1 This file provides an overview of the MediaWiki upgrade process. For help with
2 specific problems, check
4 * the documentation at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Help:Contents
5 * the mediawiki-l mailing list archive at
6 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/
7 * the bug tracker at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/
9 for information and workarounds to common issues.
13 Comprehensive documentation on upgrading to the latest version of the software
14 is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Upgrading
16 === Consult the release notes ===
18 Before doing anything, stop and consult the release notes supplied with the new
19 version of the software. These detail bug fixes, new features and functionality,
20 and any particular points that may need to be noted during the upgrade
25 It is imperative that, prior to attempting an upgrade of the database schema,
26 you take a complete backup of your wiki database and files and verify it. While
27 the upgrade scripts are somewhat robust, there is no guarantee that things will
28 not fail, leaving the database in an inconsistent state.
30 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Backing_up_a_wiki provides an overview of
31 the backup process. You should also refer to the documentation for your
32 database management system for information on backing up a database, and to
33 your operating system documentation for information on making copies of files.
35 === Perform the file upgrade ===
37 Download the files for the new version of the software. These are available
38 as a compressed "tar" archive from the Wikimedia Download Service
39 (http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki).
41 You can also obtain the new files directly from our Git source code
44 Replace the existing MediaWiki files with the new. You should preserve the
45 LocalSettings.php file and the "extensions" and "images" directories.
47 Depending upon your configuration, you may also need to preserve additional
48 directories, including a custom upload directory ($wgUploadDirectory),
49 deleted file archives, and any custom skins.
51 === Perform the database upgrade ===
53 As of 1.21, it is possible to separate schema changes (i.e. adding,
54 dropping, or changing tables, fields, or indices) from all other
55 database changes (e.g. populating fields). If you need this
56 capability, see "From the command line" below.
58 ==== From the web ====
60 If you browse to the web-based installation script (usually at
61 /mw-config/index.php) from your wiki installation you can follow the script and
62 upgrade your database in place.
64 ==== From the command line ====
66 From the command line, browse to the "maintenance" directory and run the
67 update.php script to check and update the schema. This will insert missing
68 tables, update existing tables, and move data around as needed. In most cases,
69 this is successful and nothing further needs to be done.
71 If you need to separate out the schema changes so they can be run
72 by someone with more privileges, then you can use the --schema option
73 to produce a text file with the necessary commands. You can use
74 --schema, --noschema, $wgAllowSchemaUpdates as well as proper database
75 permissions to enforce this separation.
77 === Check configuration settings ===
79 The names of configuration variables, and their default values and purposes,
80 can change between release branches, e.g. $wgDisableUploads in 1.4 is replaced
81 with $wgEnableUploads in later versions. When upgrading, consult the release
82 notes to check for configuration changes which would alter the expected
83 behavior of MediaWiki.
85 === Check installed extensions ===
87 Extensions usually need to be upgraded at the same time as the MediaWiki core.
89 In MediaWiki 1.14 some extensions were migrated into the core. Please see the
90 HISTORY section "Migrated extensions" and disable these extensions in your
95 It makes sense to test your wiki immediately following any kind of maintenance
96 procedure, and especially after upgrading; check that page views and edits work
97 normally and that special pages continue to function, etc. and correct errors
98 and quirks which reveal themselves.
100 You should also test any extensions, and upgrade these if necessary.
102 == Upgrading from 1.16 or earlier ==
104 If you have a Chinese or Japanese wiki ($wgLanguageCode is set to one
105 of "zh", "ja", or "yue") and you are using MySQL fulltext search, you
106 will probably want to update the search index.
108 In the "maintenance" directory, run the updateDoubleWidthSearch.php
109 script. This will update the searchindex table for those pages that
110 contain double-byte latin characters.
112 == Upgrading from 1.8 or earlier ==
114 MediaWiki 1.9 and later no longer keep default localized message text
115 in the database; 'MediaWiki:'-namespace pages that do not exist in the
116 database are simply transparently filled-in on demand.
118 The upgrade process will delete any 'MediaWiki:' pages which are left
119 in the default state (last edited by 'MediaWiki default'). This may
120 take a few moments, similar to the old initial setup.
122 Note that the large number of deletions may cause older edits to expire
123 from the list on Special:Recentchanges, although the deletions themselves
124 will be hidden by default. (Click "show bot edits" to list them.)
126 See RELEASE-NOTES for more details about new and changed options.
128 == Upgrading from 1.7 or earlier ==
130 $wgDefaultUserOptions now contains all the defaults, not only overrides.
131 If you're setting this as a complete array(), you may need to change it
132 to set only specific items as recommended in DefaultSettings.php.
134 == Upgrading from 1.6 or earlier ==
136 $wgLocalTZoffset was in hours, it is now using minutes.
138 == Upgrading from 1.5 or earlier ==
140 Major changes have been made to the schema from 1.4.x. The updater
141 has not been fully tested for all conditions, and might well break.
143 On a large site, the schema update might take a long time. It might
144 explode, or leave your database half-done or otherwise badly hurting.
