I notice there's some duplication here; '</ul><p>...</p>' is wrapped around nearly every error message. It might be better to factor that out to a common location.

If not all dieout points are within lists, it might be cleaner to maintain a list state to control that.

Created attachment 4538
second patch for config/index.php

dieout is used before the main list is open if the script finds the LocalSettings.php file or if the directory isn't writable. I introduced $mainListOpened variable for the current state. dieout will also add <p> if the text doesn't start with a <p> or <h1>...<h6> (if don't use preg_match because the script checks if that function exists and uses dieout if not).

Attached:

fixed in r37870.