Drupal Site install on localhost after downloading

Question

I've been working on a Drupal site and pretty much know how to install Drupal on the localhost. But when I downloaded the existing source code from the main site to my system ( using FTP ), I am unable to install the site inspite of changing the database url in the settings.php file.

Also, when I run localhost/site/install, I am able to complete the installation but when I view the existing site ( localhost/site ) I am not able to see any content.

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 and Druapl 6.x.

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

Update : Solved the above issue. Thanks to roberthernandez. But the site which I downloaded is not installed as it should be. All the modules and themes in sites/all are available but, nothing is configured as it should be.

Update 2 : I asked a new question on the above issue. Please follow the link

Answer 1

Sounds like the white screen of death. To figure out the root of the problem, add the following three lines to the TOP of your index.php file (e.g. starting on line 2) to force echo of errors to the screen:

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', TRUE);
ini_set('display_startup_errors', TRUE);

I'm going out on a limb and betting it's one of three things:

1. Your resources (memory, execution time, etc.) are too low.
2. You're missing mod_rewrite or another essential Drupal dependency module.
3. The permissions on your remote server are wrong. If you're not running SuExec, the files probably need to be owned by www-data:www-data. If you are, they will be owned by your ftp/shell user.

FYI - To see what modules are installed on your remote server, execute a phpinfo() on a new php page. You can copy the follwing to phpinfo.php and upload it to your webserver.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>