Install MediaWiki 1.7 from debian repo?

mediawiki 1.7 is in the ubuntu repos, so you can install it in mepis 6.0 and 6.5

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Thanks, carlops!

feheeszeno

Install MediaWiki direct from MediaWiki, I think that's the best way to go, you need to have (L)AMP stack working right.

--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Hi, carlops,

I am no doubt missing something but I can't tell for sure from the website: is the current version of the Big32 DVD Mepis 6.5? I am thinking of ordering a copy.

Adrian, do you mean this?
http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/LAMP
This seems to refer to MEPIS 3.3-3 and it appears to assume I plan to make the wiki public. In fact I am new to networks, servers, etc., and plan to put it on a box hidden behind a standard router. Darn, is this getting too complicated already? You see why I wanted to just try to download something from the repos and hope for the best!

feheeszeno

Well, I don't especially refer to instructions in the Wiki those are kind of old, but you do need an Apache, MySQL and PHP working on your computer, you can of course block port 80 so your Apache would not serve pages outside but from what I know MediaWiki needs that in order to run.

Even if you "just download something from repos" it will need that to work. If you have all those set up it's not very hard to set up MediaWiki from tarball downloaded from their site.
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Well, I tried dozens of things and NOTHING worked. I asked if anyone had installed it succesfully under MEPIS and no-one actually said "yes". I sure hope that someone here has at least installed working LAMP under Mepis! I agree that this would clearly be a good start.

Adrian, I am too discouraged at the moment to even try to formulate questions. Your comments about MediaWiki seem to contradict other sources who claim to have experienced no troubles--- just to clarify, are they based upon personal experience installing MediaWiki under Mepis?

feheeszeno

If you are using Mepis 3.4.3 ie pre 6.0 Ubuntu, this is what I get, using debian sid repos in Mepis 3.4.3, also available in testing repos

apt-get install mediawiki
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5
libmysqlclient15off mediawiki1.9 php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-mysql
Suggested packages:
php-pear mediawiki1.9-math memcached clamav
Recommended packages:
mysql-server postgresql-8.1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5
libmysqlclient15off mediawiki mediawiki1.9 php5 php5-cli php5-common
php5-mysql
0 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 12.5MB of archives.
After unpacking 34.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

Hope this helps.

anticapitalista

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

Suddenly I seem to be having a great deal of difficulty using this forum-- for some reason I can't edit my previous post but I CAN edit the one before that. Very weird!

Anyway, I just recalled that Adrian told me long ago that he has done PRECISELY what I want to do, set up Mepis 6.0 box with LAMP and MediaWiki--- sorry, Adrian! Anything special I should do if I do a takeover installation to ensure that LAMP will work fine? If I can get LAMP working (suggested tests, anyone?) I can ask about installing MediaWiki itself--- if I can use the Ubuntu repo that would be my preference. I don't think you guys realize how hard installing from tarball can be if you have no background in system administration.

Anticapitalista, that's the kind of detail I find helpful, so yes, it helps. I'm encouraged now that I recall that Adrian said he's actually completed the installation and used the thing under Mepis 6.0. I tried this back when I was using Mepis 3.3 and all looked well at the stage you mentioned, but terrible things happened when I didn't abort but actually tried to install.

If I try this using Mepis 6.0, should I use/avoid any particular repos?

feheeszeno

Yes, I did have a personal Wiki set up... it worked great and it wasn't very hard to set up, just install apache2, mysql and php, then install MediaWiki using the instructions on their page (sorry don't remember the details I did this more than one year ago, installing MediaWiki is just like this: unpack the tar and point the browser to the settings file then follow the prompts -- if it doesn't run it means that you probably don't have either PHP or MySQL properly set up. See Wiki for tips (even if some info might be old it might provide some insight into the process)
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Hi, Adrian,

I want to do what you did. Unfortunately I am having many troubles, so please be patient. First things first--- it turns out I am quite some ways from being ready to try installing LAMP, much less MediaWiki.

I have the official MEPIS 6.0 disk and am I sorry to say that to my astonishment (since MEPIS 3.3-3 worked fine two years ago) the installer didn't do what I want.

