Using Drupal, 1st Edition by O'Reilly

So far the book is great, but the instructions on setting up a dev environment aren’t exactly crystal clear for those completely new to Drupal. I thought I’d help out the next geek that bothers to GTS to find pitfalls before starting.

First review the preface section 2.7 ‘Downloading Drupal’. If you’ve never installed Drupal before, or any web application on a web server before, it’s a good idea to check out Lullabot Addison Berry’s very easy to follow video, Installing Drupal 6.

These instructions are specific to the context of a shared hosting account on Dreamhost, but may work for your environment as well. Be sure to review the book’s errata – the ‘confirmed errata’ will let you know about any code mistakes or problems with source discovered since the book was published. For troubleshooting help related to the books exercises and installation issues, review the Using Drupal book forum.

THESE INSTRUCTIONS MAY CAUSE YOUR DATAZ TO BE LOST. In addition to setting up things quickly, these steps include how to quickly delete all the stuff in your database, without bothersome ‘back up your data first’ steps. The idea is you are just creating a sandbox and nuking your install is no big deal.

Enough blab, let’s do this:

• Create a subdomain for your dev environment like drupal.yourdomain.com
  • Dreamhost panel > Domains > Mandage Domains > Add New Domain / Sub-Domain
• Create a new database (on a new or existing subdomain)
  • Goodies > Manage MySQL, scroll to the bottom where it says ‘Create a new MySQL database:’
  • Enter something in all the fields:database name must be unique system wide so get creative, create a new hostname like mysql.drupal.yourdomain.com, you can use your own username but I created a special username and password that I’ll also be using for the admin user in the Drupal install (note: dev enviro, not recc’d for production), you might want to put something to remind you what this is later in the comment field like “Sandbox for Using Drupal Book”.
  • Write down all that DB stuff so you can use it later.
  • Wait a while for new database host name and/or new subdomain to propagate.
• Download the latest source from the book site.
  • Extract the zip somewhere you can find it, like your desktop.
• Change the database connection string in using_drupal_source\drupal\sites\default\default.settings.php
  • Open default.settings.php with your favorite text editor
  • change connection string stored in $db_url (line 92 at TOW) from mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename to something like mysql://name:psswd@mysql.drupal.yourdomain.com/dbname
• Copy default.settings.php in the same folder and call it settings.php
  • There should now be 2 files in the default folder
• Save a backup copy of your default folder somewhere
  • I just copied the default folder and renamed it ‘_default’, or save somewhere on your hard drive, thumb drive, whatever…the point is, settings.php and default.settings.php that will soon live on your web server are going to change and you’re going to want these files again someday.
• Upload the contents of using_drupal_source\drupal to the root of your new subdomain
• chmod /sites/default to 777
  • On you web server (via your FTP client) navigate to /drupal/sites/default
  • If you’re using FileZilla, right click (ctrl+click for macs) the default folder and select file permissions, this will allow you to enter the numeric value 777 or just check read/write/execute for all roles
• Open http://drupal.yourdomain.com

Installation profile options on successful install

You’ll be prompted to select an ‘Installation Profile’. The book source code includes scripts to automatically install a site with assets and modules used in their examples for you. If you are just starting Chapter 2. where they send you off to the Appendix for installation instruction, chose the last option – the generic/basic Drupal install.

Here’s how to “start over” so you can use a different installation profile. These steps will cause you to lose any data you entered in Drupal – you will end up with a brand new install and a chance to chose a diferent installation profile:

• Nuke all your database tables
  • Note I said ‘tables’, not the database.
  • Go to http://mysql.drupal.yourdomain.com (phpMyAdmin screen) and login
  • Select you Drupal database from the databases list at left (e.g. NOT information_schema)
  • Scroll to the bottom of tables listing page and select ‘Check All’, change the ‘With selected:’ drop down to ‘Drop’.
  • You will see a screen asking if you really want to execute this command. Click ‘Yes’.
• CHMOD /sites/default to 777 again
  • On your web server, go to /sites/default
  • CHMOD default to 777 (again, because the previous install process modified the permissions) and be sure to check ‘recursive’ (or use -R on commandline) because there’s new files in there and we need to blow everything in the default folder away.
• Delete everything in /sites/default
• Put a clean copy of default.settings.php and settings.php in /sites/default
  • Remember that saved copy of default.settings.php and settings.php?
• Go to http://drupal.yourdomain.com/install.php and start all over again :)

Bold moves in phpMyAdmin. Select all > drop.

