New user considering to use RT + FreeBSD port for 3.8

RT Users
1

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and install
    rt36 now
    and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do you
    suggest
    that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then install
    it
    from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the long
    run?

  2. If FreeBSD systems are not well supported, we can also move to a Linux
    system. Is it better to use a Linux system?

  3. I’ve been reading that RT is memory intensive. Is 2 GB enough? This
    machine also runs the DHCP server. Do you guys recommend to have a
    separate system for RT?

I hope these questions belong to this list. If not, can you please point me
to
the correct list?

Thanks,
Joe the rtuser :slight_smile:

2

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

Good. I’m a big fan of Horde when it comes to IMP and Kronolith (as soon
as non-personal calendars can be given sane names not random hashes) -
but for ticketing RT is always the way to go.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and
    install rt36 now
    and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do
    you suggest
    that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then
    install it
    from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the long
    run?

I always recommend a manual install. While some are much better than
others, trusting your installation to someone else just means that when
you need to know something about the way it’s installed, you end up
having a lot of trouble finding out.

Manual installation not really difficult.

Also, I definitely recommend you use 3.8.1 not 3.6.x

  1. If FreeBSD systems are not well supported, we can also move to a Linux
    system. Is it better to use a Linux system?

It really doesn’t matter what the operating system is so long as you
have a webserver with FastCGI or mod_perl and a database, preferably MySQL.

My personal preference is Slackware Linux 12.1 + Apache 2 + mod_perl 2 +
RT-3.8.1 but your choices are endless.

  1. I’ve been reading that RT is memory intensive. Is 2 GB enough? This
    machine also runs the DHCP server. Do you guys recommend to have a
    separate system for RT?

That’s really fine. It’s not that memory intensive. I have had two
installations running side by side on a primary DNS and DHCP server that
also runs multiple MySQL instances and other things besides on it and it
was fine.

I hope these questions belong to this list. If not, can you please
point me to
the correct list?

You found the right place.

Kind Regards,

Mike Peachey, IT
Tel: +44 114 281 2655
Fax: +44 114 281 2951
Jennic Ltd, Furnival Street, Sheffield, S1 4QT, UK
Comp Reg No: 3191371 - Registered In England

3

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and install
    rt36 now and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do you
    suggest that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then install
    it from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the long
    run?

We also run this OS on our servers and we’ve been running RT over
FreeBSD for years.

There’s a port for the v3.8 in progress. Check this out:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2008-August/050271.html

4

I would like to add some personal comments to Mike’s response.

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

Good. I’m a big fan of Horde when it comes to IMP and Kronolith (as soon
as non-personal calendars can be given sane names not random hashes) -
but for ticketing RT is always the way to go.

We have been very happy with RT as our ticket system.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and
    install rt36 now
    and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do
    you suggest
    that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then
    install it
    from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the long
    run?

I always recommend a manual install. While some are much better than
others, trusting your installation to someone else just means that when
you need to know something about the way it’s installed, you end up
having a lot of trouble finding out.

Manual installation not really difficult.

Also, I definitely recommend you use 3.8.1 not 3.6.x

I also recommend a manual install and 3.8.1 as well. We are in the
process of upgrading to 3.8.1 currently.

  1. If FreeBSD systems are not well supported, we can also move to a Linux
    system. Is it better to use a Linux system?

It really doesn’t matter what the operating system is so long as you
have a webserver with FastCGI or mod_perl and a database, preferably MySQL.

My personal preference is Slackware Linux 12.1 + Apache 2 + mod_perl 2 +
RT-3.8.1 but your choices are endless.

I think that your database choice should be based on what expertise
you have available in house. One other consideration is that MySQL does
not currently support full-text indexes with InnoDB tables (the kind
used by RT). Both Oracle and PostgreSQL do and there is a wiki item
on how to use full-text indexing with RT and Oracle and we will be posting
a similar item for PostgreSQL once we have finished our testing/upgrade.

  1. I’ve been reading that RT is memory intensive. Is 2 GB enough? This
    machine also runs the DHCP server. Do you guys recommend to have a
    separate system for RT?

That’s really fine. It’s not that memory intensive. I have had two
installations running side by side on a primary DNS and DHCP server that
also runs multiple MySQL instances and other things besides on it and it
was fine.

Note: RT was developed using MySQL and is more well-tuned for it in
many places. The performance difference between MySQL and other DB backend
choices has narrowed and other backed may offer options that are not yet
available with MySQL, my two cents. The bottom-line is that you should
choose the backend based on what you can support in-house.

Ken

5

Thank you all for your suggestions.

We are using MySQL 5.0 as our database. I have no idea what full-text
indexing
with InnoDB tables means. May be I will once I start playing around with
RT. Is that
such a big of a deal?

