[rt-users] mod_perl2 compatibility

[Christopher Allison]

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005, Ian Ward wrote:

> I have kept a posting to the list from March ready for this time, here it is 
> in full... (hope this helps)
>
> The post is from Wiliam Harrison <harrison at itrd.gov>
>
> PS> I don't post very often so can I just say a BIG thanks to Jesse and crew. 
> RT Rocks!
>
> ================================================================================
>
> Well, thanks to hard work and effort from others, this procedure has been 
> verified to work across at least three installations of RHEL 4. If you think 
> it would be of value, I'm happy to add it to the wiki.

William's instructions actually were added to the wiki, and I just used 
them this past weekend to get an install up and running on RHEL 4. The 
instructions are located at:

 	http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?RHEL4InstallGuide

Every step of the instructions went perfectly, with one hitch...

> Installation procedure follows... 
>
> -William

Snip-snip

> ### Assuming everything is present and it's a go, install and intialize 
> database...
>   make install

Here, William's directions seem to go awry. He says to follow 'make 
install' with 'make initialize-database', but 'make install' finishes by 
outputting the following:

         Congratulations. RT has been installed.


         You must now configure RT by editing 
/opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm.

         (You will definitely need to set RT's database password in
         /opt/rt3/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.)

         After that, you need to initialize RT's database by running
          'make initialize-database'

I emailed the list about this discrepancy, and got back two responses. One 
was from William, who says that the sequence here doesn't matter, another 
was from another RT user who said (as the above warning does) that the 
sequence matters very much, since the info in RT_SiteConfig.pm is used in 
building the database. Because the second piece of advice, the 
instructions output by 'make install', and warnings all over the wiki, 
docs, and in other installation guides all seem to agree on the importance 
of editing RT_SiteConfig.pm first, I went ahead and did the following 
first:

> ### Make a copy of the dist config file to edit:
>   cp /opt/rt3/etc/RT_Config.pm /opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm
> ### Edit your RT config file for your purposes:
>   edit /opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm
>   ### Change the line:
>   ### Set($WebBaseURL , "http://RT::WebBaseURL.not.configured:80");
>   ### to read:
>   ### Set($WebBaseURL , "http://your.ip.address:80");
>   ### Change the line:
>   ### Set($WebPath , "");
>   ### to read:
>   ### Set($WebPath , "/rt");

Only then did I

>   make initialize-database

While William says his instructions work as they stand, and I have no 
reason not to believe that, I can't confirm it either, as I followed the 
RT installer's instructions to edit RT_SiteConfig.pm first. Whether you 
follow William's sequence or the standard RT sequence at this step, I'd 
encourage you to work from the wiki instructions, as those have been 
updated (with new formatting, if nothing else). Disclaimer: I changed the 
wiki instructions to match the procedure I followed after 'make install' 
(nothing more than copy and paste of what was there). It worked for me, 
but if you want to follow William's instructions, you can undo the switch 
described in this email. Again, the instructions are at:

 	http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?RHEL4InstallGuide

Good luck!

-Chris Allison
--
Brandeis University CS Dept.
Systems Operations Guru
chris at cs.brandeis.edu
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~guru/