Download Drupal

Before you run site-install command, you need to have a Drupal root installation. The quick way to do it is by using Drush:

$ drush dl drupal --package-handler=git_drupalorg

Use --package-handler option if you want Drush to also clone Drupal from Drupal.org.

Now you can rename the directory and then change to it.

$ mv drupal-7.8 d7dev

$ cd d7dev

Install Drupal 7

To see all the options for drush site-install and examples of usage, you can run it with the help option.

$ drush si --help

The full command can be something like this:

$ drush si standard --db-url=mysql://dbusername:dbpassword@localhost:port/dbname --db-su=name --db-su-pw=password --site-name="Your New Site"

To save time creating a new database and user, you can provide database root user credentials and Drush will do everything for you. The normal installation should be uneventful.

At this point, you need to add the new site to Apache vhosts and, if you don't use DNS, add the domain to your hosts file. Then you can login to the new site with the default Drush account name and password (admin:admin). You can actually change them during the installation process.