Troubleshooting

Exit codes

wiki returns a precise exit code so scripts can branch on the result:

Code	Meaning
0	Success.
1	A runtime error (network failure, server error, unexpected response).
2	A usage error (bad flag or argument).
3	The request succeeded but there were no results.
4	The page or entity was not found.
5	Rate-limited after exhausting retries.

if wiki summary "Some Page" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo "exists"
else
  echo "exit $?"
fi

"No matches" or "not found"

A 3 (no results) means the query ran but matched nothing; a 4 (not found) means the exact title or id does not exist. Try search to find the right title, or suggest to autocomplete it:

wiki search "the title I half remember"
wiki suggest "Quantu"

Remember that titles are case- and punctuation-sensitive after the first letter. A pasted URL is the most reliable target.

Wrong wiki or language

If results come from the wrong place, check -l/--lang and --project, or use wiki config show to see what is resolved. A pasted Wikipedia URL overrides all of these and is the surest way to hit a specific wiki.

"refusing non-Wikimedia host"

--site and pasted URLs are restricted to Wikimedia hosts as a safety guard. If you really mean to point wiki at another MediaWiki install, add --allow-any-host.

Slow or throttled

The client is deliberately polite and may pause between requests. For a large job, that is expected. If you are being rate-limited (exit 5), raise --rate, lower -n, and set a contact-carrying --ua. The on-disk cache makes repeated runs instant, so avoid --no-cache unless you need fresh data.

Stale results

Responses are cached with a TTL. To force a refresh for one run, add --no-cache; to clear everything, run wiki cache clear.

A dump download stopped partway

wiki dump download resumes. Re-run the same command and it continues from the bytes already on disk, then verifies the sha1 when one is published.

Filing an issue

If something looks wrong, re-run with -v for more detail and include the command, the output, and wiki version in an issue.