Thanks,On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Kenneth Marshall ktm@rice.edu wrote:

I would like to add some personal comments to Mike’s response.

On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 03:06:26PM +0000, Mike Peachey wrote:

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version
and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing
system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the
existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

Good. I’m a big fan of Horde when it comes to IMP and Kronolith (as soon
as non-personal calendars can be given sane names not random hashes) -
but for ticketing RT is always the way to go.

We have been very happy with RT as our ticket system.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available
    (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and
    install rt36 now
    and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do
    you suggest
    that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then
    install it
    from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the
    long
    run?

I always recommend a manual install. While some are much better than
others, trusting your installation to someone else just means that when
you need to know something about the way it’s installed, you end up
having a lot of trouble finding out.

Manual installation not really difficult.

Also, I definitely recommend you use 3.8.1 not 3.6.x

I also recommend a manual install and 3.8.1 as well. We are in the
process of upgrading to 3.8.1 currently.

  1. If FreeBSD systems are not well supported, we can also move to a
    Linux
    system. Is it better to use a Linux system?

It really doesn’t matter what the operating system is so long as you
have a webserver with FastCGI or mod_perl and a database, preferably
MySQL.

My personal preference is Slackware Linux 12.1 + Apache 2 + mod_perl 2 +
RT-3.8.1 but your choices are endless.

I think that your database choice should be based on what expertise
you have available in house. One other consideration is that MySQL does
not currently support full-text indexes with InnoDB tables (the kind
used by RT). Both Oracle and PostgreSQL do and there is a wiki item
on how to use full-text indexing with RT and Oracle and we will be posting
a similar item for PostgreSQL once we have finished our testing/upgrade.

  1. I’ve been reading that RT is memory intensive. Is 2 GB enough?
    This
    machine also runs the DHCP server. Do you guys recommend to have a
    separate system for RT?

That’s really fine. It’s not that memory intensive. I have had two
installations running side by side on a primary DNS and DHCP server that
also runs multiple MySQL instances and other things besides on it and it
was fine.

Note: RT was developed using MySQL and is more well-tuned for it in
many places. The performance difference between MySQL and other DB backend
choices has narrowed and other backed may offer options that are not yet
available with MySQL, my two cents. The bottom-line is that you should
choose the backend based on what you can support in-house.

Ken

I hope these questions belong to this list. If not, can you please
point me to
the correct list?

You found the right place.

–
Kind Regards,

Mike Peachey, IT
Tel: +44 114 281 2655
Fax: +44 114 281 2951
Jennic Ltd, Furnival Street, Sheffield, S1 4QT, UK
Comp Reg No: 3191371 - Registered In England
http://www.jennic.com

The rt-users Archives

Community help: http://wiki.bestpractical.com
Commercial support: sales@bestpractical.com

Discover RT’s hidden secrets with RT Essentials from O’Reilly Media.
Buy a copy at http://rtbook.bestpractical.com

6

conversion for me and running out of mysql5 with innodb is working very
well, FWIW.On Fri, 7 Nov 2008, Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:17:47 -0500
From: Joe Mailinglists joe.rtuser@gmail.com
To: Kenneth Marshall ktm@rice.edu
Cc: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] New user considering to use RT + FreeBSD port for 3.8

Thank you all for your suggestions.

We are using MySQL 5.0 as our database. I have no idea what full-text
indexing
with InnoDB tables means. May be I will once I start playing around with
RT. Is that
such a big of a deal?

Thanks,

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Kenneth Marshall ktm@rice.edu wrote:

I would like to add some personal comments to Mike’s response.

On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 03:06:26PM +0000, Mike Peachey wrote:

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi all,

We’ve been using Horde+whups system for helpdesk in our University
for the past 3 years. We recently upgraded it from a very old version
and
everything got hosed. We are planning to move to a better ticketing
system
that is more stable and can be upgraded later without breaking the
existing
infrastructure (databases, etc.). I heard good things about RT.

Good. I’m a big fan of Horde when it comes to IMP and Kronolith (as soon
as non-personal calendars can be given sane names not random hashes) -
but for ticketing RT is always the way to go.

We have been very happy with RT as our ticket system.

My questions to you guys are the following:

  1. We use a FreeBSD system. I see that there is a port available
    (rt36) for
    version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet. Is it ok if I go ahead and
    install rt36 now
    and later on upgrade to rt38 whenever it is available? If not, do
    you suggest
    that I manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then
    install it
    from the source? Which method is safer/easier for upgrades in the
    long
    run?

I always recommend a manual install. While some are much better than
others, trusting your installation to someone else just means that when
you need to know something about the way it’s installed, you end up
having a lot of trouble finding out.

Manual installation not really difficult.

Also, I definitely recommend you use 3.8.1 not 3.6.x

I also recommend a manual install and 3.8.1 as well. We are in the
process of upgrading to 3.8.1 currently.

