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+interwiki info, new headings
Upon installing the Mediawiki software, I ran into a few problems. Here, I document fully functional workarounds and solutions to the problems I encountered.==MySQL table field lengths=====New installations===
The current MediaWiki install, 1.7.1 · 2006-07-08, will run into two problems upon trying to initialize all the initial MySQL tables if those tables are encoded in UTF8. The reason this happens is that KEY fields are limited to 1000 bytes, and each character takes up 3 bytes in UTF. When the key fields contain a combination of columns whose combined number of bytes exceeds 1000, the installation will bail.
This guarantees that they keys are short enough so that the install won't bail.
===MySQL 5===
If you turn on experimental MySQL 5 UTF-8 handling, the file you need to patch is '''/maintenance/mysql5/tables.sql'''. In addition, the <code>cl_sortkey</code> key in <code>categorylinks</code> is apparently too big. Therefore, instead of the change posted above, use
KEY cl_sortkey(cl_to(247),cl_sortkey),
===Upgrades===
Upgrades are plagued by the same problem and require a similar workaround. However, the files to patch are '''/maintenance/archives/patch-categorylinks.sql''' and '''/maintenance/archives/patch-job.sql''', respectively.
===References===
These bugs are actually filed on the MediaWiki bugzilla. See
*http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4445
*http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322
==Interwiki links==
The initial interwiki table does not include the shorthand keys <code>w</code>, <code>m</code>, and <code>mw</code>; you have to add them manually. However, even after you add them, you have to create at least one new interwiki link for the MediaWiki software to "re-read" the interwiki prefix table and actually make the links functional. You only need to do this once as an administrator, and the newly-created link can then be immediately deleted.
===References===
*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Guide_for_system_administrators_for_setting_up_interwiki_linking#Admin_tips
[[Category:MediaWiki User's Guide]]
