ManualInstallation

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This guide walks you through installing RT from source on a modern, popular Linux distro. Specifically, that means a distribution based on Debian or Red Hat that’s been released since around 2020.

This guide assumes:

• You can install packages generally available in Debian/Ubuntu or Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS.
• You want to install RT, and all of its Perl dependencies, from source to get the latest versions. (This is a trade-off. It means the boundaries of your install will be very clear, but you won’t get security updates for RT or Perl modules from your distribution.)
• You are willing to install a couple of extra tools to manage the RT installation similarly to how you would in other packaging systems (like PyPI, npm, etc.).
• You are willing to do a relatively maximal install of RT, enabling all the options during installation and then setting what you need in the configuration. (You could save a little space and time by being pickier about your options, but then that complicates the guide and makes it harder to turn those options on later if you want.)
• You are using a regular user account on the Linux system that can get superuser privileges with sudo.

Install the base dependencies

These are required by RT, either to run or to install the dependencies.

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install autoconf build-essential curl libexpat-dev libgd-dev libssl-dev libz-dev gnupg graphviz perl w3m	sudo dnf install patch tar which gcc gcc-c++ perl-core perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker graphviz expat-devel gd-devel openssl-devel w3m sudo setenforce 0

(Turning off SELinux enforcement is required on Red Hat-based distributions because, as of October 2021, nobody has written a policy for RT.)

Install a database

You need access to a database server. It can be remote, or you can install a database server alongside RT. RT supports a few different databases, but the best supported options are PostgreSQL and MariaDB.

Installing and configuring the PostgreSQL server

If you want to install a fresh PostgreSQL database server alongside RT:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install postgresql	sudo dnf install postgresql-server

In order to set up RT’s database, you will need a PostgreSQL superuser account that can be authenticated with a password. If you don’t have that, you can create it by running:

sudo createuser -sP rt_admin

Set the password when prompted. Record this; you’ll need it later.

Installing the PostgreSQL client libraries

These are required for RT to be able to talk to any PostgreSQL server.

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install libpq-dev	sudo dnf install postgresql-devel

Once this is done you can skip ahead to installing a web server.

Installing and configuring the MariaDB server

If you want to install a fresh MariaDB database server alongside RT:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install mariadb-server	sudo dnf install mariadb-server

In order to set up RT’s database, you will need a MySQL superuser account. To stay consistent with PostgreSQL, I suggest setting a password for it. You can do that by running:

sudo mysql
mysql# GRANT ALL PRIVELEGES WITH GRANT OPTION ON rt5 TO rt_admin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'YourPassphraseHere';

Record your passphrase; you’ll need it later.

Adjust MariaDB’s max_allowed_packet setting

You need to consider this step whether you install the database locally, or use an existing one already running. MariaDB’s max_allowed_packet setting functionally limits the size of attachments in RT. The default is 16MiB, which is too small for most installations. You can ultimately choose any setting you’re comfortable with; 64MiB here should allow most requests without being too open.

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
echo -e '[client-server]\nmax_allowed_packet=64M\n' | sudo tee /etc/mysql/conf.d/max_allowed_packet.cnf sudo systemctl reload mariadb	echo -e '[client-server]\nmax_allowed_packet=64M\n' | sudo tee /etc/my.cnf.d/max_allowed_packet.cnf sudo systemctl reload mariadb

Installing the MariaDB client libraries

These are required for RT to be able to talk to any MariaDB server.

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install libmariadb-dev libmariadb-dev-compat	sudo dnf install mariadb-devel

Install a web server with FastCGI

FastCGI is the best way to host RT’s web interface today. Installing the web server before RT makes the installation process simpler, because RT will be able to automatically some details about your web server like what user it runs as.

