Aegir 0.2 beta 1 released.

We're proud to announce the first beta of the 0.2 release of the Aegir hosting system for Drupal.

Ægir is a set of contributed modules for Drupal that aims to solve the problem of managing a large number of Drupal sites. It does this by providing you with a simple Drupal based hosting front end for your entire network of sites. To deploy a new site you simply have to create a new Site node. To backup or upgrade sites, you simply manage your site nodes as you would any other node.

This release is the first beta release of our 0.2 development cycle, which has been focused on complete support for running multiple concurrent Drupal releases, and managing upgrades of sites between Drupal releases. This release has also primarily been focussed on fixing bugs and polishing the final release of the 0.2 release.

Since the previous release, we have fixed all known critical bugs and implemented few little features to make sure we can get a proper release candidate under way. There was more work done on both Drush and the Provision project to harmonize the projects and fix API issues. The alpha release allowed more people to test the codebase, which is now much more solid than before, thanks to the numerous testers that stepped up to the plate. We are also aiming for a Drupal 6 release of 0.2 to be released quickly after we release the 0.2 version. Work has already started to get the frontend working in Drupal 6 (while the backend already supports both Drupal 5, 6 and 7). The reason why we're pushing out a beta now instead of a RC is because we introduced a few more features than expected since the alpha and wish to have more testing before a real release.

Changes in this release

In addition to the changes in the alpha release, changes in this release include:

1. Stricter access controls in MySQL

   MySQL users are now created with a @host part that matches the IP of the webserver on which the site is installed.

2. A new look

   A fresh new theme and logo have been released on Drupal.org and are activated if available. We also deploy admin_menu blocks if available.

3. Added "n to n" functionality to the Clients feature

   Users can now access multiple clients.

To install Aegir you need

A unix based operating system.

Aegir will not work on windows.

• Full access to your own server or machine.

  Shared hosting will not give you enough permissions to install new sites

• A Drupal installation that is web accessible with it's own hostname.

  It is not possible to install Aegir in a subdirectory. You may need to add entries to your /etc/hosts file to test Aegir, as it does not provision DNS yet.

Installing Aegir

Aegir's architecture provides the ability to manage multiple backends through a single front end.

Each server that Aegir is installed on, needs to have it's own backend.

The canonical way of installing Aegir is to follow the INSTALL.txt file of the hostmaster profile. The instructions here are provided for your convenience but documentation bugs should be filed against the INSTALL.txt file.

• Installing Drush

  The Aegir backend is an extension to the Drush 2.x release, which needs to be installed first.

  
  
  1. Download Drush 2.x RC1

     Extract it somewhere your user has access to it. I always extract it to /home/adrian/drush.You may also choose to create an alias to it, or symlink the drush.php file into your /usr/sbin directory. More information on this is available in the Drush readme.

  important note: Drush 2.x is not a module, and it should not be installed inside a Drupal directory. Any existing instances of Drush 1.x or the deprecated Drush Extras module should be deleted from the filesystem, to avoid PHP function name collisions.

• Installing Provision

  Provision is the backend of the Aegir hosting system, as with Drush, there should only be one instance of provision per server.

  1. Create the .drush directory in the home directory of the user Provision is being installed as.

     Use this command : mkdir -p ~/.drush

  2. Download Provision 0.2 beta1

     Extract it into the ~/.drush directory, so it is located at ~/.drush/provision

• Installing Hostmaster and Hosting

  Hosting is the front end to the Aegir hosting system. The Hostmaster install profile initializes a new Drupal site with all the information
  
  that Hosting requires to operate, and provides the installation wizard for configuration.

  1. Download the Drupal 5.17 release

     Extract it to the location you host sites from (example: /var/www/aegir/drupal-5.17). You may also use an existing Drupal 5.x directory instead.

  2. Download Hostmaster 0.2 beta1

     Extract it into the profiles folder of your Drupal installation (example: /var/www/aegir/drupal-5.17/profiles/hostmaster)

  3. Create the profiles/hostmaster/modules directory.

     (example: mkdir -p /var/www/aegir/drupal-5.17/profiles/hostmaster/modules)

  4. Download Hosting 0.2 beta 1

     Place it inside the newly created profiles/hostmaster/modules directory.

  5. Optional packages

     These packages are not dependencies and can be skipped, but if they are present Aegir will take advantage of them to provide a better out of the box experience.

     1. Create the profiles/hostmaster/themes directory.

        (example: mkdir -p /var/www/aegir/drupal-5.17/profiles/hostmaster/themes)

     2. Download Eldir 0.2 beta 1 theme

        Place it inside the newly created profiles/hostmaster/themes directory.

     3. Download Admin Menu 2.8 module

        Place it inside the profiles/hostmaster/modules directory.

  6. Create a new database for the site, and create a new virtual host entry for it

     This should be the last time you need to do this.

  7. Install a new site using the HostMaster install profile in sites/default

     You will be directed along the server configuration process, and importing your sites.

Upgrading Aegir

If you are a user of the 0.1 release, you can find complete upgrade documentation in the UPGRADE.txt file of the hostmaster profile.

If you have any problems, don't hesitate to contact us, by either making a support issue on the hostmaster project, or getting a hold of us on irc. We are trying to make the project as easy as possible to install, but we simply can't test every configuration possible. At the very least we would be able to provide more adequate documentation for such cases, so please let us know. Before submitting your request, make sure you have read the bug submission guidelines

update Fixed the links as mentioned below and added information about the elder theme.