This is a 40 GB hard drive. I don't envision using more than 10 GB total for this installation, so I wanted to shrink the primary partition using qparted, create more partitions, and then put MEPIS in that space. Right now I have a single primary partition plus a swap partition. Everything including the kernel is in that single partition. (This installation comes from a competing Linux distro.) I naively expected to be able to shrink this partition on the grounds that there ought to plenty of unused space at the upper end.

After rebooting with Knoppix using the toram option (I have 2 GB RAM in this machine, because you can never have enough RAM), Qtparted says of the primary partition, /dev/hda1, "it can start at 0.03761 and end at 36585.5" and "it can grow left at 0.03761 and right at 36585.5". I.e. it can't shrink and it certainly can't grow since it's using all the space not taken up by the swap partition. Any advice? Do I need to try to use Knoppix to wipe the entire disk, set up partitions and reformat them from scratch and then try doing the installations all over again, or what? Can anyone tell me why qtparted doesn't want to resize that partition?

I don't use Windows at all, and in my opinion I shouldn't have to!

feheeszeno

First of all why MEPIS 6.0? The latest one is 6.5.0.2 which includes btw Gparted too, which might work where qtparted fails. If not use cfdisk, CLI tool.
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Hi feheeszeno. I have a couple questions for you. You state that your main partition is on /dev/hda1, and that it's currently approx 36 GB in size (my estimate based on the numbers you provide above). What partition is swap on? Is is /dev/hda2 or is it in a logical partition like /dev/hda5? If swap is in a logical partition, I would just delete the thing (temporarily) so that you only have the single, physical partition. Then you should be able to resize it. BTW, what file system are you using: ext3, reiserfs, something else?

Also, QTParted does not do a very good job of resizing things. Oh, I almost forgot. If you are running Knoppix to allow you to do things, you must provide the "knoppix noswap" cheat code upon bootup. Why? Because otherwise the swap space will be "busy" and you will be unable to "apply" disk changes. If you are already up-and-running, you can open a konsole, "su" to root and use the command "swapoff /dev/yourswappartition".

So, if you want to resize your partitions, download a copy of Gparted Live CD. It is a stand-alone, partition tool that works very nicely

Once you have the partitions arranged the way you want, then you can be sure that the "L" of LAMP (Linux) will be working ok.

Once you have the main OS working, then follow Adrian's advice and get Apache2 loaded, then MySQL. Finally load php (probably php4 unless MediaWiki requires php5).

Let us know where you're at with all this

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

I have the official MEPIS 6.0 disk, but not 6.5.0.2. Downloads are impractical at present, but if I ordered the 32 bit CD from The MEPIS Store, would I obtain the version 6.5.0.2?

feheeszeno

Hi, Jon,

This is very distressing, my floppy drive doesn't work and my USB ports are missing! I don't know if that latter is problem with the linux OS currently installed (not MEPIS) or not. Anyway, here is my crude transcription of what parted print gives in the machine in question:

Minor Start End Type FS Flags
1 0.031 36585.527 primary ext3 boot
2 36585.527 38162.219 extended
3 36585.558 38162.219 logical linux-swap

The Gparted Live CD sounds like a really good idea but I can't download for a few weeks. However, I think that in the above, "parted" is really "GNU parted 1.6.21", i.e. I think I already have gparted without a GUI, so if you know the line commands for the resizing (after noswap), that might do the trick! So, just to be clear, after looking at the above output, is the general idea to turn off swap, temporarily delete the swap partition (2 and 3 both?), and then attempt to chunk the remaining partition? Details please!

Hmm... when I boot with knoppix noswap, indeed the swap partition is not busy, but it looks like gparted insists that I cannot resize it! The option "resize" is greyed out for partition 1, not for the other two, but these show that I can grow left by 0 and grow right by 0, which isn't terribly helpful.

The possibility of trashing the other install is not a grave concern. I don't care how I get there so long as I eventually get a disk partitioned (and formatted?) in such a way that I can persuade linux installers to put a linux in each of two or three places. With a 40GB drive and not expecting more than 2GB for "personal files", so call it 5GB for safety, I'd hope I could get two, mebbe SUSE and this LAMP server under MEPIS or whatever works.

