How to install Drupal on Debian Wheezy

Thank GNUtransfer the loan us a VPS and other resources to write this article.

In this article we will see how to install Drupal on a VPS or a dedicated server.

For our article we will use the domain example.geeklab.com.ar and our IP is 69.61.93.19
We start from a minimal install of Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu Precise Pangolin.

NOTE: Although Drupal is in the Debian repositories in this article we will install from the tar.gz of Drupal site

First we need to install the necessary packages apache2, libapache2-mod-php5, php5, php5-curl, php5-intl, php5-mcrypt, php5-mysql, php5-sqlite, php5-xmlrpc, php5-gd, mysql-server, mysql-client

root@vps415960:/# apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-curl php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-sqlite php5-xmlrpc php5-gd mysql-server mysql-client
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common fontconfig-config libaio1 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libcurl3 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libfontconfig1 libgd2-xpm
  libhtml-template-perl libicu48 libjpeg8 libltdl7 libmcrypt4 libmysqlclient18 libnet-daemon-perl libonig2 libplrpc-perl libpng12-0 libqdbm14 librtmp0 libssh2-1 libxpm4 mysql-client-5.5 mysql-common mysql-server-5.5
  mysql-server-core-5.5 php5-cli php5-common ssl-cert ttf-dejavu-core
Suggested packages:
  apache2-doc apache2-suexec apache2-suexec-custom php-pear libgd-tools libipc-sharedcache-perl libmcrypt-dev mcrypt libterm-readkey-perl tinyca openssl-blacklist
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common fontconfig-config libaio1 libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libcurl3 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libfontconfig1
  libgd2-xpm libhtml-template-perl libicu48 libjpeg8 libltdl7 libmcrypt4 libmysqlclient18 libnet-daemon-perl libonig2 libplrpc-perl libpng12-0 libqdbm14 librtmp0 libssh2-1 libxpm4 mysql-client mysql-client-5.5 mysql-common mysql-server
  mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server-core-5.5 php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-gd php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-sqlite php5-xmlrpc ssl-cert ttf-dejavu-core
0 upgraded, 49 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 25,5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 152 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

We ask that we enter a password for the mysql root user

We are asked again to confirm the password for the root user of mysql

Now proceed to configure Apache will use as working directory /var/www/drupal
first create the directory

root@vps415960:/# mkdir -p /var/www/drupal

Then create the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal with the following content
Note: You must change the IP, domain and email address through which they belong.

NameVirtualHost 69.61.93.19:80
<VirtualHost 69.61.93.19:80>
        ServerAdmin rmalvarez@gnupanel.org
        ServerName example.geeklab.com.ar

        DocumentRoot /var/www/drupal

        <Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Then we disable the default site configured in apache and drupal put a site we’ve added recently, stop that run the following commands

root@vps415960:/# a2dissite default
Site default disabled.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 reload
root@vps415960:/# a2ensite drupal
Enabling site drupal.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 reload
root@vps415960:/#

Also edit /etc/hosts and where our IP will also add our domain

root@vps415960:/# cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
69.61.93.19 example.geeklab.com.ar vps415960
2002:453d:5d13::1 example.geeklab.com.ar vps415960

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
root@vps415960:/#

And in the file /etc/apache2/ports.conf comment the line NameVirtualHost *:80 so that it looks like

root@vps415960:/tmp# cat /etc/apache2/ports.conf
# If you just change the port or add more ports here, you will likely also
# have to change the VirtualHost statement in
# /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
# This is also true if you have upgraded from before 2.2.9-3 (i.e. from
# Debian etch). See /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/NEWS.Debian.gz and
# README.Debian.gz

#NameVirtualHost *:80
Listen 80

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    # If you add NameVirtualHost *:443 here, you will also have to change
    # the VirtualHost statement in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl
    # to <VirtualHost *:443>
    # Server Name Indication for SSL named virtual hosts is currently not
    # supported by MSIE on Windows XP.
    Listen 443
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_gnutls.c>
    Listen 443
</IfModule>

root@vps415960:/tmp# 

Then add the apache rewrite module

root@vps415960:/# a2enmod rewrite
Enabling module rewrite.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 restart
root@vps415960:/#

Then optimize PHP to suit the needs of Drupal
NOTE: This is not the optimal configuration, just put on estimated values ​​to make sure that drupal work properly for each particular installation should tune this setting.
Edit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and modify the following variables so they are with the following values.

max_execution_time = 900
max_input_time = 900
memory_limit = 512M
post_max_size = 64M
upload_max_filesize = 64M
max_file_uploads = 32
default_socket_timeout = 900

We proceed to restart apache

root@vps415960:/# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
[ ok ] Restarting web server: apache2 ... waiting .
root@vps415960:/#

Now we connect to mysql and create database and user mysql for drupal
for that first we connect to mysql

root@vps415960:/# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 42
Server version: 5.5.30-1.1 (Debian)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

And now create the database and user with these statements
NOTE: In our example both the database and the user are drupal, replace the password PASSWORD_DB who wish to assign to the database.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupal;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON drupal.* TO drupal@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD_DB';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> \q
Bye

We now proceed to download Drupal, we make sure to install wget and then proceed to the download

root@vps415960:/# apt-get install wget
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
wget is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@vps415960:/#
root@vps415960:/# cd /tmp
root@vps415960:/tmp#
root@vps415960:/tmp# wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.22.tar.gz
--2013-07-02 21:07:56--  http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.22.tar.gz
Resolving ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)... 140.211.166.134
Connecting to ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)|140.211.166.134|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3183014 (3,0M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `drupal-7.22.tar.gz'

100%[===================================================================================================================================================================================================>] 3.183.014   1,31M/s   in 2,3s

2013-07-02 21:07:58 (1,31 MB/s) - `drupal-7.22.tar.gz' saved [3183014/3183014]

root@vps415960:/tmp#

Unzip it then copy the contents in /var/www/drupal and make sure to change the permissions so that no conflicts

root@vps415960:/tmp# tar -xf drupal-7.22.tar.gz
root@vps415960:/tmp# cp -R drupal-7.22/* /var/www/drupal/
root@vps415960:/tmp# chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
root@vps415960:/tmp# find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0600 {} \;
root@vps415960:/tmp# find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 0700 {} \;
root@vps415960:/tmp#

Now we turn to the browser to our site to use Drupal installer, in the example http://example.geeklab.com.ar and follow the steps.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3, Here we put database conection data.

Step 4, Here we wait to be installed all modules in Drupal

Step 5, Here we put the basic data from our Drupal site

Step 7, Ready Drupal already installed.

Step 8, go to the site

This completes the installation of Drupal on a Debian Wheezy installation with the minimum to run