Re: [directory-discuss] Free Software Directory Database

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

An administrator should be able to make a dump of the images, and the content preferably using the commandline tools distributed with MediaWiki (e.g. maintenance/dumpBackup.php maintenance/dumpUploads.php); or using the Special:Export page; and lastly via the API (which requires scripting, is version-dependent, and fragile e.g. https://github.com/WikiTeam/wikiteam/blob/master/dumpgenerator.py). 

However, even with the content, there is no way to actually re-constitute a MediaWiki instance without some other important things.

Namely:

1) the MediaWiki software at the correct version. This is easy to know, and reproduce. Eg. https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Special:Version

2) each installed Extension at their respective version. This is harder to reproduce, but at least you get detailed information on the bits you need at Special:Version. The version info is also available through the API

3) the LocalSettings.php configuration file.  This is not available in general for any wiki.  The administrator would have to publish this. One way an administrator can make this available without also making your wiki insecure is to have an include named "PrivateSettings.php" which is included by LocalSettings.php.  Put the application database credentials in 'PrivateSettings.php'.  Exclude PrivateSettings.php from your version control and keep it secret. Add LocalSettings.php to your version control and publish it's contents.

Here's a formatted report of software + extension version info about the FSD (via the API) https://freephile.org/wikireport/?url="">

eQuality Technology is preparing to launch a hosted MediaWiki service with backups that makes enterprise knowledge more disaster-proof and reconstitutable. https://freephile.org/wiki/QualityBox

Greg Rundlett

https://eQuality-Tech.com

https://freephile.org

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Marta Rogers <address@hidden> wrote:

Any luck with this so far?



On Tue, Dec 27, 2016, at 11:41 AM, Marta Rogers wrote:
> Hello,
>
> does the Free Software Directory have periodic backups of its database
> somewhere? If it doesn't, would it be possible for somebody to setup a
> cron job
> to save periodic dumps of the FSD database?
> The data is released under GFDL, but it's currently impossible to use it.
> It's
> like having a free, obfuscated _javascript_: it is free, but it's
> practically
> impossible to reuse. This is what the data in the FSD looks like.
>
> Thank you for your time and understanding, I hope somebody will consider
> my
> email and actually reply.

I just spent a bit of time looking into this (been meaning to for a
while), and there is a promising tool to do this with public access
level to the wiki.

I will try to make a public backup this week and report back. In case I
don't get to it or someone else wants to try it:

This links to a section titled: "Backup the content of the wiki (XML
dump)"
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Backing_up_a_wiki#Backup_the_content_of_the_wiki_.28XML_dump.29

The most promising thing there looks like the wikiteam method:
https://github.com/WikiTeam/wikiteam/wiki/Tutorial#I_have_no_shell_access_to_server

- Ian