Andy's picture

Hello --

We are looking into setting up a wiki server, and the installation that looks the most promising is the MediaWiki appliance. The excerpt from an e-mail shown below was from one of our group members concerning the appliance:

...the bundled extensions don't include Math and Wiki2LaTeX...if the bundle also lacks the underlying latex utilities that are required by those extensions. Would we be able to add them if they're missing?

 

Can the appropriate packages that would enable the above applications to work be installed on the appliance? Thanks.

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Jeremy Davis's picture

Under the hood the TKL appliances are simply Debian headless servers. So assuming that the required packages are available (and are the required versions) then yes definately and probably quite easily.

The default commandline package management app in Debian is called apt. So to install package xyz you simply run the commands:

apt-get update
apt-get install xyz

The first line updates the local database telling your system what packages are available, the second line installs package xyz. You only need to run apt-get update once each session of installing/searching apt repositories.

If you are not sure exactly what the name is for the specific package you need you can search. E.g if you wanted to search for all the packages that are to do with latex then search like this:

apt-cache search latex

Although obviously you'll need to have an idea of what you are after...

Actually, I got a bit sidetracked and have done some of the work for you! I just had a quick google on your behalf and it seems that Math is already packaged for Debian so that easy. Wiki2latex isn't but this page suggests that the only other dependancy you'll need is pdflatex (which according to the Debian package seach is included in the package texlive-latex-base. So

apt-get install mediawiki-math texlive-latex-base

(Don't forget to run apt-get update first if you haven't run it today). You'll then need to download Wiki2latex and follow the instructions (I linked to above).

Good luck! :)

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