Installing Apache

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid	sudo dnf install httpd mod_fcgid mod_ssl

Install Perl packaging tools: App::cpanminus and App::Virtualenv

App::cpanminus is a tool for installing and managing Perl modules from the popular CPAN repository. It does a lot of the same tasks, and follows a lot of the same UI conventions, as pip, gem, npm, and similar tools. You can install it from your distribution:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo apt install cpanminus	sudo dnf install perl-App-cpanminus

If your system doesn’t have a cpanminus package available, you can install it from source following the project instructions.

App::Virtualenv is a tool to create a dedicated space where you install and manage a self-contained set of Perl modules. (If you’re familiar with Python virtual environments, the concept is the same and App::Virtualenv follows a lot of the same usage patterns.) Using it helps avoid situations where changes to distribution packages might potentially break RT. This guide will illustrate creating and using a virtual environment for RT in /opt/rt5venv, but you can choose another location if you like.

cpanm --sudo App::Virtualenv
sudo virtualenv.pl --create --empty /opt/rt5venv

Now whenever you want to work on RT (by installing it, upgrading dependencies, installing new extensions, etc.), you need to activate the virtualenv in your shell. This sets various environment variables that your shell uses to work on Perl modules in the right place. You activate the virtualenv by running:

. /opt/rt5venv/bin/activate

Install RT

Get and unpack the RT source code

Download the latest source code using the link on the RT download page, extract it using tar -xf, and cd into the source code directory to run the rest of the commands in this section. For example:

curl -O https://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-5.0.2.tar.gz
tar -xf rt-5.0.2.tar.gz
cd rt-5.0.2

Pre-configure RT

This command will detect some information about your system in order to install RT properly, and decide which set of dependencies to install. Here’s what the different parts of our command are doing:

• PERL=/opt/rt5venv/bin/perl ensures RT uses the virtualenv you set up.
• --with-db-type=TYPE - Replace TYPE with Pg for PostgreSQL, or mysql for MariaDB.
• --prefix=/opt/rt5 sets the directory where RT will install all of its libraries, tools, and supporting files. You can choose another path if you like.
• The rest of the options tell RT to install additional dependencies for optional features.

Make sure you have cded into the RT source directory, and run:

PERL=/opt/rt5venv/bin/perl ./configure --with-db-type=TYPE --prefix=/opt/rt5 --with-attachment-store=disk --enable-externalauth --enable-gd --enable-graphviz --enable-gpg --enable-smime

For more background, refer to the RT configure options documentation.

Install RT and its Perl dependencies

This command will download, build, and install all of the Perl modules necessary to run RT with the configuration you set above. Here’s what the different parts of the command are doing:

• First we make sure the virtualenv is activated in our shell, so dependencies are installed there.
• fixdeps is RT’s command to install dependencies.
• install installs all of RT’s files under /opt/rt5 (or the prefix directory you set in the previous step). It will only run if fixdeps succeeds.
• RT_FIX_DEPS_CMD='cpanm --sudo --quiet' tells RT to use cpanminus to install dependencies (instead of the older, default cpan command).

Make sure you have cded into the RT source directory, and run:

. /opt/rt5venv/bin/activate
make fixdeps install RT_FIX_DEPS_CMD='cpanm --sudo --quiet'

If it works, the command will eventually output a message that says “Congratulations. RT is now installed.” followed by instructions about configuring and setting up the database. We’ll do that next.

Configure RT

RT has many configuration options. You can put configuration options in the file /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm, or in individual files under /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.d/. Use an editor to save all the text below to /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm (you can just overwrite the existing file, or add this to the bottom of what’s there) and then fill in settings for your site everywhere the text EDIT WITH appears.

