HowTo: RedMine 2.0.0, Passenger & Subversion Repositories in Ubuntu 12.04

This is an update to my earlier installation guide for Redmine 1.1.0.

The new Redmine 2.0.0 release now supports Rails 3.2.3 and that, along with a few other changes, makes the installation route slightly different.

As stated before, I AM NOT a Linux/Ubuntu guru, so any mistakes are of my own making and I’d appreciate any feedback to make the installation better/clearer.

So, with all that said, here goes:

I know that Redmine can be installed as a package in Ubuntu, but it doesn’t appear to be the latest version (1.4.2 at the time of writing). So I’m taking the longer route to get it working, as I couldn’t get it to configure the way I want. It does have the advantage that I’m using the very latest version straight from RubyForge.

For this install, I’m using a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, configured as a LAMP server, so Apache, MySQL & PHP are already installed.
Get into the folder where we’re going to install & configure Redmine from:

cd /usr/share

Now we’re going to download the latest version of Redmine from RubyForge:

sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/76134/redmine-2.0.0.tar.gz

Unpack the archive:

sudo tar xvfz redmine-2.0.0.tar.gz

And tidy things up a little:

sudo rm redmine-2.0.0.tar.gz
sudo mv redmine-2.0.0 redmine

We also need to adjust some of the ownership of the folders

sudo chown -R root:root /usr/share/redmine

However, we need to make sure that a particular file is set to www-data as owner. This is because Passenger runs as the user that owns this file.

sudo chown www-data /usr/share/redmine/config/environment.rb

We’ll create a symbolic link from the main website home back to our actual Redmine application directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/redmine/public /var/www/redmine

Now create the database:

sudo mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for the password for the ‘root’ MySql account you created when you installed MySql.

The prompt will change to:

mysql>

Now enter the following, line by line:

CREATE DATABASE redmine character SET utf8;
CREATE user 'redmine'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password';
GRANT ALL privileges ON redmine.* TO 'redmine'@'localhost';

Type exit to leave the MySQL prompt.

Now configure the database:

sudo cp redmine/config/database.yml.example redmine/config/database.yml

Run nano or your favourite editor and edit it to the following:

sudo nano redmine/config/database.yml
production:
 adapter: mysql2
 database: redmine
 host: localhost
 username: redmine
 password: my_password
 encoding: utf8

NOTE: Make sure you change the adapter to mysql2! I spent HOURS trying to debug this issue.

NOTE: Don’t forget to change my_password to a password of your own choosing and that it matches what you configured in the MySQL database.

Firstly install all the required libraries:

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.3 libmysqlclient-dev

If you’re going to use RMagick (to enable Gantt export to png image), you’ll need to add these libraries:

sudo apt-get install libmagickcore-dev libmagickwand-dev

New to Redmine version 1.4.0 and above is support the Bundler to install all the Ruby Gems needed by Redmine.

Enter the following to install Bundler:

sudo gem install bundler

Change into the redmine directory to run Bundler to install our Gems:

cd redmine

As we’ll only be configuring for MySQL, our Bundler needs to know NOT to include Postgre and SQLite.

sudo bundle install --without development test postgresql sqlite

NOTE: If you’re not going to use ImageMagick then change the line to read:

sudo bundle install --without development test postgresql sqlite rmagick

Configure Redmine:

sudo rake generate_secret_token
sudo RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate 
sudo RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data

When the last command completes, it will prompt to choose your language. Type the code for the best match to your country & press Enter.

We now need to configure correct directory permissions:

sudo mkdir public/plugin_assets
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data files log tmp public/plugin_assets
sudo chmod -R 755 files log tmp public/plugin_assets

Test Redmine:

sudo ruby script/rails server webrick -e production

If you enter your webaddress:http://my_website:3000 you should see the Redmine homepage.

If all is well at this point, we can now configure Passenger to make sure it launches when Apache runs.

