DebianInstallGuide

Unofficial Installation Guide

This is an unofficial installation guide. It may be outdated or apply only to very specific configurations and versions. The official and maintained installation steps for RT are in the README and UPGRADING documents included in the official .tar.gz packages.

Debian 6.0 (squeeze)

RT 4 is available in the Debian squeeze-backports repository. The following packages exist:

request-tracker4 - extensible trouble-ticket tracking system
rt4-apache2 - Apache 2 specific files for request-tracker4
rt4-clients - mail gateway and command-line interface to request-tracker4
rt4-db-mysql - MySQL database backend for request-tracker4
rt4-db-postgresql - PostgreSQL database backend for request-tracker4

Install the first three packages and either the MySQL or Postgres database backends

Debian 5.0 (lenny)

This abstract shows how to install RT 3.8.8 from the Debian Backports.

• add backports to your sources.list (see http://backports.debian.org/Instructions)
• install the RT packages (here with MySQL, Apache and Mailgate):

aptitude install request-tracker3.8
aptitude install rt3.8-db-mysql
aptitude install rt3.8-clients
aptitude install rt3.8-apache2

Debian 4.0 (etch)

This documents how to install RT3.6 with postgresql and FastCGI.

Install request-tracker3.6 rt3.6-apache2, postgresql-8.1, libapache2-mod-fastcgi and libcgi-fast-perl with aptitude. This dragged in some apache1 stuff for me, so I had to manually change some selections in the aptitude GUI before the selections were sensible.

Read notes in /usr/share/doc/request-tracker3.6/NOTES.Debian.gz, but skip out when it starts with database setup. Do the following instead:

In RT_SiteConfig.pm add the following lines to the database setup section:

Set($DatabaseHost   , '');
        Set($DatabaseRTHost , '');
        
        

This makes database communication go over the local socket instead of tcp over the loopback network interface, which also makes same-host ident identification

Edit /etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_hba.conf and add the following two lines:

host    rtdb        rtuser    127.0.0.1    255.255.255.255   password
local   rtdb        rtuser                                   password

Change permissions for RT_SiteConfig so the postgres user can read it. We'll change this later.

sudo chmod 640 /etc/request-tracker3.6/RT_SiteConfig.pm
sudo chgrp postgres /etc/request-tracker3.6/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Run the db setup script:

sudo -u postgres /usr/sbin/rt-setup-database-3.6 --action init --dba postgres

Change the permissions so that apache can read the RT setup file:

sudo chgrp www-data /etc/request-tracker3.6/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Now you can go back to follow the instructions in NOTES.Debian again. An easy way to get the apache config included is to do ln -s /etc/request-tracker3.6/apache2-something.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d/, or it can be included in a file in /etc/apache2/sites-available.

Debian 3.1 (sarge)

The fastcgi package is part of the non-free repository. Make sure you have a non-free repository in the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

For Apache2 and FastCGI install the following before installing the RT package:

apt-get install libcgi-fast-perl apache2-mpm-prefork libapache2-mod-fastcgi

Make sure you have a working apache2 install before you go on to installing request tracker and read FastCGIConfiguration for hints on how to do your FastCGI setup.

The rt3 packages are part of the standard debian packages with (almost) all dependencies described. You can use:

apt-get install request-tracker3

or

apt-get install request-tracker3.4

or

apt-get install request-tracker3.6

The database system to be used (postgres or mysql) is not made into a dependency. You need to make sure that the database you want to use is installed. This makes one more /apt-get install/ .

apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client

or

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

The default database in the configuration files is postgresql. (Is this true? My RT 3.6.3 distribution defaults to MySQL). I have changed this to mysqld because I used that for my RT2 installation before, and because I had some strange problems with RT3.0.9 and rt2-to-rt3-1.23. You may be more successful, so by all means if you prefer postgresql, try it before following me in this step.

Then read /usr/share/doc/request-tracker3/README.Debian.gz and /usr/share/doc/request-tracker3/INSTALL.Debian.gz for essential installation instructions. (See also the debian package information at [1] or for version 3.4 [http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=request-tracker3.4&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all] )

If you use PostgreSQL (and on the localhost), then in addition to following the instructions in /usr/share/doc/request-tracker3.4/INSTALL.Debian.gz you will need to add the following to your RT_SiteConfig.pm:

Set($DatabaseHost   , '');
         Set($DatabaseRTHost , '');
         
         

Note: If you want to customize your RT3 install, the Debian path is /usr/local/share/request-tracker3 instead.

You may also need to install the rt3-clients package (apt-get install rt3-clients) if you want to enable the mail processing, and configure your mailer the right way, so, for instance, for exim, see EximConfig.

User comment: if using mod-fastcgi in default install mason_handler.fcgi won't start - RT_SiteConfig.pm is owned by root with mode 600 so won't be loaded unless you run your web server as root or fix permissions (apache runs as www-data:www-data unless changed):

chgrp www-data /etc/request-tracker3/RT_SiteConfig.pm
chmod 640 /etc/request-tracker3/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Debian 3.0 (woody)

Read the README file included in the RT tarball.

Note that the versions of the perl and mysql packages in woody are deprecated by RT. However, you may find that RT still functions just fine. If anyone finds anything broken, please add it to this page...