[Howto] Redmine on Fedora with Postgresql DB

Motivation

I have been using Trac for my last two projects. It works mostly as expected and the integration of Wiki+Ticketing+Subversion saves a lot of time. I have been fairly satisfied with it.

Satisfied, that is, until now.

As our projects started growing, it became tedious to install and use a different version of Trac for every new project.

So, I decided to try out Redmine, which is an application very similar to Trac, but boasts of several more features, prominent among them being:

Support for multiple projects
Role based access system
Project Scheduling (Gantt charts, etc)
Ajax interface

The catch: It is written in Ruby, and most distributions don't have ready-made bundles for it (Redmine).

Nevertheless, I decided I would be brave and go where all wise men have been before. To search on Google.com. The search yielded an excellent tutorial

The Howto

The Howto linked above was written for CentOs5 / RHEL5, but I found it equally valid on Fedora Core 10. Further, that Howto suggests the use of MySQL, but I altered some steps to make it work for Postgresql DB.

Here is the modified version.

Notes

This HOWTO is written for Fedora core 10 (might also work on CentOS and RHEL)
Replace [FQDN] with either your IP address or the hostname (or FQDN) which you’ll be using to access the interface.
Replace [user] with the username under whose home directory the Subversion repository database will be located. e.g. /home/[user]/svn-repos
This HOWTO will make the following assumptions:
- You already have the “httpd” (apache) package installed
- You will be running apache as the user ‘apache’
- The subversion repository root folder will be under /home/[user]/subversion/
- The vhost’s folder locationg will be /var/www/svn
- The subversion repository to be created will be called ‘example-repo’

Install and setup Subversion

Strictly speaking, this step is optional, since many features of Redmine don't require integration with an SCM. However, I am assuming that in most cases, users would want SCM integration.

yum install mod_dav_svn subversion

Add the group [user] to the user apache and make the subversion base URL readable and writable…

usermod -aG [user] apache
chmod g+x /home/[user]
mkdir /home/[user]/subversion
chmod g+rwx /home/[user]/subversion
chown -R [user]:[user] /home/[user]/subversion

Make the web directory:

mkdir /var/www/svn
chown apache.apache /var/www/svn

Put the following into /etc/httpd/conf.d/svn.conf (this is for a subversion repository called ‘example-repo’)

NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
        DocumentRoot "/var/www/svn"
        ServerName [FQDN]
        <Location /example-repo>
                DAV svn
                SVNPath /home/[user]/subversion/example-repo
                AuthType Basic
                AuthName "Subversion repo"
                AuthUserFile /var/www/passwd
                Require valid-user
        </Location>

        <Directory "/var/www/svn">
        allow from all
        Options +Indexes
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Add an HTTP auth user…

htpasswd -cm /var/www/passwd [user]

Create a proper SVN repository

cd /home/[user]/subversion
su [user] -c "svnadmin create example-repo"

(This creates a blank repository, which is enough for the purpose of this tutorial)

Install Ruby on Rails

Let’s get Ruby up and running first. The original Howto recommends disabling SELinux.

yum install httpd httpd-devel apr make gcc-c++ postgresql postgresql-server ruby-postgres ruby ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-ri \
ruby-libs ruby-mode ruby-tcltk ruby-irb ruby-rdoc fcgi fcgi-devel mod_fcgid rubygems subversion-ruby

Now we’ll install passenger (aka mod_rails)

gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module

Create and insert this text into /etc/httpd/conf.d/rails.conf (or alternatively edit the existing svn.conf created when we set up subversion)

The below configuration is specific to the installation of redmine (hence the DocumentRoot)

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.2/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
   PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.2
   PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

NameVirtualHost *:80

   <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName 192.168.10.17
     DocumentRoot /var/www/rails/redmine/public
   </VirtualHost>

Now on to Redmine itself

Get Redmine 0.8.x from here

Assuming you downloaded the Redmine package into ~/Dowload/redmin-0.8.x.tar.gz

mkdir /var/www/rails/
cd /var/www/rails/
tar xzf ~/Download/redmine-0.8.x.tar.gz
mv redmine-0.8.x redmine
chown -R apache.apache redmine
cd redmine

If this is the first time you have installed Postgresql, initialise the database:

service postgresql initdb

You should now setup the password for user 'postgres'. The exact steps depend on how you want to setup authentication. I found this link useful.

Now start postgresql

service postgresql restart

Before proceeding, check if you are able to login to postgres server with user-name=postgres and your chosen password.

psql -U postgres

Now, create a database for redmine:

psql -U postgres
create database redmine;
create user redmine;
grant all on database redmine to redmine;
alter user redmine with password 'red';
\q

Copy the example database file to the “live” location

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

Enter the appropriate settings for the [production] section ensuring that host is set to 127.0.0.1

vim /var/www/rails/redmine/config/database.yml

Set up email

cd /var/www/rails/redmine
cp config/email.yml.example config/email.yml

Enter the appropriate settings for the [production] section ensuring that “address” is set to the IP address of the SMTP host

vim /var/www/rails/redmine/config/email.yml

Install rails and postgresql connector for redmine using gem…

cd /var/www/rails/redmine/app/
gem install -v=2.1.2 rails
gem install activerecord-postgresql-adapter

Import the redmine database into the live database specified in the above config file

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

Install default configuration data in database (this is entirely optional, but recommended).

cd /var/www/rails/redmine/app/
rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV="production"

Bring up the testing webserver, once loaded check your config by browsing to http://[FQDN]:3000

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

Make sure your apache config file edits are ok and that the services will start at boot by doing:

service httpd configtest
service httpd restart
chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig mysqld on

Taking Backups (entirely optional)

Add the following to your crontab which will create a database backup in the /home/[user] directory

pg_dump -i -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432 -U postgres --format=plain -C -D -v "redmine" | gzip > /home/[user]/redmine_`date +%y_%m_%d`.gz

Email using Gmail and other secure servers

Out of the box, Redmine doesn't support Gmail's SMTP server (or any other secure SMTP server with TLS).

A workaround is here.

I am paraphrasing those tips here.

Install the action_mailer_optional_tls plugin

The action_mailer_optional_tls_plugin adds a TLS option to Redmine's emailing library, ActionMailer. TLS is a version of SSL which is required by GMail in order to send email.

To install this plugin, use the script/plugin command in your Redmine directory:

cd /var/www/rails/redmine/
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/collectiveidea/action_mailer_optional_tls.git

If you don't have GIT, don't fret:

cd /var/www/rails/redmine/
./script/plugin install http://svn.douglasfshearer.com/rails/plugins/action_mailer_optional_tls

Configure your email.yml

It should now look something like this (note the tls and authentication options)

# File: config/email.yml
production:
  delivery_method: :smtp
  smtp_settings:
    tls: true
    address: "smtp.gmail.com"
    port: '587'
    domain: "smtp.gmail.com"
    authentication: :plain
    user_name: "your_email@gmail.com"
    password: "your_password"

That's it. You are done. Congratulations!

Do let me know via comments, how it worked for you.

HRJ

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Page tags

Motivation

The Howto

Notes

Install and setup Subversion

Install Ruby on Rails

Now on to Redmine itself

Taking Backups (entirely optional)

Email using Gmail and other secure servers

Install the action_mailer_optional_tls plugin

Configure your email.yml

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