Install & Configure Passenger:

sudo gem install passenger

Before we can install the Passenger module, we need some additional software:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev apache2-prefork-dev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev

Now we are set to install the Passenger module for Apache:

sudo passenger-install-apache2-module

Passenger will run & compile the source code into the module for Apache.

Now use nano or your favourite editor to create the loader:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load
LoadModule passenger_module /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/passenger-3.0.12/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so

Make a link to make the module enabled:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/passenger.load

Now create a configuration file for Passenger:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf
PassengerRoot /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/passenger-3.0.12
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1

Now configure Apache for our new site:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite
<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName my_domain.com
 DocumentRoot /var/www/redmine
 ServerAdmin user@example.com
 LogLevel warn
 ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/redmine_error
 CustomLog /var/log/apache2/redmine_access combined
 <Directory /var/www/redmine>
 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
 AllowOverride None
 Order allow,deny
 allow from all
 RailsBaseURI /redmine
 PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
 </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

We also need to tell Apache how to configure Passenger:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following line at the end of the file:

Include /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf

Finally, enable the site:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mysite

Remove the default site:

sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Make sure the Passenger module is enabled:

sudo a2enmod passenger

And, restart Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

If everything went well, then you should be able to see Redmine in your browser:

http://my_website

Configure Subversion

We need to install the necessary packages before we start:

sudo apt-get install subversion libapache2-svn libapache2-mod-perl2

We need to copy the Perl script from Redmine to somewhere it can be accessed:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/redmine/extra/svn/Redmine.pm /usr/lib/perl5/Apache/Redmine.pm

Create the site description for our Subversion HTTP access:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/svn

Enter the following details:

# /svn location for users
PerlLoadModule Apache::Redmine
<Location /svn>
 DAV svn
 SVNParentPath "/var/svn"
 Order deny,allow
 Deny from all
 Satisfy any
 PerlAccessHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::access_handler
 PerlAuthenHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::authen_handler
 AuthType Basic
 AuthName "Redmine SVN Repository"
 #read-only access
 <Limit GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
 Require valid-user
 Allow from my_domain.com
 Allow from localhost
 Satisfy any
 </Limit>
 # write access
 <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
 Require valid-user
 </LimitExcept>
 ## Mysql-Settings
 RedmineDSN "DBI:mysql:database=redmine;host=localhost"
 RedmineDbUser "redmine"
 RedmineDbPass "my_password"
</Location>

Now setup our repository directory:

sudo mkdir -p /var/svn
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/svn
sudo chmod 0750 /var/svn

Now you need to log into Redmine, then select Administration->Settings->Repositories.

Tick the ‘Enable WS for repository management’ option and then click ‘Generate a key’. Remember to click ‘Save’ to store all the settings.

Now run the following code, entering the data that is correct for your site & key:

ruby /usr/share/redmine/extra/svn/reposman.rb --redmine my_domain.com --svn-dir /var/svn --owner www-data --url http://my_domain.com/svn --verbose --key=my_api_key

This should query your Redmine installation and attempt to create a project directory under the repository root you specified. As this isn’t being run as root this will fail, but that’s fine.

Now set this up so it’ll automatically check for any new projects & create any necessary repositories:

sudo crontab -e

Add the following at the end:

*/10 * * * * ruby /usr/share/redmine/extra/svn/reposman.rb --redmine my_domain.com --svn-dir /var/svn --owner www-data --url http://my_domain.com/svn --verbose --key=my_api_key

Now enable the site:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/svn /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/svn

Finally, restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

And that’s all…finally! 🙂

References:

http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/HowTo_Install_Redmine_in_Ubuntu

http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Repositories_access_control_with_apache_mod_dav_svn_and_mod_perl

http://www.modrails.com/install.html

http://lordsauron.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/zero-to-redmine-in-22-steps/

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto

http://rails.vandenabeele.com/blog/2011/11/26/installing-ruby-and-rails-with-rvm-on-ubuntu-11-dot-10/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9134113/i-cant-run-bundler-keep-getting-error