So: "arranged how I want". Well, how DO I want it to achieve the goal of two linux systems on one hard drive? (Yes, I know I couldn't use them at the same time, and I know I'd still have to deal with setting up a bootloader so that it knows about both linuxes.) As far as I can tell, at least some linux installers allow you to point at a prexisting partition and say, in effect, "please takeover that space, subpartitioning how you will".

feheeszeno

feheeszeno, I think I see part of the problem!

Normally, when an "extended" partition is made on a hard drive, it is the LAST physical partition. That doesn't mean that there have to be three prior partitions in order for you to then make an extended one, but normally, if you create an extended partition, all subsequent partitions are "logical" partitions.

Let me step back, and then I'll move forward

I think you already know this from previous conversations, but I'll put it down here for review. With an EIDE (non-SATA) drive, you can have, at most 4 "physical" partitions. If more partitions are needed, then one and only one partition can be made into an "extended" partition. Once you have an extended partition, it can be made into multiple "logical" partitions. Naming convention for physical partitions is /dev/hda1 through /dev/hda4 (assuming the first, master controller). Logical partitions ALWAYS start with /dev/hda5. You notice that I did not mention an "extended" partition? That is because the extended partition cannot be used directly; it must be referenced by "logical" partitions. It is possible to create a physical partition AFTER an extended partition, but any logical partitions would have to be created first. This is not a real common (nor recommended) layout.

So, with your layout scheme above, if you reported it correctly, you have a physical partition /dev/hda1, followed by an extended partition /dev/hda2 with no logical partitions, followed by a physical partition /dev/hda3 for swap.

Here's what I recommend. Boot up with Knoppix. Do the "knoppix noswap" during bootup. Start up QTParted, or Gparted or whatever partitioning tool Knoppix has at the moment (I don't remember). DELETE SWAP, and Apply the change. Reboot (again with the noswap option). Start up the partition tool, AND DELETE /dev/hda2. Apply the changes and reboot. Finally, change the size of /dev/hda1 to what you want. Apply the change. Reboot if you wish (we're not doing Windows here, but it's a good idea to test the partitions to make sure they "take"). You should then make an Extended partition BUT DO NOT APPLY YET. Instead, now make you swap partition, but make sure that it is a LOGICAL partition, not a physical one. You should then be able to make your other partitions.

Another way you could do it would be to make the first physical partition /dev/hda1, and make swap the second physical partition /dev/hda2. Then you could make /dev/hda3 an extended partition, into which you could put the other partitions you want as logical partitions. This would actually be my preferred way of laying things out having the extended and logical partitions last on the disk.

Does all of that make sense?

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

Hi, Jon, thanks for your reply!

This thread has actually split into two distinct questions: I'd be making progress if can overcome either problem. Problem One: install a working LAMP under some linux, perhaps Mepis 6.0. Problem Two: resize partitions on a hard disk, before or after a takeover linux installation, and then install two linuxes from live CD. We're working on Problem Two.

Indeed, using the "knoppix noswap" option makes a lot of sense. Ironically, I had considered the possibility that the first partition was unresizable because it was in use, so I tried "knoppix toram" but that didn't help.

I think I understand your instructions until the deletion of the swap partition. Referring to the partition table as given by "parted print", do you mean I should delete just the third partition, the one we believe is the swap partition, a physical partition? (By the way, I think I saw something else suggesting that this IS a logical partition, but now I can't remember what. The versions of parted or qtparted under Knoppix and Ubuntu seemed to give slightly different results.) Or both the second and third?

