Issues migrating site back to local server

Question

I have issues migrating my Drupal 7.14 site from Live Server back to local. This might be more sql related, but not sure at this point where the error comes from. Might be specifically Acquia related.

The site is now perfectly running on the live server. I made some new nodes etc and now I wish to work more on the structure. I was trying to migrate it back to my local Acquia server by doing the following:

• creating local safety copy of the current local site (also to preserve the local settings.php file)
• creating safety copy of local sql db
• exporting live sql db, then dropping tables of local db and replacing them with the live one
• replacing local site files with the ones downloaded from live
• updating settings.php from the original local safety copy

What happens is:

• when trying to access local address (mysite:8082) I get 'could not find' error message. this comes from google, so the local drupal site doesn't even get recognized in any way
• i am still able to set up new Drupal installations via Acquia and they run perfectly
• if I replace the sql db of a newly installed site with the one I got from the live site I get the same error
• i can't seem to get the local site running even if I use the safety copy sql + safety copy of the local site
• if I go to a definite url such as 'mysite:8082/index' I get the following: "The requested URL /index was not found on this server."

Where should I look next? What could be in the sql that makes the whole server unrecognisable?Any completely different ways to do this? Thanks!

Answer 1

As the OP noted in a comment, there is documentation available from Aquia that explains how to do this. For a better formatted answer please follow the above link.

IMPORTING AN EXISTING SITE OR CODEBASE INTO ACQUIA DEV DESKTOP

To run an existing site or new Drupal distribution on your local computer, complete the following steps:

1. Ensure that your local computer contains a copy of your site's Drupal files and directories (codebase).

   • Save your site's codebase in a place where you can find it and where you won't delete or move it unintentionally. This protects your site from accidental removal, and helps when you need to modify site content or change the installed modules.

   • You cannot import zipped or compressed codebases into Dev Desktop. Ensure that your site's code is uncompressed.

   • For more information about backing up the Drupal file system, see Drupal file system backup.

   Note: Dev Desktop does not move or copy your site's code into the Dev Desktop installation directory. Instead, Dev Desktop records where the Drupal directories are stored on your local computer.

2. Open the Acquia Dev Desktop Control Panel, click Settings, and then select the Sites tab.

3. Click Import. The Import site window opens.

4. In the Codebase section, click Browse to select the source code directory (also known as [docroot]) of your Drupal installation. This directory contains Drupal's files and directories, including index.php, the /includes directory, and the /modules directory.

5. After you select the your codebase, in the Subsite drop-down menu, select the site to import from the source code directory. For single-site codebases or Drupal distributions, select default. If you're importing a codebase that contains multiple subsites, select the subsite you want to import from the Subsites drop-down menu.

   Note: Dev Desktop can only import one site at a time.

6. Configure the database settings for the site import process. The settings are based on the type of site or codebase you're importing into Dev Desktop.

7. In the Database name field, enter a name for the database. If you're restoring a backed up database, the name does not have to match the backed up database's previous name.

8. Under Domain, enter the elements (server, subdomain, and URL path) of the local URL you want to use for your site. For example, if you want to reach your site locally at http://my.example:8082/mysite, enter my for the Subdomain, example for the Server, and mysite for the URL path. The subdomain and URL path are optional.

9. Click Import.

   Acquia Dev Desktop records the location of your site's Drupal codebase, creates its new database (if selected), and adds the site to the list of sites in the Sites tab.