Installing Joomla on Ubuntu

I’m redesigning my portfolio site and decided to use Joomla. I just installed it on my Ubuntu box. It wasn’t difficult, but it could have been easier.

First I downloaded Joomla from here. I had the option of download a nightly build, but I wanted the latest stable version.

I unzipped the files in a directory on my web server, opened my browser and navigated to where the joomla files were located to begin the installation.

Pre-installation Check

After choosing a language, I started the Pre-installation check. According to the installation, my configuration.php file was not writable.

PHP Version >= 4.3.10  	  Yes    
- Zlib Compression Support 	Yes  
- XML Support 	Yes  
- MySQL Support 	Yes  
MB Language is Default 	Yes  
MB String Overload Off 	Yes   
configuration.php Writable  -	No

I found the file configuration.php-dist in the main Joomla folder. I opened Terminal and navigated to that location to rename the file and change the file permissions:

mv configuration.php-dist configuration.php
chmod 777 configuration.php

I then clicked the Check Again button to re-run the Pre-installation check. All of the checks were now okay.

Database Configuration

I was then asked to enter my database information. I selected MySQL and entered localhost as the host. I then entered the username and password for my MySQL.

The database name must already exist, so I opened phpMyAdmin and created a database. I then came back and entered the database name.

Note: For information on installing PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu, see my post,
Setting up Ubuntu for Web Development

FTP Connection

Because I’m installing Joomla on my computer, I skipped this step.

Main Configuration

Now I entered my site name, my email address, and an admin password. I then clicked the ‘Install Sample Data’ button. I received an error:

Error: the XML response that was returned from the server is invalid.

After some searching, I found that I should not have created the configuration.php file. I don’t know why this is part of the installation pre-check if it can cause problems. Perhaps it only causes problems on Ubuntu/Linux.

So I renamed configuration.php file back to configuration.php-dist and was able to install the sample data.

But when I clicked the next button, I received two errors:

Notice: Undefined index: DBtype in /home/les/public_html/greenscorpion/installation/installer/models/model.php on line 764

Fatal error: Call to undefined method JException::getNullDate() in /home/les/public_html/greenscorpion/installation/installer/helper.php on line 290

After further reading, I found that I should have created an empty configuration.php file (should be empty and writable).

touch configuration.php
chmod 777 configuration.php

I then removed removed all the database tables that were created and started the installation again. This time, I was able to successfully install Joomla.

I then removed the installation directory (Joomla security feature) and proceeded to the administrative area.

While some of these problems may occur only on Ubuntu/Linux, I was able to install Joomla and I can now work on my first template.