This is the process that I use to install a create a Plone installation on an Ubuntu system. Personally I like to build my pythons from source rather than use the system version as it gives me more flexibility for upgrading and testing versions. These instructions should also work with the latest Debian release. While there are simpler ways to get a running Plone installation, such as the universal installer available on plone.org, I think this approach provides the most professional entry-level instance making it easier to administrate your instance and extend your buildout over time.
apt-get update apt-get install gcc g++ make apt-get install libreadline5 libreadline5-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev libssl0.9.8 \ libssl-dev build-essential subversion cron groff-base wget lynx apache2 apt-get install postfix # optional - I like emacs apt-get install emacs # optional - for deep search of PDFs and Office documents apt-get install wv xpdf-utils # optional - if you plan to use Varnish apt-get install pkg-config libpcre3 libpcre3-dev # If you're going to run Diazo/XDV you'll need these apt-get install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev a2enmod rewrite proxy proxy_http /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
useradd -d /home/zope -m zope passwd zope
chsh -s /bin/bash zope
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
su - zope
mkdir pythons downloads
cd ~/downloads
wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/Python-2.6.6.tgz
tar xzf Python-2.6.6.tgz
cd Python-2.6.6
./configure --prefix=/home/zope/pythons/python-2.6.6
make
make altinstall
ln -s /home/zope/pythons/python-2.6.6/bin/python2.6 /home/zope/pythons/python-2.6.6/bin/python
emacs ~/.profile
export PATH=/home/zope/pythons/python-2.6.6/bin:$PATH
exit su - zope
python # you should see the following Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Dec 14 2010, 20:24:02) [GCC 4.4.3] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
cd ~/downloads wget http://effbot.org/media/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz tar xfz Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz cd Imaging-1.1.6 python setup.py build python setup.py install
cd ~/downloads wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py python ez_setup.py
paster create -t plone4_buildout # answer the questions in the interactive prompt. If you're new to Plone, you can go with the defaults
# first cd into the buildout directory you just created python bootstrap.py bin/buildout -vvvvvvvv
# to start in foreground mode (useful for development) bin/instance fg # note when you're done press Ctl-C to stop the instance # to start the instance to run detached from the shell # (this allows you to close your terminal window and keep Plone running) bin/instance start