Installing Semantic Mediawiki, a complete and revised guide

1. How to install Semantic MediaWiki on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
2. Pre-requisites
3. Dependencies
4. Installation of MediaWiki
   1. Set up some variables for the installation
   2. Some cleanup
   3. Install SendMail
   4. Install Apache2, PHP and MySQL Client and other dependencies
   5. Install MySQL Server and set password automatically
   6. Download MediaWiki and move it to installation directory
   7. Increase maximum upload size on Apache to allow uploads larger than 2M to the wiki
   8. Configure your new mediawiki
      1. Setup process
   9. Download LocalSettings.php to the MediaWiki installation
   10. Set right permissions to enable file uploads
   11. Mediawiki is Ready
5. Installation of Semantic MediaWiki extension
   1. Install PHP Composer
   2. Run PHP Composer on HTML Folder and update MediaWiki dependencies
   3. Install Semantic Mediawiki extension in MediaWiki
   4. Finishing Touches
6. Extra 1: Promote users to admins if you need it
   1. Your SemanticMediaWiki should be ready
7. Extra 2: how to clone a semantic mediawiki installation
   1. Copy the folder to a new one
   2. Enter the cloned folders
   3. Create an empty MySQL Database for every new cloned wiki
   4. Edit LocalSettings.php inside each cloned folder
   5. Recreate MediaWiki database tables
   6. Recreate Semantic MediaWiki database tables
   7. Create admin user in each wiki

How to install Semantic MediaWiki on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Original repository with scripts for installation: https://github.com/silvae86/semanticmediawiki-install

This is intended as a record of my installations of Semantic MediaWiki for the course of Information Management and Collaboration that I teach at the Master in Information Science at FEUP.

It can also be used by anyone who needs to install a Semantic MediaWiki instance from scratch.

Pre-requisites

A fresh Ubuntu machine (I am using 18.04 LTS on a Virtual Machine at the moment).

Dependencies

Semantic MediaWiki needs MySQL, Apache2, PHP, Inkscape and others. We will install these as part of the process, as well as SendMail to be able to notify people when they register and to be able to recover passwords.

Installation of MediaWiki

Before we can install the Semantic extension we need to install the base MediaWiki software.

Set up some variables for the installation

First is necessary to set up some preliminary values that will be used later in the script. Remember, if you close the current terminal session you will have to set them up again.

MYSQL_PASSWORD="FIXME__PASSWORD"
HOST="gcc-mci.fe.up.pt"
echo $HOST
ADDRESS="http://${HOST}"
echo $ADDRESS

1. The default root password for MySQL (keep it safe!)
2. The host name of the machine you are configuring
3. The internet address of the machine.

Replace these with what you need before typing Enter in the terminal!

Some cleanup

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get -y -qq update
sudo apt-get -y -qq upgrade

Install SendMail

#install sendmail
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y -qq sendmail

Install Apache2, PHP and MySQL Client and other dependencies

sudo apt-get -y -f -qq install wget apache2 php php-mysql libapache2-mod-php php-xml php-mbstring php-apcu php-intl imagemagick inkscape php-gd php-cli mysql-client-5.7

Install MySQL Server and set password automatically

sudo apt-get -y -f -qq install debconf-utils
debconf-set-selections <<< "mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}"
debconf-set-selections <<< "mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again password ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}"
apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server
#will try to login using the root password
mysql -u root -p${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
# you should see the mysql prompt

Download MediaWiki and move it to installation directory

mkdir -p Downloads
cd Downloads
sudo wget --progress=bar:force https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.31/mediawiki-1.31.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf ./mediawiki-1.31.1.tar.gz
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mediawiki
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/mediawiki
sudo mv mediawiki-1.31.1/* /var/lib/mediawiki
cd /var/www/html
sudo ln -s /var/lib/mediawiki mediawiki
cd -
ls /var/www/html/mediawiki # You should see a file listing after these commands are run. It is the contents of mediawiki correctly installed in the Apache HTML folder.

Increase maximum upload size on Apache to allow uploads larger than 2M to the wiki

You may need to modify the PHP version in the following commands as it changes. 7.2 needs to become 7.4, or whatever is installed on your system. Run ls /etc/php, see which version of PHP you have installed and modify the paths accordingly:

sudo sed -i '/upload_max_filesize = 2M/c\\upload_max_filesize = 50M' /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini
sudo sed -i '/memory_limit = 8M/c\\memory_limit = 128M' /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini
sudo service apache2 restart # restart apache with new settings

Configure your new mediawiki

Go to your website address in the browser (for my case http://gcc-mci.fe.up.pt/mediawiki, in your case you will adjust accordingly) and configure MediaWiki using the wizard.

Setup process

Download LocalSettings.php to the MediaWiki installation

After the setup is complete, your browser will automatically download a file called LocalSettings.php. This will have to be placed in a specific directory and customised to suit our particular needs.

Upload the LocalSettings.php file to your home directory using an FTP client and then copy it to the MediaWiki installation directory

cd ~
sudo mv ~/LocalSettings.php /var/www/html/mediawiki
sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/html

Set right permissions to enable file uploads

sudo chmod -R 0755 /var/www/html/mediawiki/images

Mediawiki is Ready

You should now see the MediaWiki home page ready to work

Installation of Semantic MediaWiki extension

Semantic Mediawiki relies on PHP Composer. Let’s install it first.

