RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

RT Developers
1

Hello everybody. :slight_smile:

I would like to call for beta testers my newly released Request Tracker
Apache2-Win32 Port.

This release corresponds to the main branch’s 2.1.12 version, but
with additional tweaks both as patches to the source and as helper
files under the winrt/ directory.

There are four files available for download:

  • http://autrijus.org/rt-2-1-12-win32.exe

    This executable is a all-in-one installer for general users.
    It defaults to install in “Program Files\Request Tracker”,
    but any other directory will do. It comes with Apache2.0.36,
    Perl 5.7.3-blead (build 16610), MySQL 4.0.1-Max, RT 2.1.12
    (patched), as well as the WinRT helper files under winrt/.

    After installation, it automatically creates a Desktop shortcut
    named ‘Launch RT’ and run it, which should register a ‘RT’
    service in the system, launch Apache2 Monitor in the Tray bar,
    as well as popping out a browser that lets you log in to RT.

    The user name is the default ‘root’, and the password is
    ‘password’. Please change them at your earliest convenience.

    Also enabled is the Integrated NT domain logon, for accounts
    that have the matching ‘UnixLoginname’ (a.k.a. ‘Gecos’) fields.
    This currently requires Internet Explorer 4.0 or above to work.

    Configuration are kept under winrt/conf/. Server logs are under
    winrt/logs/. You could generally use the Apache2 Monitor to
    start/stop/pause RT.

  • http://autrijus.org/rt-2-1-12-win32.zip

    This file contains the rt/, winrt/ and perl/site/lib directories
    from the above installation; it is intended for developers that
    wishes to build one’s own environment. You need to install the
    latest version of Perl (with ithreads), MySQL (with InnoDB)
    and Apache2 to the perl/, mysql/ and apache/ directories, run
    winrt/bin/initdb.bat to initialize the database, and (optionally)
    use MakeNSIS to build a distribution from winrt/build/rt.nsi.

    Use winrt/bin/winrt.bat to start the RT service.

  • http://autrijus.org/rt-2-1-12-win32.tgz

    This file contains the rt/ and winrt/ directories in UNIX line
    ending, aimed for non-win32 developers and RT core developers
    for the ease of merging.

  • http://autrijus.org/rt-2-1-12-win32.diff

    This file is the unified diff between the rt/ directory and the
    official rt-2-1-12.tar.gz distribution. See this for what has
    been changed to the main branch.

Please report any problems to autrijus@autrijus.org.

Enjoy!
/Autrijus/

2

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit? How is the mail system
setup?

Thanks,

Neil----- Original Message -----
From: “Autrijus Tang” autrijus@autrijus.org
To: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 10:27 AM
Subject: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

3

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit? How is the mail system
setup?

I’ve been working with Autrijus on this. Down the road, it’s quite likely that
BestPractical will be producing an Win32 installer based on autrijus’ work.
From what I’ve seen, I’m very, very impressed. As a non-windows user myself,
I can’t speak to the mail configuration.

-j

Thanks,

Neil
http://www.bestpractical.com/products/rt – Trouble Ticketing. Free.

4

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit? How is the mail system
setup?

I’ve been working with Autrijus on this. Down the road, it’s quite likely that
BestPractical will be producing an Win32 installer based on autrijus’ work.

There is a free (BSD-ish licenced Pascal source) installation program at
www.innosoft.com. Very simple to use, looks very pretty.

Dan Shearer
dan@tellurian.com.au

5

Being I do the windows / iis world for a living the past 7+ years there’s a
few things that aren’t going to be accepted real well by the windows
community on this port.

I applaud the effort as I know just how much work it is to build a win32
solution / porting *nix → win32. It’s a LOT more work than most people
think.

However if I was looking at this from a windows user point of view…

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database should be
moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s good for
smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine). Alternatively MSDE
(Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few simultaneous queries
before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it for real tasks) could be
used. MSDE is also free (and is full featured Microsoft SQL Server, with
license restrictions). You’d need a licensed SQL Server (at least
development tools) to design the db, etc. but running it can be done free
embedded in your app. Of course check the licensing yourself as I’m not
about to speak for Microsoft licensing terms…

The SMTP should be handled by the socket level commands to send the mail.
There’s a lot of little issues to worry about when doing that -
authentication required / not required, smtp server name, etc. A lot of
scripts rely on the built in IIS SMTP server (CDONTS) but not everyone
installs that - ESPECIALLY if you are going to use Apache then you don’t
want to require IIS to be installed for the SMTP service…

Perl is freely available on windows too, along with plenty of free libraries
to easily port rt to iis.

