Aegir interface allows hosting a website by defining a Drupal platform and creating multiple websites.

However, strong knowledge of Aegir needs to deploy a Drupal site.

At Bobcares, we often get requests to deploy the Aegir Drupal site as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s get into the details and see how our Support Engineers deploy the Aegir Drupal site.

How we install Aegir?

In Debian, our Support Engineers take the following steps to install Aegir.

Before going to the Aegir installation, we make sure that the system and applications are up-to-date. Then only the installation goes without any error.

So, we run the following command to make the system and applications are up-to-date.

aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade

1. To begin the Aegir installation, we add the project’s repository to the system with this command.

echo "deb http://debian.aegirproject.org stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/aegi

2. The Aegir package is self-signed. So, we add a key to the system as follows.

wget -q http://debian.aegirproject.org/key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
aptitude update

3. Next, we put the Fully Qualified Domain Name in /etc/hostname file

echo 'abc.example.com' > /etc/hostname

4. Also, we add the domain into the /etc/hosts file.

127.0.0.1 abc.example.com localhost
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx abc.example.com localhost

5. Then, we install Aegir by just running the following command.

aptitude install -y aegir2

6. Finally, we restart the server with the reboot command to make the changes take effect.

That’s it!

Now, we are going to tell you how our Support Engineers deploy a site!

Deploy a site!

At Bobcares, where we have over a decade of server management experience. In between, a lot of customers reaching us with a request to deploy a site.

Here we have the steps we took to launch a site.

1. Initially, we switch the user from root to aegir to create the makefile.

su aegir
cd /var/aegir/platforms
mkdir makefiles && cd makefiles
touch d7.make

2. Then, we write the following text into the d7.make file.

api = 2
core = 7.x
projects[] = drupal
projects[] = views
projects[] = pathauto
projects[] = wysiwyg
projects[] = token
projects[] = admin_menu

3. Again, we login to the Aegir and create a new Platform. For that we go to Content management->Create content->Platform.

4. Next, we fill the following fields.

drupal Path: /var/aegir/platforms/drupal.

Makefile: /var/aegir/platforms/makefiles/d7.make.

Drush make opton: select the radio button for Normal – Discards SCM files.

5. We click the save button.

Again, we create a site. For that, we simply submit a form in Content management->Create content->Site.

At last, we save the form.

That’s it. we created an Aegir site.

How we fixed the installation error.

Now, let’s see the major reasons for this Aegir related errors and how our Support Engineers fix the top errors.

Recently, one of our customers had an error while installing Aegir in a VM. The error said,

Do you really want to proceed with the install (y/n): y
PROVISION_SITE_INSTALLED [error]
The external command could not be executed due to an application [error]
error.
Drush command terminated abnormally due to an unrecoverable error. [error]
Error: Unsupported operand types in
/var/aegir/drush/includes/environment.inc, line 916

On checking, our Support Engineers found that the installation went wrong. So, we remove everything in /var/aegir and run the installation script again.

This solved the error.

[Need assistance to install and deploy Aegir site? We’ll help you.]

Conclusion

In short, the Aegir interface allows hosting a website by defining a Drupal platform and creating a website. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers deploy the Aegir Drupal site​ and fixed related errors.