Request Tracker (RT) Installation and Configuration

Notes:

Commands preceded with "$" imply that you should execute the command as a general user - not as root.
Commands preceded with "#" imply that you should be working as the root user.
Commands with more specific command lines (e.g. bdr1> or mysql>) imply that you are executing commands on remote equipment, or within another program.
If a command line ends with "" this indicates that the command continues on the next line and you should treat this as a single line.

Exercises

Exercise 0

Exercise 1

Install the necessary packages for RT. You should have mysql-server already, but we do the install just in case. This won't cause problems.

Copy the "sudo apt-get install" line below, minus the "$" and paste this in to your terminal session on your virtual machine.

$ sudo apt-get install rt4-apache2 rt4-clients rt4-db-mysql request-tracker4 \
  libapache2-mod-fastcgi libfcgi-perl mutt

Respond "Yes" when prompted if you wish to install the packages.

You will now be presented with several windows. Read the follwing instructions to see how to respond:

Name for this Request Tracker (RT) instance:

Remove what is shown and replace with "netmgmt", then select <Ok> and press ENTER to continue.

RT installation name

Handle RT_SiteConfig.pm permissions?

Select <Yes> and press ENTER to continue.

Configure database for request-tracker4 with dbconfig-common?

Select <Yes> and press ENTER to continue.

DB configuration

Password of the database's administrative user:

Enter the MySQL root or admin password. This was set earlier in the workshop (probably when you installed Cacti). If you do not remember what this is, or if it's not written at the front of the classroom, ask an instructor for help.

DB admin password

MySQL application password for request-tracker4:

You may enter any password you wish. This will be used by Request Tracker to connect to MySQL. You generally do not need to remember this password. Pick something that cannot be guessed easily (i.e., don't use rt, requesttracker, 1234, etc...).

DB application password

Password confirmation:

Enter the same password that you created in the previous step.

DB application password

Initial root password for RT system:

Use the same password as we used for the MySQL database administrative user.

Initial root password

Now you will see quite a bit of information go across your screen as the Request Tracker installation process completes - It's a big package.

Exercise 3

At this point you have installed Request Tracker version 4. In order to access RT via the Apache web server you need to make a few small changes.

First let's update the Requestion Tracker (RT) configuration to improve the "From:" field format that will be used when RT sends out emails to users. In addition we will restrict attachment sizes and we will add our RT server to a whitelist to avoid cross site forgery error messages for legitimate RT usage.

Request Tracker maintains configuration files in the directory:

/etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.d

We will go to this directory, create a new configuration file called 90-local and regenerate the RT RT_SiteConfig.pm file using the update-rt-siteconfig command:

$ cd /etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.d
$ sudo editor 90-local

Add the following two lines to the file 90-local:

Set($MaxAttachmentSize , 10000000);
Set(@ReferrerWhitelist, qw(x.x.x.x:80  SERVNAME:80));

In the ReferrerWhitelist entry x.x.x.x. is the IP address of your PC and SERVNAME is the name of your Server. That is, if you are on srv1.campus1.ws.nsrc.org you would enter:

Set(@ReferrerWhitelist, qw(100.68.1.131:80  srv1.campus1.ws.nsrc.org:80));

Be sure to use the correct IP address and name for your Server, then save the file and execute the command:

$ sudo update-rt-siteconfig

Now we have one more change to the Apache web server configuration to make:

$ cd /etc/apache2/conf-available
$ sudo ln -s /etc/request-tracker4/apache2-modperl2.conf rt4.conf
$ sudo a2enconf rt4 
$ sudo service apache2 restart