Drupal

Drupal is an open-source content management system for content-heavy websites and applications. Its entity model, taxonomy, and module ecosystem let teams build custom content types, editorial workflows, and multilingual sites without writing the underlying code themselves.

Software included

Component	Version
Drupal	11.4.1
PHP	8.3
Apache	Latest
MariaDB	Latest
Drush	13
Ubuntu	24.04 LTS

Drupal runs on a native LAMP stack (Apache, MariaDB, PHP). The site is pre-installed with the Standard profile, so it is ready to use as soon as the VM boots.

Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
vCPU	2	4
RAM	2 GB	4 GB
Storage	20 GB	40 GB

Storage needs grow with media uploads and the number of installed modules.

Getting started

1. Connect to your VM

ssh ubuntu@<your-vm-ip>

2. Wait for first-boot configuration

On the first boot, a setup script creates the database, installs the Drupal site with Drush, and generates the admin and database passwords. This takes 1-2 minutes. Track progress:

journalctl -u drupal-first-boot.service -f

The login message (MOTD) confirms when Drupal is ready.

3. Retrieve the admin credentials

The admin password, along with the database credentials, is written to a root-only file:

sudo cat /root/.credentials/drupal.txt

Open the site in a browser:

http://<your-vm-ip>/

http://<your-vm-ip>/user/login

Field	Value
Username	`admin`
Password	From `/root/.credentials/drupal.txt`

Managing Drupal

Drupal is served by Apache with MariaDB, both managed by systemd.

# Service status
systemctl status apache2
systemctl status mariadb

# Restart the web server
sudo systemctl restart apache2

# Run Drush commands from the project root
cd /var/www/drupal && vendor/bin/drush status
cd /var/www/drupal && vendor/bin/drush cache:rebuild

Path	Purpose
`/var/www/drupal`	Project root
`/var/www/drupal/web`	Web docroot
`/var/www/drupal/web/sites/default/settings.php`	Site configuration
`/var/www/drupal/web/sites/default/files`	Uploaded files and media

Security

Port 80 is open on the VM’s network interface. UFW is enabled and allows SSH (port 22) and HTTP (port 80). The image serves plain HTTP only.

For production use, put the instance behind a reverse proxy with TLS (for example Nginx or Caddy) so the site is served over HTTPS, and update trusted_host_patterns accordingly.