[Mediawiki-l] Exploration: Multiple wikis, shared files, without $wgUseSharedUploads

[DanTMan]

You may run into issues with the databases though. When you upload an 
image you also add a database entry to the image database table. If you 
are sharing images with some odd method you should also share the 
database. That would involve hacking inclues/Database.php with a method 
I am very familiar with to tell it to use a different database when 
dealing with that table.

But it's not possible to make image information pages shared between the 
two wiki. So it would probably be best to use the commons method. That 
method uses an image fallback, and also uses image pages from that 
commons wiki when it's using the fallback images. It's also tested and 
used on the WikiMedia projects so it's reliably safe to use in 
comparison to a random method of sharing.

~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of The Gaiapedia, Wikia Graphical Entertainment Project, and Wiki-Tools.com

Agon S. Buchholz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently exploring the file storage of MediaWiki which left me for
> several hours in pure amazement, when I realized, that *several wikis*
> can share the same files even *without* enabling $wgUseSharedUploads.
>
> Now I'm trying to figure out if this is safe (most probably it isn't,
> why else would $wgUseSharedUploads have been invented?). Anyway I'd love
> to hear comments from people who have tried similiar stuff!
>
> Starting point:
>
> * Two wikis with apparently different topics (canids, photography),
> separate domains, separate codebase, separate image storage. At first I
> thought, the topics would be completely different, later I found myself
> and others increasingly often replicating images & descriptions between
> those two wikis (e.g. images of canids used at the photography wiki to
> display characteristics of several lenses, and vice versa). Thus I
> started to experiment with shared storage, firstly according to [1]
> ("Scenario 4: Multiple wikis sharing common resources"), later trying to
> avoid a separate image "pool".
>
> Setup:
>
> * Image storage: /var/mw_shared
> * MediaWiki sites: /var/www/site1, /var/www/site2
> * LocalSettings.php: $wgUploadDirectory  = "/var/mw_shared";
>
> * Apache2 (for site1; site2 similar):
> ** Alias /wiki "/var/www/site1/w/index.php"
> ** Alias /index.php "/var/www/site1/w/index.php"
> ** Alias /w/images "/var/mw_shared"
>
> Preliminary result:
>
> * This extremly simple setup gives me (a) short URLs and (b) and a
> shared file storage for both sites. The Alias "/w/images" takes care
> that image locations point to a path outside the website's root, and
> $wgUploadDirectory from both wikis points to /var/mw_shared, images can
> be used in both wikis with the usual syntax [[image:file.ext]].
>
> * At the moment this seems to work, and I haven't yet run into side
> effects. However, I'd like to know if this setup is safe and sane since
> it appears much too simple to be true.
>
> I'm planning to have both wikis around long term. Even if this setup
> would continue to work, would it be preferable fall back to the separate
> image "pool" setup according to [1]?
>
> Thanks & Greetings,
> -asb
>
>
> [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Wiki_family
>
>
>
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