I wanted to evaluate Drupal 6.13 and thought I would mimick the web host’s config as close as possible. Here is a list of the fun I went through =:)

  1. I downloaded a VMServer appliance from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/:

  • “CentOS 5.3, server install. new! Long Term Support (until 2014!) permalink“
    ..and downloaded Drupal 6.13 to it

  • http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.13.tar.gz
    To make things easier, I decided to install the latest version of phpMyAdmin (3.2.0.1)

  • phpMyAdmin-3.2.0.1-english.tar.gz
    ..but found it would not run on the version of PHP that CentOS supported – Version 5.1.6. When I tried to do a YUM updated, it said I was on the latest version.. but phpMyAdmin said I needed a newer version (5.2.0) I backed down to phpMyAdmin version 2.11.9.5 and finally got it installed

  • phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.5-english.tar.gz So.. I begin the Drupal install and find folder permission issues with the install. Resolution: I was missing the top folder permission – sites.. once I made Apache owner of it, I could proceed.

On to the next screen.. which complained about a missing PHP extension – mbstring

Resolution: YUM to the rescue again:

>yum install php-mbstring
>service httpd restart

The install proceeded marvelously after that =:)