146 Among other changes, note that Latin-1 encoding (ISO-8859-1) is
147 no longer supported. Latin-1 wikis will need to be upgraded to
148 UTF-8; an experimental command-line upgrade helper script,
149 'upgrade1_5.php', can do this -- run it prior to 'update.php' or
152 NOTE that upgrade1_5.php does not work properly with recent version
153 of MediaWiki. If upgrading a 1.4.x wiki, you should upgrade to 1.5
154 first. upgrade1_5.php has been removed from MediaWiki 1.21.
156 If you absolutely cannot make the UTF-8 upgrade work, you can try
157 doing it by hand: dump your old database, convert the dump file
158 using iconv as described here:
159 http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/jbartsh_utf-8.html
160 and then reimport it. You can also convert filenames using convmv,
161 but note that the old directory hashes will no longer be valid,
162 so you will also have to move them to new destinations.
165 * A number of additional UI messages have been changed from HTML to
166 wikitext, and will need to be manually fixed if customized.
168 === Configuration changes from 1.4.x: ===
170 $wgDisableUploads has been replaced with $wgEnableUploads.
172 $wgWhitelistAccount has been replaced by the 'createaccount' permission
173 key in $wgGroupPermissions. To emulate the old effect of setting:
174 $wgWhitelistAccount['user'] = 0;
176 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
178 $wgWhitelistEdit has been replaced by the 'edit' permission key.
179 To emulate the old effect of setting:
180 $wgWhitelistEdit = true;
182 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
184 If $wgWhitelistRead is set, you must also disable the 'read' permission
185 for it to take affect on anonymous users:
186 $wgWhitelistRead = array( "Main Page", "Special:Userlogin" );
187 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
189 Note that you can disable/enable several other permissions by modifying
190 this configuration array in your LocalSettings.php; see DefaultSettings.php
191 for the complete default permission set.
193 If using Memcached, you must enabled it differently now:
194 $wgUseMemCached = true;
195 should be replaced with:
196 $wgMainCacheType = CACHE_MEMCACHED;
198 == Upgrading from 1.4.2 or earlier ==
200 1.4.3 has added new fields to the sitestats table. These fields are
201 optional and help to speed Special:Statistics on large sites. If you
202 choose not to run the database upgrades, everything will continue to
205 You can apply the update by running maintenance/update.php, or
206 manually run the SQL commands from this file:
207 maintenance/archives/patch-ss_total_articles.sql
210 == Upgrading from 1.4rc1 or earlier betas ==
212 The logging table has been altered from 1.4beta4 to 1.4beta5
213 and again in 1.4.0 final. Copy in the new files and use the web
214 installer to upgrade, or the command-line maintenance/update.php.
216 If you cannot use the automated installers/updaters, you may
217 update the table by manually running the SQL commands in these
219 maintenance/archives/patch-log_params.sql
220 maintenance/archives/patch-logging-title.sql
223 == Upgrading from 1.3 or earlier ==
225 This should generally go smoothly.
227 If you keep your LocalSettings.php, you may need to change the style paths
228 to match the newly rearranged skin modules. Change these lines:
229 $wgStylePath = "$wgScriptPath/stylesheets";
230 $wgStyleDirectory = "$IP/stylesheets";
231 $wgLogo = "$wgStylePath/images/wiki.png";
234 $wgStylePath = "$wgScriptPath/skins";
235 $wgStyleDirectory = "$IP/skins";
236 $wgLogo = "$wgStylePath/common/images/wiki.png";
238 As well as new messages, the processing of some messages has changed.
239 If you have customized them, please compare the new format using
240 Special:Allmessages or the relevant LanguageXX.php files:
244 * editingcomment (was named commentedit)
245 * editingsection (was named sectionedit)
256 Note that the 1.3 beta releases included a potential vulnerability if PHP
257 is configured with register_globals on and the includes directory is
258 served to the web. For general safety, turn register_globals *off* if you
259 don't _really_ need it for another package.
261 If your hosting provider turns it on and you can't turn it off yourself,
262 send them a kind note explaining that it can expose their servers and their
263 customers to attacks.
266 == Upgrading from 1.2 or earlier ==
268 If you've been using the MediaWiki: namespace for custom page templates,
269 note that things are a little different. The Template: namespace has been
270 added which is more powerful -- templates can include parameters for
273 If you were using custom MediaWiki: entries for text inclusions, they
274 will *not* automatically be moved to Template: entries at upgrade time.
275 Be sure to go through and check that everything is working properly;
276 you can move them manually or you can try using moveCustomMessages.php
277 in maintenance/archives to do it automatically, but this might break things.
279 Also, be sure to pick the correct character encoding -- some languages were
280 only available in Latin-1 on 1.2.x and are now available for Unicode as well.
281 If you want to upgrade an existing wiki from Latin-1 to Unicode you'll have
282 to dump the database to SQL, run it through iconv or another conversion tool,
283 and restore it. Sorry.
286 == Upgrading from 1.1 or earlier ==
288 This is less thoroughly tested, but should work.
290 You need to specify the *admin* database username and password to the
291 installer in order for it to successfully upgrade the database structure.
292 You may wish to manually change the GRANTs later.
294 If you have a very old database (earlier than organized MediaWiki releases
295 in late August 2003) you may need to manually run some of the update SQL
296 scripts in maintenance/archives before the installer is able to pick up
297 with remaining updates.