[rt-users] RT 4.2.x + Ubuntu 14.04: package backport? native install? etc

[hydrostarr]

On 8/4/14, 10:12 AM, Kevin Falcone wrote:
> Ubuntu generally does a horrid job of importing the excellent debian
> packages. For a long time, they were ignoring security releases. The
> Debian 4.2 packages are available in testing over there, you may need to
> vote for them to come over.
> While you can use the deps from 4.0.19 to get some deps for 4.2, you
> won't get all of them.
> Generall Best Practical installs from source, even on our Ubuntu
> machines.

Thanks Kevin.  I built + installed RT 4.2.6 from source on Ubuntu 14.04 
and, in short:  it basically just worked.  No reliance on Ubuntu 
'request-tracker' package.  Good show.  I've never experienced a 
perl-based system to be installed so easily, but maybe I've been jaded 
from installing things like Bugzilla and others many (many) moons ago.  
Further, you provide an Apache-independent web server, for (at least) 
sanity-check testing.

All of this impressive.  Kudos to Best Practical.

Details.

For those interested, here's our (current, immature) Python Fabric code 
running as root (and therefore auth-limits-bugs probably exist) for 
installing a sqlite-based RT web server on a relatively-lean Ubuntu 
14.04 server--without mysql server, but maybe some other basic things 
already installed--to get things up-and-going quickly, but NOT in 
production mode (eg, no database password):

env.apt_yes = 'apt-get -y --force-yes'
env.apt_force_confnew="-o Dpkg::Options::=--force-confnew"
env.debian_frontend_noninteractive="DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive"

def aptget_core(directive,pkgname=""):
     sudo(env.debian_frontend_noninteractive + " " +
          env.apt_yes                        + " " +
          directive                          + " " +
          env.apt_force_confnew              + " " +
          pkgname)

def aptget_install(pkgname):
     aptget_core("install",pkgname)

def install_request_tracker__ubuntu():
     sudo("PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 cpan App::cpanminus")
     aptget_install("libxml-rss-perl")
     with cd("~"):
         run("wget 
http://download.bestpractical.com/pub/rt/release/rt-4.2.6.tar.gz")
         run("tar xvzf rt-4.2.6.tar.gz")
     with cd("~/rt-4.2.6"):
         run("./configure --with-db-type=SQLite")
         run("PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 make fixdeps")
         run("make install")
         run("make initialize-database")

Then run the Apache-independent webserver to sanity check:

# /opt/rt4/sbin/rt-server

None of the above attempts email-systems integration.  Do _not_ read 
this as a full install procedure.