About

RT is an enterprise-grade issue tracking system. It allows organizations to keep track of what needs to get done, who is working on which tasks, what's already been done, and when tasks were (or weren't) completed.

RT doesn't cost anything to use, no matter how much you use it; it is freely available under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

RT is commercially-supported software. To purchase support, training, custom development, or professional services, please get in touch with us at <sales@bestpractical.com>.

REQUIRED PACKAGES

o Perl 5.10.1 or later (http://www.perl.org).

    RT won't start on versions of Perl older than 5.10.1.

o A supported SQL database

    Currently supported:  MySQL 5.7, 8 with InnoDB support
                          MariaDB 10.2 or later with InnoDB support
                          Postgres 9.5 or later
                          Oracle 12c or later
                          SQLite 3.0 or later; for testing only, no
                                       upgrade path guaranteed

o Apache version 2.x (https://httpd.apache.org) with mod_fcgid -- (https://httpd.apache.org/mod_fcgid/mod/mod_fcgid.html) or mod_perl -- (http://perl.apache.org) or nginx -- (https://nginx.org/) or another webserver with FastCGI support

    RT's FastCGI handler needs to access RT's configuration file.

o Various and sundry perl modules

    A tool included with RT takes care of the installation of most
    of these automatically during the install process.

    The tool supplied with RT uses Perl's CPAN (<a href="http://www.cpan.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.cpan.org</a>)
    to install modules. Some operating systems package all or some
    of the modules required, and you may be better off installing
    the modules that way.

OPTIONAL DEPENDENCIES

o Full-text indexing support in your database

    The databases listed above all have options for full-text indexing
    (excluding SQLite). See docs/full_text_indexing.pod for details.

o An external HTML converter

    Installing an external utility to convert HTML can improve performance.
    See the $HTMLFormatter configuration option for details.

o An SSL certificate for your web server

    For production use, we recommend getting an SSL certificate for your
    web server. You can get them free from Let's Encrypt (<a href="https://letsencrypt.org/" rel="nofollow">https://letsencrypt.org/</a>)
    or even create your own self-signed certificate.

    If you are testing and want to run without a cert, add this to your
    etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm file:

        Set( $WebSecureCookies, 0 );

    Without this setting, your browser won't trust RT's cookies and you won't
    be able to log in. See the documentation for more information.
    (<a href="https://docs.bestpractical.com/rt/latest/RT_Config.html#WebSecureCookies" rel="nofollow">https://docs.bestpractical.com/rt/latest/RT_Config.html#WebSecureCookies</a>)

GENERAL INSTALLATION

1) Unpack this distribution other than where you want to install RT. Your home directory or /usr/local/src are both fine choices. Change to that directory and run the following command:

    tar xzvf rt.tar.gz

2) Run the "configure" script. To see the list of options, run:

    ./configure --help

Peruse the options, then rerun ./configure with the flags you want.

RT defaults to installing in /opt/rt5 with MySQL as its database. It
tries to guess which of www-data, www, apache or nobody your
webserver will run as, but you can override that behavior.  Note
that the default install directory in /opt/rt5 does not work under
SELinux's default configuration.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of RT, please review
the upgrade notes for the appropriate versions, which can be found
in docs/UPGRADING-* If you are coming from 4.4.x to 5.0.x you should
review both the UPGRADING-4.4 and UPGRADING-5.0 files.  Similarly, if
you were coming from 4.2.x, you would want to review the UPGRADING-4.2,
UPGRADING-4.4 and UPGRADING-5.0 documents.

Any upgrade steps given in version-specific UPGRADING files should
be run after the rest of the steps below; however, please read the
relevant documentation before beginning the upgrade, so as to be
aware of important changes.

RT stores the arguments given to ./configure at the top of the
etc/RT_Config.pm file in case you need to recreate your previous use
of ./configure.

3) Make sure that RT has the Perl and system libraries it needs to run. Check for missing dependencies by running:

    make testdeps

4) If the script reports any missing dependencies, install them by hand, or run the following command as a user who has permission to install perl modules on your system:

    make fixdeps

Some modules require user input or environment variables to install
correctly, so it may be necessary to install them manually. Some modules
also require external source libraries, so you may need to install
additional packages.

If you are having trouble installing GD, refer to "Installing GD libraries"
in docs/charts.pod.  Ticket relationship graphing requires the graphviz
library which you should install using your distribution's package manager.

See docs/rt_perl.pod for additional information about installing perl and
RT's dependencies.

5) Check to make sure everything was installed properly.

    make testdeps

It might sometimes be necessary to run "make fixdeps" several times
to install all necessary perl modules.

6a) If this is a NEW installation (not an upgrade):

  As a user with permission to install RT in your chosen directory,
  type:

      make install

  To configure RT with the web installer, run:

      /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-server

  and follow the instructions.  Once completed, you should now have a
  working RT instance running with the standalone rt-server.  Press
  Ctrl-C to stop it, and proceed to Step 7 to configure a recommended
  deployment environment for production.

  To configure RT manually, you must setup etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm in
  your RT installation directory.  You'll need to add any values you
  need to change from the defaults in etc/RT_Config.pm

  As a user with permission to read RT's configuration file, type:

      make initialize-database

  If the make fails, type:

      make dropdb

  and re-run 'make initialize-database'.