Install PHP Composer

cd ~
php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '544e09ee996cdf60ece3804abc52599c22b1f40f4323403c44d44fdfdd586475ca9813a858088ffbc1f233e9b180f061') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

sudo apt-get -y -qq install composer

Run PHP Composer on HTML Folder and update MediaWiki dependencies

cd /var/www/html
sudo chmod ugo+w composer.json
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/vendor
sudo chmod ugo+rw /var/www/html/vendor

cd /var/www/html/mediawiki
composer update

Install Semantic Mediawiki extension in MediaWiki

cd /var/www/html/mediawiki
sudo mkdir -p ./extensions/SemanticMediaWiki
sudo chmod ugo+rw ./extensions/SemanticMediaWiki
sudo composer require mediawiki/semantic-media-wiki "3.0.0" --update-no-dev
sudo composer require mediawiki/semantic-result-formats "3.0.0"
composer update --no-dev
php maintenance/update.php

Finishing Touches

The LocalSettings.php file needs to be customised with some tuning add-ons.

Add at the end:

// Set custom logo if you want
$wgLogo = $wgScriptPath . '/images/feup_logo.png';

// Enable semantics for the wiki. Replace with the root URL of your wiki
enableSemantics( 'http://gcc-mci.fe.up.pt/mediawiki' ); //FIXME
//
//Prevent new user registrations except by sysops
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;

//enable uploads
$wgEnableUploads = true; # Enable uploads

$wgTrustedMediaFormats[] = 'application/zip';

$wgFileExtensions = array( 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'doc',
    'xls', 'mpp', 'pdf', 'ppt', 'tiff', 'bmp', 'docx', 'xlsx',
    'pptx', 'ps', 'odt', 'ods', 'odp', 'odg', 'zip'
);

//enable captchas to present spam
wfLoadExtensions( array( 'ConfirmEdit', 'ConfirmEdit/QuestyCaptcha' ) );

// Add your questions in LocalSettings.php using this format:
// A question may have many answers
$wgCaptchaQuestions = array(
    'Qual é o nome ou sigla desta Unidade Curricular?' => array( 'GCC', 'gestt
ão de conhecimento e colaboração', 'Gestão de Conhecimento', 'Gestão de C
onhecimento e Colaboração', 'gestao de conhecimento e colaboracao' )
);

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;

Extra 1: Promote users to admins if you need it

Access these pages and select your users; attribute them to the administration groups

http://your-wiki-address/mediawiki/index.php/Special:Privileges (in English) http://your-wiki-address/mediawiki/index.php/Especial:Privil%C3%A9gios (in Portuguese)

Your SemanticMediaWiki should be ready

Go to your wiki address, in my case http://gcc-mci.fe.up.pt/mediawiki/wiki/Special:Version or http://gcc-mci.fe.up.pt/mediawiki/index.php/Especial:Versão (in Portuguese wikis). You should see that your list includes Semantic Mediawiki:

Happy Wiki’ing!

Extra 2: how to clone a semantic mediawiki installation

Sometimes you need to create different installations for separate permissions management. In my case I had to create several SMW instances where my students had administrative permissions to be able to parametrize controlled vocabularies. However, if they would be administrator of their wiki, they would see everyone’s work (which is obviously not good for evaluation!)

The solution is to completely clone the wiki and make it into separate workspaces, so that they can be admins of their own wikis but not see their colleagues’ work in their own wikis.

Copy the folder to a new one

cp -R /var/www/html/mediawiki /var/www/html/grupo1
cp -R /var/www/html/mediawiki /var/www/html/grupo2
cp -R /var/www/html/mediawiki /var/www/html/grupo3
# ...

Now for all the new subfolders, you need to run the following operations.

Enter the cloned folders

cd /var/www/html/grupo1

Create an empty MySQL Database for every new cloned wiki

mysql -u root -pMYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD # replace MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD with your mysql admin password

mysql> create database grupo1;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> create database grupo2;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> create database grupo3;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Edit LocalSettings.php inside each cloned folder

If you do not edit this, all three wikis will be editing the same MySQL database! We need to change the database being used by each wiki, among other stuff.

# Site name
$wgSitename = "Semantic MediaWiki Grupo 1 GCC"; # (Before) $wgSitename = "Semantic MediaWiki Sandbox GCC";

# Namespace, must be unique
$wgMetaNamespace = "Semantic_MediaWiki_Grupo1_GCC"; # (Before) $wgMetaNamespace = "Semantic_MediaWiki_Sandbox_GCC";

# Wiki subfolder
$wgScriptPath = "/grupo1";  # (Before) $wgScriptPath = "/mediawiki";  

## Database settings
$wgDBname = "grupo1"; # (Before) $wgDBname = "demo";

# Site secret
$wgSecretKey = "a_very_long_key"; # (Before) $wgSecretKey = "another_very_long_key";

# Turn off asynchronous job execution
# This can dramatically slow down your wiki, but will help deal with those times when the
# pages are not becoming part of their categories, property configurations are not being
# quickly allocated, and other bugs caused by too many pending jobs in the SMW.
$wgJobRunRate=2;
$wgRunJobsAsync=false;

Enable Results Formats (for semantic queries with average and other aggregation operators)

Semantic Formats Extension here.

# As shown in the Extension page, these are the possible formats
# average, bibtex, calendar, eventline, exhibit, googlebar, googlepie, graph, icalendar, jqplotbar, jqplotpie, max, min, outline, sum, timeline, vcard
# by default, all but the following formats are enabled: 'exhibit', 'filtered', 'googlebar', 'googlepie' and 'excel'
wfLoadExtension( 'SemanticResultFormats' );

Recreate MediaWiki database tables

mysql -u root -pMYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD < maintenance/tables.sql

Recreate Semantic MediaWiki database tables

php maintenance/update.php

Create admin user in each wiki

cd /var/www/html/grupo1
php maintenance/createAndPromote.php --sysop --bureaucrat new_user_username my_secret_password # create 'new_user_username' with password 'my_secret_password'