This is a known problem but I'm not sure where Mediawiki.org is on fixing it or whether they are attempting to fix it, though I have heard rumors of a fix in 1.17. The problem stems from Microsoft (surprise!) having changed its format for Office 7 documents. Its format gives its files a mime-type of a zip file, so when Mediawiki checks the file it sees a docx extension but when it looks at the mime-type of the file (a binary string near the beginning of the file) it sees what appears to be a zip file. Thus the "corruption". These checks help prevent users from uploading malicious files with innocent looking extensions, like uploading a nasty zip file with a jpg extension for example.
You can turn off mime-type checking with a switch in LocalSettings.php: $wgVerifyMimeType = false; and then Mediawiki will just check the extension, docx, see that it is allowed and allow the upload without checking the mime-type. Of course this also turns off a good security function, so if you do this you should trust who is uploading documents to your wiki. In my case, as a workaround, I ask users to email me when they want to upload Office 7 files, I turn off mime-type checking, then after the upload turn it back on. Now this gets the file uploaded but does not fix the problem because once uploaded your docx file still looks like a zip file to Mediawiki, so if someone makes a link to the docx file on a wiki page and someone on a PC clicks on the link, instead of their PC using Word to open up the docx file you will have whatever opens up zip files come up, like WinZip. Your users will need to download the file to their PCs to then open it in Word. And saving docx files in "doc" format does not help. They still have a zip mime type for some reason. So, that is the long and short of it. Dealing with Office 7 documents uploaded to mediawiki is problematic. Assuming these files are not being put there to be edited by others (a bad method of document development anyway) I suggest having your users save their files in PDF format. Then upload the PDF file to the wiki, which will avoid the whole Office-7-zip-mime-type problem. -Jim -----Original Message----- From: McHale, Nina [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 1:49 PM To: Haim (Howard) Roman; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Uploading office docs Haim and Ray, thanks so much for your responses! Very sorry I didn't include the error message in my initial email, which is: The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again. And Ray, yes, sanity check checks out, file upload max is 40 MB, and all Office doc types and extensions are allowed. :) I'm testing a very small file, an empty .docx file, to no avail. Haim, thanks for sharing your alternative to this issue, which I will definitely try if I can't resolve the issue. Nina Nina McHale, MA/MSLS Assistant Professor, Web Librarian University of Colorado, Auraria Library Facebook & Twitter: ninermac http://milehighbrarian.net On 3/10/11 1:17 AM, "Haim (Howard) Roman" <[email protected]> wrote: Some file types are considered dangerous, and you need extra steps to allow them. And this is something you normally shouldn't do. References: * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgMimeTypeBlacklist * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgFileBlacklist * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuring_file_uploads#Configuring_file_types I set up a special directory for such files (I call it an "auxiliary" site). They're web-accessible there. And I defined a template to build the correct URL to point to that template. E.g., {{aux|a.doc|The DOC file version}} Yields the string "The DOC file version" that is a link to http://mysite.org/wiki-aux/a.doc ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Haim (Howard) Roman Computer Center, Jerusalem College of Technology Phone: 052-8-592-599 (6022 from within Machon Lev) On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 09:38, Raymond Wan <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Nina, On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:37, McHale, Nina <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been having trouble uploading Word and PowerPoint documents to our > wiki. I added the file types .doc, .docx, .ppt, and .pptx to > $wgFileExtensions in LocalSettings.php, and it appears as though others ARE > able to upload these types of files, because, well, they're there. This came > up again because one person wanted to upload a .docx file, and while he was > able to upload .doc files, he did not have any luck with .docx. I have not > altered the mime.info <http://mime.info> or mime.types files; I just looked > over the documentation for that, but I'm not sure that's the right place to > be looking. > > And I don't know if it makes a difference, but I'm using Safari/Firefox on a > Mac, and most others are using PCs with Firefox/IE. I'm not entirely sure the cause of your problem, but I don't think the browser would matter -- someone else can correct me. So, when you go to "Upload file", .docx is listed as a possible option. Just a sanity check to make sure $wgFileExtensions changes are taken... The other thing you might want to see is the size of the file that you are uploading. There are size limits and maybe your .docx file just happens to be larger than the ones that are already up there. Or maybe they were uploaded at a time before a particular configuration was changed; and maybe that change has now broken the upload process some how. What kind of error message do you get when you upload something? When I was trying to configure uploads, putting the error message in Google helped me find the solution. See for example the steps listed here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuring_file_uploads Hope this helps. Ray _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