6b) If you are UPGRADING from a previous installation:

  Before upgrading, always ensure that you have a complete current
  backup. If you don't have a current backup, upgrading your database
  could accidentally damage it and lose data, or worse.

  If you are using MySQL, please read the instructions in
  docs/UPGRADING.mysql as well to ensure that you do not corrupt
  existing data.

  First, stop your webserver.  You may also wish to put incoming email
  into a hold queue, to avoid temporary delivery failure messages if
  your upgrade is expected to take several hours.

  Next, install new binaries, config files and libraries by running:

      make upgrade

  This will also prompt you to upgrade your database by running:

      make upgrade-database

  You should back up your database before running this command.
  When you run it, you will be prompted for your previous version of
  RT (such as 4.4.1) so that the appropriate set of database
  upgrades can be applied.

  If 'make upgrade-database' completes without error, your upgrade
  has been successful; you should now run any commands that were
  supplied in version-specific UPGRADING documentation.  You should
  then restart your webserver.

  Depending on the size and composition of your database, some upgrade
  steps may run for a long time. You may also need extra disk space or
  other resources while running upgrade steps. It's a good idea to run
  through the upgrade steps on a test server so you know what to expect
  before running on your production system.

7) Configure the web server, as described in docs/web_deployment.pod, and the email gateway, as described below.

NOTE: The default credentials for RT are:
    User: root
    Pass: password
Not changing the root password from the default is a SECURITY risk!

8) Set up users, groups, queues, scrips and access control.

Until you do this, RT will not be able to send or receive email, nor
will it be more than marginally functional.  This is not an optional
step.

9) Set up automated recurring tasks (cronjobs):

Depending on your configuration, RT stores sessions in the database
or on the file system. In either case, sessions are only needed until
a user logs out, so old sessions should be cleaned up with this utility:

    perldoc /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-clean-sessions

To generate email digest messages, you must arrange for the provided
utility to be run once daily, and once weekly. You may also want
to arrange for the rt-email-dashboards utility to be run hourly.

RT automatically creates temporary short URLs for searches and these
can be cleared from the system periodically as well. See the documentation
for the sbin/rt-clean-shorteners script for options. You can schedule
this to run regularly if desired.

If your task scheduler is cron, you can configure it by
adding the following lines as /etc/cron.d/rt:

    0 0 * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-clean-sessions
    0 0 * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m daily
    0 0 * * 0 root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m weekly
    0 * * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-dashboards

Other optional features like full text search indexes, external
attachments, etc., may also have recurring jobs to schedule in cron.
Follow the documentation for these features when you enable them.

10) Configure the RT email gateway. To let email flow to your RT server, you need to add a few lines of configuration to your mail server's "aliases" file. These lines "pipe" incoming email messages from your mail server to RT.

Add the following lines to /etc/aliases (or your local equivalent)
on your mail server:

    rt:         "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url <a href="http://rt.example.com" rel="nofollow">http://rt.example.com</a>"
    rt-comment: "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action comment --url <a href="http://rt.example.com" rel="nofollow">http://rt.example.com</a>"

You'll need to add similar lines for each queue you want to be able to
send email to. To find out more about how to configure RT's email
gateway, type:

       perldoc /opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate

11) Set up full text search

Full text search (FTS) without database indexing is a very slow operation,
and is thus disabled by default. You'll need to follow the instructions in
docs/full_text_indexing.pod to enable FTS.

12) Set up automatic backups for RT and its data as described in the docs/system_administration/database.pod document.

GETTING HELP

If RT is mission-critical for you or if you use it heavily, we recommend that you purchase a commercial support contract. Details on support contracts are available at http://www.bestpractical.com or by writing to <sales@bestpractical.com>. We also offer managed hosting plans if you prefer to have someone else manage the RT server.

If you're interested in having RT extended or customized or would like more information about commercial support options, please send email to <sales@bestpractical.com> to discuss rates and availability.

COMMUNITY FORUM AND WIKI

To keep up to date on the latest RT tips, techniques and extensions, you may wish to join the RT Community Forum website. You can find it here:

  <a href="https://forum.bestpractical.com" rel="nofollow">https://forum.bestpractical.com</a>

You'll find many different categories of discussion there including the RT Users category for general RT topics. If you're interested in customizing RT code, there is a category for RT Developers with more technical topics.

The RT wiki, at https://rt-wiki.bestpractical.com, is also a potential resource.

SECURITY

If you believe you've discovered a security issue in RT, please send an email to <security@bestpractical.com> with a detailed description of the issue, and a secure means to respond to you (such as your PGP public key). You can find our PGP key and fingerprint at https://bestpractical.com/security/

BUGS

RT's a pretty complex application, and as you get up to speed, you might run into some trouble. Generally, it's best to ask about things you run into on the Community Forum (or pick up a commercial support contract from Best Practical). But, sometimes people do run into bugs. In the exceedingly unlikely event that you hit a bug in RT, please report it! We'd love to hear about problems you have with RT, so we can fix them. To report a bug, send email to <rt-bugs@bestpractical.com>.

Note that this sends email to our public RT instance. Do not include any information in your email that you don't want shown publicly, including contact information in your email signature.

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<sales@bestpractical.com>

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This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU

General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software

Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA

02110-1301 or visit their web page on the internet at

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html.

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