How to Install and Setup MediaWiki on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS [Easy Steps]

Table of Contents

How to Install and Setup MediaWiki on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Also Read: How to Enable root user for SSH Authentication on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Step 1: Prerequisites

a) You should have a running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server.

b) You should have sudo or root access to run privileged commands.

c) You should have apt or apt-get utility installed in your Server.

Step 2: Update Your System

It is very important to keep the server updated using apt update or apt-get update command. It will ensure the installation of latest version of all the installed packages which will further reduce the chances of any broken dependency problem.

root@localhost:~# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Get:2 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]
Get:3 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]
Get:4 https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com focal InRelease [6,117 B]
Get:5 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu focal InRelease [18.0 kB]
Get:6 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/edge stable InRelease [7,342 B]
Get:7 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]
Get:8 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main i386 Packages [554 kB]
Hit:9 http://ppa.launchpad.net/micahflee/ppa/ubuntu focal InRelease
Get:10 https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com focal/main amd64 Packages [35.3 kB]
Get:11 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 Packages [1,303 kB]
Get:12 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main Translation-en [270 kB]
Get:13 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [279 kB]
Get:14 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 c-n-f Metadata [14.4 kB]

Step 3: Install Tasksel

Since we need to install lamp-server using tasksel utility so we first have to install tasksel utility itself as a prerequisite using apt-get install tasksel -y command as shown below.

root@localhost:~# apt-get install tasksel -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
tasksel-data
The following NEW packages will be installed:
tasksel tasksel-data
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.
Need to get 34.0 kB of archives.
After this operation, 289 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 tasksel-data all 3.34ubuntu16 [5,340 B]
Get:2 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 tasksel all 3.34ubuntu16 [28.6 kB]
Fetched 34.0 kB in 1s (61.6 kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...

Step 4: Install LAMP Server

Instead of installing all the components of LAMP Server individually using apt or apt-get package manager, you can use tasksel to install lamp-server which contains all the LAMP Server components. This can be done by using tasksel install lamp-server command as shown below.

root@localhost:~# tasksel install lamp-server

Step 5: Check MySQL Service

After LAMP Server installation, you can check MySQL service by using systemctl status mysql command. It should show in active and running state as you can see below.

root@localhost:~# systemctl status mysql
● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2021-11-06 07:45:15 IST; 9min ago
Main PID: 12220 (mysqld)
Status: "Server is operational"
Tasks: 37 (limit: 2314)
Memory: 352.5M
CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
└─12220 /usr/sbin/mysqld

Step 6: Create a Database

By default, MySQL Server does not ask for password when you try to login with root user account. So you can login to MySQL server using mysql -u root command as shown below.

root@localhost:~# mysql -u root
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 8.0.27-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

After login to MySQL Server, you need to first create a database to store all the data. Here we are creating a database called mediawiki using create database mediawiki query.

mysql> create database mediawiki;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)

Then we need to create a user that will have complete access of mediawiki database. Here we are creating a user called wkuser and setting his password using create user 'wkuser'@'localhost' identified by 'wiki123' query.

mysql> create user 'wkuser'@'localhost' identified by 'wiki123';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.31 sec)

Next, you need to grant complete access of mediawiki database to wkuser using grant all privileges on mediawiki.* to 'wkuser'@'localhost' query.

mysql> grant all privileges on mediawiki.* to 'wkuser'@'localhost';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Finally, you need to run flush privileges to update all the changes and then quit the database using exit.

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.30 sec)
mysql> exit;
Bye

Step 7: Install MediaWiki

In the next step, you need to download and install MediaWiki from Ubuntu Repository using apt-get install mediawiki -y command as shown below. This will download and install MediaWiki package along with its required dependencies.

root@localhost:~# apt-get install mediawiki -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
libonig5 mediawiki-classes php php-apcu php-apcu-bc php-curl php-intl php-mbstring php-wikidiff2 php-xml php7.4 php7.4-curl php7.4-intl php7.4-mbstring
php7.4-xml
Suggested packages:
imagemagick | php-gd memcached clamav php-gd
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libonig5 mediawiki mediawiki-classes php php-apcu php-apcu-bc php-curl php-intl php-mbstring php-wikidiff2 php-xml php7.4 php7.4-curl php7.4-intl
php7.4-mbstring php7.4-xml
0 upgraded, 16 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.
Need to get 24.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 137 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Step 8: Setting Up Directory

