Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.

rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for 2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

AlOn Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

What browser you using ?

I’ve had serious problems with opera, which is a shame since its my
preferred browser.

Mozilla and IE deal with this part better.

Of course, it could be something else, but thats my first guess.On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:24:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: Alan Horn ahorn@deorth.org
Cc: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com,
“Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com,
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for 2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Al

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

Walt Reed wrote:

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

Dumb question, what is your server name? Does it have an underscore in
the name? I had a similar problem and that was what was causing it.

Tom

I have had very similar problems when first getting this up. I also had
another problem which was exactly the same but with another helpdesk tool
that I can’t remember for the life of me. However in that case it was
determined that the software could only run under apache.From: Alan Horn [mailto:ahorn@deorth.org]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 12:25 PM
To: Walt Reed
Cc: Sullivan, Robert (HQP); rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

What browser you using ?

I’ve had serious problems with opera, which is a shame since its my
preferred browser.

Mozilla and IE deal with this part better.

Of course, it could be something else, but thats my first guess.

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:24:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: Alan Horn ahorn@deorth.org
Cc: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com,
“Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com,
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into
it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for
2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Al

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all
evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work
well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a
simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list
do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame
you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the
users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the
thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at
http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

Actually I had the similar issue. I discovered that for some reason under
the environment I was running under (apache 1.3.27, mod_perl 1.28, etc)
that the ref() function in perl wasn’t working correctly. It would work
if I loaded up some ref() test code without the other RT stuff, but
whenever I loaded up the full RT environment it would stop working.
Essentially without ref() working properly … it can’t properly
authenticate you (the code for the ref that I was speaking in exists in
DBIx::SearchBuilder). I couldn’t get anyone to assist me on this issue
either …

Solution: I now run RT under Apache2 with mod_perl 1.99 and it works
just fine.On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for 2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Al

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

//========================================================\
|| D. Hageman dhageman@eecs.ku.edu ||
|| Information Specialist 3042 Eaton Hall ||
|| Phone: 785.864.3923 ||
\========================================================//

Galeon, Mozilla, IE, and Firebird have all been tried.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:25:25PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

I had a very similar problem, and I never managed to track down what was
causing it. Then one day I was attempting an install, and it went away.
This problem does seem to be one that should be tracked down and
documented, because out of all the install issues, this is the real killer
:slight_smile:

Did you compile your own apache, mod_perl and mod_ssl from source ?
What compiler version did you use ?
What versions of apache and mod_perl ?On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:38:16 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: Alan Horn ahorn@deorth.org
Cc: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com,
“Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com,
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Galeon, Mozilla, IE, and Firebird have all been tried.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:25:25PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

What browser you using ?

I’ve had serious problems with opera, which is a shame since its my
preferred browser.

Mozilla and IE deal with this part better.

Of course, it could be something else, but thats my first guess.

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:24:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: Alan Horn ahorn@deorth.org
Cc: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com,
“Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com,
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for 2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Al

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Walt Reed wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


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rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

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This sort of implies a problem with mod_perl, or the version of CGI.pm
that you’re using. I’ve occasionally seen issues with broken versions of
some of the lower level modules doing things like this.

Jesse

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:25:25PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

What browser you using ?

I’ve had serious problems with opera, which is a shame since its my
preferred browser.

Mozilla and IE deal with this part better.

Of course, it could be something else, but thats my first guess.

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 15:24:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: Alan Horn ahorn@deorth.org
Cc: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com,
“Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com,
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 12:07:07PM -0700, Alan Horn said:

Walt,

I understand where you’re coming from on this. It took me a long time to
get my head around RT, and I think you’re similarly technical.

The html::mason aspect of it is something I haven’t really delved into it,
since I don’t need to radically customise the interface.

You’re right that the documentation isn’t as great as it could be (for 2.0
at least, I haven’t really worked with 3.0 yet)

I stuck with trying to get RT working because so many people suggested it
to me, peoples who’s opinions I respected.

