Drupal Installation

Installing Drupal on an Engineering Server

Installing a Drupal CMS on the NC State Engineering Servers is a suprisingly quick and easy process, especially when compared to other highly-rated CMSes. Drupal, unlike most other CMSes, functions properly even with basedir restrictions in effect. Joomla and WordPress, for example, require heavy modification in order to function properly in the EOS environment. This installation guide is current as of v.6.3.

Unpackage the Latest Drupal CMS

Drupal is a dynamic and ever-changing CMS with a large support community, with new versions rolling out at a steady rate. You can download the latest version from http://drupal.org/. Unpackage it in the directory you wish to install it in.

Steps to Prepare for Installation

Installation of Drupal is straightforward and requires only a handful of preparation steps.

Folder Permissions

Once Drupal has been unpackaged, you need to create a files folder in the sites/default directory you are installing in and change its AFS permissions to RLIDW for www-servers. Next, change the permissions of sites and sites/default to RLIDW for www-servers as well. NOTE: These two folders should have their permissions changed back to RL after installation has been completed!

Additionally, if your site is hosted on Engineering webservers, you can put in a call to eoshelp@ncsu.edu and they'll take care of adding the permissions and then removing them when you're done with the install.

Database Setup

A MySQL database needs to be created for the Drupal installation. The easiest way to accomplish this is to create a new user and select "Create database with same name and grant all privileges" during the creation. NOTE: It is important that you remember the user's password or have it handy on the clipboard

Perform the Installation

You are now ready to begin the Drupal installation. Go to the web address of the directory you are installing and follow the on-screen instructions. Select "MySQL" from the database choices. Database name and database user will be the same if you followed the instructions in the previous section. Under Advanced Settings, you will have the change the server from localhost to mysql5.ece.ncsu.edu. Submit the form and the installation is done. Now it's time to configure some of the initial basic settings of the site.

Final Steps

Once installation is complete, click the link to visit your newly set up site. The first thing you should do here is set up the initial user. The initial user is the default site admin. Once this is done, you should run the site status report. It will warn you that the site cron has not run. Manually run the site cron.

Next, remember to reset the permission of sites and sites/default to RL (read and look).

Lastly, alter the includes/file.inc file and includes/image.inc file as shown in the Drupal alterations guide. Your Drupal installation is now complete!

Note: If you are having difficulty with images, files, etc. displaying, go into the site/default/files folder and delete or edit out the content of any .htaccess files you find. Be sure to check the subdirectories of this folder as well.