Repeating a comment from the parent task:

In T137926#2421294, @Tgr wrote:

In T137926#2416368, @Jdforrester-WMF wrote:

• Provide environmental warnings about missing curl (and other things?) on Special:Version.

That page already suffers from information overload. Maybe a good time to start a new special page which could eventually become some sort of site admin status panel? Missing packages, disabled optimizations, uninstalled security upgrades etc., like Drupal's status report panel.

Possibly. For this to serve the intended purpose, it would need to be viewable and easily findable by:

1. Non-admin users of the site, so that they can pester the site admins in charge of the setup
2. By people providing MediaWiki support (e.g. people on Freenode MediaWiki-General) who are trying to help a site admin figure out what is wrong with the site

Special:Version is traditionally where this type of information has gone, and it seems like it should at least be an easily findable hyperlink away from Special:Version if it's not included inline.