Pre-installation software checklist

Drupal requires the following to be set-up and running prior to beginning your installation:

Installation Steps

These are the quick “get-up-and-running” installation steps for Drupal, targeted at an audience comfortable using a command line interface. A more comprehensive installation guide is available from Drupal.org.

cd to the location where you wish to install Drupal.
 

1. Obtain the latest Drupal release and extract the contents of the compressed file.

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-x.x.tar.gz

tar -xzvf drupal-x.x.tar.gz

This version of Islandora is currently only compatible with Drupal 7.x. Preliminary documentatin for Islandora 6.x can be found here.

2. Move the contents of  the drupal-x.x directory into a directory within your web server's document root or public HTML directory (ensure that the .htaccess file, a hidden file, is successfully moved into the destination directory as well).

mv drupal-x.x public_html/your_drupal_directory

Please note: With Drupal 7.x, on some types of shared/local hosting, if PHP and Apache are run by the same user, Drupal will attempt to execute steps 3 and 4 on its own and you can skip directly to step 5. If you get errors referring to the "Settings file" during step 6 and beyond, you can perform steps 3 and 4 manually.

3. Make a copy of the default.settings.php file in the sites/default directory and name the copy settings.php.

cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php

4. Give the web server “write privileges” to sites/default/settings.php and the sites/default/directory:

chmod a+w sites/default/settings.php
chmod a+w sites/default

5. Create a database for Drupal. Make note of your username and password as you will need it when the Drupal install script runs.

mysqladmin -u [mysqlusername] -p create [databasename]
mysql -u [mysqlusername] -p

enter your password

grant all on [databasename].* to [db_user_name>@<server] identified by '[password]';

flush privileges;

6. Run the install script by pointing your browser to the base URL of your website (e.g. http://www.example.com/).

7. Work through the on-screen steps to complete the Drupal site installation.

8. When the install script succeeds, you will be directed to the "Welcome" page, and you will be logged in as the administrator.

9. Proceed with the initial configuration steps suggested on the "Welcome" page.

If you plan on uploading large files via Islandora you may want to increase the maximum file size settings in Drupal. You can do this by creating a custom INI file in /etc/php5.d/conf.d with the following settings:

upload_max_filesize = 2048M
post_max_size = 2048M
memory_limit = 256M 

You must then restart Apache using one of the following commands:

/etc/init.d/apache reload
OR
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

For a good introduction to Drupal and to learn how to harness its power and potential to create a site that meets your needs, access Drupal’s extensive online documentation. Drupal’s active open source community is another valuable source of information.