I hope that was helpful for someone. I remember all to well not even knowing what chmod was and trying to write perl scripts, ouch! As you might guess, with as much time as I spend documenting when I should be doing book exercises I don’t really have time to offer support, but please let me know if anything I’ve written here needs to be corrected or elaborated on. Have fun in Drupal land!

USE THIS INFORMATION AT YOUR OWN RISK. Any information found on this website is offered only as informational and includes no warranty, guarantees or support. The author claims no authority on any subject whatsoever.

Why Drupal, Why Ubuntu?

Why write installation instructions?

Environment

• Ubuntu 6.06 LTS server
• Apache 2.0.5.5
• PHP 5.1.2
• MySQL 5.0.22

Get Drupal

I'm a big fan of apt-get but there were a lot of issues in the forum started by people having problems with Drupal in the repositories. Community Docs recommend getting the latest package from Drupal.org, right now that happens to be Drupal 5.7. (Drupal 6 is out now as well, and is very cool, but CCK/Views aren't ready for prime-time and I'm installing for the purposes of following tutorials written for 5.x.)

Move Drupal

My apache install is pretty much setup to default config. /var/www is my web root, yours may vary. Because I'm just using this particular install as a test which I plan on destroying later I'm going to put it in the boring old subdirectory 'drupaltest', actually I named mine d57_test_01 but thought drupaltest would be more comprehendable in the example.

In the mv command we explicitly move .htaccess because it's a hidden file.

Database Setup

Create the database for Drupal to use - you can replace 'db_drupaltest' with whatever you'd like to call the database. You'll need to enter your mySQL root password. If you get an access denied error make sure you're using the mySQL root password and not your login or Ubuntu root password. The second command puts you in mySQL monitor, the command line interface for managing your MySQL server. The commands in the next code section are SQL. You could also run this in phpMyAdmin if you'd rather have a GUI.

Change the datebase name, the username 'drupal_usr' and 'secretpassword' to whatever you like. Just don't forget to write it down somewhere safe because you'll need to know it later.

Edit Settings.php

Using vi (or whatevs) change the $db_url line. Note: If you use a fancy charcters or dashes in your user, password or database names replace them URI hex encodings, this is detailed in database settings comments section in the settings.php file.

Up Your PHP Memory Allocation

If you have a new LAMP install the default memory setting for scripts is 8M. This is redonkulous and Drupal will suck. Look for the 'Resource Limits' section and change memory_limit to 32M and then restart apache.

Final Steps

Go to http://localhost/drupaltest/install.php (or your servername instead of localhost if DNS is setup). You should see this:

One last thing, if you click Administer you will probably get a 'one or more problems were detected' error message. Two things: your files directory isn't writable and you cron job hasn't run. The first one is easy - just make the files area writable by all:

As for cron, you can just click 'run cron manually' on the Status report page - but you'll need to do this anytime you want to update the index. For a quick dev install you're likely to trash soon it may not be necessary but for a production or long-term dev install you'll want to set up a cron job to hit http://localhost/drupaltest/admin/logs/status/run-cron every few minutes depending upon your site's traffic and requirements. See Configuring cron jobs in Drupal's Getting Started guide for more.

That's it. Good luck folks, now enjoy surfing the Drupal learning curve...heheh.