Assuming that parted permits the "resize" option for partition one after deleting the other two (?), I think I know how to shrink its upper endpoint (or lower?). After that I'd have to recreate the swap partition using gparted, I guess, the same as before, only in a different place. I am not sure I know how to do that. Suppose I then wanted to try to drop Mepis 6.0 into the empty place, can the installer handle the formatting? Is there an option which says in effect, "use this existing partition however you like, but touch nothing else"? That would be very useful! After that I'd need help with the bootloader. Then there's Problem One. Hope you can help!

feheeszeno

Feheeszeno, based on your original partition descriptions above, where you show the three partitions, I drew the conclusion that your extended partition is partition 2, but that partition "3" was a normal, physical partition. But I could be wrong. Open a console and cut/paste the results of these commands:
cat /etc/fstab

and

mount

and

swapon -s

More to your point though. Yes, I would recommend deleting entirely the current swap partition as well as the current extended partition and starting over. Why? Because QTParted does not do well when it comes to "resizing" logical partitions (and you can't resize an extended partition separately). If you don't have anything "important" in those partitions, and if it is only a swap partition, then it is "unimportant", then it is much easier to just get rid of everything and start over. If you had multiple partitions that contained different OSes and/or data, that would be more difficult. But yes, for your situation, get Mepis situated nicely first

I can tell you that, for a new project at work, I have loaded a copy of Mepis 6.5 into a virtual machine, put in apache2, mysql, php, and drupal (in that order) with no problems. No, I have not directly added mediawiki (I may do that next), but put each piece in place (use synaptic when possible), and make any MINOR configuration settings before going to the next package.

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

but gave up because the existing installation (or even worse, maybe the box itself) is so messed up I can't even get the floppy drive to mount, there is no k3b or similar so I can't write to cd, and there are no usb ports that I recognize, so I can't write to a pendrive. So to answer your questions I'd have to try to write down the output on paper, and since I hate the existing installation so much there seems little point in making even that much effort to save it, even for a few minutes.

I've exhausted myself studying tutorials on the web which claim to give line by line instructions (using other distros). Some of them are very detailed and appear perfect until I actually try to follow them, then there's always something about my install experience which is different and which baffles me. Or I can't even obtain the neccessary ingredients, like a particular distro version or broadband. So I have to work with what I have, which appears to be far too limited to get anything done.

Unfortunately the disks/iso images I seem to need are very hard to obtain. I tried to figure out how to get the Gparted Live cd you mentioned and Mepis 6.5, but failed. For example, the Mepis Store just mentions 32 bit versus 64 bit (live?) DVDs (?), which isn't helpful. Everything I have is a year or two out of date or else is "brand new" but simply doesn't work (trash disks from linux magazines I obtained).

I have two seemingly intractable problems:

(1) how to persuade linux installers (e.g. SUSE, Red Hat based, Debian based, live CD or other) to install two workable linuxes on one 40 MB hard drive,

(2) how to create a working LAMP and then install Mediawiki on one of these linuxes.

If I could solve those problems, I have a chance of being able to use this computer. Otherwise I should donate it to charity or attack it with a hand axe (currently my favored option).

feheeszeno

OK feheeszeno, I'm confused again

Is your hard drive 40 MEGABYTES or 40 GIGABYTES? If MB, then you're going to have a hard time. If GB, then you have plenty of room!

Next, what version of Mepis are you actually using: 3.3, 3.4, 6.x? If you are using one of the 3.x versions, things are definitely different than the current 6.x versions, but it is possible to install all of the tools you have mentioned above.

My last job I configured two (three?) throw-away computers to use Mepis 3.3.x. I don't remember the specs on the CPU, but they were definitely not speed demons. They had no more than 256 MB RAM, and each had a 40 GB hard drive. They were running apache2, mysql, php, and drupal.

So it can be done. I'm sorry you are having so many problems with this install. I hope we can help you get the thing working soon!

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

(This is the second time I've submitted this, I'm still having trouble using the forum.)

I may have made some progress toward getting the L in LAMP. I tried reinstalling another linux over the one I disliked so much and that was even worse, wouldn't even boot. I tried using Knoppix to access the hard drive and couldn't get Knoppix to do that. I tried rebooting with the Mepis 6.0-2 live CD and Mepis 6.0 DVD and using those installers but they kept crashing no matter what options I chose. But when I rebooted again with knoppix and tried simply wiping the disk (including the partition table) with

sudo shred -n 2 -z -v /dev/hda

it wiped clean. THEN the MEPIS 6.0-2 installed Mepis. I have a 40GB (sorry!) hard drive so I requested that it leave 15GB free, which apparently it did! (See below) My floppy drive is working now and I seem to have a working k3b, so that would be progress. Here are the current answers to the questions you asked:

