Drupal: Difference between revisions

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
No edit summary
 
(12 intermediate revisions by 7 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
== Drupal-OLPC community ==

There is a community of Drupal hackers who are deeply interested in the OLPC project and doing some fantastic work at the intersection of the two. See http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-olpc for more.

== Why do this? ==

Well, here are 3 reasons:
* The XO is cool
* Drupal is cool
* XO + Drupal = righteous!

More seriously, this could let a community of XOers write books, blog, vote, arrange events and store/list structured content and do all the great community centric things that Drupal allows.

This HOWTO uses Lighttpd instead of Apache, because it is much more lightweight. I considered using SQLite instead of MySQL, but after testing found that MySQL was perfectly fast enough (and makes using contributed modules much easier). Having said that, you wouldn't want to use this for serving more than a handful of clients on a regular XO!

If you are interested in joining other people interested in Drupal on XOs there is a group at http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-olpc

<strong><em>A fourth reason?</em></strong>: See the Discussion tab on this page for a possible application of Drupal wizardry in actual XO classrooms... [[Talk:Drupal]]

== Installing software ==
== Installing software ==


Line 13: Line 32:


== Basic Configuration ==
== Basic Configuration ==

Start MySQL:
/sbin/service mysqld start


Give MySQL a root password:
Give MySQL a root password:
Line 36: Line 58:
Copy in the low memory configuration template:
Copy in the low memory configuration template:
cp /usr/share/mysql/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf
cp /usr/share/mysql/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf

Edit the configuration file:
nano my.cnf


Uncomment the following lines:
Uncomment the following lines:
Line 46: Line 71:
== Service Startup ==
== Service Startup ==


It is recommended that you start the services manually when you want to use Drupal (this will save some memory, so your system will run faster the rest of the time). But it is easy to adapt this to autostart if you want.
Start the 2 services manually and check for any errors:

Note: the /var filesystem appears to not persist over reboots (perhaps it is ROM based - there may be a way round this, I haven't found one yet), and so we need to recreate and reown the appropriate directories for these services to start.

Go to the root user's home directory:
cd /root

Start editing a new file:
nano start-web.sh

Type the following:
#!/bin/sh
mkdir /var/run/lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
touch /var/log/lighttpd/error.log /var/log/lighttpd/access.log
chown -R lighttpd:lighttpd /var/run/lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
mkdir /var/run/mysqld
chown mysql:mysql /var/run/mysqld
/etc/init.d/lighttpd start
/etc/init.d/lighttpd start
/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/mysqld start


Make the script executable, and run it to check everything starts up OK:
If you only plan on using Drupal occasionally you can simply put those 2 commands in a shell script (e.g. ''/root/start-web.sh'') and run it as needed. This will save some memory, so your system will run faster the rest of the time.
chmod u+x start-web.sh

./start-web.sh
Alternatively you can start these services on boot automatically by running:
chkconfig --levels 235 lighttpd on
chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on


When you are done, start the 'Browse' activity, and go to the URL 'localhost' - you should see the lighttpd placeholder page.
When you are done, start the 'Browse' activity, and go to the URL 'localhost' - you should see the lighttpd placeholder page.

After a reboot, when you want to use Drupal just type:
su -c /root/start-web.sh


== Install Drupal ==
== Install Drupal ==
Line 89: Line 131:
* Run the installation script: http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/run-script
* Run the installation script: http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/run-script
* Configure your site: http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/configure
* Configure your site: http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/configure
* Set up cron: http://drupal.org/getting-started/5/install/cron

And you are all set - congratulations!

== Reduce Drupal Memory Usage ==

This replacement for some of Drupal's core code can help reduce Drupal's memory footprint: http://wtanaka.com/drupal/system

Latest revision as of 12:33, 8 March 2009

Drupal-OLPC community

There is a community of Drupal hackers who are deeply interested in the OLPC project and doing some fantastic work at the intersection of the two. See http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-olpc for more.

Why do this?

Well, here are 3 reasons: 

* The XO is cool
* Drupal is cool
* XO + Drupal = righteous!

