I'm happy to announce the availability of the second beta release of the
new MediaWiki 1.19 release series.
Please try it out and let us know what you think. Don't run it on any
wikis that you really care about, unless you are both very brave and
very confident in your MediaWiki administration skills.
MediaWiki 1.19 is a large release that contains many new features and
bug fixes. This is a summary of the major changes of interest to users.
You can consult the RELEASE-NOTES-1.19 file for the full list of changes
in this version.
Five security issues were discovered.
It was discovered that the api had a cross-site request forgery (CSRF)
vulnerability in the block/unblock modules. It was possible for a user
account with the block privileges to block or unblock another user without
providing a token.
For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34212
It was discovered that the resource loader can leak certain kinds of private
data across domain origin boundaries, by providing the data as an executable
JavaScript file. In MediaWiki 1.18 and later, this includes the leaking of
CSRF
protection tokens. This allows compromise of the wiki's user accounts, say
by
changing the user's email address and then requesting a password reset.
For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34907
Jan Schejbal of Hatforce.com discovered a cross-site request forgery (CSRF)
vulnerability in Special:Upload. Modern browsers (since at least as early as
December 2010) are able to post file uploads without user interaction,
violating previous security assumptions within MediaWiki.
Depending on the wiki's configuration, this vulnerability could lead to
further
compromise, especially on private wikis where the set of allowed file types
is
broader than on public wikis. Note that CSRF allows compromise of a wiki
from
an external website even if the wiki is behind a firewall.
For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35317
George Argyros and Aggelos Kiayias reported that the method used to generate
password reset tokens is not sufficiently secure. Instead we use various
more
secure random number generators, depending on what is available on the
platform. Windows users are strongly advised to install either the openssl
extension or the mcrypt extension for PHP so that MediaWiki can take
advantage
of the cryptographic random number facility provided by Windows.
Any extension developers using mt_rand() to generate random numbers in
contexts
where security is required are encouraged to instead make use of the
MWCryptRand class introduced with this release.
For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35078
A long-standing bug in the wikitext parser (bug 22555) was discovered to
have
security implications. In the presence of the popular CharInsert extension,
it
leads to cross-site scripting (XSS). XSS may be possible with other
extensions
or perhaps even the MediaWiki core alone, although this is not confirmed at
this time. A denial-of-service attack (infinite loop) is also possible
regardless of configuration.
For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35315
*********************************************************************
What's new?
*********************************************************************
MediaWiki 1.19 brings the usual host of various bugfixes and new features.
Comprehensive list of what's new is in the release notes.
* Bumped MySQL version requirement to 5.0.2.
* Disable the partial HTML and MathML rendering options for Math,
and render as PNG by default.
* MathML mode was so incomplete most people thought it simply didn't work.
* New skins/common/*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy
piles of
generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.
* The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the
user link.
* Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.
* Better timezone recognition in user preferences.
* Extensions can now participate in the extraction of titles from URL paths.
* The command-line installer supports various RDBMSes better.
* The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki
cache
is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).
Internationalization
- --------------------
* More gender support (for instance in user lists).
* Add languages: Canadian English.
* Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page
content language.
* Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page
content language.
* Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.
Release notes
- -------------
Full release notes:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/core.git;a=blob_plain;f=RE
LEASE-NOTES-1.19;hb=1.19.0beta2
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.19
Co-inciding with these security releases, the MediaWiki source code
repository has
moved from SVN (at https://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3)
to Git (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/gitweb/mediawiki/core.git). So the
relevant
commits for these releases will not be appearing in our SVN repository. If
you use
SVN checkouts of MediaWiki for version control, you need to migrate these to
Git.
If you up are using tarballs, there should be no change in the process for
you.
Please note that any WMF-deployed extensions have also been migrated to Git
also, along with some other non WMF-maintained ones.
Please bear with us, some of the Git related links for this release may not
work instantly,
but should later on.
To do a simple Git clone, the command is:
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git
More information is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git
For more help, please visit the #mediawiki IRC channel on freenode.netirc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki or email The MediaWiki-l mailing list
at mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org.
**********************************************************************
Download:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz
Patch to previous version (1.19.0beta1), without interface text:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz
Interface text changes:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc
h.gz
GPG signatures:
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz.si
g
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz.
sig
http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc
h.gz.sig
Public keys:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html
Hey,
Is it possible to push to a branch other then the default one on gerrit
using git review?
This is needed when you want to have more then one branch on which you have
reviewed code, or if you want different levels of review. For example if
you want a novice committer play around with an extension a bit and push
new functionality that gets reviewed but is not ready to go onto master
until it really has stabilized and finalized.
