(i'm trying to make some documentation of using drush & aegir, please give me some feedback)
Start with watching the screencasts:
Installing Aegir from scratch & Aegir in action
Migrating sites to aegir
- aegir doesn't import sites/default
- mv sites/default sites/actualdomain.com
- leave a symlink to sites/default in place
- (you need to do this, because aegir has no way of knowing what the site is if it's in default)
- migrate the database (dump file -> run drush sql conf for the mysql configuration settings )
Modules
- installing modules can be done by hand or using drush
- use drush dl modulename in the drupal root directory and it will install it in sites/all/modules (create directory first)
- when you change the contents of the platform (add or remove modules and themes), just create a verify task for the platform which will pick up new modules / install profiles / languages
Modules in sites/mydomain.com/modules
- switch to the multi-site directory (sites/mydomain.com/)
- run drush dl modulename
Upgrading modules using Aegir
- in the aegir model, create a new platform with the latest code / add the platform node
- migrate the site to the new platform
(this allows safe rollbacks and stronger error recovery / dependency checking)
Updating modules inline (using drush)
- switch to the multi-site directory and run
- drush enable update
- drush update
Using Subversion to update modules
- check in drupal and a set of modules
- if you want to add new modules or update old ones, add them to the repository and make a new branch
- check out and add as a new platform and move all the old sites over
How to create installation profiles