Redmine 2.0.3 on Centos 6.3¶

• Table of contents
• Redmine 2.0.3 on Centos 6.3
  • Introduction
  • Assumptions
  • Redmine Installation Instruction
    • Turn off SE-Linux
    • Install basic services (Apache, mySQL, and several tools...)
    • Configure basic services
    • Configure passenger for Apache
    • Get Redmine and install it
    • Create Redmine database
    • Configure Redmine
    • Mind the firewall!
    • Do a testdrive!
    • Activate FCGI and generate plugin directory
    • Apache permissions!
    • Getting Apache to work with FastCGI
    • Set the file path for Redmine
    • Telling Apache to serve REDMINE
    • Additional Config: E-Mail System
  • Getting Subversion working
    • Installing Packages for Subversion
    • Linking authentication for Redmine
    • Creating repository for subversion
    • Edit virtual host for apache to serve SVN with redmine

Introduction¶

Our company was using the BITNAMI stack with Redmine and Subversion for our production environment. So the goal was about changing the server and migrating the data from Redmine 1.4 to Redmine 2.0.3 including getting all repositories and permissions preserved.

I've tried to avoid webrick but rather use the fastCGI Module for Apache2.

Second was converting the built-in accounts from the database to LDAP (ActiveDirectory). This is the result of 2 days of work and googling is this little tutorial for setting up a mentioned box doing exactly this stuff. We are using CentOS 6 (i386) for that task.

1. Please excuse my bad english for I am not used anymore to post long instruction manuals. Feel free to edit whatever you want.

First of all, I tend to use vi so if you cannot operate vi I'd recommend to use any editor you like. If my instruction tells you to edit a file, you can find the sequence "..." which means, there is something above or below that line of text, that needs to be edited. Do not include those dots...

Assumptions¶

• You have a CentOS 6.3 installation (minimum install) working and SSH access to your box
• You can access the Internet
• You are logged in as root

Redmine Installation Instruction¶

My personal flavour is to use as less self compiled packages as necessary to get the package up and runnning. So I try to use as many repository packages as possible.

Turn off SE-Linux¶

I spent a lot of time to find out, that selinux can be a real party pooper. So I strongly recommend to disable that first before installing anything else. You can find a tutorial inside the howto section describing how to enable SELinux for your installation.

vi /etc/selinux/config

find the line with SELINUX and set it to

...
SELINUX=disabled
...

Do a reboot NOW

Install basic services (Apache, mySQL, and several tools...)¶

Now we are good to go to install some tools that might be useful during our installation...

First of all, update your system, make sure it is up to date,

yum update

and then install some prerequisite packages to the setup,

yum -y install wget vim \\
       system-config-network system-config-firewall vim openssh-clients

anhd some packages needed for Redmine

yum -y install httpd mysql mysql-server 

After that continue and install all packages that might be necessary during the ruby and redmine installation.

yum -y install ruby rubygems 
yum -y install zlib-devel curl-devel openssl-devel httpd-devel apr-devel apr-util-devel mysql-devel gcc ruby-devel \\
      gcc-c++ make postgresql-devel ImageMagick-devel sqlite-devel perl-LDAP mod_perl perl-Digest-SHA

Configure basic services¶

Let's configure the basic services, first of all, make mySQL and Apache to start at boot

chkconfig httpd on --level 2345
chkconfig mysqld on --level 2345

After configuring these, start them up

service httpd start
service mysqld start

Now configure your new mySQL Installation and follow the instructions. Please note the mysql administrator password.

/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Configure passenger for Apache¶

You need to install passenger for Apache using gem. Do the following on the command line

gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module

Please notice the installation messages! The next .conf file might use another path or version!
After this you need to generate a conf file with the displayed content

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/ruby.conf

During my installation the following content was displayed and needs to be entered in that file:

   LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.15/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
   PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.15
   PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

Restart your apache with

service httpd restart

Get Redmine and install it¶

change to your home directory and download the latest version, expand it and copy it to the right place.

cd
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/76259/redmine-2.0.3.tar.gz
tar xvfz redmine-2.0.3.tar.gz
mkdir -p /var/www/redmine
cp redmine-2.0.3/* /var/www/redmine

or you can do

cd /var/www
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/76259/redmine-2.0.3.tar.gz
tar xvfz redmine-2.0.3.tar.gz
ln -s redmine-2.0 redmine

Next is to install bundler and let it install the production environment (with automatic resolve)
Now change to this directory - this is your new Redmine application directory!

cd /var/www/redmine
gem install bundler
bundle install --without development test

fetch some coffee... this might take some time...

Create Redmine database¶

Next to generate a new database for redmine
Log on to your datbase with the following command. If prompted for a password, enter it.

mysql -u root -p

I tend to create a local only user for that database, change the password 'very_secret' to a better one :)

create database redmine character set utf8;
create user 'redmine'@'localhost' identified by 'very_secret';
grant all privileges on redmine.* to 'redmine'@'localhost'; 
quit;

Configure Redmine¶

First of all, copy the example config to a productive one and edit the config for your needs

cd /var/www/redmine/config
cp database.yml.example database.yml
vi /var/www/redmine/config/database.yml

Now find the production section inside this file and edit it like that

...
production:
# adapter = mysql2 is newer and proven to be more better than mysql
# adapter: mysql2
  adapter: mysql
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  username: redmine
  password: very_secret
  encoding: utf8
...