The current solution, although definitely respectable work (and a LOT of
work) I would expect a lot of windows folks to dislike and not appreciate.
If they are going to have to run Apache on their windows server then why not
just put up a linux box specifically for rt? They have to learn to admin
mysql, etc. The average windows admin simply won’t accept anything but
Microsoft databases, regardless of their ability to perform the job.

FYI: We thought about writing a public ASP based interface to our rt system
here, that can give customers status reports, etc. That never got off the
ground as we couldn’t build the business case for it. But we were looking at
simple asp scripts to insert new problems, check basic status of problem,
etc. It’s only about a days work to write those things in ASP on IIS (since
mysql odbc drivers are readily available). That combined with a dedicated
linux box could easily be done by most any company.

Steve Radich - Colocation / Virtual Dedicated / Dedicated Servers
BitShop, Inc. - http://www.bitshop.com - $149/month colo special-----Original Message-----
From: Neil H. [mailto:neil-list@hostmysite.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 5:09 PM
To: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit? How is the mail system
setup?

Thanks,

Neil

----- Original Message -----
From: “Autrijus Tang” autrijus@autrijus.org
To: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 10:27 AM
Subject: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

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

6

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database should be
moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s good for
smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine). Alternatively MSDE
(Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few simultaneous queries
before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it for real tasks) could be
used.

[snip]

7

Oracle or SQL-Server should make a majority of Windows admins happy. I’ve
never met a win-admin who thought access was good for anything. :slight_smile: Maybe
I’ll get board one of these days and add a DBIx::SB::H::SQLServer.

-Matt

-Matt

8

I think we’re starting to get off topic from rt development and more into
Microsoft “how windows web stuff works”. I could spend a month talking about
this, and have spent years talking about it (hence the IIS/ASP M.V.P. that I
got from them for doing just that). There’s better things in life than
explaining their technical strategy when their lawyers ruin it anyway.

But… for how windows web apps work…

Remember on the windows platform Microsoft pushes you to use ODBC (or
ADO.Net on asp.net).

ODBC you just set a system DSN name (i.e. “rt”) - the odbc settings take
care of login, password, and what kind of db it is (Access, Foxpro, SQL
Server, Oracle). Oracle drivers are always buggy (funny isn’t it? Sell a
competing product and their drivers for Oracle always are buggy… hmmm…)

The point of ODBC is to make your application transparent to what database.

But if it’s ported to use ODBC on windows then IN THEORY it can use any
windows based database (including dozens more than those mentioned above).

If you watch their strategy it’s been to push this as a feature for a long
time; although granted, it’s slightly slower than native drivers for each
db. If you watch carefully, they are starting to back up and say use native
SQL Server drivers for speed… Why? I feel because mysql and other dbs
meet many clients needs, and their licensing model is getting too
aggressive… So now they want it to be work to move to a new db from theirs.

I can’t say I’ve dug into the rt code to see how on *nix the database is
talked to, but porting the actual “open connection” “read next record” “run
this select statement”, etc. to ODBC would result in most any windows
database being supported.

The Microsoft grand scheme of a plan is you can start with Access (so joe
average user can design a database that will never scale nor work and cause
anyone in IT headaches). Joe average users database grows and can be moved
to another db format (name escapes me right this second). This format is
basically sql server file format… Then IT can get this db, open it in
Access 2000 / XP and go to tools - Upsizing wizard. This will convert the db
to SQL Server and (assuming an access app) make everything completely
seamlessly move to SQL Server database back end. Then IT can work on
indices, etc. (Access supports indices, etc. but not very well).

Assuming your web app uses ODBC it can easily point the ODBC DSN to Access
until their db grows, then MSDE (under a zillion licensing restrictions),
then SQL Server after they upgrade to a real version. Or SQL Server
Enterprise Edition… Or Oracle…

The point is the EXACT same web scripts work on ANY odbc compliant database.

Some of their ideas of how to make things like this scalable easily with no
code changes are VERY good. Their implementations sometimes lack, and for
about the last 1-2 years their implementations are getting worse, as linux
continues to get better.

Steve Radich - Microsoft IIS/ASP M.V.P.
BitShop, Inc. - http://www.bitshop.com - $149/month colo specialFrom: seph [mailto:seph@commerceflow.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 8:31 PM
To: Steve Radich
Cc: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Subject: Re: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database should
be
moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s good for
smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine). Alternatively MSDE
(Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few simultaneous queries
before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it for real tasks) could be
used.

