{"id":759,"date":"2013-08-23T15:05:02","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T21:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benincosa.com\/blog\/?p=759"},"modified":"2014-11-19T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T17:24:32","slug":"mediawiki-installation-on-redhat-5-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=759","title":{"rendered":"MediaWiki Installation on RedHat 5.5"},"content":{"rendered":"

In modern data center things like IPs, user accounts, passwords, and such that you used to keep in Excel spreadsheets should be rolled into the management tools. \u00a0That way, you always have the most current information. \u00a0Static word, excel and the like are old news. \u00a0Today you can see those things start to get rolled up into vCloud Director, OpenStack and others. \u00a0But for now, most people are still doing Excel spreadsheets.<\/p>\n

This is stupid. \u00a0Please, At least use a wiki. \u00a0Catch up to 2005.<\/p>\n

Media Wiki is one that I’ve used for years. \u00a0Its easy to install and do stuff and the syntax doesn’t take too long to learn.<\/p>\n

Here’s how I set it up:<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Download Media Wiki on your Linux Server<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go to Media Wiki and download the latest stable.<\/p>\n

cd \/var\/www\/html
\nrm -rf *
\nwget http:\/\/download.wikimedia.org\/mediawiki\/1.21\/mediawiki-1.21.1.tar.gz
\ntar zxvf media*
\nmv mediawiki-1.21.1\/* .
\nrm -rf mediawiki-1.21.1<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2. \u00a0Installing the Linux Environment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get PHP and mysql installed on your server. \u00a0My server is a Red Hat 5.5 (yes, old ) \u00a0virtual machine that I’ve had for about 2 years. \u00a0I haven’t updated to 6.x. \u00a0The easiest thing to do would be to install a new server. \u00a0CentOS 6.4 might be good, but a challenge every now and then is fun, yeah? \u00a0So to get it working, you have to have at least php 5.3.x. \u00a0To update I had to just update my OS. \u00a0Since I didn’t get my subscription set up right with Red Hat, I just figured I’d use CentOS to update. \u00a0That was pretty easy. \u00a0I just did this:<\/p>\n

wget http:\/\/mirror.centos.org\/centos\/5\/os\/x86_64\/CentOS\/centos-release-5-9.el5.centos.1.x86_64.rpm
\nwget http:\/\/mirror.centos.org\/centos\/5\/os\/x86_64\/CentOS\/centos-release-notes-5.9-0.x86_64.rpm
\nrpm -ql -p centos-release-5-9.el5.centos.1.x86_64.rpm # just to see what was in it, yep, its got the repo!
\nrpm -Uvh centos-release-5-9.el5.centos.1.x86_64.rpm centos-release-notes-5.9-0.x86_64.rpm # install repos<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From here, I removed my older versions of php. This is just:<\/p>\n

rpm -qa | grep mysql
\nrpm -qa | grep php<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then I used some:<\/p>\n

yum -y remove<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then I updated everything:<\/p>\n

yum -y update<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This took a while. Finished, came back. Everything updated. Now I installed the right packages:<\/p>\n

yum -y install php53 php53-mysql msyql-server php53-xml<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There may have been several other RPMs that you’ll need as dependencies, but that should get you started. That’s how we got up. Don’t forget to now enable mysql and restart apache:<\/p>\n

service httpd restart
\nservice mysqld restart
\nchkconfig –level 345 httpd on
\nchkconfig –level 345 mysqld on<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. \u00a0Configuring via the Web Interface<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once there, go to http:\/\/<yourserver>\/<\/p>\n

You should see:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4. \u00a0Creating Content<\/strong><\/p>\n

Going to the next page it’ll start asking you questions and eventually you’ll have yourself a wiki setup. \u00a0The thing I first started looking at doing was adding a table for IP addresses. \u00a0It ended up looking like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is good and helps us to know where things are. \u00a0I started to create several pages for different VLANs. It could be updated, but I wish it was update in place. \u00a0Not the best, but ok for now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. \u00a0Editing Help<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go here:\u00a0http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Help:Editing<\/a> to see all the syntax to use to do cool formatting.<\/p>\n

Finally, now you have yourself a wiki to keep things in. Welcome to 2005. \u00a0You are awesome. \u00a0No shared Excel spreadsheet with multiple outdated copies. \u00a0Now you just have to get everyone to buy into using it. \u00a0To do that: Be the example. \u00a0Use it, refer people to it. \u00a0Pretty soon they’ll catch on.<\/p>\n

But there is a better way right? \u00a0What could that be? \u00a0The truth is, to manage effectively, you really need to integrate the information into your management toolset. \u00a0Much in the way UCS keeps track of BIOS versions, settings, VLANs, etc, you need some kind of tool that does that. \u00a0Today you can do that with OpenStack, vCloud Director, and some others. \u00a0I’m still not sold on any of them at this point but as I start to play with OpenStack more, I hope to give more guidance and thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In modern data center things like IPs, user accounts, passwords, and such that you used to keep in Excel spreadsheets should be rolled into the management tools. \u00a0That way, you always have the most current information. \u00a0Static word, excel and the like are old news. \u00a0Today you can see those things start to get rolled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[199,920],"tags":[200],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2756,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/2756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}