Installation on Debian Wheezy Testing¶

This page describes the installation of Redmine on Debian Wheezy Testing, as of 29 March 2011.
It's actually a Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) virtual server.

First, the most important fact: it does not work out of the box. But it's very easy to fix (thanks to Jérémy Lal). See below.

The used configuration contains an Apache2 webserver, its Ruby-interface Passenger and a MySQL database.

Preparation¶

All command lines below assume you're root. And no, the # symbol is not a comment, it's your root prompt. :-)

# apt-get update
# apt-get install apache2
# apt-get install mysql-server

The mysql-server installation will guide you through the process of creating an administrative (root) account. Don't forget the password!

Install Redmine¶

This is the tricky part. Debian Wheezy contains Redmine 1.0.5-1, which requires RubyGems 1.3.x or 1.4.x. But Wheezy comes with RubyGems 1.6.2. It breaks during installation. Click for related Redmine Wiki page.

There are two ways out:

• downgrade RubyGems
• take a much newer Redmine (1.1.2) from Debian Experimental

I chose the second option, as the new Gantt-charts are also available from 1.1.0.

First, let's enable the Debian Experimental repositories (see Debian Wiki):

Add the line below to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main

Then install Redmine 1.1.2:

# apt-get update
# apt-get -t experimental install redmine-mysql
# apt-get -t experimental install redmine
# apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger

Redmine's missing dependencies will be installed too, mostly exotic Ruby-related stuff (ruby, rails, rake etc.)

Redmine installation will also prompt you for the MySQL admin password (I told you to remember it), then it'll create the database called redmine_default and MySQL user redmine. You can specify its password or let the installer generate a random password.

All database settings, including the password, are stored here:

/etc/redmine/default/database.yml

Start Redmine¶

We have to configure the Apache2 webserver to start running the Redmine application.

Create a symlink from the webserver doc root to redmine:

# ln -s /usr/share/redmine/public /var/www/redmine

Passenger should run as user www-data (same as Apache2). Add the line below to /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf:

    PassengerDefaultUser www-data

Add the /var/www/redmine location in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default:

    <Directory /var/www/redmine>
        RailsBaseURI /redmine
        PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
    </Directory>

Usually the Passenger module is enabled during installation (libapache2-mod-passenger). If not, enable it manually:

# a2enmod passenger

And last but not least, restart apache2:

# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Your new Communist Underground Movement a.k.a. Redmine is now available here:

http://yourservername/redmine