My first hints and pointers were from the poorly formatted guide at:

• http://wiki.bestpractical.com/view/DebianLennyInstallGuide

Install “providing” software. By this, I mean software that is needed to compile software, serve data to the web, test the data served, and communicate with the world.

apt-get install build-essential bzip2 \
                gcc libncurses5 libncurses5-dev bin86 gawk \
                ncurses-dev initramfs-tools \
                zlib1g zlib1g-dev binutils

sudo apt-get install openssl apache2  mysql-server-5.0 \
                libapache2-mod-perl2 curl lftp lynx \
                mlocate makepatch wget gpgv libgpgme11 \
                libgpgme11-dev libgpg-error0 libgpg-error-dev \
                libapache2-mod-fcgid libcgi-fast-perl libfcgi-perl libfcgi-dev


sudo apt-get install fetchmail

Install and configure an MTA. I prefer to use postfix, and in my setup, the postfix installation is configured to use a smarthost to send mail out to the world.

sudo apt-get install postfix

Next up is a shockingly long list of development- and perl-dependencies. The commands below are split into chunks that the BASH shell will accept, but the order, and eventual dependency satification is not taken into consideration. I.e. the list is for completeness.

Your mileage may vary on what you actually need to install.

sudo apt-get install  libc6-dev libc-dev gcc-4.1-base libmudflap0 libmudflap0-dev
                libxml-dom-perl libxml-encoding-perl libxml-parser-perl \
                libxml-perl libxml-regexp-perl libxml-um-perl \
                libxml-handler-composer-perl libxml-generator-perl

sudo apt-get install libapache-dbi-perl libapache-session-perl \
                libcalendar-simple-perl libconvert-binhex-perl libcss-squish-perl \
                libdatetime-format-mail-perl libdatetime-format-w3cdtf-perl \
                libdatetime-locale-perl libdatetime-perl \
                libdatetime-timezone-perl libdbd-sqlite3-perl \
                libdbix-searchbuilder-perl liberror-perl libexception-class-perl \
                libgd-gd2-noxpm-perl libgd-graph-perl libgd-text-perl 

sudo apt-get install libhtml-mason-perl libhtml-scrubber-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl \
                libmime-tools-perl libmodule-versions-report-perl libnet-libidn-perl \
                libnet-ssleay-perl libparams-validate-perl libregexp-common-perl \
                libcache-cache-perl libcache-simple-timedexpiry-perl \
                libclass-accessor-perl libclass-container-perl \
                libclass-data-inheritable-perl libclass-returnvalue-perl

sudo apt-get install libclass-singleton-perl libclone-perl libdbix-dbschema-perl \
                libdevel-stacktrace-perl libfreezethaw-perl libipc-sharelite-perl \
                libwant-perl libterm-readline-perl-perl libtext-autoformat-perl \
                libtext-quoted-perl libtext-reform-perl libtext-template-perl

sudo apt-get install libtext-wikiformat-perl libtext-wrapper-perl libtime-modules-perl \
                libtree-simple-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml-rss-perl \
                libxml-sax-expat-perl libxml-sax-perl libxml-simple-perl \
                libxml-namespacesupport-perl

Now, prepare your Perl CPAN setup, as Request Tracker installation will use CPAN to pull in even more dependencies! Here follows a somewhat complete(ish) summary of my interaction with CPAN: CPAN

Now, download and unpack Request Tracker, the latest release:

wget http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/
tar zxvf rt.tar.gz
cd rt-3.*

The following code sets up my RT install to dump the instance files into the dir /opt/rt/defcon, and use MySQL for storage

./configure \
  --prefix=/opt/rt/defcon \
  --enable-gd \
  --enable-gpg \
  --with-db-type=mysql \

Test for dependencies. This will fail, even though we have run a fairly thorough pre-install… The output below is an excerpt, showing only the packages that failed on my test-run.

