Best web server for RT4?

RT Users
1

Hey all,
I think it’s pretty clear by now that no one on this list uses Nginx (my
server of choice). So, I guess I’ll try to use Apache instead, using the
official setup page:
https://docs.bestpractical.com/rt/4.4.1/web_deployment.html

I’m using 4.2.8, but it’s the same thing for hosting, I hope. Anyway, the
Nginx section of the above page looked very simple–a configuration, a
restart of Nginx, a spawn-fcgi, and you’re done. Worse are all the warnings
in each subsection of the Apache section. I’m not good enough with Linux to
fully grasp what it is they’re warning me about, but when Apache, then each
subsection of Apache, has caveats and notes, while Nginx has none, I
thought I’d take the safer road. If Nginx isn’t an option, though, which
method for Apache should I use to host the FCGI that RT needs in order to
work? Is there a different RT setup/serving page that explains things
differently? Thanks in advance.

Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

2

Hey all,
I think it’s pretty clear by now that no one on this list uses Nginx (my
server of choice). So, I guess I’ll try to use Apache instead, using the
official setup page:
Web deployment - RT 4.4.1 Documentation - Best Practical

I’m using 4.2.8, but it’s the same thing for hosting, I hope. Anyway, the
Nginx section of the above page looked very simple–a configuration, a
restart of Nginx, a spawn-fcgi, and you’re done. Worse are all the warnings
in each subsection of the Apache section. I’m not good enough with Linux to
fully grasp what it is they’re warning me about, but when Apache, then each
subsection of Apache, has caveats and notes, while Nginx has none, I
thought I’d take the safer road. If Nginx isn’t an option, though, which
method for Apache should I use to host the FCGI that RT needs in order to
work? Is there a different RT setup/serving page that explains things
differently? Thanks in advance.

–
Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

Hi Alex,

We use nginx+spawn-fcgi with RT here and it works very well. I think you
will need to test each piece of your setup before moving to the next. i.e.
Does the standalone server run? Then try it with fcgi. You should also
check your RT logs, because if the backend exits, then their will be nothing
to talk to.

Regards,
Ken

3

Thanks for the reminder to check the built-in server first; it’s still
trying to use SQLite. My config file says to use MySQL, but RT doesn’t seem
to want to. The error message I get when starting the server says to
configure my database connection by visiting the “URL below”, but never
actually gives me a URL. I’ve restarted the RT service, but that didn’t
work.

I seem to keep going in circles with RT. I can’t get it to run, likely
because of it not taking my configuration changes. To apply those changes,
I have to restart whatever server it’s running on, but to do that, a server
has to be running. /var/log/request-tracker4 has no files in it at all, so
I can’t look there to see if there’s a missing piece. I don’t know why I’m
having so much trouble with what should be a relatively straightforward
process; I’m either missing something very obvious, or the Debian package
for RT isn’t working correctly. Installing with the latest source, though,
was a nightmare.

Anyway, any thoughts on where to go from here? My configuration file seems
to be okay, but RT doesn’t want to pick it up. Maybe that’s the root of my
problem?On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Kenneth Marshall ktm@rice.edu wrote:

On Thu, Sep 01, 2016 at 01:23:23PM -0400, Alex Hall wrote:

Hey all,
I think it’s pretty clear by now that no one on this list uses Nginx (my
server of choice). So, I guess I’ll try to use Apache instead, using the
official setup page:
Web deployment - RT 4.4.1 Documentation - Best Practical

I’m using 4.2.8, but it’s the same thing for hosting, I hope. Anyway, the
Nginx section of the above page looked very simple–a configuration, a
restart of Nginx, a spawn-fcgi, and you’re done. Worse are all the
warnings
in each subsection of the Apache section. I’m not good enough with Linux
to
fully grasp what it is they’re warning me about, but when Apache, then
each
subsection of Apache, has caveats and notes, while Nginx has none, I
thought I’d take the safer road. If Nginx isn’t an option, though, which
method for Apache should I use to host the FCGI that RT needs in order to
work? Is there a different RT setup/serving page that explains things
differently? Thanks in advance.

–
Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

Hi Alex,

We use nginx+spawn-fcgi with RT here and it works very well. I think you
will need to test each piece of your setup before moving to the next. i.e.
Does the standalone server run? Then try it with fcgi. You should also
check your RT logs, because if the backend exits, then their will be
nothing
to talk to.

Regards,
Ken

Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

4

I’m either missing something very obvious, or the Debian package for RT
isn’t working correctly. Installing with the latest source, though, was
a nightmare.

First of all, read the docs. Especially the Debian docs, as installing
RT as a Debian package works different than install RT from Source,
which the Best Practical documentation describes.

In Debian the RT config is managed by files under
/etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.d/. If you change something in one
of these files, you have to run the command update-rt-siteconfig, which
actually builds the /etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.pm file.

Did you install the rt4-fcgi package?
This will install everything you need for a nginx web deployment.
/etc/init.d/rt4-fcgi would then reload the RT configuration.

Why was installing from source a nightmare?
We actually use RT from source on Debian for years, and it works great.