[snip]

The average windows admin simply won’t accept anything but Microsoft
databases, regardless of their ability to perform the job.

9

For now, Mail::Sender that explicitly connects to the user’s mail server
sounds like a viable solution, although accepting mail remains a problem
that (fortunately) we were able to punt for now.

Incoming mail I didn’t think of. POP3 via a socket connection is the only
way on windows since a smtp server isn’t generally running.

Even if you run the SMTP service it’s not designed for incoming mail - only
outgoing.

A standard POP3 account however is readily available code (socket
connections) to grab all mail.

Problem is scheduling a pop3 connection - you can use the built in windows
scheduler (ugly solution) or make a NT service that polls the mailbox (also
ugly).

If you go down the path of apache, etc. on windows then I’d see if sendmail
on windows supports redirecting to scripts, etc. Once you have apache
everyone’s going to know it’s a unix port instead of a native app and those
that accept that (anyone with technical sense) isn’t going to care about
sendmail being on the box (as long as open relays aren’t allowed, etc.).

On FastCGI: Sorry, not familiar with (I know ISAPI). From the little I think
I know it’s somewhat similar to isapi. If rt persists across connections or
stays running as long as the user is on that would make the port 100x harder
than it being a standard cgi script / perl script that doesn’t persist (i.e.
exits and completely shuts down between web hits). I’ve only hacked around
rt making sure the db was structured decent enough to meet our needs when we
evaled it and everything else (installing it, config, etc.) was done by just
junior staff here.

Steve Radich - Colocation / Virtual Dedicated / Dedicated Servers
BitShop, Inc. - http://www.bitshop.com - $149/month colo special

10

So perl has DBI and DBD. DBI provides the app developer a nice interface
to any database, as ODBC/JDBC does. DBD provides the actual native drivers
to communicate with the database. DBIx are DBI extensions. The DBIx::SB
objects provide a dynamicish O/R layer which further abstracts the database
away from the developer. From the developers point of view, they have a
bunch of objects and collections which happen to reside on a DB somewhere.

DBB has a ADO and ODBC driver, so fundamentally there is no reason why RT
could not be made to talk to Access/Sqlserver without too much headache.
All someone would need to do, in theory, is implement the appropriate
DBIx::SearchBuilder::Handle::<ODBC|ADO> wrappers.

-Matt

11

Steve,

If the database stuff should be moved to Microsoft Access there should
be noted it should support no more then 5 or perhaps 10 users. Access
blows itself away pretty fast (even in the latest XP version) I’ve
expirienced database weirdeness. Using a scaled down SQL server is far
better solution.
Access tends to act weird when using it for a network solution database
where more then just 2 users hit on it. That’s from my expirience.

Just my 2 cents.
Aleš Mustar
direktor
Opensource-Technologies
Aleš Mustar s.p.-----Original Message-----
From: rt-devel-admin@lists.fsck.com
[mailto:rt-devel-admin@lists.fsck.com] On Behalf Of Steve Radich
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 1:24 AM
To: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Subject: RE: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

Being I do the windows / iis world for a living the past 7+ years
there’s a few things that aren’t going to be accepted real well by the
windows community on this port.

I applaud the effort as I know just how much work it is to build a win32
solution / porting *nix → win32. It’s a LOT more work than most people
think.

However if I was looking at this from a windows user point of view…

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database
should be moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s
good for smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine).
Alternatively MSDE (Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few
simultaneous queries before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it
for real tasks) could be used. MSDE is also free (and is full featured
Microsoft SQL Server, with license restrictions). You’d need a licensed
SQL Server (at least development tools) to design the db, etc. but
running it can be done free embedded in your app. Of course check the
licensing yourself as I’m not about to speak for Microsoft licensing
terms…

12

I still don’t think the mail handling is clear on NT.

Neil----- Original Message -----
From: “Aleďż˝ Mustar” alesh@opensource-technologies.com
To: “‘Steve Radich’” stever@bitshop.com
Cc: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 11:30 AM
Subject: RE: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

Steve,

If the database stuff should be moved to Microsoft Access there should
be noted it should support no more then 5 or perhaps 10 users. Access
blows itself away pretty fast (even in the latest XP version) I’ve
expirienced database weirdeness. Using a scaled down SQL server is far
better solution.
Access tends to act weird when using it for a network solution database
where more then just 2 users hit on it. That’s from my expirience.

