Bryan.TongMinh wrote:

If you use MediaWiki with multiple webservers, you need to store your session data on a shared storage. This means using memcached, or setting PHP's session store path to a shared path (but I don't know if that is supported).

As Bryan pointed out this is a problem with the setup, not anything that can be fixed in MediaWiki.

etiennefalcon wrote:

Great! thanx for the hint guys.
I'll look into it and report any development.

Etienne

etiennefalcon wrote:

Got it working.
Not exactly a walk in the park but...

here's a little walk-through I created for our own use, thought I would share it with you.

Install WIKI on TWO Load-Balanced Server
The server we are using to publish the Wiki site are load-balanced.
So if we install the WikiPage on only one server, if the switch directs you to the second server you won’t reach the site.
If you simply install two stand alone wiki on both servers, well they will be stand alone. Any change made on one serer won’t show on the other server.

The solution is to install Wiki on both servers and have the second one (back) to point to the database on the prime server. Not as easy as it sounds… I’ll walk you through it.
Note: For a real redundant installation you would perform the following steps on both server and have them point to a third database server, or have the servers act as a cluster. In our case, we just want the web-site to display properly.

1-Install a standalone wiki site on your “back” server as explained in this document. To make the process easier, you can copy the configuration files. For the PHP, the file is php.ini and for the wiki, LocalSettings.php.
Don’t forget to install (copy) the extensions on the ‘back” server.

2-We need to share some key folders on the “prime” server:
a. PHP/sessiondata
b. PHP/uploadtemp
c. Inetpub/Wiki/images
Share the folders, and allow a domain user all access to them.

3-On the “back” server only, you need to have the application pool run as the user you picked at step 2. To do so, in IIS, go on “Application Pools” select the appropriate pool, Wiki if you followed this manual. Right click “Advanced Settings” and change the Identity to that user.

4-On the “back” server. Delete the wiki/images folder. This folder holds the uploaded images and all the other uploaded files.

5-On the “back” server, create a virtual folder pointing to your_prime_server/inetpub/wiki/images/. Right click the wiki web app, “Add Virtual Directory”. Alias: Images. Physical path: your_prime_server/images/. Click “Connect as…” and configure your domain user that has acces to the images folder.

6-Make the following change to the php.ini file on the “back_server”

a. open_basedir = "c:/inetpub/wiki; //”your_prime_server”/sessiondata; //”your_prime_server”/uploadtemp; //”your_prime_server”/images"
b. upload_tmp_dir = "//”your_prime_server”/uploademp"
c. session.save_path = "//”your_prime_server”/sessiondata"

7-Make sure this is set as: fastcgi.impersonate = 0

any comments or suggestions, go ahead !

Etienne

Oh just so you know memCached is now memBase available at http://techzone.couchbase.com/
still free !

(In reply to comment #4)

here's a little walk-through I created for our own use, thought I would share
it with you.

Would you mind posting this to MediaWiki.org to make it easy for others who try to imitate your setup??

etiennefalcon wrote:

Will Do ! (in the following week hopefully)

Etienne