From NixTheWorld

This done on a Debian-Etch GNU/Linux system with MediaWiki 1.11.0 on 2008/02/04

Installing

Grabbing the source and building it

vnc@vurt:~$ wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.11/mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz
--01:33:34--  http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.11/mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz
           => `mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz'
Resolving download.wikimedia.org... 66.230.200.212
Connecting to download.wikimedia.org|66.230.200.212|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 4,885,120 (4.7M) [application/x-gzip]

100%[======================>] 4,885,120    905.25K/s    ETA 00:00

01:33:39 (952.53 KB/s) - `mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz' saved [4885120/4885120]

vnc@vurt:~$ mkdir source
vnc@vurt:~$ mv mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz source/
vnc@vurt:~$ sudo su -
vurt:~# cd /home/vnc/source/
vurt:/home/vnc/source# ls
mediawiki-1.11.0.tar.gz
vurt:/home/vnc/source# tar -xzf *.tar.gz
vurt:/home/vnc/source# mv mediawiki-1.11.0 wiki

Creating a user

Now, here we change things up a little, since "vnc" is just an account I have for vnc'ing into this machine. I am now going to create the user "wiki" to store/allow public_html access to the wiki through:

vurt:/home# adduser wiki
Adding user `wiki' ...
Adding new group `wiki' (1014) ...
Adding new user `wiki' (1014) with group `wiki' ...
The home directory `/home/wiki' already exists.  Not copying from `/etc/skel'.
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for wiki
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
        Full Name []: Wiki User
        Room Number []: 
        Work Phone []: 
        Home Phone []: 
        Other []: 
Is the information correct? [y/N] y
vurt:/home/vnc/source# mkdir /home/wiki/public_html
vurt:/home/vnc/source# mv wiki /home/wiki/public_html
vurt:/home/vnc/source# chown -R wiki:wiki /home/wiki/*
vurt:/home/vnc/source# su - wiki
wiki@vurt:~$ chmod -R 777 public_html/wiki/config

See also

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki

Sorry, I got to writing this and then just merged over my existing installation from my other VE... maybe it'll come along sometime soon. snippet