Summary

Move the wiki from our current hoster to a self managed system and perform an upgrade to the latest version

Architecture

This will be a straightforward mediawiki installation, hosted on an externally hosted vps managed by the bofh team.

Steps

Notify members of upcoming change

Since the wiki wont be usable during the period of the migration, a headsup must be sent to our members. This should be done via (atleast) the ML and IRC.

Prevent writes to wiki

See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Preventing_access

Create backup

Fetch a copy of both the files and a database export from our current hoster, and store these

Prepare upgrade host

Install and configure a webserver + database server on the externally hosted machine

mariadb
Apache2
php5.6
php7.4

Perform upgrade

You will need two systems to perform this upgrade. First, the machine on which the upgrade is to be performed. On this, install apache, mariadb, php5.x and php7.x. The destination machine will receive a copy of all upgraded files + database, and should use php-fpm and nginx. Note that we stick with mediawiki LTS releases only.

Preparation

Download export of current wiki files and database
Create archive of mediawiki files excluding the images
Get a copy of the upgrade files for 1.27; mediawiki-1.27.tar.xz
Get a copy of the upgrade files for 1.35; mediawiki-1.35.tar.xz
Get a copy of the upgrade files for 1.39; mediawiki-1.39.tar.xz

Get current version working

Modify /etc/hosts and point nurdspace.nl to the upgrade machine
Import database
Extract archive to /var/lib/mediawiki
Fix database details in LocalSettings.php
Set wgServer to http://nurdspace.nl
Enable mod_php5.6
Test if site is working

Upgrade to mediawiki-1.27

Move /var/lib/mediawiki to /var/lib/mediawiki-current
Extract mediawiki-1.27.tar.xz to /var/lib/mediawiki
Copy LocalSettings.php from previous install
set wgDefaultSkin to Vector
Comment out all extensions
Run php maintenance/upgrade.php
Enable mod_php7.4
Test if site is working (some errors are to be expected)

Upgrade to mediawiki-1.35

Extract mediawiki-1.35.tar.xz to /var/lib/mediawiki
Copy LocalSettings.php from previous install
Run php maintenance/upgrade.php
Test if site is working (some errors are to be expected)

Upgrade to mediawiki-1.39

Extract mediawiki-1.39.tar.xz to /var/lib/mediawiki
Copy LocalSettings.php from previous install
Re-enable all extensions
Install simplesaml to /var/lib/simplesaml
Update wgSamlSspRoot to /var/lib/simplesaml
Run php maintenance/upgrade.php
Copy images from backup
Copy skins/common/images from backup
Test if site is working (some errors are to be expected)

Mediawiki upgrade

Create backup of /var/lib/mediawiki
Create database backup
Extract new version of mediawiki to /var/lib/mediawiki
Copy LocalSettings.php from previous version
Grep for installed extensions in LocalSettings.php; For each extension, run the installation procedure
Run php maintenance/upgrade.php

Test

Make sure that everything works as expected, use the hosts file to 'spoof' the required DNS entries to get this to work. Be sure to test authentication

Migrate the website

Swith the nurdspace.nl DNS entry to the ip address(es) of the externally managed host