This page may help you with the installation of the Drupal Ecological Information Management System (DEIMS) installation profile.

First, we need to address some pre-requisites:

You will need a functional AMP stack -Apache/MySQL/PHP- (Versions equal or higher than MySQL 5, PHP 5.3, Apache 2.2). Apache mod_rewrite will help with "Clean URLs", and PDO MySQL as the connector. Optionally, you may want to install PHP Tidy extension. You, or your friendly system administrator, or your hosting environment can provide you with the above requisites. In addition to MySQL, DEIMS has been tested with MariaDB. We successfully deployed DEIMS on Ubuntu, MacOSX and Solaris 5.0. Other combinations may be possible (XAMP, WAMP, MAMPs; Postgres, etc) but we did not test them, please share with us your stories.

For the most part of the DEIMS install, you will experience a process that looks exactly as the Drupal install. However, we will need extra steps. Before anything, please change your php.ini default settings so we can accommodate DEIMS which includes over 130 modules. For example, we changed some php.ini defaults and used the following generous settings:

max_execution_time = 230
max_input_time = 180
memory_limit = 512M

Restart Apache in order to make the new settings take effect. Now we are ready for DEIMS.

  • Go to http://drupal.org/project/deims, scroll down to the downloads section, and click on the the tar.gz or zip link to download DEIMS. Note that the DEIMS package contains the Drupal 7.36 core; do not download the Drupal core separately.
  • Un-tar or unzip in a web accessible location; For example, on Ubuntu-linux, you want to unzip it in the folder located at /var/www, but the location may vary depending on your environment settings.
  • Create a MySQL database, take note of a database name and database username and credentials (user has to have Create-Read-Update-Delete (CRUD) privileges on the newly created database). To create this database, you can use a database administration tool such as MySQL Workbench or Navicat or PhpMyAdmin or others. If you feel comfortable with the MySQL shell client, the following command to create a database named "mydeims" should work:

    mysql> create database mydeims;
  • Create a "files" directory under sites/default (i.e $sudo mkdir /var/www/deims/sites/default/files )
  • You may have to change ownership of the "files" folder to an apache-enabled user/group. I.e, on ubuntu, chances are this is user is www-data. (i.e: $sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/deims/sites/default/files
  • Make a copy the file default.settings.php into settings.php. This file is located in the folder sites/default, right under the folder where you unpacked DEIMS. Change the settings.php permissions so we can allow Apache to write to it. I.e, $chmod 777 settings.php. Note that you will revert the settings.php permissions to 444 when all the DEIMS install is complete
  • Point your browser to your newly created folder or virtual site to start the DEIMS install wizard. (i.e: http://my-deims-site-URL-path/ ).
  • If everything went well up to this point, you will land in what looks like a Drupal install wizard. In the first screen, you have the chance to install DEIMS in a language other than English (follow the link for instructions on how to add other languages). In this example, I am choosing English as our DEIMS base language. In this wizard screen, we are selecting DEIMS as the profile we want to install; ignoring the default "Standard" and the "Minimal" profiles. That is, select the third checkbox, where it says: Install the DEIMS profile. Click Next.
  • Next screen of this install wizard is the Database settings screen:
    Here is where you enter the database name, database user and database password (we discussed these in the 3rd step from the top, "Create a mysql database". Click Next; you will see the install progress in the progress bar -- over 130 modules in all. Patience, this process may take time, depending on your environment, anywhere from 4 minutes to 30 minutes is normal.
  • Once the initial install is done, we move to the configuration of your website. Your first choice is whether to do "development" or "production" server. There are some differences, but without further details, choose development for play, and production for, well, live websites.
  • The next wizard step is a DEIMS configuration screen - it is about the Ecological Metadata Language related services, and declaring your data use policies. No worries, you can change all these settings later (at /admin/config/services/eml ), but for now, please choose a Station name, typically an acronym for your station, organization or project. Click Next.
  • In this screen, you have the chance of enabling DEIMS enhanced functionality, such as DEIMS Workbench, the Data Explorer, the Variable Search, PASTA and a DEIMS D6 Migration package. Here is a short introduction to these features, you will find some more information about these features elsewhere.
  1. DEIMS Workbench: provides a workflow for chain of command operations. datasets may be in different states: Draft, Needs Review, Published. Changing states may trigger e-mails to the next person in the chain of command (information manager, owner, etc)
  2. Data Explorer: It will enable you to dynamically query any "data source" that lives in an external Database. For now, it works out of the box with mysql databases. Further explanations in other posts
  3. DEIMS D6 Migration: Do you use a DEIMS D6? You can save yourself time and use this module to migrate your content.
  4. Variable Search: Populate the variable elements using this feature. You write the variable name, and this module will allow you to search the database and fetch you the closest match, think a super-autocomplete.
  • Once you click Next, you will be done with the initial install - Now you are ready for your new site.
  • If you enabled the migration, you'll need now a connector to your DEIMS D6 database instance. Create a "settings.local.php" file, which will be placed in sites/default folder of your new DEIMS install. Use the following entries as an example:

    <?php
    $databases['drupal6']['default'] = array(
      'database' => 'your_deims_d6_db_name',
      'username' => 'your_mysql_drupal_user',
      'password' => 'the corresponding password',
      'host' => 'localhost',
      'port' => '',
      'driver' => 'mysql',
      'prefix' => '',
    );
    

    If you have a prefix of if your DEIMS D6 database, or is in a different host, modify all of the respective items accordingly.

  • Moreover, if you enabled your Data Explorer DEIMS custom module, you need another database connector to make the Data Explorer module work properly. Add the connector to your settings.local.php, you can use this as an example
    <?php
    $databases['data_db_name']['default'] = array(
      'database' => 'DB_Name',
      'username' => 'DB_User',
      'password' => 'DB_User_password',
      'host' => 'localhost',
      'port' => '',
      'driver' => 'mysql',
      'prefix' => '',
    );