Several maintenance scripts wish to use the URL of the server, but of course this is not available, as we are running a maintenance script: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18274 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18362 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Wiki_family#Fix_for_Maintenance_Scripts Would the solution be to officially say that if the user intends to use maintenance scripts, he should have something like https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18274#c6 in LocalSettings.php? Also maybe maintenance scripts should bomb out instead of guessing we meant http://localhost and hoping for the best.