Output of cat /etc/fstab:

# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda2 swap swap sw,pri=1 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0622 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 /home ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom iso9660,udf noauto,users,exec,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy vfat,ext2 noauto,users,exec,rw 0 0

Output of mount:

/dev/hda1 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=100,mode=0622)
devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/hda3 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime)
capifs on /dev/capi type capifs (rw,mode=0666)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
/dev/fd0 on /media/floppy type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev)

Output of swapon -s:

Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/hda2 partition 976552 0 1

From df -h looks like I have two ext3 partitions:
/dev/hda1 9.2 GB
/dev/hda3 12 GB

(Suddenly I'm having trouble with the floppy drive on ths computer, a recurring problem, so I am approximating.)

Also, I mistakenly assumed the gparted live CD would be listed at distrowatch, but I found it at sourceforge and am downloading it. It's small but still takes hours, so this won't be done for a while, but I have some confidence that if I can get the iso image that I can burn a live CD. So I might be able to use the partitioner soon. (EDIT: I spoke too soon, the iso failed to download, so I am trying again).

At this point, we could go in either of two directions:

1. Discuss how to put another linux, say SUSE in the unused space,

2. Discuss how to install the AMP in LAMP and then MediaWiki 1.7 under my new MEPIS 6.0-2.

Jon, you've been very patient with me and I appreciate it! I certainly have been having a hard time getting started but at the moment I can see definite progress, the L in LAMP!

Something strange-- I can't seem to edit my immediately previous post, which is quite recent. I hope some kind moderator can delete it and point to this post, since the information there was already out of date when you replied--- sorry about that!

feheeszeno

Congratulations feheeszeno! You deserve to go out and get yourself a nice strong cup of coffee!

So, it sounds like your hard drive was just completely messed up. Good job on wiping the thing clean!

Is there any way you can back this mess up so that you don't have to go through it again?

Since you want to load two different Linux distros, I would recommend loading SUSE first. Why? Because Mepis seems to be more tolerant of where it is installed. Both SUSE and Mepis use GRUB for the bootloader, but keep this in mind: Whichever distro you install SECOND, make sure that you install its version of grub in the ROOT PARTITION, not the MBR. The MBR load should be done with the FIRST Linux distro; the second in the root partition. Once that is done, then you can get the appropriate info from the root partition and copy it into the "Real Grub" that is in the MBR.

Although, now that I think of it, Mepis has a wonderful, "Reload GRUB" from the Live CD, so it might be better to load Mepis first, and then SUSE. I'm not sure (I'm getting tired; it's been a very long few days for me) so wait for some other opinions on this matter

So let's get LINUX loaded and stable before we worry about Apache2, MySQL, and PHP.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I forgot to mention. I didn't see multiple copies of your last post.

Jon

No computer is magic, no operating system is magic, no website is magic. They all require human interaction, thought, and responsibility to work.

Well, I already loaded Mepis 6.0-2 so next I might as well try loading SUSE 10.0 into the unused space. I am studying the SUSE book while I await your further instructions. (Will check back in a few hours).

I was able to download the GnuParted 0.3.4-7 iso image and burned the live CD and have been able to boot from it. This is what it gives me for the existing partitions:

Partition FileSys Size Used Unuused Flags
/dev/hda1 ext3 9.31 GB 2.22 GB 7.02 GB boot
/dev/hda2 linux-swap 053.67 MB - - -
/dev/hda3 ext3 11.33 GB 312.27 MB 11.02GB -
- unallocated 15.69 GB - - -

For the drive:
Model ST340015A
Size 37.27 GB
Path /dev/hda
Label msdos
heads 255
sectors/head 63
cylinders 4865
sectors 78156225

For the unallocated/unformated space:
first 45244141
last 78156224
total 32912084

It looks like I should be able to use K3B to back up whatever I have in the existing partitions. (I have a DVD R/W drive and a CDROM drive, and I have blank CDs and DVDs at hand.) I don't have any personal files at all on the computer yet, although I did add a handful of extensions to Firefox such as NoScript, so as yet nothing horrible if I lose something except that I might be back to square one, which WOULD be horrible, actually.

