Switching from windows to linux
ltwinner - July 4, 2009 - 14:25
I'm switching my drupal site to linux, local development and online hosting. I installed linux mint two days ago, this was my first time using linux. What I want to know is what is the best method for installing drupal in linux...
Should I install it through the package manager? This seems like a good option as it automates alot of the procedure. However only version 6.10 is available for download.
Or should I follow the instructions here on the drupal.org docs and download the drupal tar file directly and install according to the instructions given in the docs? If I did it this way Id be getting version 6.13 of drupal, obviously.
So which option do you recommend?
It is better to install the one on Drupal.org
It usually takes quite some time for a package on your distro to be upgraded to the latest upstream release. And as there is no compilation to install Drupal or special start up scripts that has to follow the standard of your distro, I suggest to use the latest stable package on Drupal.org. That is what I always do and I have never experienced any issues doing it like that.
Edit misunderstood question
Edit misunderstood question
Definitely download from drupal.org
Linux package managers are a wonderful invention but their primary reason for existence is to identify and resolve dependencies. If you have a Linux configuration that includes the obviously required items -- Apache, PHP 5, MySQL 5 -- you're covered, and you can move on to managing Drupal independently. You're going to have to learn to manage Drupal's files anyway if you're installing any contributed modules.
You might want to install Drush as well. Drush takes a bit of configuration but it makes installation and upgrading of contributed modules very easy and fast.
Get the latest from
Get the latest from Drupal.org and install as instructed. You ought to be able to get it using this command
wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.13.tar.gzthen unpack it like this
tar zxvf drupal-6.13.tar.gzThat's one way there are a couple of others eg via CVS or using DRUSH if you install that first it'll save you hours in the future.
drush dl drupalDoes all the above, then you can get modules as easily as this
drupal dl viewsdrupal dl cck
Ok, I installed it with the
Ok, I installed it with the latest version from drupal.org.
Have to say that drush is cool the way it can download and enable modules so easily. Are there any other tricks it can do?
It can update your modules
It can update your modules and run update.php
drush updateWhen in a few weeks you find a few modules have new releases or security updates it can update them all in a minute or so, a task which can take much longer the manual download, untar route.
Check out
drush helpor for a particular command in more detail eg "update"
drush help updatefor more details. Since I was shown how to use this module it has saved me hours if not a day in the last 6 months. On the DRUSH page there are some links to video tutorials..
NOTE: It can't update core yet.
how do you use drush with a
how do you use drush with a module whose name contains a space like user relationships?
Look at the module's
Look at the module's directory name or the module's project page url on Drupal.org. You'll see the name you can use there, in your example the project name uses an underscore in place of the space
User Relationships - user_relationships
some might remove the space
Node reference field - nodereference_field
while other modules have completely different names (possibly for historical reasons).
Meta tags - nodewords
Most things in Drupal follow a predictable pattern.