Mailing List Archive: Attempt to set up a local wiki from scratch

Attempt to set up a local wiki from scratch

Mar 18, 2003, 12:45 PM

Post #1 of 3 (344 views)

For some project with some friends, I've looked for some time for
a way to build some text in common. Wikis answer the questions,
and I tried to build from scratch a local wiki, using wikipedia's
scripts.

Let me clarify that up to yesterday morning I had no experience
with http servers, php, mysql, or wikipedia's scripts. OK, that's
quite arrogant (or courageous, or plain dumb) to try to jump so
high from so low, please be kind with me... Moreover I use a not
so young PC (Pentium III 450 MHz)...

I must say that things went quite well! I managed to get all what
I wanted (I can browse the base and modify pages), which is
positively surprising. Most of the hurdles were negotiated with
the various help and doc files, and looking in the php scripts.

In the process I noticed a few things, and it remains a malfunction with page modifications.

Before going further, here follows the bare bones of what I tried
to set up:

OS : ms windows me (no comment, please)

browser : ms ie 5.50...

server : xitami (could'nt manage to install ms PWS - might not be
possible on win me -, and couldn't find a simple install of
apache...) no pb at all, neither installing or running.

php: version 4.2.3 for win32; some pb's, solved by tinkering in
php.ini, in particular, set with cgi redirect off

mysql : 3.25.55 for windows; no pb at all, neither installing or
running

wikipedia : the last versions of the files found on source forge,
loaded one by one (how to dump the CVS??)

Points to note:

a) The script createdb.php fails if there is already a db. This is
due to lack of deletion of table user_newtalk in buildTables.inc

b) The database as obtained starting with an empty directory and
running the script createdb.php is such that the search function
always answers that it found nothing.

Running rebuildindex.php corrects that. May be this is the normal
policy, and rebuildindex.php must be run regularly??

c) I loaded the current state of the french articles (smaller than
the english, and I'm french btw). There again, basic functions
runs correctly except for the search.

I tried to run rebuildindex.php, but it aborts, seemingly some
timer in the server (message is an overload indication). Is there
any way to do that without invoking the server? For instance, a
MySQL script would be handy!

d) When I edit a page, the submit yields a blank page after a long
time. Likely to be a pb in the php scripts, but this seems beyond
my competence.

e) After a submit on a new page, I can see the modification only
after deleting the IE cache and recalling wiki.phtml. I set the
browser to checking most recent version at each page download, but
the behaviour is the same.

Thanks in advance for any help!

This being said, congratulations to all of you (and also Xitami,
php and MySQL). It is quite impressive that the code and docs
allowed me with my limited experience to go so far in so little
time!

M. Mouly

Re: Attempt to set up a local wiki from scratch [ In reply to ]

lee at piclab

Mar 18, 2003, 1:10 PM

Post #2 of 3 (339 views)

Permalink

> (Michel Mouly <mmouly@wanadoo.fr>):
>
> wikipedia : the last versions of the files found on source forge,
> loaded one by one (how to dump the CVS??)

Get an account on Sourceforge. Install CVS (I have no idea how to
do this for Windows). Then use:

cvs -d <name>@cvs.wikipedia.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wikipedia checkout phpwiki

to get the sources all at once. Then just "cvs update" to get new
ones whenever they change.

> a) The script createdb.php fails if there is already a db. This is
> due to lack of deletion of table user_newtalk in buildTables.inc

Thanks; fixed.

> b) The database as obtained starting with an empty directory and
> running the script createdb.php is such that the search function
> always answers that it found nothing.
> Running rebuildindex.php corrects that. May be this is the normal
> policy, and rebuildindex.php must be run regularly??

It has to be run once; it became a separate script because those
tables and that functionality were added recently. I'll update the
docs.

> c) I loaded the current state of the french articles (smaller than
> the english, and I'm french btw). There again, basic functions
> runs correctly except for the search.
>
> I tried to run rebuildindex.php, but it aborts, seemingly some
> timer in the server (message is an overload indication). Is there
> any way to do that without invoking the server? For instance, a
> MySQL script would be handy!

Hmm. Yes, if you load pages through SQL, you have to rebuild the
indexes again. Maybe the French SQL dump was in an old format?
Brion?

