[Mediawiki-l] importing uploaded files between installations

[Lorenzo Franceschini]

Hi all, some months ago I installed MediaWiki locally for personal use.  
Now I'm trying to migrate my existing MediaWiki installation to a
new machine, but I found a problem. 

I used the `maintenance/dumpBackup.php` and `maintenance/importDump.php` 
scripts to transfer textual content from one database to another,
and I copied over the images/ folder, containing all the uploaded files; 
the problem is that the new MediaWiki instance seems not be able
to recognize them, since for example, the Special:Newimagespage is empty 
and existing links to media files in articles are broken. 

Now my question is: what's the right way, if one, to import all the 
uploaded files into the new installation, possibly without losing all
files' metadata information (as their descriptions) and restoring links 
in articles ?

Thanks in advance for any answer.