Related Links

• Ubuntu Documentation > Drupal
• Drubuntu Group - "for people using Ubuntu for developing Drupal core or contributed modules, and also for people using the Ubuntu LAMP stack as a server for Drupal."
  • Drubuntu Howto a Wiki Page that explains how to install and configure an Ubuntu/LAMP/Eclipse Drupal development environment.
  • Drupal Dev on VMWare - including Eclipse setup.
• Install a Local Web Server on Ubuntu (11/2007) - screencast using Ubuntu desktop version, covers Drupal install.
• Installing PHP, MySQL and Apache under Linux on Drupal.org (Developing for Drupal » Setting up a development environment » Local server setup » Linux specific ) - covers enabling mod_rewrite which you'll need for clean URLs.

kill 5347

Worked like a charm. Another hint for you fellow newbs…maybe reading an Apache admin book would actually SAVE you time, eh? All I needed to do to enable my dern rewrite was to change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride all in my sites-enabled config. Hmmm….I bet a quick doc on configuring sites in Apache2 would have saved me all that. But then I wouldn’t have ever found out how to kill stuff on linux…so then again, maybe it was all worth it.

Awesome drawing by pure evil bunny on Flickr.

What is Plone? – Plone is a pretty cool content management system (CMS). Well, I think it’s cool based on some videos and documentation on their site. After comparing a lot of CMS options (including some really expensive closed-source stuff and 2 weeks of developer training on Sharepoint) I’m trying out Plone because a) open source is cool. b) Google people are smart, c) it supports LDAP authentication which I need for my all-M$ work enviro, d) there’s training/conferences/books/commercial support!? available and d) I’ve read some great reviews and CMS comparisons that rated it #1.

That was the good, now the most common complaint: hellish learning curve. Well, if you’re a developer and you’re going to customize beyond the existing system and available plugins. Why? Well, you’ll have to learn some python and the database is the rather obscure Zope instead of MySQL or SQL. In fact, I just read this on 456 Berea St (one of my fav dev blogs) and it gave me the shivers:

And the inital learning curve, even though I was a fairly good python programmer, was insane.

Then again, people told me Perl was insane too and I loved working with Perl. Besides, we’re just playing right now, right?

What is Ubuntu? - Ubuntu is a community developed, linux-based operating system that I use for a web server. ‘Dapper Drake’ is the release name for 6.06 LTS. (Keyword: LTS – long term support). It’s surprisingly easy to install. If you’re bored, geeky and/or have extra VMs or boxes lying around you should try a LAMP install and get your web server up in 15 minutes!

There’s already a Plone From Scratch HOWTO on the Ubuntu Forums, however it is for a previous version of Plone (2.0.5) and uses the apt-get method which I’ve noticed a lot of people in the forums having trouble with. Disclaimer: I do not provide ‘undo/uninstall’ instructions, other than, whip up a a LAMP on VMware and test it first or backup your system. I would welcome uninstall directions if someone who knows what they are doing could provide them.

Doesn’t Plone provide installation instructions? Well, yes. But when I started to read them I got real nervous. What the heck is gcc? libssl? TLS? etc. Those poor geeks at Plone don’t realize how noob noob can be! I tried to find better instructions (for me) at the Ubuntu Forums and instead I found a lot of people having problems trying to install Plone via Synaptic or apt-get instead of using Plone’s instructions. So here ya go.

You should already have gcc, g++, make and tar installed by default, but if you want to be anal do this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ make tar

Sidetrack > (Possibly totally unnecessary step!) If you’re a fair server noob like me you have no idea what libssl and readline libraries and development headers are and what the heck is TLS? Google suggests it has something to do with mail encryption. I read some confusing stuff on Ubuntu Forums about RPM and a program called Alien that converts RPMs to DEB packages seemed probably unrelated but like a handy utility to have and so:

sudo apt-get install alien

Download the Plone Installer Package. I saved it in my home folder – it doesn’t really matter where you put it so long as you can find it.

wget -c http://plone.googlecode.com/files/Plone-3.0.2-UnifiedInstaller-Rev2.tar.gz
tar zxf Plone-3.0.2-UnifiedInstaller-Rev2.tar.gz
cd Plone-3.0.2-UnifiedInstaller


Here’s where you have to pay attention. You can do a ZEO or Stand-Alone install. “WTF?” you say? Yeah, well just pick your poison after reading all about it. Me, I’m doing a Stand-Alone as root install.

