Mediawiki 1.43 from 1.39

Background

This is a WhatIf page to map out 1.39 to 1.43 (and maybe just wait until November for 1.47 LTS)

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LTS

To upgrade MediaWiki, you can upgrade from the two most recent Long Term Support (LTS) versions directly. If you are using an older version, you must first upgrade to one of the two latest LTS versions before proceeding to the latest version.

The Path

Version	MySQL	PHP	Jumps	Status	Notes
MediaWiki 1.39.5 LTS	MySQL 8.0.46	PHP 8.1.2	0	Current
MediaWiki 1.43 LTS	MySQL 5.7.0+ (good)	PHP 8.1.0+ (good)	1	Could do now
MediaWiki 1.47 LTS	MySQL 5.7.0+ (good)	PHP 8.3.0+ (need to update)	2

Requirements

Required software as of MediaWiki 1.47.0:

• Web server with PHP 8.3.0 or higher, plus the following extensions:
  • ctype
  • dom
  • fileinfo
  • iconv
  • intl
  • libxml
  • mbstring
  • openssl
  • xml
  • xmlreader
• A SQL server, the following types are supported
  • MariaDB 10.11 or higher
  • MySQL 5.7.0 or higher
  • PostgreSQL 10 or higher
  • SQLite 3.31.0 or higher

The Approach

• ALL THIS STUFF IS FROM THE LAST PAGE, REVAMP IT!

Prepping the Databases

1. Backup the MW databases
2. Find my Google sheet with notes
3. Tally the extensions in use and find out what is still being maintained.
   • From the old sites I made copy of the Extensions that were installed via the Special:Version page
4. Upgrade MySQL
5. Upgrade PHP

• I installed the lowest version of MediaWiki I required and verified it worked.
  • I then pulled in a backup of my two wiki sites
  • I imported images/ from the same site
  • I pointed mediawiki (via localsettings.php) at one of the databases
    • Ran maintenance/update.php --force
  • Verified that the information loaded in the new site
• NOTE: I entirely ignored Skins and Extensions.
• Repeated for Site #2
• Once I had a working MW site for each database, I installed the next LTS MW version.
• Repeated the above steps
• Once I had a working MW site for each database, I installed the next LTS MW version.
• Repeated the above steps
• Eventually I had two working MW databases at 1.39

New Ubuntu Server

• I created a new Ubuntu 22.04 server and on this one, I took the time to set up various security related items.
• I opted to put
  • MySQL at 8.0.35-0ubuntu0.22.04.1
  • php at 8.1.2-1ubuntu2.14 (apache2handler)
• Installed apache2, created a new MW1.39LTS site to verify it ran under the new software.
• From there, I imported the two site databases, copied the 1.39 directory to two separate directories, set up MW, imported images and all was good.

Extensions and Skins

• The Skin was freshly installed from the latest version. Not much of an issue there.
• This was a little more tedious: I matched up the default 1.39 extensions against the old site listings and then went looking to for the latest extensions.
  • Some extensions were still in production
  • Some were not
• Fiddled until things were working. Had to fix some code for YouTube.

Summary

• I tried this about seven months ago and I was attempting to update the extensions as I went: this was not the way to go. Getting the database updated was the key and ignoring everything else made that easier to do. All a wiki really is at the base is the information (database) and the images/... everything else is functionality.