Install Request Tracker (RT) 4.4.4 on Debian GNU/Linux 10

install_rt4.4_on_debian10.md

Aim

Install Request Tracker (RT) 4.4.4 on Debian GNU/Linux 10 with less pain

Note: This has been reported to not work on Debian GNU/Linux 9.x. But has been documented to work with v8.6 and v10.

Challenges

At the time of this writing…

• There is no nice and clean setup guide
• RT's README and Makefile "help" are controversial (???)
• A typical installation often leads to Perl CPAN dependency hell

Preparation

Install base Debian GNU/Linux 10 without web server.

Install needed distribution packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid mariadb-server-10.0 mariadb-client-10.0 libssl-dev libexpat1-dev

Proceed with

wget https://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-4.4.4.tar.gz
tar xzvf rt-4.4.4.tar.gz
cd rt-4.4.4
./configure --with-web-user=www-data --with-web-group=www-data
sudo /usr/bin/perl -MCPAN -e shell # Quit with CTRL+D
sudo make testdeps
sudo make fixdeps # Press ENTER when needed
sudo cpan install -f GnuPG::Interface
sudo make fixdeps # Press ENTER when needed
sudo make install

Test your installation with the built-in Web server: sudo /opt/rt4/sbin/rt-server --port 8080. Hit CTRL-C to stop the process.

• initialise database?

Configure Apache Web server

We choose Apache2 Web Server and FastCGId. RT will be available under the URL /rt.

Edit RT's local configuration file /opt/rt4/etc/RT_SiteConfig.d/myissues.pm:

# sudo nano /opt/rt4/etc/RT_SiteConfig.d/myissues.pm
Set($WebPath, "/rt");

Create a new VirtualHost:

# sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/myissues.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName myissues.example.com
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

        DocumentRoot /var/www/html

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

        ScriptAlias /rt /opt/rt4/sbin/rt-server.fcgi/

        <Location /rt>
                Require all granted
                Options +ExecCGI
                AddHandler fcgid-script fcgi
        </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Replace default VirtualHost with your new one and restart Apache Web server:

sudo a2dissite 000-default
sudo a2ensite myissues
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Open http://myissues.example.com/rt/ (or something similar) in a Web browser to test everything runs smoothly.

Re-work

From RT's README:

• Set up users, groups, queues, scrips and access control
• Set up automated recurring tasks (cronjobs)
• Configure the RT email gateway
• Set up full text search
• Set up automatic backups

…and keep your operating system clean and updated.

What's next?

Update/upgrade RT! Oh my gosh…

Sources that helped me

• RT's README
• RT's Web deployment
• CPAN Issue Tracker: Bug #105189 for Net-SSLeay: Net::SSLeay fails to build on perl-5.22.0
• Stack Overflow: How to install XML::Parser without expat-devel?