It looks like the gnome parted disk doesn't give me the option of formatting the unused space but I might be able to play with resizing. If this works out I'd probably want SUSE as my main workstation and the LAMP as my private test pretend website, so I probably would want to downsize the space currently given to the MEPIS. Any advice? I wouldn't anticipate more than five GB personal files even allowing for backups (which are of course essential) in this LAMP thing. I am pulling a number out of a hat, but this estimate is based on my modest usage in my production machine over the past two years. I have much less idea whether I really need all that space in /hda1.

When I log booting from the hard drive (Mepis 6.0-2) the layout appears different from what I am used to from Mepis 3.3-1. But it appears that the root directory is /dev/hda1 and the /home directory on /dev/hda3.

The remark about where to install the bootloader for the second installation is extremely helpful!

About the post: it didn't "take" the first time, so yes, it only appears once. The previous one, the whiny one threatening the computer with physical destruction, is the one I wanted to delete (sheepish grin)

Again, a million thanks for your patience, Jon! I hope you can help me finish this--- that would be cool, I think!

Well, I guess Jon is catching up on his sleep so I decided to try to proceed with the installation of apache, mysql, php, mediwiki.

The very first thing I did was to try to see if apache was already installed, even already running (answer: no) and I found /usr/share/apps/quanta/doc/php/install.apache2.html which says "Warning: Do not use Apache 2.0 and PHP in a production environment neither on Unix nor on Windows." Then it continues with (oudated? it's part of the 2003 php manual) intructions for installing Apache 2.0!

I guess that one part of the steep learning curve here is learning when to dismiss comments as irrelevant because outdated. Progress report: I have installed apache2 and the server appears to be running. I have installed mysql 5.0 but this is not running and the directory /var/run/mysqld is empty, so mysqladmin ping fails. There was a mysterious message in the dialog after that was done:

"On upgrades from MySQL 3.23, as shipped with Debian Woody, symlinks in place of /var/lib/mysql or /var/log/mysql gets accidently removed and have manually be restored. MySQL will only install if you have a non-numeric hostname that is resolvable via the /etc/hosts file. E.g. if the "hostname" command returns "myhostname" then there must be a line like "10.0.0.1 myhostname". A new mysql user "debian-sys-maint" will be created. This mysql account is used in the start/stop and cron scripts. Don't delete."

Does anyone know if this is relevant? What do I need to do to bring up mysql?

Because of the question of php5 versus php4 I next went straight to MediaWiki 1.7 and it seems that one does want php5. I am attempting to install that now from the Ubuntu archivs. Yesterday I installed some other little things I like such as gkrellm and it seems that the switch from the Debian to Ubuntu repos might not be the big deal I thought it was last year, which would be good.

feheeszeno

As far as I can tell, mysql should be running at boot time but nothing related to mysql is listed in ps -ef run as root. Running mysqladmin ping gives:

mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)'
Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!

Well, mysqld is not running, so I tried to look at init and conf files to figure out why not, but failed.

It seems that /etc/mysql/debian-start might be the startup script. This script seems to use the conf file /etc/mysql/debian.cnf which does seem to suggest that this socket should be /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock, which doesn't exist.

# Automatically generated for Debian scripts. DO NOT TOUCH!
[client]
host = localhost
user = debian-sys-maint
password = USwfkxuamtlQewx1
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
[mysql_upgrade]
host = localhost
user = debian-sys-maint
password = USwfkxuamtlQewx1
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

(What's this, a backdoor? Well, the thing isn't running, but still...)

The directory /etc/rc5.d contains a symbolic link to

/etc/init.d/mysql
/etc/init.d/mysql-ndb-mgm
/etc/init.d/mysql-ndb

(This is OT, but about half the symbolic links appear to be BROKEN! Is that normal for a freshly installed sysstem? None of the three mysql-related scripts appear to be broken.)

It seems that /etc/init.d/mysql tries to use /etc/mysql/my.cnf as conf file. That exists. I don't see why mysql is not starting. Any ideas?

feheeszeno

What's the output if
service mysql start
(it might be mysqld, don't remember which)

Also, try the dpkg-reconfigure mysql command to reconfigure the package.

