To install BigTree on a fresh Ubuntu 11.10 Linode instance, first setup a LAMP server by following Linode's LAMP Guide for Ubuntu 11.10.

After completing those steps and ensuring that you can connect to your web server, you will want to enable a few additional key components to your LAMP stack that BigTree needs to function:

  1. GD Library support for PHP
  2. cURL Library support for PHP
  3. mod_rewrite support

GD Library Support

To install GD support in PHP, you will want to run the following command from your root shell:

apt-get install php5-gd

cURL Library Support

To install cURL support in PHP, you will want to run the following command from your root shell:

apt-get install php5-curl

mod_rewrite Support

To enable mod_rewrite support for Apache, run the following command from your root shell:

a2enmod rewrite

Restarting Apache

After you have enabled mod_rewrite and installed php5-gd, restart Apache by running the following command from your root shell:

service apache2 restart

Installing BigTree

When you run the install.php script (by visiting http://www.yourdomain.com/install.php) you will see a warning about .htaccess Overrides not working.  This is a false negative and can be ignored. Continue your install normally and you should be all set.