Installing Drupal on SourceForge

Basics: Understanding SourceForge Hosting

The project servers consider the "htdocs" folder in a different
"space" and hence you don't get to write to this folder, or it's
subfolders. However, in the project directory
(/home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME) you have a folder called "persistent".
This folder consists of writable space, that you can use to install
Drupal.

Insight: Understanding the "ln" command (Unix)

The "ln" command in Unix is used to create a symbolic link, which is
very close to what we call "shortcuts" in Windows. So the approach to
be followed here is to mirror all writable folders in the "htdocs"
folder into the "persistent" folder mentioned above.

You don't need to copy/recreate all folders, just the writable ones would do.

Final: The Process

Install Drupal on your SourceForge.net server space in the "htdocs"
folder (unzip all files there). Go to the folder "sites/default" and
open the file "default.settings.php" in a text editor. Now, copy the
contents of this opened file into another file, and name it
"settings.php". Save "settings.php" on your desktop.

Then, login to the project shell space using PuTTY (Follow this article for an excellent guide to configuring PuTTY for SourceForge.net). Execute the following instructions:

Now, upload the files "settings.php" to
"/home/groups/P/PR/PROJECTNAME/persistent/sites/default/". Once the
file is uploaded, execute the following instructions in PuTTY:

Now we proceed to creating the symbolic links. Execute the following instructions in PuTTY:

Closing

Your Drupal installation should work fine now. Remember, once you
are done with the installation, you should change the permissions of
all folders from 0777 to 0644.