Drupal multi-site to single-site go-live

I have a colleague asking me to provide a single tarball containing an entire Drupal site, which they can drop on their server with no configuration beyond connecting the database.

To my knowledge this is not possible.

To further complicate the issue, the site is currently developed as a multi-site install and the colleague needs it provided as a single-site install. This is a conversion I've done countless times, but I've always completed the process on the destinati开发者_C百科on environment, because Drupal multi-sites need a proper domain pointed at them to function. There's no way for me to confirm that the site will work at the new location without actually testing it on that environment first, so I don't think I can fulfill this request.

Am I missing something? Is this in fact possible to achieve?

I don't see why this isn't possible.

In regards to the drop in install, as long as you include the settings.php file and a copy of the DB that they import, that is all they should need as long as their webserver is configured properly (such as pretty URLs and the like). Certainly their are a few considerations to take when doing this, you need to make sure the DB connection path is done in relation to localhost (or however they have it) and that when you tarball it together, that you have the right permissions set up for the destination machine, otherwise though, moving a drupal install is really not that difficult and can be just that simple.

Depending upon how 'drop in' they want it, you could write a little script to automate and verify the install. Have the script import a copy of the DB, redo the permissions and owner of the files on destination host, and reload apache.

As far as the multi-site to single site is concerned, I would just do the conversion in a sandbox and set up the domain you need in /etc/hosts (as shown here). This will simulate the destination domain well enough that you can make sure the install is working before sending it off.

Hope that helps.