[Mediawiki-l] strange 500 internal server error

[Harald Groven]

Thanks Taylor.

Of course I have sql backups of my (previously working) MW182 and MW15
databases.
The problem is that if I upgrade from the MW15 or if I reinstall MW
using the MW182 backup, the MW installation is broken. Pages are
either empty, or result in a "500 internal server error".
So, some of the tables must be inconsistent. Anyone who know how to
check table consistency in MW?

If I run the php maintenance scripts (upgrade.php), I get errors
unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR

Backup are not exactly useful, if they can't be used for restore :-)

Harald

On Mon Dec 4 03:39:53 Taylor Ralston wrote:

> Harald, I had the same exact problem before. I believe it has something to
> do with pages that have been "edited" (special pages can't be edited, and
> the main page was probably the default). After pulling out my hair for a 2-3
> weeks, I installed MW 1.7.1. In order to keep your current stuff, backup
> your database, and make sure you remember all the settings you used when you
> first installed MW.
>
> If your server doesn't have a MySQL backup utility, you can do it directly
> in PhpMyAdmin. On the left choose "Export", select your database in the
> list, check the box to save it to file, then click Go or Proceed (can't
> remember its caption). Save that file. You might also consider downloading
> all the files from your wiki folder to your local computer, especially if
> you've modified the code of any of them. Then delete all files in the wiki
> folder. Restore the MySQL database (unless you somehow were able to keep it
> intact) and start over with 1.7.1. Hopefully your server will be as
> understanding as mine was! Good luck.
>
> Taylor

On 12/3/06, Harald Groven <harald at groven.no> wrote:
>>
>> Anyone experienced this problem?
>>
>> My MW182 installation throws a "500 internal server error". Some of
>> the special pages work fine, but none of the regular content pages are
>> displayed. The Main_Page shows up with navigation elements but no
>> content. Following any m-wiki links results in 500 error pages.
>>
>> To test the server configuration I made a fresh MW install with a new
>> database (w other namespace), and it seems that that empty MW is
>> working fine. That should mean that the problem that creates the 500
>> messages are in the database not in the php code. I can access all the
>> tables from PhpMyAdmin, so its probably an inconsistency in the
>> database tables that cause the problem.
>>
>> Is it possible to repair the MW database tables without doing harm to the
>> data?
>>
>> --
>> Harald Groven
>> University of Tromsø
>>
>> link to broken wiki (when mod_rewrite is turned off)
>> http://www.groven.no/mediawiki182/index.php?title=Main_Page
>>
>> link to broken wiki (when mod_rewrite is on)
>> http://www.groven.no/harald
>>