Introduction
This section lists the various steps that were taken to install and configure the OS and the various application software packages. Each step is described briefly in English -- often only the task to be accomplished -- followed by the command line steps that were used.
Important: The command line steps are almost certainly neither complete nor completely accurate. This is due to any number of benign causes, including transcription errors, forgetting to write down a step, software updates that somehow invalidate one of the steps, etc. Therefore a Linux-savvy System Administrator will always be required to maintain the system.
Initial Server Build-Out
Using Rackspace's cloud server management console, select the minimum size configuration (256MB RAM, 10GB disk) and the Ubuntu 32-bit Server Edition, version 11.10.
After Rackspace completes the initial OS load, login as root using the password provided by Rackspace. Then create an ordinary user account for the sysadmin to use, add that user to the www-data and sudo groups, then log out.
adduser xxx # xxx is a placeholder, obviously usermod -G sudo,www-data,xxx xxx exit
Log back in as user xxx.
Pick up the latest OS patches and updates:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Next, install Drupal's pre-requisite packages:
sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server-5.1 php5 php5-mysql php5-gd php5-curl php5-cli
Install the curl utility (a command line tool for retrieving web pages and files from HTTP servers), the command-line email client, and the SSH and FTP servers:
sudo apt-get install curl mailutils openssh-server proftpd
Create a directory to hold the Drupal files, download the latest release of Drupal 7, then make all subdirectories group-writeable:
cd /usr/local/share curl http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.12.tar.gz | sudo -u www-data tar xvz # N.B.: 7.12 was the current release as of this writing. New releases come out several times a year. sudo ln -s drupal-7.12 drupal7 cd drupal7 find . -type d -print0 | sudo xargs -0 chmod 775
Enable the required Apache rewrite module:
cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled sudo ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load rewrite.load
Configure PHP by editing /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini:
- To suppress deprecation warnings, change the error_reporting variable to E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_NOTICE
- Instruct PHP to load the 'gd' graphics library by adding the following at the end of the file: extension=gd.so
Restart Apache to pick up the configuration changes:
sudo apache2ctl restart # You can safely ignore the warning message about the server name
Initialize the Database
Create user IDs and passwords for MySQL:
mysql -u root
set password for 'root'@'localhost' = password('some-suitable-password);Create Drupal's MySQL database and grant privileges to the newly created user acct (still within the mysql command shell):
create database iacweb_prod; grant all on iacweb_prod.* to 'iacweb_prod'@'localhost' identified by 'the previously specified password'; flush privileges; exit
$D7 Environment Variable
To help reduce the amount of command line typing and to make the Drupal path name somewhat more portable, I created an environment variable called D7 in ~webmaster/.bashrc, which equates to /usr/local/share/drupal7. So rather than spelling out /usr/local/share/drupal7/sites/all/modules/blah, one can type $D7/sites/all/modules/blah. And henceforth the pages of the Webmaster's Guide will use $D7 as well.
Initialize the Drupal site
Create the site directory:
cd $D7/sites sudo -u www-data mkdir iac.org sudo -u www-data chmod 775 iac.org sudo -u www-data cp default/default.settings.php iac.org/settings.php
Configure Apache
Set up cron
sudo su www-data crontab -e [Add the following line:] 0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.iac.org/cron.php
Install Drush
sudo apt-get install php-pear # Installs the PHP Extension and Application Repository utility pear upgrade --force Console_Getopt pear upgrade --force pear pear upgrade-all pear channel-discover pear.drush.org pear install drush/drush