make testdeps 
        Locale::Maketext::Lexicon >= 0.32...MISSING
        Text::Template >= 1.45...MISSING
                Text::Template version 1.45 required--this is only version 1.44 
        File::ShareDir...MISSING
        Locale::Maketext::Fuzzy...MISSING
        Log::Dispatch >= 2.0...MISSING
        UNIVERSAL::require...MISSING
        Email::Address...MISSING
        HTML::RewriteAttributes >= 0.02...MISSING
        CGI >= 3.38...MISSING
                CGI version 3.38 required--this is only version 3.29 
        PerlIO::eol...MISSING
        GnuPG::Interface...MISSING
        Data::ICal...MISSING
        Net::Server::PreFork...MISSING
        Net::Server...MISSING
        HTTP::Server::Simple >= 0.34...MISSING
        HTTP::Server::Simple::Mason >= 0.09...MISSING
make: *** [testdeps] Error 1

Use RT's own helper to satisfy the missing dependencies:

sudo make fixdeps

This uses CPAN to pull in the missing or out-dated Perl modules. After a successful run, rerun make testdeps, and you shuld get:

All dependencies have been found.

Time to do the actual installation:

sudo make install

...

You must now configure RT by editing /opt/rt/defcon/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm.

WARNING: Never, EVER, change RT_Config.pm. All your changes need to be put in RT_SiteConfig.pm.

(You will definitely need to set RT's database password in /opt/rt/defcon/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm before continuing. Not doing so could be very dangerous. Note that you do not have to manually add a database user or set up a database for RT. These actions will be taken care of in the next step.)

So, the natural next step is to open $PREFIX/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm in your favourite text-editor, and decide on the basic setting of this instance…

# What RT instance?
Set($rtname, 'Ticket');
Set($Organization , "defcon.no");

# Default email adresses
Set($CorrespondAddress , 'rt@defcon.no');
Set($CommentAddress , 'rt-comment@defcon.no');

# How to handle time (timezone setting)
Set($Timezone , 'CET');

# Database setup
#Set($DatabaseHost   , 'localhost');
#Set($DatabaseRTHost , 'localhost');
#Set($DatabasePort , '');
Set($DatabaseType, 'mysql');
Set($DatabaseUser , 'rt_user');
Set($DatabasePassword , 'password');
Set($DatabaseName , 'rt_database');

# Who is owner/admin of this instance?
Set($OwnerEmail , 'rtowner@defcon.no');
Set($LoopsToRTOwner , 1);

# Max allowed attachments, up from 10MB to 20MB
Set($MaxAttachmentSize , 20000000);

# Where do we exist on the web?
Set($WebDomain, 'rt.home.defcon.no');

# RT resides on the root of the previous name...
Set($WebPath, "");

sudo make initialize-database

I am using Apache2, and running RT through mod_perl. Note the PerlRequire, SetHandler and PerlResponseHandler. Without these, your RT will not work.

# /etc/apache2/sites-available/rt.home.defcon.no
<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerName rt.home.defcon.no

DocumentRoot /opt/rt/defcon/share/html
PerlRequire "/opt/rt/defcon/bin/webmux.pl"

<Location />
    AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlResponseHandler RT::Mason
</Location>

</VirtualHost> 

As this is a Debian Lenny system, I used the Debian helper tools to enable all needed apache2 related configurations:

sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod perl
sudo /usr/sbin/a2enmod rewrite
sudo /usr/sbin/a2ensite rt.home.defcon.no
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Go to the address you have configured in Apache, DNS and RT_SiteConfig.pm, and you should be greeted with the login-box of RT3.8!

Log in as “root” with password “password”. Now SET A NEW PASSWORD ! (!)

• Preferences
  • About me
  • Password
    • New passord
    • Retype passord

That's not all, but it is all for now…

web:/opt/rt/defcon# mkdir local/html/Elements
web:/opt/rt/defcon# cp share/html/Elements/Footer local/html/Elements/
web:/opt/rt/defcon# vim local/html/Elements/Footer