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Hi, Adrian:

root@4# service mysql start
Starting MySQL database server: mysqld.
.

root@4[bin]# ps -ef | grep mysqld
root 14333 1 0 10:19 pts/4 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe
mysql 14397 14333 1 10:19 pts/4 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --skip-locking --port=3306 --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
root 14398 14333 0 10:19 pts/4 00:00:00 logger -p daemon.err -t mysqld_safe -i -t mysqld
root 14649 14249 0 10:20 pts/4 00:00:00 grep mysqld

root@4[bin]# mysqladmin ping
mysqld is alive

Hurrah! How on Earth did you know what command to issue? Regardless, thanks. I have a fairly awful mysql book which does however at least recognize that some readers might use linux, which in another (Red Hat derived) installation has helped me to set a root password, so I'll go try that right now...

And I'm logged in as "root"! Output from mysql

mysql> status;
--------------
mysql Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.0.22, for pc-linux-gnu (i486) using readline 5.1

Connection id: 11
Current database:
Current user: root@localhost
SSL: Not in use
Current pager: stdout
Using outfile: ''
Using delimiter: ;
Server version: 5.0.22-Debian_0ubuntu6.06.3-log
Protocol version: 10
Connection: Localhost via UNIX socket
Server characterset: latin1
Db characterset: latin1
Client characterset: latin1
Conn. characterset: latin1
UNIX socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Uptime: 11 min 23 sec

Threads: 1 Questions: 151 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 0 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 17 Queries per second avg: 0.221
--------------

Excellent! Ladidah... I hate typing mysql commands in the shell, don't we all? Any recommendations on nice query browsers? Also, ideally I'd like to have something like emacs to "browse sidewise" in mysql tables, if you know what I mean.

Ooooh! NEVER MIND! It seems that I already have installed something called mysql-navigator which is evidently just what I wanted! I am experimenting...

It seems that php is at least partially functional since
% php -v
PHP 5.1.2 (cli) (built: May 22 2007 20:23:21)
Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2006 Zend Technologies
% php -r 'echo "Hello World\n";'
Hello World
gives the expected output.

feheeszeno

it looks like you are on the right track

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Hi, AdrianTM,

Hope you are Jon are still here, because in fact I'm stuck where I was ten hours ago. I know enough about mysql to be able to test that it is up and running (not sure that mysql-navigator is working, though), but I'm not at all sure either php or apache are working after all! Bearing in mind that I have restrictive firewall settings and only intend to serve web pages to myself for the moment, can you suggest some simple tests? I don't see any executables associated with mediawiki--- is that right? I do see /var/lib/mediawiki with symbolic links to php scripts in /usr/share/mediawiki1.7 but pages like index.html don't appear when I point konqueror or firefox at them. Any ideas? Have I in fact installed mediawiki? If so, is there a simple test to show whether it appears to be working yet?

Another general question: do I need to have mastered php to administer mediawiki? If so, any good linux oriented books? (I don't use Windows at all so wish to avoid books which assume I am using Windows.)

feheeszeno

You don't need to know php, I don't and MediaWiki worked just fine.

index.html pages are empty you don't have what to see...

Initially I followed this howto (even though it's for Windows):
http://lifehacker.com/software/wikipedia/geek-to-live-set-up-your-personal-wikipedia-163707.php

See if that helps...

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Hi, Adrian, thanks, but as far as I can see that link won't help me. First, I don't use Windows at all, although I did try substituting http://***/var/lib/mediawiki1.7 for the suggested URL in the article (if I were still using that RHEL thing, no doubt SELinux would have had a FIT since you obviously aren't supposed to access pages that way). Second, if possible I'd like to avoid putting the test on the web itself--- I was trying to say that I'd like to stay behind my router, which currently has this machine and another (currently powered down) hooked up to it. Third, even if I had connected to that directory, what should I look for? What should I expect? Is there one wiki per MediaWiki installation or could I have several? Can you give me some idea of what crucial MediaWiki related directories I should have? What about binaries? I presume that if this works at some point I should see something like a wiki page which is a tutorial in creating a wiki?

feheeszeno