ejhildreth'sBlog

Problem: Having a Drupal site automatically run the cron.php script and automatically backup a mySQL database at regular intervals on a Slicehost slice that is running Ubuntu.

Solution: Shell Scripting and Crontab

Lullabot developer Addi Berry put together some great screencasts on how to setup local Drupal test environments on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. Even though I have been running Kubuntu as my primary OS at home for over a month now, I hadn't actually set up my test server yet! To make sure I didn't make a misstep, I used Addi's video as the basis for the setup I did on my machine, but command lineified it a bit:

1. Open Konsole
2. Login as root
   • sudo -s
3. Make sure that the repository is up to date
   • apt-get update
4. Install Apache, MySQL, PHP5, the PHP5 GD Library, and the PHP5 MySQL configuration
   • apt-get install apache2 mysql-client mysql-server php5 php5-gd php5-mysql
5. Enable Clean URLs in the conf file
   • vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
   • press i to go into insert mode
   • Change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All in the <Directory /var/www/> section
   • press esc