I’ve not seen any other freeware tool out there that comes close to the
abilities of RT. Thats why I’ve gone from being a frustrated systems guy
ready to throw it out the window, to being a huge RT advocate.

Stick with it a little longer… if you have any specific questions, send
me an email. Apologies, but with workload lately I haven’t been watching
this list much. I’ve always had great responses from key members on the
list though, once I figured out the basics. Once again, I agree that the
barrier to entry could be significantly lowered :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Al

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:58:00 -0400
From: Walt Reed rt@linuxguy.com
To: “Sullivan, Robert (HQP)” Robert.Sullivan@rhi.com
Cc: ‘Walt Reed’ rt@linuxguy.com, rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Abandoning RT Not for the faint of heart

Hmm. I had no intention of slamming anyone. If anything, pointing out
that the documentation is very weak should help prompt someone to fix
it. I am attempting to give constructive criticism. I posted quite a few
messages and only received one response by someone who wasn’t able to
help (no fault on his part…) An inhouse Mason expert who has
developed dozens of large-scale mason-based applications could’t figure
the thing out after spending several days on it.

I was perfectly willing to work with anyone to try and figure out what
went wrong, but nobody with the right expertise stepped up to the plate.

BTW, I compile all my apps by hand - I’m no stranger to tough manual
configurations. It’s VERY rare that I find something I can’t work with.
I even recompiled apache, perl, and mod_perl on a new machine to attempt
to get this thing going with the exact same problem.

If you like RT and are able to get it to work, Great! Don’t switch. If
like me you can’t get the thing to go, there are other alternatives -
you don’t have to keep bashing your head into a brick wall.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 11:24:28AM -0700, Sullivan, Robert (HQP) said:

Hi,

While RT is not an easy program to get up and running and all evaluations of
it say that it is not an easy install. The tool does work and work well. I
agree that it would be nice if it was packaged and one could do a simple
pkgadd. Also I think that Jesse and the rest of the users on this list do a
very good job of helping out whene there are questions. I do not blame you
for going with another product but I think it is a mistake to slam the users
and author of the RT program.

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Reed [mailto:rt@linuxguy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 11:13 AM
To: rt-users@lists.fsck.com
Subject: [rt-users] Abandoning RT

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

I see a few other people struggling to get it working too. If you are
one of those people, you may want to check out http://otrs.org/ which
seems competitive, works, and seems to be currently maintained.


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm


rt-users mailing list
rt-users@lists.fsck.com
http://lists.fsck.com/mailman/listinfo/rt-users

Have you read the FAQ? The RT FAQ Manager lives at http://fsck.com/rtfm

Request Tracker... So much more than a help desk — Best Practical Solutions – Trouble Ticketing. Free.

I actually still have it installed on the fresh box. The problem I’ve
been having is that when I try and login, it dumps me right back to the
login screen. If you look back in the email achives of this list, my
guess is that the CGI object is not getting initialized. The session
cookie doesn’t show up, and GET / POST arguments are not there when I
add some debugging code to print out things like %cookies %ARGS, $user,
etc. The problem is pretty low-level - before autohandler gets called.

Dumb question, what is your server name? Does it have an underscore in
the name? I had a similar problem and that was what was causing it.

I JUST FOUND THE PROBLEM.

RT needs:
“PerlSetupEnv On”
in the apache config. This is off by default in my apache config.

Jesse: Just found the problem.

RT needs:
PerlSetupEnv On

Can you please add this to the documentation?

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 03:43:33PM -0400, Jesse Vincent said:

Jesse: Just found the problem.

RT needs:
PerlSetupEnv On

Cool! I’m quite glad you’ve found the issue that’s been biting you. I’ve
never seen the need for this on any system I’ve touched before. For
posterity, can you give me a final rundown of packages and versions? (Is
this a modperl_2 variable? Are you running other mod_perl apps?)

Best,
Jesse

Request Tracker... So much more than a help desk — Best Practical Solutions – Trouble Ticketing. Free.

