BestPractical RT: Request Tracker on CentOS 5 with PostgreSQL

see also http://www.ptitov.net/2008/07/request-tracker-installation-o.html

Here are the steps how to install Request Tracker on CentOS 5 with PostgreSQL:

Install RPM packages

yum install postgresql postgresql-server postgresql-libs
yum install httpd perl-BSD-Resource perl-FCGI perl-Apache-DBI mod_perl
wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rpm -Uhv rpmforge-release*.rpm

yum install perl-Digest-HMAC perl-Apache-Session perl-Class-Container perl-Class-Data-Inheritable perl-Crypt-DES perl-Devel-StackTrace perl-Exception-Class perl-GD \
perl-GD-Graph perl-GD-Text-Util perl-Hook-LexWrap perl-HTML-Mason perl-HTTP-Server-Simple perl-HTTP-Server-Simple-Mason perl-IO-Socket-INET6 \
perl-Net-SNMP perl-Params-Validate perl-Socket6 perl-UNIVERSAL-require perl-HTML-scrubber perl-Text-WikiFormat perl-XML-RSS perl-Tree-Simple \
perl-Text-Wrapper perl-Module-Versions-Report perl-CSS-Squish \
perl-Term-ReadKey perl-Class-ReturnValue  perl-Text-Quoted   perl-Calendar-Simple  perl-DBIx-SearchBuilder  perl-Text-Autoformat \
perl-MailTools perl-Regexp-Common perl-Locale-Maketext-Lexicon perl-Locale-Maketext-Fuzzy perl-Time-HiRes perl-Time-modules perl-TimeDate \
perl-Log-Dispatch perl-Text-Template perl-HTML-Tree perl-HTML-Format \
perl-HTML-Scrubber perl-libwww-perl perl-MIME-tools perl-DBD-mysql

Configuration of Perl modules
To see if all required perl modules have been installed, run this:

/usr/bin/perl -MCPAN -e shell
make testdeps
/usr/bin/perl ./sbin/rt-test-dependencies --verbose --with-pgsql

Also, make sure you have newer versions of IO::File (1.14) and File-Temp (1.21).
Otherwise you get in trouble. More details follow here:

Fixes:

cat testemail.txt | /usr/bin/rt-mailgate --queue MyQueue --action correspond --url http://rt.mydomain.org/
Can't locate object method "seek" via package "File::Temp"

check currently installed version of File::Temp:
perl -le 'use File::Temp; print File::Temp->VERSION'

install the latest version 0.21:

cpan
# for reinitialising cpan:
o conf init
i /MIME-tools/
test D/DO/DONEILL/MIME-tools-5.425.tar.gz
i /file-temp/
install T/TJ/TJENNESS/File-Temp-0.21.tar.gz

Problem with attachements:

cat rttestmailatt.txt | /usr/bin/rt-mailgate --debug --queue myQueue --action correspond --url http://rt.mydomain.org
Connecting to http://rt.mydomain.org/REST/1.0/NoAuth/mail-gateway at /usr/bin/rt-mailgate line 102, <> line 1.
hello http://rt.mydomain.org/REST/1.0/NoAuth/mail-gateway
not ok - Failed to parse this message. Something is likely badly wrong with the message at /usr/bin/rt-mailgate line 112, <> line 1
another problem:
Can't locate object method "binmode" via package "IO::File" at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/MIME/Body.pm line 437.

We need version 1.14 of IO::File

perl -le 'use IO::File; print IO::File->VERSION'

requires: yum install gcc
cpan
i /IO-1.2301/
install G/GB/GBARR/IO-1.2301.tar.gz

IMPORTANT: need to reload the apache server, otherwise the new perl packages have no effect:
/etc/init.d/httpd reload

I came once across a Cpan problem:

Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Unrecognized character \x88 at (eval 29) line 1.

The solution was: delete 03modlist.data.gz, and just run cpan again

Install RT
Download the latest tar.gz file from http://bestpractical.com/rt/download.html
In a tmp directory, not the destination directory:
cd /home/timop
tar xvzf rt-3.6.6.tar.gz
cd rt-3.6.6
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-layout=RH \
--with-db-host=localhost \
--with-db-dba=rt --with-db-rt-user=rt \
--with-db-database=rt --with-pgsql

Check to see if all dependancies are installed:
make testdeps | grep MISSING
make install

You then need to configure /etc/rt/RT_SiteConfig.pm
e.g. if you want to use Postgresql, it could look like this:

# {{{ Database Configuration

# Database driver beeing used. Case matters
# Valid types are "mysql", "Oracle" and "Pg"

Set($DatabaseType , 'Pg');

