Installing Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management system.

Installation

Download your preferred version of Drupal to your public_html folder.
Extract the tar.gz with the following command.

 tar -pzxf drupal-$version.tar.gz

This will extract drupal into a folder with the name drupal-$version.
You can now rename the folder or move the files to where you see fit.

 mv drupal-$version drupal

To complete the installation follow the steps onscreen at http://redbrick.dcu.ie/~username/drupal

Enabling Proxy Support

At the time of writing (June 2011) Drupal does not have proxy support by default. However there is a patch which will add support for it to the current version of Drupal 7.

Without proxy support on redbrick Drupal is unable to use automatic updates and module installation.

To apply this patch follow the following instructions.

 cd ~/public_html/drupal/
 wget http://drupal.org/files/issues/7881-proxy-please-341.patch
 chmod u+w ./sites/default/ 
 patch -p1 < ./7881-proxy-please-341.patch
 chmod u-w ./sites/default/ 

Then add the following lines to the bottom of ~/public_html/drupal/sites/default/settings.php

 $conf['proxy_server'] = 'http://proxy.dcu.ie';
 $conf['proxy_port'] = 8080;
 $conf['proxy_exceptions'] = array('127.0.0.1', 'localhost');

Changing the location of temporary files

By default Drupal stores temporary files created when a module or theme is installed are placed in a folder in /tmp/. In a shared hosting environment such as Redbrick it cannot be guaranteed that this folder is not already in use by another user.

For this reason you should change the location of Drupal temporary files.
To change your Drupal Temporary Directory follow the following instructions.

Log in to your Drupal admin account.
Click Configuration in the top navigation bar.
Then proceed to Meida - File System.
In the box marked Temporary directory replace "/tmp" with "tmp".

Temporary files will now be stored in the tmp directory within your Drupal install.