How to Install MediaWiki on AlmaLinux 9

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MediaWiki is the free open-source wiki software used to power Wikipedia and thousands of other wikis. The contributions of hundreds of individual developers have helped make it a feature-rich, secure and scalable platform capable of powering some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world.

Pre-requisites

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• A system with AlmaLinux 9 installed and running.
• root access to the system.

Once you're all set, we'll proceed with MediaWiki installation and configuration

Update the System

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dnf update -y

Install Required Packages

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For MediaWiki installation we need Apache Web Server, PHP 7.4 and above, MariaDB/MySQL Database,

Use below commands to install packages,

dnf module reset php

dnf module enable php:7.4

dnf install -y httpd php php-mysqlnd php-gd php-xml php-intl mariadb-server mariadb php-mbstring php-json

Start and Enable the Apache and Database

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Run the below commands to start and enable Apache and MariaDB Database services,

systemctl start httpd

systemctl enable httpd

systemctl start mariadb

systemctl enable mariadb

To make your pages available to public, you will have to edit your firewall rules to allow HTTP and HTTPS requests on your web server by using the following commands.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http 

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https 

firewall-cmd --reload

Output:

[root@server ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
success
[root@server ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
success
[root@server ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Configure MySQL

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Create the MySQL user, database using below command,

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE mediawiki_db;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mediawiki_db.* TO 'wiki_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword' WITH GRANT OPTION;

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

exit;

Change StrongPassword to something more secure/unqiue when using it for your database password.

Download the MediaWiki

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Check out Mediawiki's official site to download the latest version,

dnf install wget -y

wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.39/mediawiki-1.39.3.tar.gz

Extract the file using below command,

dnf install tar -y

tar -zxvf mediawiki-1.39.3.tar.gz

Move mediawiki-1.39.3 to apache document root directory /var/www/html

mv mediawiki-1.39.3 /var/www/html/mediawiki

Set the required permissions on mediawiki directory

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Change the ownership and group of mediawiki directory using below command,

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/mediawiki/

If SELinux is enabled then apply below selinux rule on mediawiki folder,

getenforce

Output:

Enforcing

Set the rule using below command,

restorecon -FR /var/www/html/mediawiki/

Configure Apache Web Server for MediaWiki

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Configure MediaWiki VirtualHost file /etc/httpd/conf.d/wiki.domainhere.info.conf

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/wiki.domainhere.info.conf

Copy the below content and save it into the file.

Replace wiki.domainhere.info with your actual domain name.

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName wiki.domainhere.info
     ServerAlias www.wiki.domainhere.info.com
     ServerAdmin admin@wiki.domainhere.info.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mediawiki/

     <Directory /var/www/html/mediawiki>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
            RewriteEngine on
            RewriteBase /
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>   

Restart Apache web server using below command,

systemctl restart httpd

Configure MediaWiki

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Navigate your browser to http://wiki.domainhere.info, you'll get the installation screen like below,

NOTE: Replace wiki.domainhere.info with your actual domain name

Select your language and click on continue,

Click on Continue to complete installation,

Fill the Database user, name details and click on continue,

If you want to use the same account then mark tick the box and click on continue,

Fill your wiki name , your user name, password, email address, and click on continue,

Click on Continue to install MediaWiki,

Next, MediaWiki will provide the settings that was configured so far in the form of a php file. The file with settings should be placed into the web root directory, /var/www/html/meddiawiki/.
Click on the Download LocalSettings.php link, a file will be downloaded to your local system.

Open it with a notepad or similar application.

Copy the contents of the file and Switch over to the server, paste the contents into the file mentioned below:

nano /var/www/html/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

After pasting the contents to the file, save and exit.

Restart the Apache using below command,

systemctl restart httpd

Once downloaded Click on Enter Wiki and you will get the MediaWiki Dashboard Page,

That's how we installed the MediaWiki on AlmaLinux 9 OS.