XiphInfra:Wiki VM

Wiki VM
Maintainer(s)	ePirat
Host	mf4
IPs	192.168.2.180
Service(s)	Wiki
https://wiki.xiph.org

As the name suggest, the Wiki VM runs this MediaWiki instance.

It runs an Apache2 server with PHP module, in front of it is a reverse proxy (nginx) running on Catfish. If you need to add or adjust things like headers and the HTTPS redirect, check the nginx config on Catfish, not the Apache2 config.

The current version of MediaWiki and the installed Modules can be found here.

Important Modules

These are the most important modules that we have in use:

Math and Mathoid

The Math module allows us to use equations similar as in LaTeX:

<math>E=mc^2</math> will display as $E=mc^{2}$

The extension uses Mathoid to render equations, this is how it's configured:

/* Math */
$wgUseTeX           = true;
$wgTexvc            = "$IP/extensions/Math/math/texvc";
$wgMathPath         = "{$wgUploadPath}/math";
$wgMathDirectory    = "{$wgUploadDirectory}/math";
$wgMathMathMLUrl    = "http://127.0.0.1:10042";
$wgMathValidModes   = array(MW_MATH_MATHML, MW_MATH_PNG, MW_MATH_SOURCE);

/* Set Mathoid as default rendering option */
$wgDefaultUserOptions['math'] = MW_MATH_MATHML;

More information about the config can be found on the Math/advancedSettings page.

Once the Math extension is configure, as mentioned, it needs Mathoid to render MathML and SVGs. It's a bit tricky to install therefore below is a short guide how to do so:

Fetch the source code

cd /opt/
git clone https://github.com/wikimedia/mathoid

Install a relatively new node.js version

The packaged version is probably too old, so you should download one from the Node.js download page. For example:

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.2.4/node-v4.2.4-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar xfv ./node-v4.2.4-linux-x64.tar.xz
mv ./node-v4.2.4-linux-x64.tar.xz /opt/node-v4.2.4

Add node binaries to your PATH

echo export PATH=/opt/node-v4.2.4/bin:$PATH >> ~/.bashrc

Install dependencies

Inside the mathoid folder do:

npm install

Change config

Remove the default config symlink and crate one for the prod config:

rm config.yaml
ln -s config.prod.yaml config.yaml

Adjust the config accordingly, currently the config looks similar to:

# Number of worker processes to spawn.
# Set to 0 to run everything in a single process without clustering.
# Use 'ncpu' to run as many workers as there are CPU units
num_workers: ncpu

# Log error messages and gracefully restart a worker if v8 reports that it
# uses more heap (note: not RSS) than this many mb.
worker_heap_limit_mb: 500

# Logger info
logging:
  level: warn
  streams:
  # Use gelf-stream -> logstash
  #- type: gelf
  #  host: logstash1003.eqiad.wmnet
  #  port: 12201

# Statsd metrics reporter
metrics:
  #type: statsd
  #host: statsd.eqiad.wmnet
  #port: 8125

services:
  - name: mathoid
    module: ./app.js
    conf:
      interface: 127.0.0.1
      port: 10042
      svg: true
      img: false
      texvcinfo: true
      speech: true
      sppechOn: false

Try it

Let's try to start it:

npm start

If it start successfully, go to a Wiki Page, edit it and add a simple equation and preview the page. (Make sure to use a unique equation, as caching could prevent that Mathoid is used, if the equation already exists.)

If everything works as expected, write a systemd unit or such and start Mathoid with it, for production use.

Maybe useful for debugging, you can use curl to make a request to Mathoid like this:

 curl -d 'q=E=fobarmc^2' http://127.0.0.1:10042/