Installing MediaWiki on Linux Mint

MediaWiki is a widely used free and open-source wiki engine software. It is popularly known for powering the Wikipedia website. If you want to create your own wiki website, MediaWiki is a great choice. This tutorial will explain how to install MediaWiki on Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

Before starting with the installation, you need to ensure that your system has the following prerequisites:

• A Linux Mint latest version installed.
• A web server installed (such as Apache or Nginx)
• PHP 5.5.9 or later installed
• MySQL or MariaDB installed
• Admin-level access to your system

Installation

The following steps will guide you through the MediaWiki installation process:

Step 1: Download MediaWiki

First, download the MediaWiki package from its official website. Open a terminal, navigate to the /var/www/html directory, and download the package:

sudo wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.36/mediawiki-1.36.0.tar.gz

Step 2: Extract MediaWiki

Once the package is downloaded, extract it to the /var/www/html directory:

sudo tar xvzf mediawiki-1.36.0.tar.gz

Step 3: Configure the MediaWiki Directory Permissions

After extracting the package, MediaWiki's files and directories are owned by the root user. You need to change the ownership to the Apache user www-data:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/mediawiki-1.36.0/

Step 4: Create a Database for MediaWiki

You need to create a database for your MediaWiki installation. Log in to your MySQL or MariaDB server using the root account:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Enter the root password when prompted. Then, create a new database for your MediaWiki installation:

CREATE DATABASE mediawiki_db CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;

You can replace mediawiki_db with your preferred database name.

Next, create a database user and grant permission to access the database:

CREATE USER 'mediawiki_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YourPassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mediawiki_db.* TO 'mediawiki_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Replace YourPassword with your preferred password.

Step 5: Configure MediaWiki

You need to configure MediaWiki before you can use it. Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost/mediawiki-1.36.0/. You will see a configuration page. Click the "Set up the wiki" button to begin the configuration process.

On the next page, select your language and click the "Continue" button.

On the database settings page, enter your database details, such as database name, database username, and password that you created in step 4. Leave the rest of the fields with default values and click the "Continue" button.

On the server settings page, leave the default values and click the "Continue" button.

On the account creation page, enter your administrator account details and click the "Continue" button.

Finally, on the installation complete page, click the "Continue to your wiki" button.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed MediaWiki on your Linux Mint system.

Conclusion

In this guide, we have explained how to install MediaWiki on Linux Mint. Now that you have MediaWiki installed, you can customize and use it to create your own wiki website. Enjoy!