Redmine

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Redmine is a free and open source, web-based project management and issue tracking tool. It handles multiple projects and subprojects. It features per project wikis and forums, time tracking, and flexible role based access control. It includes a calendar and Gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines. Redmine integrates with various version control systems and includes a repository browser and diff viewer.

Redmine is written using the Ruby on Rails framework. It is cross-platform and cross-database and supports 34 languages.

Installation

This document will guide you through the suggested installation process of Redmine.

If for some reason you want to setup redmine manually, it is recommended to follow the official Installation Guide.

Although it is possible to run Redmine on its own for testing purposes, for production use it requires an SQL database as well as a web server. As database it is recommended to use MariaDB or PostgreSQL. The supported web servers are

Installation

Build and Installation

Install the redmine package.

In the following we assume user under which the redmine will be running is http. The ruby commands are thus explicitly executed under this specifiy user's control.

Database Configuration

Now, we will need to create the database that the Redmine will use to store your data. For now on, the database and its user will be named redmine. But this names can be changed to anything else.

Note: The configuration for MariaDB and MySQL will be the same since both are binary compatible.

Database Creation

To create the database, the user and set privileges: 

# mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE redmine CHARACTER SET UTF8;
CREATE USER 'redmine'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON redmine.* TO 'redmine'@'localhost';

For PostgreSQL: 

CREATE ROLE redmine LOGIN ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'my_password' NOINHERIT VALID UNTIL 'infinity';
CREATE DATABASE redmine WITH ENCODING='UTF8' OWNER=redmine;
Note: If you want to use additional environments, you must create separate databases for each one (for example: development and test).

Database Access Configuration

Now you need to configure Redmine to access the database we just created. To do that you have to copy /usr/share/webapps/redmine/config/database.yml.example to database.yml: 

# cd /usr/share/webapps/redmine/config
# cp database.yml.example database.yml

And then edit this file in order to configure your database settings for "production" environment (you can configure for the "development" and "test" environments too, just change the appropriate sections).

Example for MariaDB and MySQL database: 

database.yml
production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  port: 3307   #If your server is not running on the standard port (3306), set it here, otherwise this line is unnecessary.
  username: redmine
  password: my_password

Example for PostgreSQL database: 

database.yml
production:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  username: redmine
  password: my_password
  encoding: utf8
  schema_search_path: <database_schema> (default - public)

Example for a SQL Server database: 

database.yml
production:
  adapter: sqlserver
  database: redmine
  host: localhost #Set not default host (localhost) here, otherwise this line is unnecessary.
  port: 1433 #Set not standard port (1433) here, otherwise this line is unnecessary.
  username: redmine
  password: my_password

Ruby gems

Redmine requires some RubyGems, however redmine comes prepackaged with all requirements.

Session Store Secret Generation

Now you must generate a random key that will be used by Rails to encode cookies that stores session data thus preventing their tampering: 

# bundle exec rake generate_secret_token
Warning: Generating a new secret token invalidates all existing sessions after restart.

Database Structure Creation

With the database created and the access configured for Redmine, now it is time to create the database structure. This is done by running the following command under the application root directory: 

# cd /usr/share/webapps/redmine
# chown -R http:http db # migration requires write access to db/schema.rb
# sudo -u http -g http RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate

These command will create tables by running all migrations one by one then create the set of the permissions and the application administrator account, named admin.

Database Population with Default Data

Now you may want to insert the default configuration data in database, like basic types of task, task states, groups, etc. To do so execute the following: 

# sudo -u http -g http RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data

Redmine will prompt for the data set language that should be loaded; you can also define the REDMINE_LANG environment variable before running the command to a value which will be automatically and silently picked up by the task: 

# sudo -u http -g http RAILS_ENV=production REDMINE_LANG=de bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data
Note: This step is not mandatory, but it certainly will save you a lot of work to start using Redmine. And for a first time it can be very instructive.

