Installing MediaWiki with Lighttpd

This page presents step-by-step instructions for installing MediaWiki with Lighttpd and PHP+FastCGI. We will assume you have MySQL installed already.

• Download Lighttpd
• Download PHP
• gzip -dc lighttpd-1.3.14.tar.gz | tar xf -
• cd lighttpd-1.3.14
• ./configure --prefix=/opt/lighttpd
• make all install
• cp doc/lighttpd.conf /etc/
• cd ..
• gzip -dc php-5.0.4.tar.gz | tar xf -
• cd php-5.0.4
• ./configure --enable-fastcgi --with-mysql=<path to MySQL installation> --prefix=/opt/php-fcgi
• make all install
• Edit /etc/lighttpd.conf as appropriate. You will need to add at least the following lines:

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
                   ( "localhost" =>
                     (
                       "host" => "127.0.0.1",
                       "port" => 1026,
                       "bin-path" => "/opt/php-fcgi/bin/php"
                     )
                   )
                )

url.rewrite-once = (
                     "^/$" => "/w/index.php",
                     "^/wiki/([^?]*)(?:\?(.*))?" => "/w/index.php?title=$1&$2"
                   )

And if you also want to support "http://yoursite/ArticleName" URLs:

url.redirect = ( "^/(?!w|wiki|robots.txt|favicon.ico)(.*)" => "/wiki/$1" )

Ensure the "rewrite", "redirect" and "fastcgi" modules are enabled.

• Extract the MediaWiki source into your document root, and mv mediawiki-1.5beta1 w
• Start lighttpd: /opt/lighttpd/sbin/lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd.conf
• Visit "http://www.yoursite.com/w/config/index.php" and configure MediaWiki as documented at Help:Installation
• Edit LocalSettings.php and change $wgArticlePath to:

$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";

• Done!