After successful installation, you need to set up the MediaWiki directory under /var/www/html path so that it can be used to serve requests sent to the apache web server. For this you need to create a directory called mediawiki under /var/www/html using mkdir /var/www/html/mediawiki command and then copy all the contents from /var/lib/mediawiki to this directory using cp -R /var/lib/mediawiki/* /var/www/html/mediawiki/ command as shown below.

root@localhost:~# mkdir /var/www/html/mediawiki
root@localhost:~# cp -R /var/lib/mediawiki/* /var/www/html/mediawiki/

Step 9: Setting FQDN

Since I don't have any fully qualified domain name yet to use in the apache configuration, so I will first set up my FQDN. This can be easily done by mapping your local IP with your chosen domain name in /etc/hosts file. For the moment, I am going to use mediawiki.example.com as my FQDN so I will map my local IP with this FQDN in /etc/hosts file as shown below. Here my local IP Address is 192.168.29.194. This could be different for you so you need to map it accordingly.

root@localhost:~# nano /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.29.194 mediawiki.example.com

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

To verify, you can run ping command and check if this FQDN is working fine.

root@localhost:~# ping mediawiki.example.com
PING mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.028 ms
64 bytes from mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.017 ms
64 bytes from mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.027 ms
64 bytes from mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.057 ms
64 bytes from mediawiki.example.com (192.168.29.194): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.031 ms
^C
--- mediawiki.example.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4088ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.017/0.032/0.057/0.013 ms

Step 10: Configure Apache Server

Once you have all the prerequisites to set up the Apache configuration, then you need to create Mediawiki configuration (mediawiki.conf) under /etc/apache2/sites-available path as shown below. In this configuration, we will be providing HTTP Port 80 to Listen all the incoming requests on Port 80. Then providing ServerAdmin as admin@example.com and ServerName as mediawiki.example.com. You can set these information as per your local Server details.

root@localhost:~# nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mediawiki.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mediawiki/
ServerName mediawiki.example.com
<Directory /var/www/html/mediawiki/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/mediawiki_error
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/mediawiki_access common
</VirtualHost>

Step 11: Reload Apache

After setting up the apache configuration, you need to enable MediaWiki by using a2ensite mediawiki.conf command as shown below.

root@localhost:~# a2ensite mediawiki.conf
Enabling site mediawiki.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
systemctl reload apache2

Then reload apache2 service by using systemctl reload apache2 command.

root@localhost:~# systemctl reload apache2

Step 12: Open MediaWiki

To open MediaWiki default home page, you need to open your favorite browser and provide URL http://mediawiki.example.com. This should open the MediaWiki page as shown below. Also you can notice that currently it shows LocalSettings.php not found. So to create this configuration file you need to Click on set up the wiki link.

Step 13: Setup MediaWiki

It will take you to below Installation page where you need to select your Language and then Click on Continue.

Next window will perform the Environmental checks and see if the system has also prerequisites installed. Then Click on Continue.

Here you need to provide MySQL database name that we created earlier along with the user account information. Then Click on Continue to connect the database.

Once DB is connected, it will ask you to select Storage Engine. By default, InnoDB will be selected as this is the recommended one. So we will not change anything here and just Click on Continue to proceed.

Here you need to provide the Project name and administrator account credentials to setup the Project. Then Click on Continue to set up Project Namespace.

Then in the User rights profile, by default Open wiki will be selected which we will leave as it is and then Click on Continue. This option allows Wikis to work best when you let as many people edit them as possible.

Finally you will get the install window where you just need to Click on Continue to start the Installation if everything looks ok.

As soon as you click Continue, it will start setting up the database, creating tables, populating wiki details on the database tables. Once it is completed, you can click on Continue to finish the Installation.

Below displayed output shows MediaWiki 1.31.7 has been installed successfully.

At the end of the installation, you will have the LocalSettings.php file generated which contains all your configuration. You need to download this file and copy it under /etc/mediawiki path.

root@localhost:~# cp /home/cyberithub/Downloads/LocalSettings.php /etc/mediawiki/

Then again open the URL http://mediawiki.example.com.

Cyberithub