Head back to your application directory and generate a secret token

cd /var/www/redmine/
rake generate_secret_token

Now it is about time to generate the database structure (application directory!)

cd /var/www/redmine/
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

fill the database with default values...

cd /var/www/redmine/
RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data

follow the instructions to select your language.

Mind the firewall!¶

Be aware that the firewall is enabled by default (which is good!). So if you know which ports to open, do it now or disable the firewall (just for testing purposes). I'd really recommend disabling the firewall during installation and enable it (opening ports) after you are sure that everything works.

system-config-firewall

use the onscreen menu to disable it or adjust the values.

or simply disable iptables during Redmine's setup

service iptables stop

Do a testdrive!¶

I mentioned that I wanted not to use webrick, but for a testdrive, it'll work. This helps finding bugs and errors that might have occured before.

cd /var/www/redmine/
ruby script/rails server webrick -e production

Open up a browser and point it to: http://yoursystemname.yourdomain.com:3000 - the default username and password is 'admin'.
If everything is working, you are good to go! Kill webrick by hitting Ctrl+C.

Activate FCGI and generate plugin directory¶

To activate the fcgi module you need to copy the example file and edit the very first line. During this step it is recommended to generate the default .htaccess config as well.

cd /var/www/redmine/public
mkdir plugin_assets
cp dispatch.fcgi.example dispatch.fcgi
cp htaccess.fcgi.example .htaccess
vi /var/www/redmine/public/dispatch.fcgi

now edit dispatch.fcgi and change it like this...

#!/usr/bin/ruby
...

Apache permissions!¶

this one is important, so don't miss that one...

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/redmine/

Note: "apache" is the user that runs httpd (apache) service, as defined in /etc/password and /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Getting Apache to work with FastCGI¶

Unfortunately the default Repo from CentOS cannot deliver the fcgid module so it is important to include a replo, that can deliver this package. I use the Fedora Repo so it is time to activate this... Again - this can change so please take care which repository to use.

rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/0608B895.txt
wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
yum -y install mod_fcgid

Set the file path for Redmine¶

I wanted to move the files to another location, so I decided to move them to /opt/redmine

mkdir -p /opt/redmine/files
chown -R apache:apache /opt/redmine

now edit the configuration

cd /var/www/redmine/config
cp configuration.yml.example configuration.yml
vi /var/www/redmine/config/configuration.yml

edit the path settings inside this file...

...
  attachments_storage_path: /opt/redmine/files
...

Telling Apache to serve REDMINE¶

The final step is to tell apache, where to find Redmine and what to do with it. Generate a new conf file for your virtual host to serve redmine...

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/redmine.conf

and enter the following config (adjust to your needs ;) )

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName yoursystemname.yourdomain.com
        ServerAdmin yourmail@yourdomain.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/redmine/public/
        ErrorLog logs/redmine_error_log

        MaxRequestLen 20971520

        <Directory "/var/www/redmine/public/">

                Options Indexes ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
                AllowOverride all
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache and cross your fingers, wheter you can access http://yoursystemname.yourdomain.com - redmine should be available right now...

service httpd restart

Additional Config: E-Mail System¶

in order to get emails sent to your clients, edit the configuration.yml and enter your server settings...

vi /var/www/redmine/config/configuration.yml

now find the settings for your server... the following settings describe an anonymous relay on an internal server. You need to remove the username and password line if you use anonymous sign on.

...
default:
  # Outgoing emails configuration (see examples above)
  email_delivery:
    delivery_method: :smtp
    smtp_settings:
      address: mailserver.yourdomain.com
      port: 25
      domain: yourdomain.com
...

Here is the configration if you use Google's SMTP server

production:
  email_delivery:
    delivery_method: :smtp
    smtp_settings:
#      tls: true
      enable_starttls_auto: true
      address: "smtp.gmail.com" 
      port: '587'
      domain: "smtp.gmail.com" 
      authentication: :plain
      user_name: "google-account-name@domain-name.domain-extension" 
      password: "password" 

Getting Subversion working¶

After getting Redmine working, it is time to get Subversion working... The goal is to integrate the repositories inside Redmine and host them on the same server...

Installing Packages for Subversion¶

Install the following packages

yum -y install mod_dav_svn subversion subversion-ruby

Linking authentication for Redmine¶

Redmine provides a perl module to handle Apache authentication on SVN DAV repositories. First step is to link that module into the search path

mkdir /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Apache
ln -s /var/www/redmine/extra/svn/Redmine.pm /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Apache/Redmine.pm

Creating repository for subversion¶

create a path and set permissions for your SVN repo...

mkdir /opt/subversion
chown -R apache:apache /opt/subversion

Edit virtual host for apache to serve SVN with redmine¶

to get Apache working with subversion, you need to adjust (create) the virtual host file

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/subversion.conf

now enter/edit the following

PerlLoadModule Apache::Redmine
<Location /svn>
        DAV svn
        SVNParentPath "/opt/subversion" 
        SVNListParentPath on
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Satisfy any
        LimitXMLRequestBody 0
        SVNPathAuthz off

        PerlAccessHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::access_handler
        PerlAuthenHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::authen_handler
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName "Redmine SVN Repository" 

        Require valid-user
        RedmineDSN "DBI:mysql:database=redmine;host=localhost:3306" 
        RedmineDbUser "redmine" 
        RedmineDbPass "OuaWe0HXidr39X" 

        # cache max. 50 passwords
        RedmineCacheCredsMax 50
</Location>