Problem installing drupal package

You need to include the "current directory" in php's include_path
ie: set

include_path = ".";

in php.ini

Drupal out-of-the-box does not require PEAR, so you don't need that installed unless you use any modules that specifically require it.

It appears to me that there is an issue with Drupal, its installation instructions, and some php distributions. In my case they are the php4 and php5 rpm packages that are part of SuSE Linux 10.0 (see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=129682 for SuSE's side of this issue). My symptoms were that after an out of the box installation of Drupal, its initial main page (where the first account is supposed to be created) had several php error messages when using php4, and was completely blank under php5.

Since the issue of include_path may be simply a matter of differing philosophies, I suggest that the Drupal installation instructions include verbiage that if the user experiences either of the above two situations upon installation, they should either add to the proper php.ini file (in SuSE Linux 10.0, this is /etc/php.ini (php4) or /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini) ".:" to the front of the existing include_path directive, or add to /includes/bootstrap.inc the line "ini_set("include_path",".");" around line 639 of that file, before the "unset($conf);" line and the subsequent four "include_once..." directives. Either one works (for me) to get Drupal to display its main page.

Of course, if there are no other implications, just add the "ini_set..." line to bootstrap.inc and be done with it. I am not a php programmer and cannot speak about possible implications of this.

Thanks for your time and efforts on a great program.