# The domain name of your database server
# If you're running mysql and it's on localhost,
# leave it blank for enhanced performance
Set($DatabaseHost   , 'localhost');
Set($DatabaseRTHost , 'localhost');

# The port that your database server is running on.  Ignored unless it's
# a positive integer. It's usually safe to leave this blank
Set($DatabasePort , '');

#The name of the database user (inside the database)
Set($DatabaseUser , 'rt');

# Password the DatabaseUser should use to access the database
Set($DatabasePassword , 'secret');

# The name of the RT's database on your database server
Set($DatabaseName , 'rt');

# If you're using Postgres and have compiled in SSL support,
# set DatabaseRequireSSL to 1 to turn on SSL communication
Set($DatabaseRequireSSL , undef);

# }}}

Configuration of PostgreSQL
vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf;
For PostgreSQL 7.x: add line: tcpip_socket=true;
For PostgreSQL 8.x: listen_addresses = 'localhost'

vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf; it should contain:
local all all ident sameuser
host template1 rt 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host rt rt 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host all postgres 127.0.0.1/32 trust

/etc/init.d/postgresql start
postgresql logfile if db does not start: /var/lib/pgsql/pgstartup.log
chkconfig postgresql on
make initialize-database: problem: user rt does not exist; need to use dba postgres
/usr/bin/perl //usr/sbin/rt-setup-database --action init --dba postgres --prompt-for-dba-password

For a nightly backup of your database, you can use this command:

su - postgres -c "umask 0077; pg_dumpall | gzip > /var/lib/pgsql/data/backup.sql.gz"

To restore a database, e.g. when moving from one server to another:

su - postgres
psql template1
drop database rt;
create database rt;
\q
psql rt < /var/tmp/rt-20071210.sql

HTTPD configuration
/etc/httpd/conf.d/rt.conf should contain:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName rt.mysupport.com
    DocumentRoot /var/rt/html
    AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

    ServerAdmin Timotheus.Pokorra@mysupport.com
    PerlModule Apache::DBI
    PerlRequire /usr/bin/webmux.pl

    <Location />
        Options None
        SetHandler perl-script
        PerlHandler RT::Mason
        <IfDefine PerlDProf>
          <IfDefine PerlSmallProf>
            PerlFixupHandler Apache::SmallProf
          </IfDefine>
        </IfDefine>
    </Location>

    <Location /NoAuth/images>
      SetHandler default-handler
    </Location>
    # To use this you have to start apache with -DPerlStatus.
    #
    # In RHEL, add the following line to /etc/sysconfig/httpd:
    #
    # OPTIONS=-DPerlStatus
    <IfDefine PerlStatus>
      <Location /perl-status>
        SetHandler perl-script
        PerlHandler Apache2::Status
        PerlSetVar StatusOptionsAll On
        PerlSetVar StatusTerse On
        PerlSetVar StatusTerseSize On
        PerlSetVar StatusTerseSizeMainSummary On
        PerlSetVar StatusLexInfo On
      </Location>
    </IfDefine>

To solve issues with "Can't change ownership of files written by interp object: Permission denied" when running Apache:
chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /var/rt/mason_data/obj
chown -R apache /var/rt/mason_data/obj
chgrp -R apache /var/rt/mason_data/obj
chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /var/rt/html
not: chcon -Rt httpd_sys_script_t /var/rt/html
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

To solve issues after upgrading RT, I had to do this sometimes:

rm -fr /var/rt/mason_data/obj
mkdir /var/rt/mason_data/obj
touch /var/rt/mason_data/obj/.__obj_create_marker
chmod -R a+w /var/rt/mason_data/obj
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Configure Sendmail
The goal is to receive new requests via email.

You need to create a symbolic link, to avoid errors like "DSN: Service unavailable" or "write error: Broken pipe" in /var/log/maillog

ln -s /usr/bin/rt-mailgate /etc/smrsh

I have these lines in my /etc/aliases file:
my-support-comment: "|/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action comment --url http://rt.mysupport.com/"
my-support: "|/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action correspond --url http://rt.mysupport.com/"

Make sure that your server knows about rt.mysupport.com, you might need to add it to /etc/hosts.

You can test the delivery of emails:

echo "test" | mail my-support@rt.mysupport.com -s "test rt"
tail -f /var/log/maillog
or even more directly:
cat testemail.txt |/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action correspond --url http://rt.mysupport.com/

One other error I got was: "Relaying denied. IP name lookup failed" in /var/log/maillog
The problem was that emails were delivered to ticket.mycompany.com, and the rt server was at rt.mysupport.com.
I had to edit the file /etc/mail/local-host-names
and add the line ticket.mycompany.com