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Maniphest T268515

Upgrade wiki.wikimedia.it from 1.26.4 to latest LTS
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Description

Actually https://wiki.wikimedia.it/ is running MediaWiki 1.26.4 but some time is passed since 2015 and now this version is no longer supported.

We should upgrade the installation to assure maximum support to latest security patches (some of them were not back-ported) and maximum support for post-2015 features like VisualEditor, the Extension:Thanks and other awesome things that could be appreciated by Wikimedia Italia members.

In short we should take some time to:

  • assure a backup
  • check if upgrade is feasible on the same server
  • upgrade from 1.26.4 to latest LTS 1.35
  • eventually adopt the cute Debian mediawiki package maintained by User:Legoktm
  • bonus point: track A/B configuration changes of our LocalSettings.php in Wikimedia Gerrit or whatever code hosting the community is discussing now between Phabricator and/or GitLab and/or GitHub and/or a nextCloud directory called wikina-final-version-really-really-final-ok-really-ok-ok-2020.zip asd

Also after the upgrade we could wait some time (few days?) before installing our new extensions, in order to test the fresh upgrade as-is and be sure that everything works without regressions.

(This was imported from here)

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Event Timeline

valerio.bozzolan created this task.Nov 23 2020, 7:00 PM
valerio.bozzolan updated the task description. (Show Details)
valerio.bozzolan added a subscriber: Ferdi2005.Nov 23 2020, 7:02 PM

Ping my dear @Ferdi2005 who was interested.

valerio.bozzolan renamed this task from Upgrade wiki.wikimedia.it from to latest LTS to Upgrade wiki.wikimedia.it from 1.26.4 to latest LTS.Nov 23 2020, 7:03 PM
valerio.bozzolan triaged this task as Medium priority.
valerio.bozzolan updated the task description. (Show Details)
valerio.bozzolan set the point value for this task to 6.
Ferdi2005 added a comment.Nov 23 2020, 7:19 PM

Magari! Magari! Magari! Magari! @valerio.bozzolan

valerio.bozzolan updated the task description. (Show Details)Nov 23 2020, 9:18 PM
valerio.bozzolan added a parent task: T268529: Adopt VisualEditor in wiki.wikimedia.it.Nov 23 2020, 9:32 PM
Nemo_bis added a subscriber: Nemo_bis.Nov 23 2020, 9:41 PM

gvf already did most of the work here; the upgrade is blocked on https://mailman.wikimedia.it/private/tech/2020-October/000642.html pending debugging.

valerio.bozzolan added a comment.EditedNov 23 2020, 10:07 PM
In T268515#6642531, @Nemo_bis wrote:

gvf already did most of the work here; the upgrade is blocked on https://mailman.wikimedia.it/private/tech/2020-October/000642.html pending

To be honest with that bug I really got the feeling it's better to conclude our upgrade. Now we have PHP 7.3 (year 2018) while running MediaWiki 1.26.4 (year 2015). That's not unlikely to be a bug related to this combination. I would avoid investing time in troubleshooting 1.26.4 and instead I would just upgrade to 1.35 to eventually draw a line on this bug... or further investigate otherwise.

valerio.bozzolan mentioned this in T270148: Install Extension:Thanks in wiki.wikimedia.it.Dec 15 2020, 1:51 AM
valerio.bozzolan added a parent task: T270148: Install Extension:Thanks in wiki.wikimedia.it.
valerio.bozzolan added a parent task: T270266: Allow to mention/ping someone in wiki.wikimedia.it.Dec 16 2020, 11:50 AM
valerio.bozzolan mentioned this in T270266: Allow to mention/ping someone in wiki.wikimedia.it.Dec 16 2020, 1:28 PM
valerio.bozzolan mentioned this in T235314: Simplify $wgResourceLoaderMaxage.Dec 16 2020, 5:14 PM
valerio.bozzolan added a comment.Dec 17 2020, 12:51 PM

I forgot to mention that yesterday I made some progresses here playing with a private/dummy MediaWiki instance based on the Wikimedia Italia's production LocalSettings.php (configuration that was kindly shared by @Nemo_bis and Gvf some days ago).

First of all. The good news. Few explosions, guys! Yeeh!

Precisely I tried the MediaWiki 1.35 packaged for Debian GNU/Linux buster-backports. I mean the one packaged by User:Legoktm, my hero.

I was able to adapt our configuration file and see a MediaWiki 1.35 running. The Extension:Lockdown works. VisualEditor works!

For the record, note that now VisualEditor is a MediaWiki core extension so we don't need to maintain another fancy stuff or NodeJS services. There's a Wikimedia Foundation blog post about this topic:

What to do now:

  1. audit the Lockdown extension a little bit
    1. verify all the MediaWiki's known security vulnerabilities just to tighten our panties
  2. play with VisualEditor
    1. whooooa *click* *click* VisualEditor whoa!
    2. VisualEditor go brrr!
    3. etc.
  3. plan the real migration in production
  4. proceed with the other stuff
Nemo_bis added a comment.EditedJun 12 2021, 11:50 AM

we don't need to maintain another fancy stuff or NodeJS services

That makes things easier, but T260201 remains a blocker for T268529 until confirmed fixed.

As for the upgrade itself, the question is whether MediaWiki 1.35 can support basic functionalities such as wikitext editing (however degraded) while the API is disabled.

Nemo_bis removed a subtask: T273607: Avoid storing secrets on wiki.wikimedia.it not to require complex ACLs .Jun 12 2021, 3:24 PM
Nemo_bis added a comment.Jun 13 2021, 5:54 AM

So we're running in good old T16944 / https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=45132 but it's unclear why. The UTF-8 locales are installed in the OS and configured on MediaWiki's side, safe mode is not enabled, nothing changed in PHP on this front https://3v4l.org/DrhCK , everything works fine in a PHP shell on latest Devuan.

We've not confirmed that the it_IT.UTF-8 locale was available when Apache was last (re)started.

Recent versions of MediaWiki moved from wfShellExec() to the Shellbox library.

valerio.bozzolan moved this task from Backlog to MediaWiki-related on the WMIT-Infrastructure board.Jun 28 2021, 4:30 PM
valerio.bozzolan moved this task from MediaWiki-related to Deadlock on the WMIT-Infrastructure board.Aug 6 2021, 3:35 PM
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