Testing Drupal 7 on a virtual appliance with MySQL 5.1 and the InnoDB plugin

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Saturday, September 18. 2010

Testing Drupal 7 on a virtual appliance with MySQL 5.1 and the InnoDB plugin

Drupal logoThe Drupal community just recently released another alpha test release of their upcoming Drupal 7 version, to shake out the remaining bugs and to encourage more users to test it.

If you would like to give it a try, but you don't have a free server handy, how about using a virtual machine instead? Using the fabolous SuSE Studio, I've created an appliance based on openSUSE 11.3, Drupal 7.0-alpha7 and MySQL 5.1 with the InnoDB plugin and strict mode enabled (both for the SQL mode and InnoDB mode. Using this configuration helps to ensure that Drupal works well with the current version of MySQL/InnoDB and does not use any "questionable" SQL statements. This might be especially interesting for additional modules - Drupal core did not reveal any problems using strict mode so far.

You can download disk images for VMware/Virtualbox/KVM or XEN from the SUSE Gallery (free login required). Just boot the appliance in your virtualization application of choice, choose your keyboard layout and step through the network configuration and Time Zone selection. Once the appliance has booted up and the login: prompt appeared, point your web browser to the appliance's IP address to start the Drupal installation/configuration. MySQL has been pre-configured, there is an empty database named "drupal" and a user "drupal" with the same password to access it. You just need to enter this information in the Drupal Database configuration dialogue during the installation. Anything else can be configured to your liking.

After you have finished the installation, you can toy around with a fresh Drupal 7 installation! Install additional modules, change the themes, add content. And make sure to report all bugs that you run into while doing so! Have fun.

Posted by Lenz Grimmer in Linux, MySQL, OSS at 00:37 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)
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Thanks, Lenz! Although it's not surprising that Drupal core is running fine in Strict mode, since we defaulted to that 2 years ago and are actively forcing strict mode in the connection. <img src="/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Any invalid queries should die hard and fast. What is most tricky on MySQL at this point is character encoding and collation, which is iffy in some languages. You can see a full list of the remaining MySQL issues <a href="http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?status%5B%5D=Open&version%5B%5D=7.x&component%5B%5D=mysql+database">here</a>. Help is always needed!
#1 Larry Garfield (Homepage) on 2010-09-18 07:20 (Reply)
Hi Larry, thanks for your comments! I'm glad to hear that strict mode is being enforced already! Maybe this appliance will help to test other Addon-modules for compliance as well. Also thanks for the pointer, I'll ask our folks to take a look at these.
#1.1 Lenz Grimmer on 2010-09-20 12:53 (Reply)
Hi Lenz, thanks for providing this image! I hope you'll be able to continue to provide images, when new versions are released.
#2 Richard on 2010-09-19 11:05 (Reply)
Richard, yes - I'll try to keep this appliance updated with following official Drupal 7 releases.
#2.1 Lenz Grimmer on 2010-09-20 12:54 (Reply)
Thanks for this info. Perhaps you or another reader here would be a good person to answer some of the following: (1) I'm considering Drupal for transforming what is currently a static HTML site (the only web technology I know). I've had a look through much of the Drupal introductory info online which suggests it is easy to use, but is a knowledge of either Javascript or databases, or both, necessary for a beginner to get started on it quickly? (2) As the previous poster mentions, are you intending to provide updates to this appliance when the beta / final versions arrive? (3) I know nothing about servers, but had assumed I'd just install Drupal direct on my openSUSE 11.3 installation. I want to test on my local machine and only pay for hosting if/when I have the site nearing completion. I assume that your appliance's principal benefits are that it provides a ready-to-install package with some pre-configuration, but is installing it as a virtual appliance preferable for other reasons?
#3 gumb on 2010-09-19 15:15 (Reply)
Hi Gumb, there is no need to know any HTML or Javascript to get started with Drupal. Yes, the appliance will be kept up to date with future Drupal 7 releases. My motiviation for this virtual appliance was to take away the burden of installing and configuring the LAMP stack required to run Drupal. Of course you are free to take your customized installation out of this appliance and install it at a hosting provided at any time!
#3.1 Lenz Grimmer on 2010-09-20 12:57 (Reply)
OK thanks. I became interested in Drupal around the start of the year when I saw notices about the upcoming version 7, but it's taken longer to materialize than I imagined. I have a now-or-never window of opportunity to get this site renewed and can't wait any longer for the final release, so hopefully this appliance will be a good way to get familiar with the basics before it arrives, without risking it messing up my whole machine.
#3.1.1 gumb on 2010-09-20 18:57 (Reply)
Lenz - Congrats, you seem to be on the only one I've found with a virtual appliance ISO for Drupal 7. I've loaded it into Virtualbox on my XP laptop. However, after installing both the GUI and non-GUI versions, the installations seem to be lost after I power down the VM. No boot media is found upon the restart of the VM in either case. After several installs of each Drupal appliance (GUI and non), I keep encountering this error. I defined my Virtualbox VM as opensuse. A Drupal 6 virtual appliance on Ubuntu under Virtualbox seems to work OK. Curious if you encountered this similar experience? Again, thanks for the nice work on the appliance.
#4 Steve on 2011-01-13 04:12 (Reply)
Hi Steve, thanks for your comment. Hmm, this is truly odd. I will try to reproduce this behaviour on my local virtualbox instance. Which installation image did you choose? Does this also happen when you use the dedicated virtual disk images?
#4.1 Lenz Grimmer (Homepage) on 2011-01-13 13:11 (Reply)

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