I wanted to install a wiki on a Kloxo VPS (CentOS release 5 ). As Mediawiki is the most popular of them all, and despite some criticism that it is the most difficult to install and configure, I want to give it a try.
As there are two (2) versions of Mediawiki available for download, versions 1.19.1 and 1.18.4, I selected the higher version, that is, 1.19.1.
As usual, I tried installing it on my local XAMPP server and there were no problems at all during the installation which made me confident that I could install it on the proposed VPS. I was wrong.
After uploading and extracting Mediawiki 1.19.1 unto my VPS. I run the installation script. After several steps in the installation process, I am getting this.
I got stuck on this installation error for several days. The Mediawiki website does not provide any information about this error. I don’t even know what the error is as there are no texts at all.
After too much net searching and not finding the right solution, I tried downloading version 1.18.4 just to have some comparison. Honestly, I don’t actually know the differences between the two (2) versions and I don’t have the intention to delve into it. All I want is a working wiki site.
To cut the long story short, I came unto the installation process of version 1.18.4. I got errors but it provides me more useful information.
Now, I know that the error is missing PCRE UTF-8 support. Using SSH, I check the PCRE version.
[root@server ~]# pcretest -C
PCRE version 6.6 06-Feb-2006
Compiled with
UTF-8 support
No Unicode properties support
Newline character is LF
Internal link size = 2
POSIX malloc threshold = 10
Default match limit = 10000000
Default recursion depth limit = 10000000
Match recursion uses stack
From above test, it clearly indicates that PCRE has UTF-8 support but no unicode properties support. The next step I did was to install PCRE and hopefully correct the problem.
[root@server ~]# yum install pcre
then restarted the web server.
[root@server ~]# /etc/init.d/httpd restart
After restarting the web server, I checked PCRE again.
[root@server ~]# pcretest -C
PCRE version 8.02 2010-03-19
Compiled with
UTF-8 support
Unicode properties support
Newline sequence is LF
\R matches all Unicode newlines
Internal link size = 2
POSIX malloc threshold = 10
Default match limit = 10000000
Default recursion depth limit = 10000000
Match recursion uses stack
Unicode properties support is now available. I tried installing Mediawiki 1.19.1 again. I was happy, I only get warnings which means, installation process can continue.
Problem solved!
Now I believe what I previously read that Mediawiki is not use friendly at all, during installation or configuration. Now, I have several reasons. First, I have search the Mediawiki website about the prerequisites of Mediawiki but it does not actually say anything about PCRE UTF-8 unicode support.
Secondly, Mediawiki installation particularly version 1.19.1 does not warn of any lacking requirements of the server. Thirdly, it does not provide solutions to problems.
Mediawiki fanatics may argue with me, but honestly this is my experience with the script and I have my evidence. Installing Mediawiki is not recommended for a newbie.