Install Drupal 8 on Debian 10 (Buster) Linux

5 September 2024

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How can I install Drupal on Debian 10 (Buster) Linux system?. Most new guys getting into blogging and website design always look for that perfect content management framework, that’s easy to use and with plenty of features. Drupal is an free and open source content management platform created to facilitate building of amazing digital content.

Our guide has been written to help you guys install Drupal on Debian 10 (Buster). As of this article writing, Drupal 8 is the most recent version of Drupal. If you’re following along when there is a newer version of Drupal, you may need to make few adjustments for the guide to fit.

Install Drupal on Debian 10 – System requirements

So before you start the installation, what are the minimal requirements for the setup?.

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Database server – MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Percona, SQLite e.t.c.
Web Server – Nginx, Apache, Caddy e.t.c
PHP 7.x – >=7.2 recommended
At least 1GB disk space – less should work just fine

Our installation of Drupal 8 on Debian 10 will cover setup of the required software packages and dependencies. So if you’re new to Linux and web hosting, there is no need to worry.

Step 1: Update System

Update you system packages and packages index.

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo reboot

Step 2: Install Database server

Choose a database server you want to use, this can be MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL. One of the guides below should work for you.

Install PostgreSQL 11 / PostgreSQL 12 on Debian 10

In my Setup, I’ll use MariaDB database server. After database server installation, create database and user for Drupal 8 on Debian 10 (Buster) Linux.

$ mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE drupal CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;
CREATE USER drupal@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "StrongDBP@ss";
GRANT ALL ON drupal.* TO drupal@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "StrongDBP@ss";
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT

Test database connection as drupal user.

$ mysql -u drupal -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 49
Server version: 10.3.17-MariaDB-0+deb10u1 Debian 10

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| drupal             |
| information_schema |
+--------------------+
2 rows in set (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> QUIT
Bye

Step 3: Install PHP and required extensions

Our next installation is PHP and the extensions required to run Drupal on Debian 10. Install them by copying and running the following commands in your terminal.

sudo apt -y install php php-{cli,mysql,json,opcache,xml,mbstring,gd,curl}

Confirm your PHP version.

$ php -v
PHP 7.3.9-1~deb10u1 (cli) (built: Sep 18 2019 10:33:23) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.3.9, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.3.9-1~deb10u1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Step 4: Install Web Server

Apache web server is the mostly used web server for hosting Drupal websites. Since it is the easiest to configure, we’ll install it.

sudo apt -y install apache2

Enable rewrite module.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Confirm that the module is loaded.

$ sudo apache2ctl -M | grep rewrite
rewrite_module (shared)

Step 5: Download Drupal 8 on Debian 10 (Buster)

Download the latest release of Drupal from the Drupal releases page.

sudo apt -y install wget
DRUPAL_VERSION="8.9.20"
wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-${DRUPAL_VERSION}.tar.gz

Extract downloaded archive file.

tar xvf drupal-${DRUPAL_VERSION}.tar.gz

Move folder created from extraction to /var/www/html directory.

sudo mv drupal-${DRUPAL_VERSION} /var/www/html/drupal

Set directory permissions.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data  /var/www/html/drupal

Step 6: Install Drupal 8 on Debian 10 (Buster)

Create Apache Configuration file for Drupal 8 on Debian 10.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal.conf

A basic configuration looks similar to below.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/drupal
    <Directory /var/www/html/drupal/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/drupal_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/drupal_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Where:

example.com is your site domain
/var/www/html/drupal is the location of Drupal files
/var/log/apache2/ is the location of Apache log files

For https access, check Drupal SSL Configuration guide.

Enable your website.

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/drupal.conf

Restart apache2 service after making the change.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

The service should be restarted without any errors.

$ systemctl status apache2
● apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2019-10-07 17:59:42 UTC; 8s ago
     Docs: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/
  Process: 13403 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 13407 (apache2)
    Tasks: 6 (limit: 4719)
   Memory: 14.0M
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─13407 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─13408 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─13409 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─13410 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─13411 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─13412 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Oct 07 17:59:42 deb10 systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
Oct 07 17:59:42 deb10 systemd[1]: Started The Apache HTTP Server.

Open your browser and type the configured URL “http://example.com”, this is should be a record resolvable from DNS or in your /etc/hosts file.

Select your installation language and click “continue“.