After years wasting time on drupal/sql backups, drupal restores, drupal updates etc, I started using the powerful drush command.

If you don’t know it “drush” is simply a (dru)pal (sh)ell written in PHP. It has been developed by core drupal developers to assist sysadmin and developers in everyday site management.

First, to install drush in a typical Debian/Ubuntu server, you need to install the PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) which hosts drush. Simply type:
apt-get install php-pear

Then to install drush, use the following two commands:

pear channel-discover pear.drush.org
pear install drush/drush

Now you should be okay. Just check with

which drush

You should see something like

/usr/bin/drush

Now, you can start using drush.

The drush command needs some “Drupal root”  directory to work with. That is the directory on a Drupal installation. If you don’t specify it, it assumes your Drupal root directory is the current one. For instance, if you have a site installed at /var/www/supersyntages.gr you can check its status with the command:

drush -r /var/www/supersyntages.gr status

or with the combination

cd  /var/www/supersyntages.gr
drush status

In both cases, you’ll get something like

Drupal version                  :  6.29
Site URI                        :  http://default
Database driver                 :  mysql
Database hostname               :  localhost
Database username               :  cthulu
Database name                   :  bloodyrecipes
Database                        :  Connected
Drupal bootstrap                :  Successful
Drupal user                     :  Ανώνυμος
Default theme                   :  myawesomethme
Administration theme            :  0
PHP configuration               :  /etc/php5/cli/php.ini
Drush version                   :  5.9
Drush configuration             :
Drupal root                     :  /var/www/supersyntages.gr
Site path                       :  sites/default
File directory path             :  sites/default/files
Temporary file directory path   :  /tmp

From now on, I assume we are using the current directory as our  Drupal root dir.

So, to backup all your Drupal files plus the MySQL database to a single file, you only need
drush ard

You will get a single backup tarball in /root/drush-backups/archive-dump/currentdate

If you have already backed up a drupal installation, you can restore it with:
drush arr

To see if anything’s wrong with your installation — essentially show what you would normally see in the  status admin page:
drush rq

or more essentially, make it show only the red lines from the status admin page:
drush rq --severity=2

You will get a list with all things you would normally see in /admin/settings/status plus a list with all modules which need update.

To update drupal core and modules (and apply dateabase update) in the current installation, you just type:
drush up

First, drush will tell you what exactly it will do, and you will be prompted to continue. If you press Y, you will have an updated Drupal installation in less than 5 minutes.

Then check your Drupal installation status again:
drush rq

or you can have a birds-eye view of the current Drupal installation, using
drush st

To clear all caches, without a single click:
drush cc all

Of course there are dozens of more interesting drush commands.

For instance, to download and install some a PDF library, i.e. tcpdf
drush pdfdl tcpdf

To see all installed modules and thems:
drush pm-list

or just modules
drush pm-list --type=module

or just non-core modules
drush pm-list --type=module --no-core

To refresh the module update status:
drush rf

To uninstall a module/theme, i.e. Scheduler, you use:
drush pm-uninstall scheduler

To print release information for a given module/theme:
drush rl scheduler

To download some other module/theme from drupal.org, i.e. mytinytodo and zen theme:
drush dl mytinytodo zen

or make it prompt you for the version you want to download:
drush dl zen --select

If you have a Drupal installation you want to use as a template for future projects, just generate a “makefile” from it:
drush  make-generate supersyntages.make

When you need to setup a new Drupal installation from your supersyntages.make makefile, use the following command to set up the new site inside the “newsitedir” folder:
drush make supersyntages.make newsitedir

With drush creating and deleting a user could not be simpler:
drush ucrt dimitris
drush ucan dimitris

To change the password for a user, you use:
drush upwd dimitris

If you have search index issues, you can see how many search items remain unindexed, with:
drush search-status

To force Drupal to index any remaining search items:
drush search-index

To see a list of site variables:
drush vget

To run cron in all active modules:
drush core-cron

To disable all non-core modules (you’ ll need it when you upgrade to a major version of Drupal):
drush pm-disable `drush pm-list --no-core --type=module --pipe`

And, finally, to see the last 20 watchdog messages:
drush ws 20
or you can search for cron messages only:
drush watchdog-show "cron"

For drush commands or info about each one of them, just use the drush command alone or drush help topic where “topic” is some command, i.e. drush help ws