For some explanation of how to hack your own auth system into MediaWiki, a couple good resources are:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Otheus/AutoLoginviaREMOTEUSER http://www.x-tend.be/~raskas/blog/2006/11/17/mediawiki-remote-user-authentication

I wanted to do someting a little different:

• Rather than use HTTP Auth, I wanted to use MediaWiki's login form and authenticate against a different database.
• I also did not want any user who is not authenticated to be able to view the wiki at all.
• And, I wanted users that I choose to be able to register and login properly.

Here are the steps I took - many thanks to Raska!

• Copy includes/AuthPlugin.php to a different file with a new name (such as mfplauthplugin.inc.php)

• Edit the file

  // Include the original file (change path as needed) include ('/usr/share/mediawiki/includes/AuthPlugin.php'); // Optionally include any libraries you might personally // use for authentication here

  // Give the class a new name and extend the original class class mfplauthplugin extends AuthPlugin {

  // define a new constructor function // this function adds a new function that is always called on // page loads (it will be described below) function mfplauthplugin() { global $wgExtensionFunctions; if (!isset($wgExtensionFunctions)) { $wgExtensionFunctions = array(); } else if (!isarray($wgExtensionFunctions)) { $wgExtensionFunctions = array( $wgExtensionFunctions ); } arraypush($wgExtensionFunctions, 'Authremoteuser_hook'); }

  // Review the remaining functions - I only modified the authentice // function

function Auth_remote_user_hook()
{
global $wgUser;
global $wgRequest;

// For a few special pages, don't do anything.
$title = $wgRequest->getVal('title') ;
if ($title == 'Special:Userlogout' ||
$title == 'Special:Userlogin') {
return;
}

$wgUser = User::loadFromSession();
$username = strtolower($wgUser->getName());
global $wgAllowedUsers,$IP;
if(in_array($username,$wgAllowedUsers))
{
// Do nothing if session is valid
if ($wgUser->isLoggedIn()) {
return;
}
}

// If it is not valid log them out
include("$IP/includes/SpecialUserlogout.php");
wfSpecialUserLogout();
}

// Add to the bottom of the file (change path as appropriate):
require_once('/path/to/mfpl_auth_plugin.inc.php');
$wgAuth = new mfpl_auth_plugin();
$wgAllowedUsers = array(
'joe','susie','jane'
);