Cheers
--
Jeroen De Dauw
http://www.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil.
--
> Message: 8
> Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 21:49:57 +0200
> From: Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com>
> To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] HTMLMultiSelectField as <select
> multiple="multiple"/>
> Message-ID: <jpjf1s$b23$1(a)dough.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 23/05/12 19:16, Daniel Werner wrote:
> > Right now I am implementing a new option (as part of
> > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36425) for which I'd
like to
> > use a <select multiple="multiple"/> html element with options. Right now
> > MediaWiki always generates a list of selectboxes instead of that when
using
> > the HTMLMultiSelectField class. We are talking about 280+ selectable
items
> > here, so for now we came to the conclusion that a real multi <select/>
> > would be nicer and less space consuming for now
> > I have already managed to implement this multiple select,
> > modifying HTMLMultiSelectField adding a new option 'usecheckboxes' which
> > can be set to false to disable the known behavior and use a select
element
> > instead.
> >
> > This would mainly be for the JavaScript-less ui. If javascript were
> > enabled, we could still do something nicer, for example with something
like
> > jQuery chosen plugin here.
> >
> > My question would just be, how I should implement these changes
preferably.
> > Is it ok with the new option for HTMLMultiSelectField or should this be
a
> > new class inheriting from HTMLMultiSelectField? I think
> > HTMLMultiSelectField sounds more like describing what I just implemented
> > rather than a bunch of select boxes, but of course renaming the existing
> > one could "break" extensions (even though both are fully compatible and
> > interchangeable). So one option would be simply naming the new one
> > HTMLMultiSelectField2 if we don't want to stick with an additional
option
> > here.
>
> No. You shouldn't need to know that HTMLMultiSelectField2 is a
> MultiSelect but HTMLMultiSelectField uses checkboxes.
> Your useCheckboxes looks good.
> I recommend you to make it a tri-state value, so you could force
> checkboxes, select or let it decide (eg. checkboxes for < 100 elements,
> select for more)
Alright, just submitted this for review to gerrit:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/8924/
I implemented it as tri-state now. By default 'usecheckboxes' will be true,
not set to a number. This could be changed (would make sense imo) but for
now I didn't want to do this since it could for example affect the default
search namespace user preference in wikis with many search namespaces. I
think the plain multiple select HTML element is not that nice because it is
not very obvious that you can do multiple selects by holding the control
key. There should be some JavaScript ui element replacing this for users
having JS enabled I think before using this as default for huge multiselect
options. I think if all of that were implemented, 15 or 20 would be a good
default value for the option.
Cheers
Daniel
Hi,
Sorry about the length of this mail, it reads faster than it looks.
I am working with the recentchanges and the cu_changes (checkuser)
mediawiki SQL tables. I would like to be able to filter bot activity,
unfortunately I am increasingly confused.
Things that I think I know:
- In the recentchanges<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Recentchanges_table>
table
there is a `rc_bot` flag that should indicate whether the edit comes from a
bot.
- The checkuser table
cu_changes<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser> (which
is not documented on the mediawiki database layout
page<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_layout>)
contains mostly the same information as the recentchanges table but for a
longer period of time. However, there is no bot flag as there is on the
recentchanges table - I don't know why not.
- There is a `bot` entry in the
user_groups.ug_group<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:User_groups_table>
field.
A revision/recentchanges/cu_changes entry can be identified as bot by
joining the original table with user_groups on the user_id and by setting
ug_group=`bot`.
- The user_groups method way of identifying bots is inefficient and the
data seems incomplete. For some other projects we have used various other
bot tables created by hand (on db1047: halfak.bot used during WSOR 2011 or
declerambaul.erik_bots containing the bots identified by Erik Zachte).
I would like to know the answers to the following questions:
1. *What is the meaning/purpose of the rc_bot flag on recentchanges? *There
are entries in the recentchanges table from editors that are flagged as
bots in the user_groups and the other bot tables but still have the rc_bot
flag set to 0.
mysql> select rc.rc_user_text from recentchanges rc join user_groups ug ON
(rc.rc_user=ug.ug_user) WHERE ug.ug_group = 'bot' and rc.rc_bot=0 limit 1;
+--------------+
| rc_user_text |
+--------------+
| ClueBot NG |
+--------------+
2. *Why is there no bot flag in the checkuser table? *A lot of the other
fields seem to be copied from the recentchanges table, why not the rc_bot
field? The check user table contains both entries that are flagged as bots
in the recentchanges table and entries that are flagged as bots in the
user_groups.
