Installing Drupal 6.8 on SourceForge.net Hosting

Posted on January 29th, 2009 Hasnain 9 comments

Part I: The Basics

Drupal Logo

The project servers consider the folder htdocs in a different “space” and hence you don’t get to write to this folder, or it’s subfolders. However, in the project directory (/home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME) you have a folder called persistent. This folder consists of writable space, that you can use to install Drupal.

Part II: UNIX & Symbolic Links

The ln command in Unix is used to create a symbolic link, which is very close to what we call “shortcuts” in Windows. So the approach to be followed here is to mirror all writable folders in the htdocs folder into the persistent folder mentioned above. You don’t need to copy/recreate all folders, just the writable ones would do.

Part III: Installation Process

Install Drupal on your SourceForge.net server space in the htdocs folder (unzip all files there). Go to the folder sites/default and open the file default.settings.php in a text editor. Now, copy the contents of this opened file into another file, and name it settings.php. Save settings.php on your desktop.

Login to the project shell space using PuTTY (Follow this article for an excellent guide to configuring PuTTY for SourceForge.net). Execute the following instructions:

$ cd /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent
$ mkdir sites $ chmod 0777 sites
$ cd sites
$ mkdir default
$ chmod 0777 default
$ cd default
$ mkdir files
$ chmod 0777 files

Now, upload the files settings.php to /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent/sites/default/. Once the file is uploaded, execute the following instructions in PuTTY:

$ cd /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent/sites/default
$ chmod 0777 settings.php

Now we proceed to creating the symbolic links. Execute the following instructions in PuTTY:

$ cd /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/htdocs/sites/default
$ ln -s /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent/sites/default/settings.php
$ ln -s /home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent/sites/default/files

Your Drupal installation should work fine now. Remember, once you are done with the installation, you should change the permissions of all folders from 0777 to 0644.

Guides drupal, installation guide, sourceforge hosting
9 responses to to “Install Drupal 6.8 on SourceForge.net Hosting”
1. Anonymous January 30th, 2009 at 14:18
  
  Nice article. Thanks!
2. Basil Shubin June 10th, 2009 at 10:17
  
  Thanks a lot!
3. casainho June 10th, 2009 at 17:02
  
  Many thanks!!
  
  I used this information to install this website:
  
  http://lyre.sourceforge.net/
4. frank0987 August 14th, 2009 at 19:33
  
  I’ve tried using FileZilla and PuTTY, but get a message saying “This is a restricted account, you can’t execute commands here” I’ve got the configuration right, but SF has recently gone more strict (and slow too).
5. Hasnain August 14th, 2009 at 22:29
  
  I haven’t used SF.net in a while now, so I guess these instructions could be dated (especially because SF.net keeps changing it’s web based provisions). I suggest looking at this article: https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/wiki/Project%20web
6. Andrew Ziem August 14th, 2009 at 23:05
  
  Did you get Clean URLs working?
7. Andrew August 15th, 2009 at 02:32
  
  SF blocks all outbound traffic (email and HTTP), so people won’t get sign up emails, notification emails, etc.
  
  You can vote for a change
  https://sourceforge.net/apps/ideatorrent/sourceforge/ideatorrent/idea/218/
8. openblocks November 18th, 2009 at 02:47
  
  Pretty nice.I have Drupal on:
  
  alert(1)>
9. openblocks November 18th, 2009 at 02:49
  
  openblox.sourceforge.net
  
  alert(1)
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