> d) When I edit a page, the submit yields a blank page after a long
> time. Likely to be a pb in the php scripts, but this seems beyond
> my competence.
>
> e) After a submit on a new page, I can see the modification only
> after deleting the IE cache and recalling wiki.phtml. I set the
> browser to checking most recent version at each page download, but
> the behaviour is the same.

Got me there. I'm afraid I can't be much help for Windows.

> This being said, congratulations to all of you (and also Xitami,
> php and MySQL). It is quite impressive that the code and docs
> allowed me with my limited experience to go so far in so little
> time!

Well I had never used PHP or MySQL before I wrote it; no doubt
our shared ignorance helps us communicate.

In all honesty, though, I don't think the Wikipedia software is
really good for personal use. There are a lot of smaller, simpler
Wikis that do a great job--I use UseMod for my personal site,
for example. I really wrote this one for one and only one goal:
to run Wikipedia. If it's useful for other things,I certainly don't
mind, but that's not a goal I ever had.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC

Re: Attempt to set up a local wiki from scratch [ In reply to ]

brion at pobox

Mar 18, 2003, 1:45 PM

Post #3 of 3 (355 views)

Permalink

On Tue, 2003-03-18 at 12:10, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Michel Mouly <mmouly@wanadoo.fr>):
> >
> > wikipedia : the last versions of the files found on source forge,
> > loaded one by one (how to dump the CVS??)
>
> Get an account on Sourceforge. Install CVS (I have no idea how to
> do this for Windows). Then use:

Supposedly there's a program 'WinCVS' which has a windows interface that
some people use. As a unix-head, I just run Cygwin and use the
unix-style tool. :)

> > I tried to run rebuildindex.php, but it aborts, seemingly some
> > timer in the server (message is an overload indication). Is there
> > any way to do that without invoking the server? For instance, a
> > MySQL script would be handy!

PHP generally has an execution time limit (default is 30 seconds I
think). This makes sense for web stuff which should generally never take
that long, but is obviously not something you want for your admin
scripts which might take an hour or two for really big things.

I run these scripts from the command line:
php rebuildIndex.php

This avoids the timeouts, gives me regular job control (well, under
Unix), and most importantly does not require the maintenance scripts to
be web-accessible!

Make sure your PATH is set appropriately, or use the full path to the
php executable, ie:
c:\webserver\php\bin\php rebuildIndex.php

(or something like that? I've never run these things on Windows, I
always use Linux for my servers.)

> Hmm. Yes, if you load pages through SQL, you have to rebuild the
> indexes again. Maybe the French SQL dump was in an old format?
> Brion?

It should be current... As a reminder, the SQL dumps only include the
'cur' and 'old' tables. The link, recentchanges, and search index tables
are recreated by the rebuild scripts:
rebuildLinks.php does links, recentchanges
rebuildIndex.php does search index.

These, I think, rely on the tables already existing, so you should run
the createdb.php before importing the data. (Michel I think is already
doing this part right.)

Hmm, it occurs to me that we don't have a clean backup/rebuild system
for the uploads. Probably someone should look into that.

> > d) When I edit a page, the submit yields a blank page after a long
> > time. Likely to be a pb in the php scripts, but this seems beyond
> > my competence.

No idea...

> > e) After a submit on a new page, I can see the modification only
> > after deleting the IE cache and recalling wiki.phtml. I set the
> > browser to checking most recent version at each page download, but
> > the behaviour is the same.
>
> Got me there. I'm afraid I can't be much help for Windows.

IE has the crappiest reload button ever, in that it doesn't reload
unless you hold down control. Help with workarounds for this is
welcome...

> In all honesty, though, I don't think the Wikipedia software is
> really good for personal use.

I do agree. There hasn't been a public, packaged, numbered software
release for a reason: it's idiosyncratic, built for a single site, has a
lot of assumptions (like all those hard-wired strings talking about
Wikipedia and GNU FDL license for text!), and way overkill for most
purposes.

I'm not going to say, "don't use it!" But keep the same caveats that you
would have for an early pre-alpha release of any large application with
a lot of weird features. It's fragile, and if you're trying to get real
work done it might not be for you unless you're willing to put a lot of
effort into it.

> There are a lot of smaller, simpler
> Wikis that do a great job--I use UseMod for my personal site,
> for example. I really wrote this one for one and only one goal:
> to run Wikipedia. If it's useful for other things,I certainly don't
> mind, but that's not a goal I ever had.

UseMod is also fairly easy to set up -- one perl script. :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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