Parker Jones wrote: It's easy to do, but each sysadmin will have different needs and will thus need different scripts. Supposing the server location and db don't change between servers (eg. it is always on /wiki and localhost database with same user) it could be like this: backup-wiki.sh mysqldump -u $USER --password=$PASSWORD $DATABASE -c > backup.sql || exit 1 bzip2 backup.sql || exit 1 tar cjf backup.tbz backup.sql.bz2 LocalSettings.php images/ math/ || exit 1 # Alternatively, tar the whole mediawiki folder unbackup-wiki.sh # Unpack the backup on the latest mediawiki MW_VER=1.15.3 wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/`echo $MW_VER | sed "s/\([0-9]*\.[0-9]*\).*/\1/"`/mediawiki-$MW_VER.tar.gz -O mediawiki.tgz || exit 1 tar xzf mediawiki.tgz || exit 1 cd mediawiki-* && mv * .. && cd .. && rmdir mediawiki-* || exit 1 tar xjf backup.tbz || exit 1 php5 maintenance/update.php || exit 1 Moving to an older wiki is not supported. You could install two mediawiki versions side by side, each with its own database but what you neeed is to update if you are moving to a server with an *older* mediawiki (moving to a newer mediawiki is not a problem, just run update.php, see the above sample)

Parker Jones wrote: for large installs, but still too hairy for the personal wiki demographic. You don't need a "install". Only an upgrade. Extract the new mediawiki code, place the old LocalSettings.php at its root (I think apt moves it to /etc/), move the contents of math and image. Import the old database (this step was missing in the script I sent earlier), then run maintenance/update.php If you have done some particular setup or installed extra extensions, you may need to do some adjustment, but it should be straightforward.