HOW TO INSTALL RT ON UBUNTU

Do you have a company/organization with many requests/inquiries and want to know:

     

Who wants what?

Who's going to work on this?

When did they ask, when was it done?

How much time did it take (billing, hours)?

What's left to do?

Request Tracker, an  open source ticketing system  will help you to manage it.

HOW TO INSTALL RT ON UBUNTU:

Since covering an install of Request Tracker 4 on Debian (Part 1/2, 2/2), my most common request has been a guide for Ubuntu. A lot of the material is the same, since Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian.

This guide assumes you are installing a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server onto a new computer or virtual machine. I have chosen the latest LTS release as it will be supported for far longer than regular releases. These instruction should also work on any version of Ubuntu released after 11.10 (minor changes may be required).

Feel free to change settings to suit your environment and use your favorite text editor (vi, emacs, butterflies etc) instead of nano.

I have chosen PostgreSQL over MySQL as it makes enabling fast full-text searching in RT4 much easier, but feel free to use MySQL instead.

Requirements

You will need to have a few basic things before proceeding:

• Spare server (or VM) with 1GB+ RAM and at least 9GB HDD (more is better)
• Email account for RT (I have used rt@example.com)
• Email account for RT comments (I used rt-comments@example.com)
• A basic understanding of Linux, networking etc

Ubuntu Install

Install Ubuntu using the Server 12.04 LTS .ISO image (64-bit recommended)

• Select Language (English)
• Install Ubuntu Server
• Select Language (English)
• Select your location
• Detect keyboard layout (No)
• Select Keyboard Layout
• Edit the Hostname (rt)
• Create your non-root account
• Encrypt your home directory
• Configure the clock
• Partition Disks
• Wait while the base system installs (make a coffee..)
• Configure proxy if required
• Wait while the installer runs a few tasks
• Configuring tasksel (Install security updates automatically)
• Software selection (OpenSSH Server – we will add the rest later)
• Wait while the installer downloads and installs packages
• Install the GRUB boot loader
• Finish install, computer reboots, remove CD

Network Setup

Configure a Static IP address and DNS resolution

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Change the following two lines from:

allow-hotplug eth0
 iface eth0 inet dhcp

To suit your environment:

auto eth0
 iface eth0 inet static
 address 192.168.1.100
 broadcast 192.168.1.255
 gateway 192.168.1.1
 dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1

Restart networking and test:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
ping google.com

Not covered here, but now is a good time to configure SSH (preferably using certificates). Continuing the install using SSH from your desktop/laptop will make it easier to copy/paste config files. On Windows I highly recommend PuTTY.

Install Required Packages

Update your available packages, install Request Tracker 4, Apache 2, PostgreSQL and the lynx browser:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install request-tracker4 \
 rt4-apache2 rt4-clients rt4-db-postgresql apache2-doc lynx \
 postgresql apache2 libapache-dbi-perl fetchmail

You now need to configure some basic RT settings:

• Name for this RT Instance ($rtname) – example.com (pick something unique to your organization like your domain name)
• Handle RT_SiteConfig.pm Permissions – Yes
• More stuff installs.. (time for more coffee)
• Configure database for request-tracker4 with dbconfig-common – Yes
• Set the PostgreSQL application password for request-tracker4
• Set the RT root password (note that this is not the system root user)
• More stuff installs..

Email Configuration

You can choose any MTA you want but I have decided to keep the Ubuntu default of Exim4.

Please note that your email setup may be different and require additional configuration. For example if you use Google Apps you will need to configure authentication and SSL. I have added a couple of links at the end of this page with further information.

To reconfigure Exim:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Configure Exim4 to work in your environment:

• Select: mail sent by smarthost; received by SMTP or fetchmail
• System mail name: example.com
• IP-addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP connections: leave at default
• Other destinations for which mail is accepted: leave at default
• Machines to relay mail for: leave blank
• IP address or hostname of the outgoing smarthost: smtp.isp.com
• Hide local mail name in outgoing mail?: Yes
• Visible domain name for local users: example.com
• Keep number of DNS-queries minimal (Dial-on-Demand): No
• Delivery method for local mail: mbox format in /var/mail (default)
• Split configuration into small files: No

Test outbound mail by emailing a file to yourself (edit to suit):

mailx -s "Exim4 email Test" you@example.com < /etc/fstab

Check your e-mail to see if this is working. If the email doesn’t come through in a few minutes you might want to check the Exim4 configuration.

Basic RT Configuration

Edit the RT config file

sudo nano /etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Find and edit the following lines from:

Set($CorrespondAddress , 'rt@svr011.example.com');
Set($CommentAddress , 'rt-comment@svr011.example.com');

to

Set($CorrespondAddress , 'rt@example.com');
Set($CommentAddress , 'rt-comment@example.com');

Also paste the following lines to the end of the file, just above the last comment block, then save and exit:

Set($MaxAttachmentSize , 10000000);
Set($FriendlyFromLineFormat, "\"%s\" <%s>");

Apache2 Configuration

Edit the apache2 default available sites:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Find the end of the file “</VirtualHost>” and add the following line just above it:

Include /etc/request-tracker4/apache2-modperl2.conf
RedirectMatch ^/$ /rt

Save the file and exit.

To enable mod_rewrite run the command:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

And then restart apache2:

sudo service apache2 restart

now you are through. 

and to access your RT interface, if for example your IP is 41.74.172.45, type 41.74.172.45/rt. type user: root and password: use the one you provided during installation. Then,start configuration and enjoy.

If you still have some trouble, write me at rugwiza@gmail.com. I will help whenever i have time