  1. If FreeBSD systems are not well supported, we can also move to a
    Linux
    system. Is it better to use a Linux system?

It really doesn’t matter what the operating system is so long as you
have a webserver with FastCGI or mod_perl and a database, preferably
MySQL.

My personal preference is Slackware Linux 12.1 + Apache 2 + mod_perl 2 +
RT-3.8.1 but your choices are endless.

I think that your database choice should be based on what expertise
you have available in house. One other consideration is that MySQL does
not currently support full-text indexes with InnoDB tables (the kind
used by RT). Both Oracle and PostgreSQL do and there is a wiki item
on how to use full-text indexing with RT and Oracle and we will be posting
a similar item for PostgreSQL once we have finished our testing/upgrade.

  1. I’ve been reading that RT is memory intensive. Is 2 GB enough?
    This
    machine also runs the DHCP server. Do you guys recommend to have a
    separate system for RT?

That’s really fine. It’s not that memory intensive. I have had two
installations running side by side on a primary DNS and DHCP server that
also runs multiple MySQL instances and other things besides on it and it
was fine.

Note: RT was developed using MySQL and is more well-tuned for it in
many places. The performance difference between MySQL and other DB backend
choices has narrowed and other backed may offer options that are not yet
available with MySQL, my two cents. The bottom-line is that you should
choose the backend based on what you can support in-house.

Ken

I hope these questions belong to this list. If not, can you please
point me to
the correct list?

You found the right place.

–
Kind Regards,

Mike Peachey, IT
Tel: +44 114 281 2655
Fax: +44 114 281 2951
Jennic Ltd, Furnival Street, Sheffield, S1 4QT, UK
Comp Reg No: 3191371 - Registered In England
http://www.jennic.com

The rt-users Archives

Community help: http://wiki.bestpractical.com
Commercial support: sales@bestpractical.com

Discover RT’s hidden secrets with RT Essentials from O’Reilly Media.
Buy a copy at http://rtbook.bestpractical.com

nimbius@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

7

Angelo, can you please send me the updated shar if it is different from the
one available at
http://people.freebsd.org/~pgollucci/rt38
I want to try it on a test system before I try to install it from source. I
luckily have enough time to
play around with things.

Thanks,On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Angelo Turetta <aturetta+rt@bestunion.itaturetta%2Brt@bestunion.it wrote:

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi Angelo,

My name is Krishna…I am subscribed to too many mailing lists, hence a
separate email address for every mailing list.

Thanks, that’s a good habit (look at my address), but I nonetheless like to
know who I’m talking to. The name need not be fake, even if the address is.

Our primary concern here is the upgrade procedure and of course stability.

Will everything magically work from one port
to the other?

Every upgrade is a sensible operation, no matter how you installed the
software. The biggest challenges are upgrades involving DB schema changes,
RT is a shining example of how to do it right, but you cannot expect to do
such a thing ‘magically’: based on your business continuity policies, you
may even need a test installation to validate the upgrade before deploying
it on a production system.
The port of rt38 by Philip M. Gollucci is actually the first which seems to
allow for a comfortable upgrade to future versions.

Can I just download rt38 port from the link you mentioned and install it?

Is it stable enough? One of the users was
suggesting that I install it from source. What do you suggest?

The freebsd port infrastructure is a solid one, and it is one of the few
way you have to keep the dependencies sane if you install more than one
application per system. I personally don’t like to install software from
source other than by using a port, but I have to admit that previous
versions of the rt port where somewhat unfriendly.
The rt38 port is not yet finished, so you should be prepared to some
non-pleasant surprise, but it has much more solid structure than previous
ones.
Only you, based on your expertise with the ports collection, can decide
which way to go. If you try the port, please try my patch attached to the
PR.

Angelo.

Thanks,

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Angelo Turetta <aturetta+rt@bestunion.itaturetta%2Brt@bestunion.it> wrote:

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

   1) We use a FreeBSD system.  I see that there is a port
   available (rt36) for version 3.6 but none for 3.8 yet.  Is it ok
   if I go ahead and install rt36 now and later on upgrade to rt38
   whenever it is available?  If not, do you suggest that I
   manually download the latest version of rt3.8.1 and then install
   it from the source?  Which method is safer/easier for upgrades
   in the long run?

There is a port for 3.8.1 in the works, look at
125745 – Update to www/rt3* available - 3.8.0 (check all
replies), and the user’s work space at
http://people.freebsd.org/~pgollucci/rt38http://people.freebsd.org/~pgollucci/rt38

The port is really well thought, and for the first time it will be
possible to pre-package rt. Unluckily Philip seems to have vanished for
the last two months, and the work on it has stopped.

