[Server-devel] Running complete Wikipedia offline

[Daniel Drake]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 9:28 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> I've been debating the possibility of running a *complete* copy of
> Wikipedia (txt and images) offline on the XS. At this point, the
> targets are English (https://en.wikipedia.org) and Hindi
> (https://hi.wikipedia.org).
>
> The demand on the local server wouldn't be huge, given the relatively
> small footprint at the school. Storage is cheap. This would be an
> offline copy for one-way consumption, so I'm not looking for ways to
> do local edits, and push these back upstream. I'd imagine the
> Wikipedia dumps can be rsync'd once every x months over sneakernet.
> Dump data is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps

When I was in Nepal we cloned Wiktionary onto the school server, and I
imagine the process is similar for wikipedia. The way we did it was:

Install mediawiki and configure it the same way that the "real"
version is configured:
http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/

Install the same plugins that are running on the real version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version

Then import the db
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html

Then make a few local tweaks (e.g. disable registration/editing)

Daniel