2 This file provides an overview of the MediaWiki upgrade process. For help with
3 specific problems, check
5 * the documentation at https://www.mediawiki.org
6 * the mediawiki-l mailing list archive at
7 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/
8 * the bug tracker at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org
10 for information and workarounds to common issues.
14 Comprehensive documentation on upgrading to the latest version of the software
15 is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading.
17 === Consult the release notes ===
19 Before doing anything, stop and consult the release notes supplied with the new
20 version of the software. These detail bug fixes, new features and functionality,
21 and any particular points that may need to be noted during the upgrade
26 It is imperative that, prior to attempting an upgrade of the database schema,
27 you take a complete backup of your wiki database and files and verify it. While
28 the upgrade scripts are somewhat robust, there is no guarantee that things will
29 not fail, leaving the database in an inconsistent state.
31 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Backing_up_a_wiki provides an overview of
32 the backup process. You should also refer to the documentation for your
33 database management system for information on backing up a database, and to
34 your operating system documentation for information on making copies of files.
36 === Perform the file upgrade ===
38 Download the files for the new version of the software. These are available
39 as a compressed "tar" archive from the Wikimedia Download Service
40 (http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki).
42 You can also obtain the new files directly from our Git source code
45 Replace the existing MediaWiki files with the new. You should preserve the
46 LocalSettings.php file and the "extensions" and "images" directories.
48 Depending upon your configuration, you may also need to preserve additional
49 directories, including a custom upload directory ($wgUploadDirectory),
50 deleted file archives, and any custom skins.
52 === Perform the database upgrade ===
54 As of 1.21, it is possible to separate schema changes (i.e. adding,
55 dropping, or changing tables, fields, or indices) from all other
56 database changes (e.g. populating fields). If you need this
57 capability, see "From the command line" below.
59 ==== From the web ====
61 If you browse to the web-based installation script (usually at
62 /mw-config/index.php) from your wiki installation you can follow the script and
63 upgrade your database in place.
65 ==== From the command line ====
67 From the command line, browse to the "maintenance" directory and run the
68 update.php script to check and update the schema. This will insert missing
69 tables, update existing tables, and move data around as needed. In most cases,
70 this is successful and nothing further needs to be done.
72 If you need to separate out the schema changes so they can be run
73 by someone with more privileges, then you can use the --schema option
74 to produce a text file with the necessary commands. You can use
75 --schema, --noschema, $wgAllowSchemaUpdates as well as proper database
76 permissions to enforce this separation.
78 === Check configuration settings ===
80 The names of configuration variables, and their default values and purposes,
81 can change between release branches, e.g. $wgDisableUploads in 1.4 is replaced
82 with $wgEnableUploads in later versions. When upgrading, consult the release
83 notes to check for configuration changes which would alter the expected
84 behavior of MediaWiki.
86 === Check installed extensions ===
88 Extensions usually need to be upgraded at the same time as the MediaWiki core.
90 In MediaWiki 1.14 some extensions were migrated into the core. Please see the
91 HISTORY section "Migrated extensions" and disable these extensions in your
96 It makes sense to test your wiki immediately following any kind of maintenance
97 procedure, and especially after upgrading; check that page views and edits work
98 normally and that special pages continue to function, etc. and correct errors
99 and quirks which reveal themselves.
101 You should also test any extensions, and upgrade these if necessary.
103 == Upgrading from 1.16 or earlier ==
105 If you have a Chinese or Japanese wiki ($wgLanguageCode is set to one
106 of "zh", "ja", or "yue") and you are using MySQL fulltext search, you
107 will probably want to update the search index.
109 In the "maintenance" directory, run the updateDoubleWidthSearch.php
110 script. This will update the searchindex table for those pages that
111 contain double-byte latin characters.
113 == Upgrading from 1.8 or earlier ==
115 MediaWiki 1.9 and later no longer keep default localized message text
116 in the database; 'MediaWiki:'-namespace pages that do not exist in the
117 database are simply transparently filled-in on demand.
119 The upgrade process will delete any 'MediaWiki:' pages which are left
120 in the default state (last edited by 'MediaWiki default'). This may
121 take a few moments, similar to the old initial setup.
123 Note that the large number of deletions may cause older edits to expire
124 from the list on Special:Recentchanges, although the deletions themselves
125 will be hidden by default. (Click "show bot edits" to list them.)
127 See RELEASE-NOTES for more details about new and changed options.
129 == Upgrading from 1.7 or earlier ==
131 $wgDefaultUserOptions now contains all the defaults, not only overrides.
132 If you're setting this as a complete array(), you may need to change it
133 to set only specific items as recommended in DefaultSettings.php.
135 == Upgrading from 1.6 or earlier ==
137 $wgLocalTZoffset was in hours, it is now using minutes.
139 == Upgrading from 1.5 or earlier ==
141 Major changes have been made to the schema from 1.4.x. The updater
142 has not been fully tested for all conditions, and might well break.
144 On a large site, the schema update might take a long time. It might
145 explode, or leave your database half-done or otherwise badly hurting.