Chris

5

Thanks for the very helpful reply. No, I didn’t know about rt4-fcgi, nor
the update command. Unfortunately, even after running that command, the
stand-alone server still thinks it’s supposed to use SQLite3 and the
default database name, for some reason. I even restarted the
request-tracker4 service.

Where are the docs you mentioned? I searched for “request tracker debian”,
but got only unhelpful results. There’s an RT set up for Debian itself; a
wikia.com page that is broken, an install guide for RT3.6 that never
mentions the rt4-fcgi package, and so on. The package details page for
rt4-fcgi itself doesn’t seem to give any usage instructions, unless I’m
missing them (possible when using a screen reader, though unlikely).
Specifically, I’m not sure how to tell it to use 127.0.0.1:8485, or
whatever port I set in the RT site file for Nginx. Are there other commands
that will be useful?

Installing from source got quite confusing. I’ve never used Perl, so had to
configure the CPAN first, and wasn’t sure how to answer the questions it
asked. Then the make testdeps command didn’t work, so I had to manually
look through the (very long) list of dependencies, find one that was
missing, and try to install it manually. That installation process then got
rather confusing, with a few packages not going smoothly at all. Finally, I
found there was a pre-built package already made, and the installation for
that was a breeze. Of course, I’m now stuck with a stubborn configuration
that isn’t letting any RT server start, so I suppose it’s six of one and a
half dozen of the other. Still, I think this odd configuration problem will
be much easier to solve.On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 1:48 AM, Christian Loos cloos@netcologne.de wrote:

Am 01.09.2016 um 20:15 schrieb Alex Hall:

I’m either missing something very obvious, or the Debian package for RT
isn’t working correctly. Installing with the latest source, though, was
a nightmare.

First of all, read the docs. Especially the Debian docs, as installing
RT as a Debian package works different than install RT from Source,
which the Best Practical documentation describes.

In Debian the RT config is managed by files under
/etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.d/. If you change something in one
of these files, you have to run the command update-rt-siteconfig, which
actually builds the /etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.pm file.

Did you install the rt4-fcgi package?
This will install everything you need for a nginx web deployment.
/etc/init.d/rt4-fcgi would then reload the RT configuration.

Why was installing from source a nightmare?
We actually use RT from source on Debian for years, and it works great.

Chris

Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

6

Hi,

If you decide to retry a source install. You might want to look at
using perlbrew to install a stand alone perl and configuring cpanminus
as
described in the rt_perl documentation below will make life much easier.

https://docs.bestpractical.com/rt/4.4.1/rt_perl.html

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu/Debian, but always use a source install of RT,
with Nginx incidently,
works a treat.

Best Regards

MartinOn 2016-09-02 13:01, Alex Hall wrote:

Thanks for the very helpful reply. No, I didn’t know about rt4-fcgi,
nor the update command. Unfortunately, even after running that
command, the stand-alone server still thinks it’s supposed to use
SQLite3 and the default database name, for some reason. I even
restarted the request-tracker4 service.

Where are the docs you mentioned? I searched for “request tracker
debian”, but got only unhelpful results. There’s an RT set up for
Debian itself; a wikia.com [1] page that is broken, an install guide
for RT3.6 that never mentions the rt4-fcgi package, and so on. The
package details page for rt4-fcgi itself doesn’t seem to give any
usage instructions, unless I’m missing them (possible when using a
screen reader, though unlikely). Specifically, I’m not sure how to
tell it to use 127.0.0.1:8485 [2], or whatever port I set in the RT
site file for Nginx. Are there other commands that will be useful?

Installing from source got quite confusing. I’ve never used Perl, so
had to configure the CPAN first, and wasn’t sure how to answer the
questions it asked. Then the make testdeps command didn’t work, so I
had to manually look through the (very long) list of dependencies,
find one that was missing, and try to install it manually. That
installation process then got rather confusing, with a few packages
not going smoothly at all. Finally, I found there was a pre-built
package already made, and the installation for that was a breeze. Of
course, I’m now stuck with a stubborn configuration that isn’t letting
any RT server start, so I suppose it’s six of one and a half dozen of
the other. Still, I think this odd configuration problem will be much
easier to solve.

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 1:48 AM, Christian Loos cloos@netcologne.de wrote:

Am 01.09.2016 um 20:15 schrieb Alex Hall:

I’m either missing something very obvious, or the Debian package
for RT
isn’t working correctly. Installing with the latest source,
though, was
a nightmare.

First of all, read the docs. Especially the Debian docs, as
installing
RT as a Debian package works different than install RT from Source,
which the Best Practical documentation describes.

In Debian the RT config is managed by files under
/etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.d/. If you change something in
one
of these files, you have to run the command update-rt-siteconfig,
which
actually builds the /etc/request-tracker4/RT_SiteConfig.pm file.

Did you install the rt4-fcgi package?
This will install everything you need for a nginx web deployment.
/etc/init.d/rt4-fcgi would then reload the RT configuration.

Why was installing from source a nightmare?
We actually use RT from source on Debian for years, and it works
great.

Chris

–

Alex Hall
Automatic Distributors, IT department
ahall@autodist.com

Links:

[1] http://wikia.com
[2] http://127.0.0.1:8485

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