Installing XAMPP and Joomla on Xubuntu 11.10

I'm evaluating CiviCRM, a contact relationship manager which is installed as a module in either Joomla or Drupal. In my last post, I installed CiviCRM with Joomla (Installing XAMPP and Joomla on Xubuntu 11.10). Today, I'll be installing CiviCRM with Drupal.

I'm starting with a custom install of XAMPP. I installed the the latest version from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html. Download the tarball, and then open a console shell:

sudo tar xvfz ~/Downloads/xampp-linux-1.7.7.tar.gz -C /opt

That's it. I also made the following changes to the /opt/lampp/etc/php.ini file:

display_errors = Offdisplay_startup_errors = Offoutput_buffering = Off

These 'production' settings will prevent warning messages from displaying all over your web pages. Now start XAMPP, and test your installation by pointing your browser to localhost. 

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

Visit www.drupal.org, and download the latest version of Drupal. I created two sites - a reference site named drupal_demo, and a working site named drupall_crm

sudo mkdir /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_demo
sudo unzip ~/Downloads/drupal-7.10.zip -d opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_demo
sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_demo
sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_demo 

Browse to localhost/drupal_demo, and follow the installation instructions, using database name 'drupal_demo'.

sudo mkdir /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_crm
sudo unzip ~/Downloads/drupal-7.10.zip -d /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_crm
sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_crm
sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal_crm

Again, browse to localhost/drupal_crm, and follow the installation instructions. For database name, I used 'drupal_crm'.

To install CiviCRM, I first copy the install package to the web root:

sudo cp ~/Downloads/civicrm-4.0.8-drupal.tar.gz /opt/lampp/htdocs

Then I enter my drupal_crm site as administrator, and select Modules --> Install new module, and I install if from my own local web server, entering: http://localhost/civicrm-4.0.8-drupal.tar.gz

This just seems to unpack the files, and does not automatically start the CiviCRM install process, as Joomla did. To start the install, point the browser to http://localhost/drupal_crm/sites/all/modules/civicrm/install/index.php

Now I have CiviCRM installed in both Joomla and Drupal. As I move forward evaluating CiviCRM, I'll also be comparing Joomla vs. Drupal as my choice of infrastructure.