I may send you an updated shar if you whish.

   3) I've been reading that RT is memory intensive.  Is 2 GB
   enough?  This machine also runs the DHCP server.  Do you guys
   recommend to have a separate system for RT?

If you need a high-performance system you’d sure need to consider a DB
server optimization (including cache memory etc…), but I don’t think
the web application is inherently memory intensive.

   I hope these questions belong to this list.

Yes, they do. Eventually, you may consider posting using your real
name :slight_smile:

Angelo.

8

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi Angelo,

My name is Krishna…I am subscribed to too many mailing lists, hence a
separate email address for every mailing list.

Thanks, that’s a good habit (look at my address), but I nonetheless like
to know who I’m talking to. The name need not be fake, even if the
address is.

Our primary concern here is the upgrade procedure and of course
stability. Will everything magically work from one port
to the other?

Every upgrade is a sensible operation, no matter how you installed the
software. The biggest challenges are upgrades involving DB schema
changes, RT is a shining example of how to do it right, but you cannot
expect to do such a thing ‘magically’: based on your business continuity
policies, you may even need a test installation to validate the upgrade
before deploying it on a production system.
The port of rt38 by Philip M. Gollucci is actually the first which seems
to allow for a comfortable upgrade to future versions.

Can I just download rt38 port from the link you mentioned and install
it? Is it stable enough? One of the users was
suggesting that I install it from source. What do you suggest?

The freebsd port infrastructure is a solid one, and it is one of the few
way you have to keep the dependencies sane if you install more than one
application per system. I personally don’t like to install software from
source other than by using a port, but I have to admit that previous
versions of the rt port where somewhat unfriendly.
The rt38 port is not yet finished, so you should be prepared to some
non-pleasant surprise, but it has much more solid structure than
previous ones.
Only you, based on your expertise with the ports collection, can decide
which way to go. If you try the port, please try my patch attached to
the PR.

Angelo.

9

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Angelo, can you please send me the updated shar if it is different from
the one available at
http://people.freebsd.org/~pgollucci/rt38
I want to try it on a test system before I try to install it from
source. I luckily have enough time to
play around with things.

Here it is, along with a sample RT configuration (please review it,
don’t blame me for any security issue :-).

Angelo.

rt38at.shar (79.5 KB)

rt38modperl.conf (625 Bytes)

10

Angelo Turetta wrote:

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Angelo, can you please send me the updated shar if it is different
from the one available at
http://people.freebsd.org/~pgollucci/rt38
I want to try it on a test system before I try to install it from
source. I luckily have enough time to
play around with things.

Here it is, along with a sample RT configuration (please review it,
don’t blame me for any security issue :-).

Ah, from the port messages it’s not clear how to initialize the database
after setup, here is the command line I used for my PostGreSQL DB:

rt-setup-database --action init --dba postgres --prompt-for-dba-password
–datadir /usr/local/etc/rt38/

HTH,
Angelo.

11

Joe Mailinglists wrote:

Hi Angelo,

My name is Krishna…I am subscribed to too many mailing lists,
hence a
separate email address for every mailing list.

Thanks, that’s a good habit (look at my address), but I nonetheless
like
to know who I’m talking to. The name need not be fake, even if the
address is.

Our primary concern here is the upgrade procedure and of course
stability. Will everything magically work from one port
to the other?

Every upgrade is a sensible operation, no matter how you installed the
software. The biggest challenges are upgrades involving DB schema
changes, RT is a shining example of how to do it right, but you
cannot
expect to do such a thing ‘magically’: based on your business
continuity
policies, you may even need a test installation to validate the
upgrade
before deploying it on a production system.

I really recommend everybody run the upgrade on his RT on a test-
machine first.
There are far too many things that can go wrong.
I’ve been running our RT for over three years now - on the same
hardware (started as 3.4.2 on FreeBSD5.4, then 3.6.3 on FreeBSD6.2 and
now 3.8.1 on FreeBSD7.0) and I’ve always tried out the upgrades on a
VMware copy of the installation first (which is easy for me, because
the DB is not very big yet)
With FreeBSD, you just need to restore /var/db and /usr/local and /usr/
ports to a fresh install of your current installation (I always run
RELEASE+security-patches only, no STABLE).
Then, start by updating the OS to the latest release, than re-build
the ports and then update RT.
RT is one of the few pieces of software that I don’t install via a
FreeBSD port - maybe I’m a control-freak, but I really want to make
sure, that nothing goes wrong :wink:

I use PostgreSQL, because I believe it’s the more powerful database
(and I hate some aspects of MySQL).

FreeBSD is IMO the best OS to run RT on, because the packaging-system
doesn’t fight with 3rd-party PERL-module installations (but I think
nowadays all the required modules are in FreeBSD’s port-framework
anyway)

Rainer