Just my 2 cents.
Aleďż˝ Mustar
direktor
Opensource-Technologies
Aleďż˝ Mustar s.p.

-----Original Message-----
From: rt-devel-admin@lists.fsck.com
[mailto:rt-devel-admin@lists.fsck.com] On Behalf Of Steve Radich
Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 1:24 AM
To: rt-devel@lists.fsck.com
Subject: RE: [rt-devel] RT 2.1.12-Win32 beta distribution

Being I do the windows / iis world for a living the past 7+ years
there’s a few things that aren’t going to be accepted real well by the
windows community on this port.

I applaud the effort as I know just how much work it is to build a win32
solution / porting *nix → win32. It’s a LOT more work than most people
think.

However if I was looking at this from a windows user point of view…

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database
should be moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s
good for smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine).
Alternatively MSDE (Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few
simultaneous queries before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it
for real tasks) could be used. MSDE is also free (and is full featured
Microsoft SQL Server, with license restrictions). You’d need a licensed
SQL Server (at least development tools) to design the db, etc. but
running it can be done free embedded in your app. Of course check the
licensing yourself as I’m not about to speak for Microsoft licensing
terms…

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

13

Is this approved by Jesse, i.e. Is this legit? How is the mail system
setup?
I’ve been working with Autrijus on this. Down the road, it’s quite likely that
BestPractical will be producing an Win32 installer based on autrijus’ work.

Yup, this is my intention as well. However, it can take quite a bit of
time to get the help modules (i.e. WinRT) into a generally-portable
configuration framework.

Also the currently combination of Mysql4-alpha, Modperl2-alpha, Perl58-alpha
and Mason109-alpha needs to be seriously ironed out – see winrt/lib/WinRT/HTTPD.pm
for some truly horrifying makeshift work. I’d like to eliminate these before
Bestpractical releases it for General Availability.

From what I’ve seen, I’m very, very impressed. As a non-windows user myself,
I can’t speak to the mail configuration.

Thanks. :slight_smile: Since the attached nms_sendmail does not (yet) handle Cc: and Bcc:,
some amount of porting would be required. There are currently no plans for
handling incoming mails – if somebody have expertise in hooking into Windows
SMTP server, that’d be wonderful.

Thanks,
/Autrijus/

14

The package needs to use IIS to be accepted IMHO, and the database should be
moved to Microsoft Access (the db is free, the UI isn’t. It’s good for
smaller stuff and could probably handle rt just fine).

There is a FastCGI port earlier, which suffers from tha rather bad
performance of isapi_fcgi.dll. But you can use the mason_handler.fcgi
alright; just delete the apache/ directory, and patch WinRT::HTTPD
to recognize IIS start/stop options.

(Microsoft SQL Server, full blown, limited to a few simultaneous queries
before it starts slowing down so you don’t use it for real tasks) could be
used. MSDE is also free (and is full featured Microsoft SQL Server, with
license restrictions). You’d need a licensed SQL Server (at least
development tools) to design the db, etc. but running it can be done free
embedded in your app. Of course check the licensing yourself as I’m not
about to speak for Microsoft licensing terms…

I’ve also started porting toward DBD::Sybase and/or DBD::ODBC – all
it needs is a SearchBuilder; we have done the schema part. This part
was suspended when our client realized that MySQL+Apache makes a far
better combination, and hence stopped sponsoring us to complete the
MSSQL porting. If anybody is ineterested, let me know.

The SMTP should be handled by the socket level commands to send the mail.
There’s a lot of little issues to worry about when doing that -
authentication required / not required, smtp server name, etc. A lot of
scripts rely on the built in IIS SMTP server (CDONTS) but not everyone
installs that - ESPECIALLY if you are going to use Apache then you don’t
want to require IIS to be installed for the SMTP service…

For now, Mail::Sender that explicitly connects to the user’s mail server
sounds like a viable solution, although accepting mail remains a problem
that (fortunately) we were able to punt for now.

Perl is freely available on windows too, along with plenty of free libraries
to easily port rt to iis.

Note that I used the 5.8-tobe trunk instead of ActivePerl, which disallows
aggregation in its ActivePerl Community License. The build options should
be binary compatible, though – this means PPM.pm can probably work.

If they are going to have to run Apache on their windows server then why not
just put up a linux box specifically for rt? They have to learn to admin
mysql, etc. The average windows admin simply won’t accept anything but
Microsoft databases, regardless of their ability to perform the job.

That is very true. Helps would be appreciated.

/Autrijus/