Backing up the wiki

Mediawiki Dump Generator

You can easily generate a database dump and file dump using the Mediawiki Client Tools' Mediawiki Dump Generator Python 3 dumpgenerator script, (full instructions are at this link).

The result will include an XML dump with full page history, a dump of all images and files along with associated descriptions and a siteinfo.json file containing information about features, such as the installed extensions and skins.

To dump a private wiki you will have to use a login that has at least read permission on the wiki.

Restoring from backup

See MediaWiki.org for more detailed instructions, (specifically Manual:Importing XML dumps and Manual:importImages.php).

After installing MediaWiki and extensions, in the shell use importDump.php to import the XML, this can take a long time. e.g. from the mediawiki folder
php maintenance/importDump.php --conf LocalSettings.php --dry-run < your_dumpfile.xml

If that works repeat without --dry-run. It won't matter if the XML dump file has the file extension .gz or .bz2 (is compressed).

Due to the bug T206683 it may be necessary to also include --user-prefix="" in the command.

Afterwards use ImportImages.php to import the images
php maintenance/importImages.php your_files/

Afterwards run php maintenance/rebuildrecentchanges.php in order to update the content of Special:Recentchanges.

External links

• Backups, Miraheze Meta
• Manual:Backing up a wiki, MediaWiki