# Single-quote all values EXCEPT the special value `undef`
# that turns off a setting.

# rtname appears in ticket email subjects. It needs to be globally unique,
# so use your organization's domain name.
Set($rtname, 'EDIT WITH yourdomain.example.com');
# Organization is used in the database for ticket links, etc. It also needs to
# be globally unique, so use your organization's domain name.
Set($Organization, 'EDIT WITH yourdomain.example.com');
# WebDomain is domain name of the RT web server. RT uses it to construct links
# and defend against CSRFs.
Set($WebDomain, 'EDIT WITH rt.yourdomain.example.com');
# WebPort is the port where the RT web server runs. Edit the number below if
# you're not using the standard HTTPS port.
Set($WebPort, '443');

# DatabaseUser is the name of the database account RT uses to read and store
# data. 'rt_user' is the default but you can change it if you like.
# DO NOT use the 'rt_admin' superuser created in the instructions above.
Set($DatabaseUser, 'rt_user');
# DatabasePassword is the password for DatabaseUser.
Set($DatabasePassword, 'EDIT WITH SomePassphraseHere');
# DatabaseHost is the hostname of the database server RT should use.
# Change 'localhost' if it lives on a different server.
Set($DatabaseHost, 'localhost');
# DatabasePort is the port number of the database server RT should use.
# `undef` means the default for that database. Change it if you're not
# using the standard port.
Set($DatabasePort, undef);
# DatabaseName is the name of RT's database hosted on DatabaseHost.
# 'rt5' is the default but you can change it if you like.
Set($DatabaseName, 'rt5');

# RT can log to syslog, stderr, and/or a dedicated file. For a modern install,
# I recommend logging to syslog, so it goes to journald where it's easy to
# query and automatically gets rotated. You set both these paramaters to a
# standard log level: 'debug', 'info', 'notice', 'warning', 'error',
# 'critical', 'alert', or 'emergency'.
Set($LogToSyslog, 'info');
Set($LogToSTDERR, undef);

# Turn off optional features that require additional configuration.
# If you want to use these, refer to the RT_Config documentation for
# instructions on how to set them up.
Set(%GnuPG, 'Enable' => '0');
Set(%SMIME, 'Enable' => '0');

# Perl expects to find this 1 at the end of the file.
1;

RT_SiteConfig.pm is actually Perl code. RT runs the code directly to load the configuration. Any time you finish editing it, you can check that you didn’t make any syntax errors by running:

perl -c /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm

Set up RT’s database

RT includes a tool to help you set up its database. By default, it connects to the database as an administrator to create the database and user that you configured in the previous step.

(The instructions from make install and RT’s README file tell you to run make initialize-database. That just runs rt-setup-database for you. Running the tool directly makes it easier to pass the options you need.)

• --action=init tells the tool to create the user, the database, the tables inside it, and insert core data RT needs to function.
• --dba=rt_admin provides the username of the administrator account to use to do the setup. rt_admin is the name we used earlier to set up a new database server. You can specify a different value if your database has a different adminsitrator account.
• If you are using an existing database server and the database adminstrator has already created the user account and database for RT, then you can add the --skip-create option.
• If you have a less common database setup, this tool has additional options to give you finer-grained control over what steps are run and how. Refer to the full rt-setup-database documentation to learn more about those.
• The command reads files from RT’s etc/ directory by default, so the easiest way to run it is to cd /opt/rt5 first, and then it will find the necessary files automatically.

Run:

cd /opt/rt5
sudo sbin/rt-setup-database --action=init --dba=rt_admin

Enter the password for your database administrator account when prompted.

Set up fulltext indexing

Fulltext indexing speeds up searches for ticket content, which makes RT a lot nicer to use.

• --noask uses the default names for the index, which will be fine for a new install and simplifies the setup.
• --dba=rt_admin provides the username of the administrator account to use to do the setup. rt_admin is the name we used earlier to set up a new database server. You can specify a different value if your database has a different adminsitrator account.

Run:

sudo /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-setup-fulltext-index --noask --dba=rt_admin

Enter the password for your database administrator account when prompted. The end of the process will output some RT configuration that looks like this:

Set( %FullTextSearch,
    Enable     => 1,
    Indexed    => 1,
    # Additional output from rt-setup-fulltext-index should be here.
    # The configuration varies by database type.
);

Copy that output and save it to the file /opt/rt5/etc/RT_SiteConfig.d/FulltextIndex.pm.

