Earlier: "... there's nothing really special about most setups that work, probably it's the ones that don't that are interesting :-) ..."
Peter Blaise agrees: However, it's the ones that work that set the example, and if they are not documented, then those of us with MediaWiki setups that do not work have scant few examples to study and learn from, so we wallow in frustration! :( Hence my hunger for documentation on working examples! I have many success I've shared here and on http://www.mediawiki,org/ and I'd like to share more, I'm just stuck on SMTP at the moment.
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Earlier: "... my PHP error messages go to Apache's error_log ..."
Peter Blaise responds: Wow - thanks for drawing my attention to error LOGs - I just checked:
C:\www\apache2\logs
access.log 5,154 KB error.log 363,698 KB install.log 4 KB
So maybe I should back 'em up and start fresh ones more frequently (meaning I have to stop the Apache server more often)! What the heck am I doing with 1/3rd mb of errors?!? :-( I have some studying to do!
One endless error was the call for missing faveicon.ico, so I built one using free http://www.irfanview.com/ software to resize of our logo to 32x32 pixels, and save as "icon"-file-type named "faveicon.ico" in C:\www\apache2\htdocs, then visitors will see it in their "My Favorites" next to our link. I digress.
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Earlier: "... my working SMTP server is 'private' according to your criteria - running on localhost. $wgSMTP is not set, so MediaWiki will be using PHP's build in mail() function. The email related settings I can see in LocalSettings.php are: $wgEnableEmail = true; $wgEnableUserEmail = true; $wgEmergencyContact = "oliver@gtwm.co.uk"; $wgPasswordSender = "oliver@gtwm.co.uk"; ## For a detailed description of the following switches see ## http://meta.wikimedia.org/Enotif and ## http://meta.wikimedia.org/Eauthent ## There are many more options for fine tuning available see ## /includes/DefaultSettings.php ## UPO means: this is also a user preference option $wgEnotifUserTalk = true; # UPO $wgEnotifWatchlist = true; # UPO $wgEmailAuthentication = true;
Hey, I just found this in php.ini in the php directory:
[mail function] ; For Win32 only. SMTP = localhost smtp_port = 25 ; For Win32 only. ;sendmail_from = me@example.com ; For Unix only. You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i"). ;sendmail_path = ; Force the addition of the specified parameters to be passed as extra parameters ; to the sendmail binary. These parameters will always replace the value of ; the 5th parameter to mail(), even in safe mode. ;mail.force_extra_parameters =
Now I wonder if there's a coordinated suite of criteria and parameters all over the place to make send mail work with whatever resources are available (SMTP being either private, Intranet, ISP, or Internet).
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Earlier: "... Is there a reason this won't work for you? ..."
Peter Blaise responds: Yes, I have a penultimate challenge or working in catch-22-ville, run by zombie volunteer bureaucrats. When I ask for a link to a document showing our in-house SMTP server settings, I get, "Let's have a meeting so you can explain what you are going to do, and the person to meet with is out until next week ..." and so on. I wasn't asking for permission, I was asking for settings! However, since I'm inside an aggressive, undocumented firewall, I'm not sure if my failures are my own settings, or someone actively blocking something, like port 25, hence my request for samples of working ones from anybody else. If I make mine look exactly like someone else's working SMTP, say, even using GMail, then I have a golden example to start from!
Does anyone else have some collected settings that make SMTP work for you? I'd LOVE to see a comprehensive page (or four) on http://www.mediawiki.org/ - who wants to build 'em?
-- Peter Blaise