mysql> select cuc.cuc_user_text from recentchanges rc join cu_changes cuc
ON (rc.rc_user=cuc.cuc_user) WHERE rc.rc_bot=1 limit 1;
+---------------+
| cuc_user_text |
+---------------+
| MiszaBot III |
+---------------+
mysql> select cuc.cuc_user_text from cu_changes cuc join user_groups ug ON
(cuc.cuc_user=ug.ug_user) WHERE ug.ug_group = 'bot' limit 1;
+---------------+
| cuc_user_text |
+---------------+
| Robbot |
+---------------+
3. *Am I missing some fundamental information about how bots are handled?* This
is a frequently recurring request for data analytics and it seems the data
is inconsistent.
What is the most convenient, sane way to classify bot activity as such? Are
there any projects underway that aim to improve the situation? Any input,
pointers and recommendations are much appreciated.
Thanks a lot! Regards,
Fabian
Since MediaWiki 1.18 we have the variable $wgUseCombinedLoginLink [1]
which is set to true per default.
During edit workshops with students and seniors I registered that new
editors are confused about the combined login page. They tried to
register new accounts on the login page.
Surely, these observations are not representative but I think that the
usability could be improved by setting $wgUseCombinedLoginLink=false
If I missed a prior discussion about this issue I apologize and would be
happy if someone could point me to the discussion.
Otherwise I suggest to set $wgUseCombinedLoginLink to false for all WMF
wikis.
Raimond.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgUseCombinedLoginLink
Hey all,
Now that we're on a more regular deployment schedule, staying on top of the
blocking bugs and deviding lists into smaller, more managable chunks, is more
and more important.
For that reason I put together a quick tool:
https://toolserver.org/~krinkle/wmfBugZillaPortal/
It is already becoming clear that there is a lot of stuff left behind from past
versions. We should probably start moving stuff to later verisons and keep an
eye on it more regularly.
-- Krinkle
Hello!
I thought I'd reach out to the wider wikitech community to discuss a
problem we are having in the MobileFrontend extension and see if
anyone can come up with a good solution.
The MobileFrontend extension is increasingly getting [1] bugs [2]
raised [3] which are due to inline css styles present in certain wiki
articles that are written with the desktop site in mind. (Slightly off
topic there is also certain content that just doesn't work on mobile
[4])
To get an idea of some of the bugs that are present please see this bug [5].
Currently we are resorting to various !important hacks in a separate
css file [6] but this is not sustainable and does not cover everything
and ideally I would prefer that this file was not needed at all.
Solutions I have thought about so far involve the following. I am yet
to conclude on which is the best way to do this so would really
appreciate discussion...
1) scrubbing all inline styles
#########################
* in php - my worry is this would be a quite expensive operation?
* in javascript (but this doesn't help people with javascript disabled)
* would mean any nice mobile safe styling disappears :(
2) scrubbing certain inline styles
#########################
* I could imagine us scrubbing any inline styles which have not been
marked as mobile safe (e.g. anything with a class 'mobilesafe' keeps
its inline style) - this at least allows editors to use pretty styles
and encourages checking their styles on mobile
3) disallowing inline styles in wikitext output
##################################
* this is controversial as it would restrict us to defining css rules
in MediaWiki:Common.css which only admins can edit
** one could imagine pages/templates being able to maintain their own
stylesheets for desktop and mobile to allow customisations
** ResourceLoader could serve the desktop or mobile stylesheet
depending on the context
4) educating editors better about ensuring their styles work on mobile
#############################################
I'm not sure how effective/sustainable this would be and how we'd go
about doing this... but would be keen to hear your thoughts around it.
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30887
[2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36030
[3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36076
[4] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20030
[5] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35704
[6] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/extensions/MobileFrontend…
Hi everyone,
I recently set up a MediaWiki (http://server.bluewatersys.com/w90n740/)
and I need to extra the content from it and convert it into LaTeX
syntax for printed documentation. I have googled for a suitable OSS
solution but nothing was apparent.
I would prefer a script written in Python, but any recommendations
would be very welcome.
Do you know of anything suitable?
Kind Regards,
Hugo Vincent,
Bluewater Systems.
Hey,
I am wondering if we have IRC bots that can report changes to specific
extensions (both on gerrit, ie when a comment is made or stuff is merged,
and on bugzilla). This would be useful for the #wikimedia-wikidata and
#semantic-mediawiki channels, and possible others as well.
Cheers
--
Jeroen De Dauw
http://www.bn2vs.com
Don't panic. Don't be evil.
--