Installing Drupal

So I am having a problem with an install/migration and I thought I would throw out a couple of questions for the gurus out there.

Background
I have a developed a site which has recently gone to production.
The site is as part of a multi-site installation.
I have decided to create a test box to do future development work on away from the live server to avoid clashing with users using the site.
I decided to do this by creating a virtual box server that mirrors as closely as possible the webserver hosting the site.

Hi i am installing drupal 7.28 version first time using Apache Web Server. But when i click on Database Setup then i got error something like this
" Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in C:\wamp\www\drupal_second\includes\database\database.inc on line 532"
Can anybody hlp me???

Hi,

Notice: Undefined variable: errno in drupal_http_request() (line 903 of /home/koudaiho/domains/koudaihome.com/public_html/includes/common.inc).
Notice: Undefined variable: errstr in drupal_http_request() (line 904 of /home/koudaiho/domains/koudaihome.com/public_html/includes/common.inc).

Error message after installation, ask how to deal with it?

I have installed Drupal 7 into Ubuntu 14.04

I got as far as installating apache2, Drupal, php (LAMP server), but then when entering http://localhost/drupal/install.php in a browser (firefox) all I get is 404 not found.

I tried just entering /var/www/drupal/install.php and then Firefox found the file but a dialog box popped up asking me what to do with the file, rather than allowing me to continue with the drupal installation. It suggested opening it with gedit.

Using drupal-7.28, things went well on the installation until I hit "Save and continue" from the page with "site information", "site maintenance account", and "server settings". It ran for a couple of minutes, and then stopped with a blank (white) page.

Where do installation problems get logged? The only newly-created files in the directory system were ./sites/default/files/.htaccess and ./sites/default/settings.php, and dmesg didn't report anything drupal-related.