Acquia Drupal Stack - Installation & Upgrade

Need technical support for the stack installer? See the Acquia Drupal Stack - FAQ for details.

Stack and site installation overview

  • Install the Acquia Drupal Stack and first local website
  • If installation fails
  • Launch the stack control panel
  • Uninstall the Acquia Drupal stack

Install the Acquia Drupal Stack and first local website

  1. Download the Acquia Drupal Stack installer package for your operating system from http://acquia.com/downloads to your local computer.
    • For Windows, this will be a file called something like acquia-drupal-win-1.x-x.x.exe.
    • For Mac OS X, this will be a disk image file called something like acquia-drupal-osx-1.x-x.x.dmg
  2. Run the installer
    • Windows - Double click the installer .exe file to begin installing the Acquia Drupal Stack.
    • Mac OS X - Double click the .dmg file to mount it. Begin installing the Acquia Drupal Stack by double clicking the Acquia Drupal Stack Installer file contained in the .dmg (Do not drag it into the applications directory). Depending on your security settings, you might need enter your administrative password to permit the installation.

    Stack installer splash panel

  3. Welcome to Acquia Drupal screen - Read the installer's welcome message. Click "Next" to continue.
  4. Select installer components Windows only. The XMailer component allows sites hosted in the Acquia Drupal stack to send e-mail. Mac OS X has this functionality built in.
  5. Overview screen - This page shows the names and versions of the software about to be installed. Click "Next" to continue.
  6. License Agreement screen - Read the license agreement. To accept the term of the license , click the "Yes" radio button. Click "Next" to continue.
  7. Choose Installation Location screen - You can define alternate installation locations for the Acquia Drupal Stack on this screen. The standard locations are appropriate for most users' systems.

    • Windows

      • Acquia Drupal Stack: C:\Program Files\acquia-drupal
      • Site: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Sites\acquia-drupal

    • Mac OS X

      • Acquia Drupal Stack: /Applications/acquia-drupal
      • Site: /Users/[username]/Sites/acquia-drupal

    Click "Next" to continue.

  8. Port Settings screen - You can define alternate ports to access the Apache web server and MySQL database server on this screen if the standard ports conflict with other applications on your system. Click "Next" to continue.
  9. Drupal Settings screen
    • Username and password - These are the login credentials for Drupal User 1 on your new locally hosted website.
    • E-mail- Enter a working e-mail address - if your local site has access to the internet, you will be able to reset your password via this address.
    • Keep this information for future reference - You need it to access and make changes to your website.

    Click "Next" to continue.

  10. Review Your Information screen - Check that all settings are correct and click "Next" to continue.
  11. Ready to Install screen - Click "Next" to install the Acquia Drupal Stack using your settings. The installation takes a few minutes to complete.

    Windows Firewall

    Near the end of the Windows installation, you may see a Windows security alert asking you if you want to keep blocking the Apache HTTP server's connections from the Internet or a network. Click "Unblock" if you want full functionality, including access your Drupal web site from outside your computer. Alternatively, block it if required by your security needs and you do not need to access your web site from outside your computer.

  12. Congratulations, you're done! screen - If the checkbox is checked, you can now launch the Acquia Drupal Control Panel application by clicking "Finish".

If installation fails

All registered users of acquia.com are encouraged to participate in the installer support forums.

  • Check the Windows, Mac or Windows Web Platform Installer forums to see if other users are experiencing similar problems to yours.
  • When making a new forum post, include if present, installer.log and piscript.log from your installation directory. These files help in the troubleshooting process.
  • Stack installer support questions may also be sent to installer-support@acquia.com. Be sure to attach the aforementioned log files.

Launch the stack control panel

  • Windows - Select the Windows Start > All Programs > Acquia Drupal Stack menu item.
  • Mac OS X - Double click the control panel application: /Applications/Acquia Drupal/AcquiaDrupalControlPanel.app

DAMP stack control panel

Install multiple, local Drupal sites

The Acquia Drupal Stack Installer supports multiple sites and has a simple wizard-type functionality for creating them quickly and easily. See the Adding additional local sites section of this documentation.

Uninstall the Acquia Drupal Stack

Windows

  • Shut down the Acquia Drupal stack with the "Stop" button. Close the stack control panel application.
  • Select the uninstall option from the start menu at Start > All Programs > Acquia Drupal Stack > Uninstall Acquia Drupal Stack
  • Follow the instructions to uninstall the stack. Uninstallation also removes all of the components installed by the stack installer:
    • Acquia Drupal installation and directories
    • MySQL database
    • DAMP technology stack

Mac OS X

  • Shut down the Acquia Drupal stack with the "Stop" button. Close the stack control panel application.
  • Double click "uninstall.app" in the directory: /Applications/Acquia Drupal
  • Follow the instructions to uninstall the stack. Uninstallation also removes all of the components installed by the stack installer:
    • Acquia Drupal installation and directories
    • MySQL database
    • DAMP technology stack

Upgrade to the latest version of the DAMP stack

Upgrading the Acquia Drupal DAMP stack on Windows or Mac OS X:

  • Upgrades the stack's own components to their latest versions (apache, php, apache, control panel, etc.)
  • Upgrades your local Acquia Drupal sites created using the control-panel site-creation functionality to the latest version of Acquia Drupal, including the Acquia Drupal suite of modules.
  • Does not upgrade any other modules you have installed on your local Acquia Drupal sites in the DAMP stack.
  • Does not change or upgrade other local sites you have imported into or built in the DAMP stack running other versions or distributions of Drupal - or their modules (Drupal 5, 6 or 7 from drupal.org, Pressflow, Open Atrium, etc.).
  • All site databases and configuration data are preserved (paths, ports numbers, etc.) for all sites.

Upgrade the DAMP stack and its components

  1. Download latest stack installer from http://acquia.com/downloads
  2. Stop and quit the DAMP stack control panel
  3. Start the new version of the stack installer
    • Mac OS X: double-click the .dmg file
    • Windows: double-click the .exe file - On some Vista and Windows 7 systems, the stack will only run if you right-click the .exe and select "run as admin".
  4. Enter your system/administrator password if/when prompted.
  5. Install the latest version of the DAMP stack - Click through the installation panels, agree to the license agreement, etc.
  6. If your site is installed in a non-standard directory, you must specify its path on the "Choose install locations" panel - you will see an error message and be unable to continue the upgrade if the site location is not correct. The default installation directory in current versions of the DAMP stack is:
    • Windows - C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Sites\acquia-drupal
    • Mac OS X - /Users/[username]/Sites/acquia-drupal
    • This used to be ...\Sites\acquia-drupal-site (or .../Sites/acquia-drupal-site) in older versions.
  7. Re-enter your system/administrator password, if prompted, to re-launch the DAMP stack once the upgrade is complete.

Upgrade notes:

If there are problems following the upgrade or if you have modified any code in Acquia Drupal or its modules, the upgrade functionality creates backups of your code before overwriting old code with new:

  • When upgrading from version 1.2.24 or earlier of the DAMP stack, any site created using the control-panel site-creation functionality is completely backed up into the [docroot]/#oldsite directory and then overwritten with the new files.
  • Version 1.2.25 and later of the DAMP stack creates a .hashlist file in the site docroot. This makes it possible to detect which files, if any, have been modified. On update, all unmodified files are simply overwritten, while any modified files are copied to corresponding [filename].bak files in the same folder and then overwritten.

Ubuntu/Debian users - Since the Acquia Drupal .deb package leverages the AMP components present on your system, updates to its components are part of your normal system maintenance.

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