[Mediawiki-l] No search results on MW 1.5 and frustrated - Any help very much appreciated

[JCKnust]

Dear all,

I´m out of my depth really. I have installed MediaWiki 1.5 (hoping to 
solve the problem I encountered with MW 1.4.9) but the problem is still 
there: Entering any search term (yes, more than three letters) does not 
provide any results at all, but the response is stupid: "There are 0 
results, starting with #417511". (The displayed ## vary, though.)

The MW URL is http://www.detroitinfo.de/wiki

PHP is run by my webhost in safe mode, but I have never read anywhere 
that this would cause a problem with the search function (I´m aware that 
the upload function will not work with the safe mode and am fine with 
that).

I´ve been doing web search on this issue for many hours but came up 
empty. Another MW admin sent me the following information which worked 
for him:

Quote: The problem was having configured the rewrite rules in the wrong 
way.  Change the rewrite rules to use "path syntax" instead of 
"parameter  syntax":

     <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
         RewriteEngine On
         RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^TRACE
         RewriteRule .* - [F]
         RewriteRule ^/wiki/?(.*)$ /mediawiki/index.php/$1 [QSA,L]
     </IfModule>
End Quote.

My understanding is that I would have to start rewrite with a .htaccess 
file, but would I not have to modify the localsettings.php first to 
accomodate this? Moreover, my installation directory is "/wiki" in my 
server´s /html base directory, what modifications in syntax would I have 
to make? I´m not even sure where, i.e. in which directory the .htaccess 
file would need to be placed.

If that is not the cause, what else could it be? Certain chmod for a 
directory? That would result in no search result page being displayed at 
all, would it not?

I´m quite frustrated since I´ve been able to install the MW, get the SQL 
database up and all the other stuff and now this darn search function 
just won´t work. I don´t know about the inner works of PHP, MySQL and 
stuff, so if there´s anyone who can give me a hand on this stupid 
problem, I´d really appreciate any hint!

Thanks from Germany, regards
Chris