Installing Redmine on Centos 6 Dot 2 With Mysql and Apache

I needed recently to install the excellent project management tool Redmine on a CentOS 6.2 machine. There are some tutorials on the Web (here or here) but they are a little bit outdated. The following is a method that works as of today.

Pre-requisites

Logged as root, install the following packages:

yum install make gcc gcc-c++ zlib-devel ruby-devel rubygems ruby-libs apr-devel apr-util-devel httpd-devel mysql-devel mysql-server automake autoconf ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel curl-devel

And then install the bundle ruby gem:

gem install bundle

Install Redmine

Run the following commands to install Redmine:

cd /var/www
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/76255/redmine-1.4.4.tar.gz
tar zxf redmine-1.4.4.tar.gz
ln -s redmine-1.4.4 redmine
rm -f redmine-1.4.4.tar.gz

Install Redmine ruby dependencies

Bundle helps us install the ruby Redmine dependencies:

cd /var/www/redmine
bundle install --without postgresql sqlite test development

Database creation

First we start MySQL:

service mysqld start

Then we secure it (Optional):

mysql_secure_installation

We then create the redmine database and user:

$ mysql
mysql> create database redmine character set utf8;
mysql> grant all privileges on redmine.* to 'redmine'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit

Redmine database configuration

We copy the database configuration example and we modify it to point to our newly created database:

cd /var/www/redmine/config
copy database.yml.example database.yml

On the database.yml file, the production section should look like this:

production:
    adapter: mysql
    database: redmine
    host: localhost
    username: redmine
    password: my_password
    encoding: utf8

And then we create and populate the database with the following rake commands:

cd /var/www/redmine
rake generate_session_store
rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production"
rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV="production"

Outgoing email configuration (Optional)

To configure an outgoing SMTP server for sending emails, we create the config/configuration.yml file from the sample:

cd /var/www/redmine/config
cp configuration.yml.example configuration.yml

And edit it to provide our configuration :

production:
    email_delivery:
        delivery_method: :smtp
        smtp_settings:
            address: 'smtp.mydomain.com'
            port: 25
            domain: 'mydomain.com'

Redmine standalone testing

At this point, Redmine can be tested in standalone mode by running the following command:

cd /var/www/redmine/
ruby script/server webrick -e production

and open the http://localhost:3000 address in a browser. If you are testing from another computer, you will need to open the port in the /etc/sysconfig/iptables file by duplicating the ssh (port 22) line and adapting it:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 3000 -j ACCEPT

Then apply the new configuration with the following command:

service iptables restart

Passenger installation

To install Phusion passenger, we first install its gem:

gem install passenger

And then install the Apache module with the command:

passenger-install-apache2-module

Apache configuration

We remove the default Apache configuration and replace it by a new one:

cd /etc/httpd
mv conf.d available
mkdir conf.d

In the empty new conf.d folder, we create a redmine.conf file with the following configuration:

# Loading Passenger
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.13/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.13
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName redmine.mycompany.com
   DocumentRoot /var/www/redmine/public
   <Directory /var/www/redmine/public>
      # This relaxes Apache security settings.
      AllowOverride all
      # MultiViews must be turned off.
      Options -MultiViews
      allow from all
   </Directory>

   ErrorLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /etc/httpd/logs/redmine-error.%Y-%m-%d.log 86400"
   CustomLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /etc/httpd/logs/redmine-access.%Y-%m-%d.log 86400" "%h %l %u %t %D \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\""

</VirtualHost>

We then enable named based virtual hosting for our server by uncommenting the following line in the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file:

...
#
# Use name-based virtual hosting.
#
NameVirtualHost *:80
...

We give full access on the redmine folder to the apache user and test the configuration:

chown -R apache:root /var/www/redmine
service httpd configtest

At this point, the SELinux configuration needs to be modified to allow our apache instance to run the phusion passenger module. You can do this by putting SELinux in permissive mode:

setenfore Permissive

And letting the Permissive mode survive a reboot by modifying the /etc/selinux/config file from:

SELINUX=enforcing

to

SELINUX=permissive

If you want to run redmine while enforcing, you may want to apply the method described here for which you will need to install the policycoreutils-python package.

In any case, you will start Apache with the command:

service httpd start

Now you can access your Redmine installation with your browser. To access it from all the computers in your network, you will need to open the port 80 in the /etc/sysconfig/iptables. You can replace the 3000 rule by :

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

And restart iptables.

service iptables restart

Start services at boot

To have MySQL and Apache started at boot, run the commands:

chkconfig --level 345 mysqld on
chkconfig --level 345 httpd on

Cleaning up

A quick command to clean up all the devel stuff needed for installation:

yum remove '*-devel' make automake autoconf

Tips

Don’t forget that if you change your Redmine configuration, you don’t have to restart Apache. Your can restart only Redmine with the command:

touch /var/www/redmine/tmp/restart.txt

If you restore data on your server from another redmine instance that runs on a previous version, dont forget to migrate your data:

cd /var/www/redmine
rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production"