Notes on Drupal for Fedora Insight

This page captures notes on evaluating Drupal for Fedora Insight.

Drupal general information

Drupal site
The Drupal website has constantly updated information on Drupal and is a good source of general information.

Drupal has many positive aspects that make it an attractive option for Fedora Insight:

• Very large install base, ~1% of websites run it (by comparison, 8.5% run WordPress, and just over 1% run Joomla)
• Drupal community is large and vibrant
• Drupal community principles well aligned with Fedora (100% FOSS)
• Most modules of interest seem to be very well suited from licensing perspective

Possible risk considerations:

• Drupal 5 -> 6 migration is not painless, though Drupal 6.16 is current and in Fedora
• Drupal 6.16 is not in EPEL-5, but may be available in EPEL-6
• Drupal 7 due at an unknown date, possibly June 2010 but depends on bug stomping
• Drupal modules need packaging for Fedora/EPEL
• Modules may move at a fairly brisk pace of change, requiring attentive maintainers

Installing

Web and SQL server setup

1. Switch to the root account. Enter the root password at the prompt.

   su -

2. Install necessary packages:

   su -c 'yum shell'
   > groupinstall 'Web Server' 'MySQL Database'
   > install drupal

3. If you have not already done so, start the MySQL database server:

   su -c '/sbin/service mysqld start'

4. If you have not already done so, set up the MySQL database server's administrator account. First, provide a root password.
   

   Do not use root account password
   Do not provide the system administrator's password for your Linux system here. Use a different strong password, since this is a separate authentication for a MySQL user called "root."

   mysqladmin -u root password $PASSWORD

5. Create a database for Drupal:

   mysqladmin -u root -p create drupal

   

   Database creation
   You will be prompted to enter the MySQL "root" password from the previous step.
6. Grant rights for a Drupal administrator on this database:

   [root@publictest1 ~]# mysql -u root -p
   Enter password: 
   Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
   Your MySQL connection id is 5
   Server version: 5.1.41 Source distribution
   
   Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
   
   mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO drupaladmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'DRUPAL_PASSWORD';
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
   
   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
   
   mysql> QUIT;
   Bye

   The drupaladmin account and the DRUPAL_PASSWORD you used above are the ones you will use in Drupal's installation process shortly.

Drupal setup

1. Edit the /etc/httpd/conf.d/drupal.conf file. If you are installing on the same system where you run your Web browser, uncomment the line below:

   Allow from 127.0.0.1

   If you are installing on a different system on your network, change the previous lines so they read as follows:

   #Deny from All
   Allow from All

   Save the file.
2. Edit the /usr/share/drupal/.htaccess file. Uncomment the line below:

   RewriteBase /drupal

   Save the file.
3. If necessary, change your firewall settings to permit TCP port 80 (HTTP) traffic.
4. Copy and change the permissions on the default settings file:

   cp /etc/drupal/default/default.settings.php /etc/drupal/default/settings.php
   chmod 666 /etc/drupal/default/settings.php

5. Start the Apache web server:

   service httpd start