Environmental Variables for Aegir

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Gregsim's picture

I am writing to describe my recent efforts to learn Aegir and to invite interested folks to collaborate with me in the learning experience. (I did attend the meeting at Pitt earlier this year on Aegir, but I don't remember enough of the details.)

I recently set up an ubuntu server at home and installed Aegir, mostly following the great tutorial at: http://friendlydrupal.com/screencasts/how-install-aegir-drupal-hosting-p.... Also, some instructions at: http://www.wepoca.net/how-to-install-aegir-1x-ubuntu

I did a lot of cutting and pasting of scripts which I did not fully understand. There seem to be paths and environmental variables that needed to be established to support Aegir. I wonder if anybody knows a good document that lists all the essential environmental variables that need to be in place to support Aegir/Drupal, etc. I think I could troubleshoot issues better if I had a complete list of necessary connections along with a description of their function. (Maybe I just need to reread the above links until it sinks in).

I am happy to say that I succeeded in installing Aegir. I am able to access it remotely (from my living room - the server is in basement) via NoMachine Nx Client on my MacBook Air. I am not using a headless server, but it is a proper server machine (Dell PowerEdge SC1420). I installed ubuntu 11.10 desktop 64 bit version. (I like GUI's).

At this point, I do not have a valid Drupal installation. Here is the exact error message in Aegir: "The directory /var/aegir/platforms/drupal-7.10 does not contain a valid Drupal installation". Googling this error says I need a make file. That diagnosis contradicts the tutorial, but it gives me something to go on. I did create the settings.php file. I also need to get the DNS set up so I can access the sites externally. Right now, I am mostly working with localhost.

When I get these things figured out, I am thinking of setting up an Amazon EC2 machine with CentOS and Aegir, etc. If anybody else in the Pittsburgh group wants to collaborate on the project, I am happy for the help.

Greg

Comments

There seem to be paths and

pearcec's picture

There seem to be paths and environmental variables that needed to be established to support Aegir.

I never needed to set anything. Everything is owned and managed by the aegir user.

As far as instructions, I following this page for ubuntu or debian.

http://community.aegirproject.org/installing/debian

I created a vagrant-aegir project that allows you to load up aegir in a VirtualBox VM fairly quickly if you want to experiment.

https://github.com/xforty/vagrant-aegir

I am planning on coming out in March for the meetup. If you guys have one. We can talk more about this afterwords if you want.

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Christian

Thanks

Gregsim's picture

Thanks Christian,

I bookmarked that link. Do you have a similar link for CentOS? I guess I have to work on that platform.

I have never tried VirtualBox - Maybe I will give that a try.

I think I will be out of town in March. I will try to catch up to you another time.

Greg

I don't. I believe it will

pearcec's picture

I don't. I believe it will be easier to learn ubuntu when working with AEgir, than learn how to make AEgir work on CentOS.

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Christian

Oh, Here is the exact error

pearcec's picture

Oh,

Here is the exact error message in Aegir: "The directory /var/aegir/platforms/drupal-7.10 does not contain a valid Drupal installation".

You can grab this as a starting point

$ git clone git://github.com/xforty/aegir-scripts.git
$ git clone git://github.com/xforty/xforty-drupal.git
$ cd xforty-drupal
$ git fetch origin
$ git branch --track 7.x origin/7.x
$ ../aegir-scripts/build.sh

You can checkout the build.sh file. This automatically loads platforms into aegir.

Alternatively

$ sudo su - aegir -s /bin/bash
$ cd platforms
$ drush make somemakefile.make

Then log into AEgir and import the platform.

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Christian