Patent Data Project Wiki

The patent data project wiki is intended to be a central location for cooperative development, data dissemination, and information provision for the Patent Data Project at the NBER.

This page details the installation and configuration of the wiki.

Getting the files

See the download page for mediawiki

Do the following:

nber7%> wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.18/mediawiki-1.18.1.tar.gz

Installation

The official mediawiki Installation guide

Check that PHP is higher than version 5.2.3 (and not 5.3.1):

nber7%> php -v
PHP 5.3.3 (cli) (built: Jul 22 2010 15:57:00)

Check that MySQL is version 4.0 or higher:

nber7%> mysql -h mysql.nber.org -u wikipatent -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 7991397
Server version: 5.1.48-log FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.1.48

We will also need:

• ImageMagick or GD is required for image thumbnailing.
• TeX is required for the in-line display of mathematical formulae.
• Sendmail is required in order for the system to be able to send e-mails.

Extract the tar.gz and put the files in a directory called 'w' under public_html:

tar xvzf mediawiki-*.tar.gz
mv mediawiki-1.18.1 ../public_html/
cd ../public_html/
mv mediawiki-1.18.1/ w/

Mohan at the NBER created a database for the wiki. Check it's configuration now.

nber7%> mysql -h mysql.nber.org -u wikipatent -p
mysql> show GRANTS;
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for wikipatent@%                                                          |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'wikipatent'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '610973195c4dda6b' |
| GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `patentwiki`.* TO 'wikipatent'@'%'                       |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.02 sec)

Fix the permissions so we can set up the wiki in directory 'w' (tighten them afterwards):

chmod 777 -R w

Browse to http://www.nber.org/~edegan/w/index.php and click the 'set-up the wiki' link.

Basic Configuration

Make the following choices in the web-based interface (otherwise use the defaults):

Database host: mysql.nber.org
Database username: wikipatent
Database password: ******** (available from Mohan)
Name of wiki: PDPWiki
Your name: wikiadmin
Password: ******** (same as above)
Password again: ******** (same as above)
Enable user talk page notification: yes
Enable watchlist notification: yes
WikiEditor: yes
Renameuser: yes
Enable file uploads: yes (directory for deleted files: /disk/homes2b/nber/edegan/public_html/w/images/deleted)
Logo Url: /disk/homes2b/nber/edegan/public_html/wiki.png

Then click the final continues...

Save the offered LocalSettings.php file. Then upload it into the w directory, and chmod 777 LocalSettings.php (tighten the security again later).

There where also the following notices:

• ImageMagick was found
• intl PECL extension was not available (this is not crucial unless the traffic is high) [1]
• The uploads directory has a security vulnerability that needs closing [2]

There was also the following database warning:

Warning: You have selected MyISAM as storage engine for MySQL, 
which is not recommended for use with MediaWiki, because:
*it barely supports concurrency due to table locking 
*it is more prone to corruption than other engines 
*the MediaWiki codebase does not always handle MyISAM as it should 

If your MySQL installation supports InnoDB, it is highly recommended 
that you choose that instead. If your MySQL installation does not 
support InnoDB, maybe it's time for an upgrade.