As this can most likely be the first screen the user encounters when pointing himself to drupal root (http://drupal.org/node/75264 was just committed), it's critical to improve it's usability and provide welcomeness

The common error users are encountering is:

"The Drupal installer requires write permissions to ./sites/default/settings.php during the installation process"

This is a scary message and does not help the user much. What possibly needs to be done is combination of:
- short troubleshoot instructions, based on references below. If can not be done (permissions are complicated thing), skip
- link to a complete instructions in drupal handbook
- suggest "manual route" eg "open ./sites/default/settings.php and follow the instructions"

References:

http://drupal.org/node/34022
http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#7 installationPermissionsErrors.png66.77 KBTor Arne Thune
install_dir_not_writable.png57.56 KBkika

Comments

Amazon’s picture

Amazon commented

A lot of these problems were solved in the initial version of the installer, but to make things easier to check back in we removed the requirements checking. The requirements checking in effect attempted to automated 80% of the configuration necessary to have a successful installation. These requirements checking techniques were developed after a year of user testing and supporting the installer and production environments.

Perhaps a quick focused discussion on how to re-introduce requirements checking would help get the global problem solved.

Kieran

dries’s picture

dries commented

Note that requirement checking was removed to reduce the installer patch and to make it more managable to get the installer into core. Now the installer is in core, we should look at migrating the requirement checking to core. Steven Wittens has done some work on that.

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

I have an almost finished requirements checking patch which depends heavily on http://drupal.org/node/76802 . As soon as that patch gets committed, requirements checking will be done.

forngren’s picture

forngren commented

Also note that Gallery 2 can edit it's config directly from install, not sure how they do that. Permsissions in the tar.gz?

I think we really should take a look at that installer, how about creating user/1 directly from install?

LAsan’s picture

LAsan commented
Version: x.y.z » 7.x-dev

Whats the progress on this task?

sutharsan’s picture

sutharsan commented
Component: update system » usability

Moving all usability issues to Drupal - component usability.

Tor Arne Thune’s picture

Tor Arne Thune commented
Component: usability » ajax system
StatusFileSize
new installationPermissionsErrors.png66.77 KB

I would say that Drupal 7 has dealt with all the suggestions in the original post. See attached screenshot for how it is in Drupal 7.

Tor Arne Thune’s picture

Tor Arne Thune commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)
Tor Arne Thune’s picture

Tor Arne Thune commented
Component: ajax system » user interface text

Gah, usability component no longer exists, so it automatically sets it to ajax system. I guess 'user interface text' is the closest component to 'usability'.