latest version.

I have the database backed up, and the mediawiki install zipped up from my old host. Is it as simple as extracting the php and related files, importing the database, pointing the settings file to the new database contact info and then upgrading as normal?

Anything else I should watch out for?

[Michael Daly]

That might be a bit of a challenge - trying to get all the settings set just right can be a headache if the questions on these forums from others who've done that are any guide.

Try installing the latest (MW1.14) from scratch. When you install it, be sure to use the same database prefix as in the previous version (you should be able to get this from the database backup if you don't remember it).

With the new, now-empty database, restore the old DB in its place. This will put a 1.6.x DB into a 1.14 install.

Run the update.php maintenance script (in wiki/maintenance/) - this will upgrade the database from 1.6 to 1.14.

[regoarrarr]

Thank you for your quick reply - I am giving that a try.

I have the files installed, and imported the database, but in trying to run update.php, I'm having the problem that it is not finding my php5 install.

When I run update.php it tells me

Sorry! This version of MediaWiki requires PHP 5; you are running 4.4.9.

If you are sure you already have PHP 5 installed, it may be installed
in a different path from PHP 4. Check with your system administrator.

I created an alias for php to the php5 install, so it seems like it should work

[karpis]$ php --version
PHP 5.2.6 (cli) (built: Oct 24 2008 14:56:33)
Copyright (c) 1997-2008 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Zend Technologies
with Zend Extension Manager v1.2.2, Copyright (c) 2003-2007, by Zend Technologies
with Zend Optimizer v3.3.3, Copyright (c) 1998-2007, by Zend Technologies
[karpis]$

Any thoughts?

[Michael Daly]

You can confirm the PHP configuration to see which version of PHP is being found. If there are two versions (both PHP4 and 5), you can modify .htaccess to avoid this and then run the installer again to get update.php to run (useful if you're having command line problems.

[whitestream6]

I was also doing pretty much the same thing, except with MediaWiki 1.3.

How did developers block users originally before sysops had the ability to do so in MediaWiki? What was the SQL query for that?

[Emufarmers]

DH, in an uncharacteristic bit of 2002ness, still has php on the command line use PHP 4. You need to use the PHP 5 binary, located at /usr/local/php5/bin/php

[regoarrarr]

Thanks for all of your help. I had set up an alias in my .bashrc to make php from the command line point to php.

I'm not sure if it just took awhile to propagate, but this morning when I tried it, it worked.

Thanks again - you guys are great!