Set permissions

All of RT’s configuration files should be readable by the user that runs the web server, and no other users, in order to protect sensitive information like the database password. RT provides a command to set permissions appropriately according to your distribution and configuration. cd to the directory where you extracted the RT source code, and run:

cd rt-5.0.2
sudo make fixperms

Verify the installation

If everything has gone well, then you should be able to set a password for RT’s root user. You’ll use this later to log in to the web interface and continue setting up your system. Run:

sudo /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-passwd root

Set the password when prompted. Record this; you’ll need it later.

Set up RT’s web server

Configure Apache modules

You will need to have the following modules enabled in Apache to run RT. You should already have these installed if you followed the instructions above.

• alias (required to map URLs to RT)
• fcgid (required for Apache to talk to RT)
• mpm_prefork (Apache requires you to select an MPM. RT is designed to work with the prefork module.)
• ssl (required to serve HTTPS; optional otherwise)

Enable them following these instructions:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo a2dismod mpm_event sudo a2enmod fcgid sudo a2enmod mpm_prefork sudo a2enmod ssl	echo LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so | sudo tee /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-mpm.conf

Configure an Apache VirtualHost

Create a file at the following location. You can change the RT part of the filename if you like, but the file must exist in this directory and have a .conf suffix.

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
/etc/apache2/sites-available/RT.conf Then after you create the file, run: sudo a2ensite RT	/etc/httpd/conf.d/RT.conf

Use an editor to save all the text below to the new RT.conf and then fill in settings for your site everywhere the text EDIT WITH appears.

### Server-level settings
# These settings affect all of Apache. It is okay to put them here if Apache
# only hosts RT. If you are hosting other sites in the same Apache instance,
# you may need to put these settings in another file like
# (Debian/Ubuntu) /etc/apache2/conf-available/RT.conf
# (Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS) /etc/httpd/conf.d/RTserver.conf
# ... and ensure they do not conflict with settings required by other sites.

# mod_fcgid only allows 128KiB requests by default. This is too small for users
# to upload files to RT. You can ultimately choose any setting you're
# comfortable with; 70MiB here should allow most requests without being too
# open.
FcgidMaxRequestLen 73400320

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
  # Listen on the standard HTTPS port.
  # You can change this to a nonstandard port if you must.
  Listen 443
</IfModule>
### End server-level settings

### Primary RT VirtualHost
# You can change both the bind address and/or the port here as required.
# This default will listen for HTTPS connections on all interfaces.
<VirtualHost *:443>
  # EDIT HERE with the domain name of the web server.
  ServerName rt.yourdomain.example.com
  <IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    SSLEngine on
    # These specify the paths to the SSL certificate and private key Apache
    # should use. These example paths are common for Let's Encrypt. If you
    # don't use Let's Encrypt, the standard location for these files is under
    # (Debian/Ubuntu) /etc/ssl
    # (Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS) /etc/pki/tls
    # EDIT HERE with the appropriate paths for your server
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/chain.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
  </IfModule>
  <Location />
    Require all granted
    Options +ExecCGI
    AddHandler fcgid-script fcgi
  </Location>
  AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
  DocumentRoot /opt/rt5/share/html
  ScriptAlias / /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-server.fcgi/
</VirtualHost>
### End primary RT VirtualHost

### Optional HTTPS Redirect VirtualHost
# Most modern servers support HTTPS and want all web traffic to go through it.
# This VirtualHost redirects normal HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
# You can delete this whole section if you don't want or need this.
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
  # You can change both the bind address and/or the port here as required.
  # This default will listen for HTTP connections on all interfaces.
  <VirtualHost *:80>
    SSLEngine off
    # EDIT HERE both lines below with the domain name of your web server.
    ServerName rt.yourdomain.example.com
    Redirect permanent / https://rt.yourdomain.example.com/
  </VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
### End optional HTTPS Redirect VirtualHost

After you’ve edited the file, load the configuration with:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo systemctl reload apache2	sudo systemctl reload httpd

If this command reports an error, double-check the configuration file for typos, especially in option names, file paths, and the <Section> pairs. Edit again and reload the configuration until it succeeds without output.