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 03:56:47PM -0400, Jesse Vincent said:> On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 03:51:29PM -0400, Walt Reed wrote:

Jesse: Just found the problem.

RT needs:
PerlSetupEnv On

Cool! I’m quite glad you’ve found the issue that’s been biting you. I’ve
never seen the need for this on any system I’ve touched before. For
posterity, can you give me a final rundown of packages and versions? (Is
this a modperl_2 variable? Are you running other mod_perl apps?)

Running on RedHat 8, but with custom compiled apache / perl / mod_perl.
Embedded Perl version v5.8.0 for Apache/1.3.28 (Unix) mod_perl/1.28

I am running another large mason based application. FWIW, the mod_perl
documentation advises turning this variable off so it is likely that
this may bite others as well. In fact, I have it off in the main apache
configuration and turned on in the virtual.

In lib/RT/Interface/Web.pm, RT sets args_method to “CGI” instead
of “mod_perl” like our application uses. My guess is that CGI grabs args
from the environment variables for QUERY_STRING (or whatever it is) as
opposed to internal apache structures (which is what mod_perl does.)
With PerlSetupEnv Off, this variable does not exist.

In lib/RT/Interface/Web.pm, RT sets args_method to “CGI” instead
of “mod_perl” like our application uses. My guess is that CGI grabs args
from the environment variables for QUERY_STRING (or whatever it is) as
opposed to internal apache structures (which is what mod_perl does.)
With PerlSetupEnv Off, this variable does not exist.

Oh. Um. I didn’t realize you were trying to run two different apps on
the same mod_perl instance. Due to apache/mod_perl’s total inability to
sandbox such things cleanly, that’s totally unsupported. Using a
seperate backend server is likely the best way to go. We use the CGI
args_method in mason for compatibility. There have been various issues
with mod_perl args over time (aside from the fact that RT goes to great
lengths to be cleanly compatible with non-mod-perl configurations).

Best,
Jesse

Request Tracker... So much more than a help desk — Best Practical Solutions – Trouble Ticketing. Free.

Jesse: Just found the problem.

RT needs:
PerlSetupEnv On

Cool! I’m quite glad you’ve found the issue that’s been biting you. I’ve
never seen the need for this on any system I’ve touched before. For
posterity, can you give me a final rundown of packages and versions? (Is
this a modperl_2 variable? Are you running other mod_perl apps?)

I’m not sure it would have helped in this case, but when I installed
twiki from http://www.twiki.org it included a nice ‘testenv’ utility
that ran under mod_perl and compared what it found to the required
settings. Something like that might help with the more obscure
problems.

Les Mikesell
les@futuresource.com

Well, after spending several days trying to get it to work, and trying
to debug the code, I decided to abandon my efforts to install RT. This
is too bad because from a feature / demo perspective, RT looks great.
Unfortuantely, the documentation is very weak, the code seems
convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to debug the thing.
The bottom line is that it just doesn’t work.

FWIW: What went wrong? Errormessages, logs, output from installruns would
help us a lot.

I’ve installed RT about 10 times at different boxes without having to
debug the code:-)

And I had a look at the homepage of your suggested alternative: otrs.org
and the documentation found there. The documentation states that:

“The described way of installing the otrs is tested on a newly installed
system. In case you have trouble to install it on your working system
please try it with a new linux installation. Most of the installation
problems are caused by messy apache configurations and forgotten mysql
database passwords. So please use a fresh installation to encircle an
installation problem in case it occures”. The documentation then goes on
to describe the installation on a SuSE system.

Though the manual for RT may not be state of the art, it is
actually possible to make a working RT by following the directions in
the README file. It is not tied to a particular OS (Linux) and/or a
particular flavour (SuSE) as is the documentation for otrs.

So I suggest that you give RT another try, and if (or when) it fails,
comes up with some specific questions on this list.

Greetings
Steen
Steen.Andersen@OpenStone.Dk