MediaWiki SaaS

We maintain an up-to-date MediaWiki installation to serve this wiki, and several others.

If you license your content under an open source license like CC-BY, you're welcome to request hosting.

Hosted wikis

The following wikis are hosted on this service:

• https://agora.nasqueron.org/ ­— this wiki
• https://www.wolfplex.org/wiki/ — Wolfplex Hackerspace wiki

Repositories

• saas-mediawiki: MediaWiki SaaS entry point: contains the wiki configuration and the MediaWiki bootstrap logic
• saas-service: base entry point for SaaS: serves /status requests and contains some base classes
• rOPS: describes the saas-mediawiki role provisioning instructions

How to add a wiki?

1. DNS: <your domain> CNAME saas-mediawiki.nasqueron.org
2. Send a change to the Operations repository
   1. nginx: add your server block to the webserver-legacy role, you need to use include includes/mediawiki-root to serve /Article pages, or include includes/mediawiki-wiki to serve /wiki/Article pages (useful if you've other services than a wiki on this domain)
   2. data directory: add your canonical host to the pillar/saas/mediawiki.sls file in the mediawiki_datastores section
3. Deploy operations changes with Salt
   1. Nginx vhost. salt-call --local state.sls roles/webserver-legacy/nginx or sometimes saas-mediawiki/nginx instead
   2. Datastores. salt-call --local state.sls roles/saas-mediawiki/data
4. Declare the dbname/host name pair for the new instance in the configuration
5. Create a database
   1. In every case, GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on wikis.* TO 'mediawiki-saas'@'localhost';
   2. If you migrate an existing wiki from its db: mysql yourwiki < dump.sql + mw update yourwiki works well
   3. If it's a fresh new wiki: mw addWiki yourwiki will create the database and populate the tables

To deploy changes with Salt

How to deploy an extension or a skin?

• Ensure it's available on the service
  • If it's hosted on gerrit.wikimedia.org, add it to pillar/saas/mediawiki.sls file in the rOPS repository
  • If not, you need to provide custom logic at roles/saas-mediawiki/mediawiki
• Configure it
  • Edit the saas-mediawiki config/Settings.php folder, saasUseExtensionFoo will load the Foo extension and saasUseSkinBar will load the bar skin.
  • If you need more advanced logic, config/CommonsSettings.php contain a good example for Scribunto

Where to configure settings?

MediaWiki wg variables

Most variables can directly be set in the saas-mediawiki repository under config/Settings.php.

For any special logic, like transform values or set a bunch of values at once, can be added to CommonSettings.php. Feel free to create a task on DevCentral if you need assistance to do so.

Interwiki

Interwiki configuration is peculiar, as it's a database.

To update the interwiki:

1. Update the configuration under mediawiki_interwikis at rOPS: pillar/saas/mediawiki.sls
2. Deploy with salt web-001 state.apply roles/saas-mediawiki/mediawiki/interwiki

How to run a script against a wiki?

The mw <script to run> <wiki name> command allow to run a maintenance script to a specific wiki.

For example sudo -u mediawiki mw update agora will run update.php for this wiki.

How to lock a wiki in read-only mode?

Set saasReadOnly to Some("Your explanation message").

An example can be found at D3743.

If the lock is for a maintenance, commit it so we've a trace, then simply revert the change when the maintenance is done.

Upgrade

SaaS entry point

Should be automated with Jenkins CD.

For now, as mediawiki user: cd /srv/saas/mediawiki && git pull && composer update && restart-php-fpm

MediaWiki

As mediawiki user, assuming a clean branch:

cd /srv/mediawiki
git pull

for dir in extensions/*/; do (cd "$dir" && git pull); done
for dir in skins/*/; do (cd "$dir" && git pull); done

composer update

mw update agora
mw update wolfplex
mw update wikis

Troubleshoot

Upgrade databases older than 1.39

Support has been removed for older versions upgrades.

We need to create a temporary installation with that "installation relais" for a by-step update.

There is no automation for that currently.