According to the README.TXT in the installation package my choice of standalone instance installed as root will result in Plone being installed to /opt/Plone-3.0.2 and libz and libjpeg libraries getting built in /user/local. A “plone” user will be added and Zope will be configured to run under that user id. You need to start Zope as root user (via sudo).

sudo ./install.sh standalone

Then a whole bunch of stuff happens. Lots of gcc (compiling) and checking for things (lots of yes and a few no-s in my case). Just wait, watch, hail Mary and knock on wood. This is a good time to read about the rest of this tutorial or creating new Zope/Plone instances if you want to do that. Or just catch up on your RSS feeds and I’ll hold your hand some more ;o)

If you’re real lucky, this is what you’ll see when it’s all said and done:


#####################################################################
###################### Installation Complete ######################
Use the account information below to log into the Zope Management Interface
The account has full 'Manager' privileges.
Username: admin
Password: XXXXXXX
Before you start Plone, you should review the settings in:
/opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/etc/zope.conf
Adjust the ports Plone uses before starting the site, if necessary
To start Plone, issue the following command in a Terminal window:
sudo /opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/bin/zopectl start
To stop Plone, issue the following command in a Terminal window:
sudo /opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/bin/zopectl stop
Plone successfully installed at /opt/Plone-3.0.2
See /opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/adminPassword.txt
for password and startup instructions
Ask for help on plone-users list or #plone
Submit feedback and report errors at http://dev.plone.org/plone
This installer was created by Kamal Gill (kamalgill at mac.com)
Maintainers for Plone 3 are Kamal Gill and Steve McMahon (steve at dcn.org)

First, write down your admin password!! Then, check zope.conf to ‘review settings’. I’m not familiar with them, so I just scanned for the port. Found it on line 969 (YMMV), set to the default Zope/Plone standalone install grabs, port 8080.

sudo vi /opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/etc/zope.conf

Use :q! to quit vi without messing anything up

Use netcat to see what ports you have open already. (Netcat comes with Ubuntu install)

nc -z -v -w2 localhost 1-65535

After confirming that 8080 is avail (or changing it in zope.conf if it is not available) continue following directions.

sudo /opt/Plone-3.0.2/zinstance/bin/zopectl start #that last part is an L not a 1, took me a while...

Then go to: http://localhost:8080 (or sub servername for localhost to test from other computer). If you’re lucky AGAIN you’ll see the Zope Quick Start page!! Wahoo! Hii Fiiiiveh to self! Then look at the example site: http://localhost:8080/Plone, and then check out the management interface at http://localhost:8080/manage. Have fun. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me!

BTW: I suggest the Ubuntu Support Forum and Plone Support Forum for help. I am totally new at server administration, I prolly shouldn’t even publish this and I definitely can’t support your lazy arse!

Now, anyone who knows me may be wondering what the hey? Now, I’m as a web designer, I have to say, nothing is yummier than Apache and PHP. But, I’m learning development for my job, they’re a great firm that does amazing design work (architecture), so I’ve come to accept that for all their charms they are an MS shop.

My plan with Virtual Server? Well, I have to admit I’m kind of excited about SharePoint’s next iteration. I’m almost through with a course at Netdesk, which has been engrossing and enlightening and I’m trying to set up a good test environment for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). MOSS is soo cool, the knowledge harvesting, management and communication possibilities are huge. I will keep you informed of my painful process.

New to MS > I’m not a Sysadmin > I’m barely a web developer > FEEL MY PAIN!

p.s. That screenshot is using IE7 beta. It’s much, much better than IE 6, more like Firefox, almost as clean and snappy.