Verify the web interface

You should be able to visit your web server in your browser, and be presented with RT’s login screen. You should be able to log in with username root and the password you set previously.

If you run into trouble, the first place to look for more information is by reading Apache’s error log:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo less /var/log/apache2/error.log	sudo less /var/log/httpd/error.log

Set up RT’s mail server

RT both can both send and receive ticket updates via email. Unfortunately, there are too many variables to document a useful setup process here: getting this working usually requires creating DNS records, and coordinating with existing mail servers, which will be the main constraint on your setup. Instead this guide provides a brief overview of how the integration works, and where the connection points are that you likely need to work on.

Sending Mail

RT only knows how to send mail by passing it off to another program on the system. It cannot connect or authenticate directly to external mail servers. In the default configuration, RT runs the standard sendmail command. There are configuration options to send mail through different commands if you need.

The most common setup is to install and configure a proper Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) like Postfix or Exim, and then configure it to send mail to the wider Internet as you need. This works well because the MTAs are robust and well-tested; they have flexible configuration to let you send mail out by relaying to other mail servers you specify with optional authentication; and most distributions install one by default anyway. The only hard part is configuring the MTA to send mail following your site’s policies.

Other software is available that provides a slimmer version of the sendmail command that connects to an external mail server for you, like ssmtp. These programs are usually easier to configure than an MTA, but they often lose email permanently if they can’t connect to the external server at the time it’s sent. (MTAs keep email queued locally until they successfully deliver it to another server.)

Receiving email

RT installs a command called rt-mailgate that receives an email on standard input and posts it to RT’s REST web interface, where it gets saved in the database and added to a ticket. You need to arrange for a way to send incoming email to this command.

The most common setup is to have an MTA on the same box as RT receive email directly, and then set up mail aliases that call this command when mail comes in. Example /etc/aliases entries look like:

rt: "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url https://rt.yourdomain.example.com/"
rt-comment: "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action comment --url https://rt.yourdomain.example.com/"

This works well because, again, you’re probably running an MTA anyway; and the MTA can hold and queue mail if it comes in while RT is down for any reason, giving you a buffer against downtime.

Another common option is to periodically run a tool that fetches mail using a protocol like IMAP, like fetchmail or getmail, and passes it on to rt-mailgate. This is less common because it requires setting up another tool to run, and securely storing another set of mail server credentials. But it is useful when local policy prevents the RT server from receiving email directly.

This is much less common, but it might help to know that rt-mailgate doesn’t have to run on the same system as RT itself. It just needs to be able to connect to RT’s web interface. If you don’t have any other options, you can install the RT software on a different system that receives email, and configure that system to run rt-mailgate and pass it on to the RT server. To do that, just repeat the installation instructions above, skipping the steps about installing the database and web server.

Set up RT’s background jobs

Create a file /etc/cron.d/rt with the following content. You may edit all of the time fields as you see fit. Refer to the crontab(5) man page for details about their definitions.

# Update the fulltext index with new ticket data
*/3 *   *   *   *   root    /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-fulltext-indexer
# Email out dashboards that users have subscribed to
0   *   *   *   *   root    /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-dashboards
# Clean old sessions from the database
10  3   *   *   *   root    /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-clean-sessions --older 8d
# Email out weekly digests for users who have requested it
50  4   *   *   Mon root    /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m weekly
# Email out daily digests for users who have requested it
50  5   *   *   *   root    /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m daily

You can run all these jobs as the same user that runs your web server, rather than root. Run:

Debian/Ubuntu	Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS
sudo sed -i 's/\broot\b/www-data/' /etc/cron.d/rt	sudo sed -i 's/\broot\b/apache/' /etc/cron.d/rt

Set up RT

If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations, your RT install is really done now. You can start setting up RT with users, groups, queues, and business logic. Head back to the main page to start exploring those topics.