Wikitech-l November 2004

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

89 participants
114 discussions

Set variables before you use them
by Brion Vibber 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

Just a reminder: always *set* global variables before attempting to use them. Many sites still use the unsafe 'register_globals' PHP configuration, by which any remote visitor can stuff arbitrary string or array data into global variables -- if you don't override this value in the code, then the user-supplied data can end up being used when an empty or privileged host-set value was expected. Using error_reporting set to E_ALL during development helps catch some of these mistakes, but not all. In particular it does *not* catch: * testing with isset() will of course not throw an error on an unset variable! * something like "global $wgFoo; if( $wgFoo ) {...}" will not throw an error, since the "global" statement binds the variable name in the local scope. If you deliberately want a global variable to be empty, set it to null or use unset(); $wgFoo = null; or unset( $wgFoo ); (The exact semantics of the two are a bit different, but either will make isset( $wgFoo ) return false.) -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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Old usemod-based Wikipedia backup?
by Brion Vibber 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

Did anybody else keep a backup of the English Wikipedia database from when it ran on UseMod (Jan 2001 - Jan 2002)? I seem to recall keeping a copy, but can't find it now. It's primarily just for historical interest, but there is also one practical issue which anyone may or may not care about: When the UseMod database was originally converted to Magnus's new wiki software, only the latest revision text of each page was copied into the new database, and it was attributed to "Conversion script". Some months later I wrote a script that did another pass through the data, correcting for some renaming that had been done in the meantime, to copy in the previous page histories with attribution. But the actual current revision at the time of conversion was not changed, and was left attributed to 'Conversion script'. If we ever hope to fix those up, we'll need the pre-conversion database. It should be in a tarball, something on the order of 50-150 megabytes, containing 'lib-http' and 'work-http' subdirectories. Somewhere under 'lib-http' is a 'page' subdirectory with lots and lots of files split up by letter -- that's the guts of it. The tarball was probably but not necessarily named something like 'wikipedia-usemod.tgz' or 'wiki-fromusemod.tgz' or similar. We don't need it for other languages (they were converted with a later script that included histories intact, and I still have a bunch of those tarballs anyway), just for English. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header
by Gerard Meijssen 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Hoi, A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header along. This she said could easily be retrieved using PHP with the variable $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it makes excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers. I have no idea if our software uses this or not. I thought this a great idea so I move this remark to you in the hope that we can enhance our software and make our anti vandal solutions more accurate. Thanks, GerardM

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maintenance/archives/importUseModWiki.php
by Minty 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

before I get my hands dirty, anyone know if there is a recent and working import script from UseMod (v1.0) to MediaWiki? the one in the bundle states it doesn't work, and a quick poke suggests this is accurate. It doesn't look to complex a job, but either way, if I can avoid writing it, all the better :) Whilst I'm here, same question but for MoinMoin...

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Wikipedia IPv6 support
by Kate Turner 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Preliminary, experimental IPv6 support has been added to Wikipedia. The wildcard A record now has an AAAA entry for our IPv6 proxy host. This will probably be tested for the next few days, and may be removed if it proves unworkable. However, until then, IPv6-enabled users can access Wikipedia (only - not any other projects, yet) via IPv6 just as easily as IPv4. Please let me know about any issues, problems or other comments during the test period. Kate.

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Special characters tool bar
by Anthere 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Special characters: Á É Í Ó Ú Ý · á é í ó ú ý · Ä Ö Ü · ä ö ü · Ð ð · Þ þ · Æ æ Œ œ · – — [] [[]] {{}} ~ Could the help bar under the editing windown also include the vertical bar ? I do not have it on my keyboard, and it would be most helpful Thanks.

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RE: [Wikitech-l] HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header
by Domas Mituzas 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Hey, You'd have to log at least both addresses, if you don't trust a forwarding proxy. Malicious user can specify same header and have other users framed. Moreover, lots of such headers would contain local ip addresses, like 192.168.0.0/24 subnet. And last, but not the least. Apaches already use this, because users don't contact software directly, but via squid proxy pool. Cheers, Domas -----Original Message----- A user of the nl:wikipedia who had the misfortune to be blocked on a proxy server, mentioned that many providers send a HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header along. This she said could easily be retrieved using PHP with the variable $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]. Now when this is true, it makes excellent sense to use this IP-adress for the registration of contributions but also for the use of blocking specific IP numbers.

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Lilypond 2.4.0
by uninvited＠nerstrand.net 07 Nov '04

07 Nov '04

We have for quite some time talked about using Lilypond for embedded music markup. There is a real need. At present, those music articles that have music notation in them are using .png files. There is no effective means of editing these files, and many music editors lack the technical facility to install lilypond, run it, and upload the png. Lilypond is the obvious choice, for us, for music notation, because it has the widest following of any of the GPL'ed notation programs. I see that Lilypond 2.4.0 is out. It purports, at least, to have a safe mode for use in web servers. This has been one of the objections to using it here in the past. I am willing to do some of the work on this. I have used lilypond for a number of projects and am familiar with it, and have a local wp mirror. Any interest? UninvitedCompany

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uploading a .el file
by Chong Yidong 07 Nov '04

07 Nov '04

Uploading of unrecognized file formats was blocked several weeks ago to prevent some browser exploits. Are there any plans to fine-tune this policy? Wikipedia contains a file, wikipedia-mode.el (an Emacs major mode for editing wikipedia articles) that I would like to update, but I can't do so with the block in place. -- CYD

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Enotif 1.35 for MediaWiki 1.3.7 (a maintenance release)
by Thomas Gries 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

I fixed some minor problems in my Email Notification patch. Download http://www.tgries.de/mw/mw137+en135.tgz (this decompresses to a subdirectory testwiki/ ) Documentation http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif Bugzilla http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 Tom Berlin local time UTC+1 If you have questions, you can call me: +49 30 859 2873

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Wikitech-l November 2004