147 Among other changes, note that Latin-1 encoding (ISO-8859-1) is
148 no longer supported. Latin-1 wikis will need to be upgraded to
149 UTF-8; an experimental command-line upgrade helper script,
150 'upgrade1_5.php', can do this -- run it prior to 'update.php' or
153 NOTE that upgrade1_5.php does not work properly with recent version
154 of MediaWiki. If upgrading a 1.4.x wiki, you should upgrade to 1.5
155 first. upgrade1_5.php has been removed from MediaWiki 1.21.
157 If you absolutely cannot make the UTF-8 upgrade work, you can try
158 doing it by hand: dump your old database, convert the dump file
159 using iconv as described here:
160 http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/jbartsh_utf-8.html
161 and then reimport it. You can also convert filenames using convmv,
162 but note that the old directory hashes will no longer be valid,
163 so you will also have to move them to new destinations.
166 * A number of additional UI messages have been changed from HTML to
167 wikitext, and will need to be manually fixed if customized.
169 === Configuration changes from 1.4.x: ===
171 $wgDisableUploads has been replaced with $wgEnableUploads.
173 $wgWhitelistAccount has been replaced by the 'createaccount' permission
174 key in $wgGroupPermissions. To emulate the old effect of setting:
175 $wgWhitelistAccount['user'] = 0;
177 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
179 $wgWhitelistEdit has been replaced by the 'edit' permission key.
180 To emulate the old effect of setting:
181 $wgWhitelistEdit = true;
183 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
185 If $wgWhitelistRead is set, you must also disable the 'read' permission
186 for it to take affect on anonymous users:
187 $wgWhitelistRead = array( "Main Page", "Special:Userlogin" );
188 $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;
190 Note that you can disable/enable several other permissions by modifying
191 this configuration array in your LocalSettings.php; see DefaultSettings.php
192 for the complete default permission set.
194 If using Memcached, you must enabled it differently now:
195 $wgUseMemCached = true;
196 should be replaced with:
197 $wgMainCacheType = CACHE_MEMCACHED;
199 == Upgrading from 1.4.2 or earlier ==
201 1.4.3 has added new fields to the sitestats table. These fields are
202 optional and help to speed Special:Statistics on large sites. If you
203 choose not to run the database upgrades, everything will continue to
206 You can apply the update by running maintenance/update.php, or
207 manually run the SQL commands from this file:
208 maintenance/archives/patch-ss_total_articles.sql
211 == Upgrading from 1.4rc1 or earlier betas ==
213 The logging table has been altered from 1.4beta4 to 1.4beta5
214 and again in 1.4.0 final. Copy in the new files and use the web
215 installer to upgrade, or the command-line maintenance/update.php.
217 If you cannot use the automated installers/updaters, you may
218 update the table by manually running the SQL commands in these
220 maintenance/archives/patch-log_params.sql
221 maintenance/archives/patch-logging-title.sql
224 == Upgrading from 1.3 or earlier ==
226 This should generally go smoothly.
228 If you keep your LocalSettings.php, you may need to change the style paths
229 to match the newly rearranged skin modules. Change these lines:
230 $wgStylePath = "$wgScriptPath/stylesheets";
231 $wgStyleDirectory = "$IP/stylesheets";
232 $wgLogo = "$wgStylePath/images/wiki.png";
235 $wgStylePath = "$wgScriptPath/skins";
236 $wgStyleDirectory = "$IP/skins";
237 $wgLogo = "$wgStylePath/common/images/wiki.png";
239 As well as new messages, the processing of some messages has changed.
240 If you have customized them, please compare the new format using
241 Special:Allmessages or the relevant LanguageXX.php files:
245 * editingcomment (was named commentedit)
246 * editingsection (was named sectionedit)
257 Note that the 1.3 beta releases included a potential vulnerability if PHP
258 is configured with register_globals on and the includes directory is
259 served to the web. For general safety, turn register_globals *off* if you
260 don't _really_ need it for another package.
262 If your hosting provider turns it on and you can't turn it off yourself,
263 send them a kind note explaining that it can expose their servers and their
264 customers to attacks.
267 == Upgrading from 1.2 or earlier ==
269 If you've been using the MediaWiki: namespace for custom page templates,
270 note that things are a little different. The Template: namespace has been
271 added which is more powerful -- templates can include parameters for
274 If you were using custom MediaWiki: entries for text inclusions, they
275 will *not* automatically be moved to Template: entries at upgrade time.
276 Be sure to go through and check that everything is working properly;
277 you can move them manually or you can try using moveCustomMessages.php
278 in maintenance/archives to do it automatically, but this might break things.
280 Also, be sure to pick the correct character encoding -- some languages were
281 only available in Latin-1 on 1.2.x and are now available for Unicode as well.
282 If you want to upgrade an existing wiki from Latin-1 to Unicode you'll have
283 to dump the database to SQL, run it through iconv or another conversion tool,
284 and restore it. Sorry.
287 == Upgrading from 1.1 or earlier ==
289 This is less thoroughly tested, but should work.
291 You need to specify the *admin* database username and password to the
292 installer in order for it to successfully upgrade the database structure.
293 You may wish to manually change the GRANTs later.
295 If you have a very old database (earlier than organized MediaWiki releases
296 in late August 2003) you may need to manually run some of the update SQL
297 scripts in maintenance/archives before the installer is able to pick up
298 with remaining updates.