More seriously, this could let a community of XOers write books, blog, vote, arrange events and store/list structured content and do all the great community centric things that Drupal allows.

This HOWTO uses Lighttpd instead of Apache, because it is much more lightweight. I considered using SQLite instead of MySQL, but after testing found that MySQL was perfectly fast enough (and makes using contributed modules much easier). Having said that, you wouldn't want to use this for serving more than a handful of clients on a regular XO!

If you are interested in joining other people interested in Drupal on XOs there is a group at http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-olpc

A fourth reason?: See the Discussion tab on this page for a possible application of Drupal wizardry in actual XO classrooms... Talk:Drupal

Installing software

Start the 'Terminal' activity (on the far right of the menu bar).

Get root access: 

su

You should now see a prompt that looks like: 

bash-3.2#

Install the various tools we will need: 

yum install mysql mysql-server lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi php php-mysql php-gd

Basic Configuration

Start MySQL: 

/sbin/service mysqld start

Give MySQL a root password: 

mysqladmin -u root password YOUR-ROOT-MYSQL-PASSWORD

Go to the /etc directory: 

cd /etc/

Edit the php.ini file (with your favorite editor): 

nano php.ini

Add the following line to the very bottom of the file: 

cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

Edit the lighttpd configuration file and enable FastCGI: 

nano lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
  • Uncomment "mod_fastcgi" line, in the server.modules section
  • Uncomment the fastcgi.server section (all ~8 lines of it)

XO Friendly MySQL Configuration

Copy in the low memory configuration template: 

cp /usr/share/mysql/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf

Edit the configuration file: 

nano my.cnf

Uncomment the following lines: 

skip-networking
skip-bdb

In the section [mysqld] add the line: 

skip-innodb

Service Startup

It is recommended that you start the services manually when you want to use Drupal (this will save some memory, so your system will run faster the rest of the time). But it is easy to adapt this to autostart if you want.

Note: the /var filesystem appears to not persist over reboots (perhaps it is ROM based - there may be a way round this, I haven't found one yet), and so we need to recreate and reown the appropriate directories for these services to start.

Go to the root user's home directory: 

cd /root

Start editing a new file: 

nano start-web.sh

Type the following: 

#!/bin/sh
mkdir /var/run/lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
touch /var/log/lighttpd/error.log /var/log/lighttpd/access.log
chown -R lighttpd:lighttpd /var/run/lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
mkdir /var/run/mysqld
chown mysql:mysql /var/run/mysqld
/etc/init.d/lighttpd start
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

Make the script executable, and run it to check everything starts up OK: 

chmod u+x start-web.sh
./start-web.sh

When you are done, start the 'Browse' activity, and go to the URL 'localhost' - you should see the lighttpd placeholder page.

After a reboot, when you want to use Drupal just type: 

su -c /root/start-web.sh

Install Drupal

Switch back to the Terminal activity, and change to the web root directory: 

cd /srv/www/lighttpd/

Clean it up, and change ownership: 

pwd
rm *
chown olpc:olpc .

Switch back to our regular (non-root) user, and go to our home directory: 

exit
cd ~

Download and extract Drupal (replace x.x with the latest Drupal stable version, currently 5.5): 

wget http://drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-x.x.tar.gz
tar -zxvf drupal-x.x.tar.gz

Move the contents of the drupal-x-x directory into the webroot: 

mv drupal-x.x/* drupal-x.x/.htaccess /srv/www/lighttpd/

Change to the web root directory, create a files directory (for uploads) and adjust permissions on this and the settings.php file: 

cd /srv/www/lighttpd/
mkdir files
chmod a+w files
chmod a+w sites/default/settings.php

Follow the regular Drupal installation process:

And you are all set - congratulations!

Reduce Drupal Memory Usage

This replacement for some of Drupal's core code can help reduce Drupal's memory footprint: http://wtanaka.com/drupal/system

Retrieved from "http://wiki.laptop.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Drupal&oldid=197953"