I spent a fair bit of time looking for a good issue tracking / project management solution. Having considered extensively both open source and commercial solutions (up to about $200/month price range like Jira+Confluence and Zoho Projects) I decided to go with Redmine as it offers a good mix of issue tracking and project management capability, most specifically status workflows, sub-tasking and task dependencies and everything else we need.
However, when I decided to deploy Redmine I encountered numerous difficulties, as at my workplace we use PHP and are not familiar with Ruby on Rails and setting up Ruby on Rails for anyone not familiar with it is rather difficult, largely due to the various version dependencies and incompatibilities and lack of decent detailed documentation on how to do it. I managed to setup Redmine on Windows XP using MySQL, Apache and Mongrel, but when I tried to install the same setup on Windows Server 2008 I encountered all sorts of issues with RoR and MySQL, so I decided to setup on CentOS, which is what we use for our production web hosting anyway.
CentOS is one of the most frequently chosen Linux operating systems for Linux based production environments. There is extensive documentation available on setting up CentOS and it is arguably the best choice for deploying and running production Linux servers for organisation with all levels of in-house Linux server deployment and administration capability.
Redmine is one of the best (if not THE best) open source issue tracking and project management applications, but because it is developed using Ruby on Rails it can be rather complex to deploy for anyone not familiar with the Ruby on Rails environment.
This How-To provides detailed steps required to get Redmine up and running on a CentOS operating system using the following components:The How-To provides detailed instructions on the installation and explains what each step does, so that it can be easily follows by people experienced and new to the Ruby on Rails environment.
yum -y install zlib-devel curl-devel openssl-devel httpd-devel apr-devel apr-util-devel mysql-devel
# Create the directory where you will store the Downloadsmkdir ~/Downloads # This can be any directory.# Change to directory where you will store the downloadcd ~/Downloads # This can be any directory.# FTP to where you will download ruby from.# When asked to login use user/password of anonymous/anonymousftp ftp.ruby-lang.org Name (ftp.ruby-lang.org:root): anonymousPassword: anonymousftp> cd /pub/rubyftp> get ruby-1.8.7-pXXX.tar.gzftp> quit# You have now downloaded ruby and need to untar ittar zxvf ruby-1.8.7-pXXX.tar.gz# Compile rubycd ruby-1.8.7-pXXX./configuremakemake install# Verify ruby installationruby -vwhich ruby# Change back into your downloads directorycd ..
wget http://production.cf.rubygems.org/rubygems/rubygems-1.4.2.tgztar zxvf rubygems-1.4.2.tgzcd rubygems-1.4.2ruby setup.rbgem -vwhich gemcd ..
gem install passengerpassenger-install-apache2-module
An alternate method is to install mod_passenger RPM for Apache from the following location:
http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/
RHEL/CentOS 5
rpm -Uvh http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rhel/5/passenger-release.noarch.rpmyum install mod_passenger
RHEL/CentOS 6
rpm --import http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-stealthymonkeys.ascyum install http://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rhel/6/passenger-release.noarch.rpmyum install mod_passenger
service httpd restart
Download page: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1850
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/75597/redmine-1.3.0.tar.gz # GET LATEST VERSION ON RUBYFORGEtar zxvf redmine-1.3.0.tar.gz
cp -av redmine-1.3.0/* /var/www/redmine
more information can be found here: HowTo configure Apache to run Redmine
gem install bundler
For more info go to the Bundler site.
vi /var/www/redmine/Gemfile
# file: /var/www/redmine/Gemfilesource "http://rubygems.org" gem "rake", "0.8.3" gem "rack", "1.1.0" gem "i18n", "0.4.2" gem "rubytree", "0.5.2", :require => "tree" gem "RedCloth", "~>4.2.3", :require => "redcloth" # for CodeRaygem "mysql" gem "coderay", "~>0.9.7"
bundle install
yum install mysql-serverchkconfig mysqld onservice mysqld start/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation
For MySQL:
start the mysql client (mysql -u root -p) and enter the following commandscreate database redmine character set utf8;create user 'redmine'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';grant all privileges on redmine.* to 'redmine'@'localhost';
For versions of MySQL prior to 5.0.2 - skip the 'create user' step and instead:
grant all privileges on redmine.* to 'redmine'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';
Uncomment the following line in file redmine/config/environment.rb:
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake generate_session_store
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data
Follow instructions.
mv dispatch.cgi.example dispatch.cgimv dispatch.fcgi.example dispatch.fcgimv dispatch.rb.example dispatch.rb
mv htaccess.fcgi.example .htaccess
cd ..chown -R apache:apache redmine-1.xchmod -R 755 redmine-1.x
Enjoy!
