How do I upgrade a very obsolete, nonfunctional wiki?
January 7, 2015 7:47 PM Subscribe
Way back in 2005, I wrote an essay in wiki form using MediaWiki 1.5.1 on my website's third-party server. I did not upgrade it, and consequently it got broken when the server upgraded to an more advanced version of... well, I'm not sure what broke it, but probably MySQL, or PHP, or something. It's no longer supported. The database with its content still exists. Is it possible to get it back? How would I go about doing so?
For what it's worth, the (Linux) server is now running PHP version 5.3.37, and MySQL version 5.1.73-cll. Currently, going to the onetime base URL returns:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_NAMESPACE, expecting T_STRING in /home/[username]/public_html/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52
Ideally, I'd like the wiki to be functional again, but, barring that, I'd settle for just being able to somehow extract the content.
(Please assume I have forgotten everything I once knew about PHP.)
For what it's worth, the (Linux) server is now running PHP version 5.3.37, and MySQL version 5.1.73-cll. Currently, going to the onetime base URL returns:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_NAMESPACE, expecting T_STRING in /home/[username]/public_html/wiki/includes/Namespace.php on line 52
Ideally, I'd like the wiki to be functional again, but, barring that, I'd settle for just being able to somehow extract the content.
(Please assume I have forgotten everything I once knew about PHP.)
Best answer: That's an error I associate with sites that broke going from PHP 5.2 to 5.3, and it's mentioned here in relation to MediaWiki. If the wiki content's in a database, updating MediaWiki should fix it relatively painlessly: easiest way to test that is to archive all the old MediaWiki files into a separate directory, upload a fresh install, and copy across the old config from LocalSettings.php.
posted by holgate at 8:26 PM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by holgate at 8:26 PM on January 7, 2015 [1 favorite]
Dump the db to csv?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:21 PM on January 7, 2015
posted by oceanjesse at 10:21 PM on January 7, 2015
Best answer: You are in luck and holgate is right:
If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.5 or newer, you can upgrade in one step, from your old version to the latest stable version.
Make a back up of all the files and your database (very important, that way you can still try to recover if anything goes wrong during upgrading!), put a new installation in place, run the upgrade process as described further up in that wiki page I linked to, and you *should* be good to go. If you're not, PM me.
posted by foxfirefey at 10:35 PM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you are upgrading from MediaWiki 1.5 or newer, you can upgrade in one step, from your old version to the latest stable version.
Make a back up of all the files and your database (very important, that way you can still try to recover if anything goes wrong during upgrading!), put a new installation in place, run the upgrade process as described further up in that wiki page I linked to, and you *should* be good to go. If you're not, PM me.
posted by foxfirefey at 10:35 PM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Okay... I ran the upgrade script from the command line, and it did a bunch of things (and then it hit an out-of-memory error, which I managed to fix after googling that), and then it finished doing stuff.
And now I'm getting a new error:
[348f9c79] 2015-01-08 07:15:26: Fatal exception of type MWException
It's progress, I guess. I'll look at it again in the morning...
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:16 PM on January 7, 2015
And now I'm getting a new error:
[348f9c79] 2015-01-08 07:15:26: Fatal exception of type MWException
It's progress, I guess. I'll look at it again in the morning...
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:16 PM on January 7, 2015
Best answer: Add
$wgShowExceptionDetails = true;
to the very end of your LocalSettings.php to turn that error into a full stack trace, i.e. a big chunky error message that tells you more about what's causing the problem. (As described here.)
posted by holgate at 11:25 PM on January 7, 2015
$wgShowExceptionDetails = true;
to the very end of your LocalSettings.php to turn that error into a full stack trace, i.e. a big chunky error message that tells you more about what's causing the problem. (As described here.)
posted by holgate at 11:25 PM on January 7, 2015
Response by poster: That led me to "MediaWiki does not function when magic quotes are enabled." And then I did some more googling and fixed that, and then fixed one last issue related to skins, and it is up and running!
Thank you both!
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:41 PM on January 7, 2015
Thank you both!
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:41 PM on January 7, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by cmm at 8:00 PM on January 7, 2015