File System Permissions

The user account running the application must have write permission on the following subdirectories:

  • files: storage of attachments.
  • log: application log file production.log.
  • tmp and tmp/pdf: used to generate PDF documents among other things (create these ones if not present).

The redmine comes preconfigured with permissions for user http. In case you like to use a different user you need to change the ownership, e.g. 

# chown -R redmine:redmine files/ log/ tmp/

Test the installation

To test your new installation using WEBrick web server run the following in the Redmine folder: 

# sudo -u http -g http ruby bin/rails server webrick -e production

Once WEBrick has started, point your browser to http://localhost:3000/. You should now see the application welcome page. Use default administrator account to log in: admin/admin. You can go to Administration menu and choose Settings to modify most of the application settings.

Warning: Webrick is not suitable for production use, please only use webrick for testing that the installation up to this point is functional. Use one of the many other guides in this wiki to setup redmine to use either Passenger (aka mod_rails), FCGI or a Rack server (Unicorn, Thin, Puma or hellip) to serve up your redmine.

Configure the production server

Puma / Unicorn

Puma and Unicorn are web servers based on Mongrel. For its increased speed and smaller memory footprint Puma is recommended. Both are very simple to setup, but for production use should be used in combination with a reverse proxy (Apache, Nginx, lighttpd, etc.). 

# gem install puma
# sudo -u http -g http /opt/ruby2.6/bin/puma

For production, puma can be started as a systemd service: 

/etc/systemd/system/redmine.service
[Unit]
Description=Redmine
After=network.target

[Service]
User=http
Group=http
RestartSec=1
Restart=always
StartLimitInterval=10
StartLimitBurst=10
WorkingDirectory=/usr/share/webapps/redmine/
ExecStart=/opt/ruby2.6/bin/puma -e production -p 9292

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Do a complete daemon-reload, then start/enable redmine.service.

Phusion Passenger

For Apache and Nginx, it is recommended to use Phusion Passenger. Passenger is a module available for Nginx and Apache HTTP Server.

Start by installing the 'passenger' gem: 

# gem install passenger

Now you have to look at your passenger gem installation directory to continue. If you do not known where it is, type: 

# gem env

And look at the GEM PATHS to find where the gems are installed. If you followed this guide and installed RVM, you can have more than one path, look at the one you are using.

For this guide so far, the gem path is /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@global. 

# cd /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@global/gems/passenger-4.0.23

If you are aiming to use Apache HTTP Server, run: 

# passenger-install-apache2-module

In case a rails application is deployed with a sub-URI, like http://example.com/yourapplication[dead link 2023-05-06 ⓘ], some additional configuration is required, see the Passenger documentation

For Nginx: 

# passenger-install-nginx-module

And finally, the installer will provide you with further information regarding the installation (such as installing additional libraries). So, to setup your server, simply follow the output from the passenger installer.

Updating

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: Redmine package is now in extra and has its own dependencies. The update process is a little different. (Discuss in Talk:Redmine)

Backup the files used in Redmine: 

# tar czvf ~/redmine_files.tar.gz -C /usr/share/webapps/redmine/ files

Backup the plugins installed in Redmine: 

# tar czvf ~/redmine_plugins.tar.gz -C /usr/share/webapps/redmine/ plugins

Backup the database: 

# mysqldump -u root -p <redmine_database> | gzip > ~/redmine_db.sql.gz

Update the redmine package as normal.

Update the gems requirements: 

#  bundle update

For a clean gems environment, you may want to remove all the gems and reinstall them. To go through this, do: 

# for x in `gem list --no-versions`; do gem uninstall $x -a -x -I; done
Warning: The command above will delete ALL the gems in your system or user, depending of what type of Ruby installation you did in the prerequisites step. You must take care or you can stop working another applications that rely on Ruby gems.

If you did the last step and removed all the gems, now you will need to reinstall them all: 

# gem install bundler
# bundle install --without development test
Note: If you removed ALL the gems as above, and used a server that uses a gem, remember to reinstall the server gem: passenger (for Apache and Nginx), Mongrel or Unicorn. To do this, just follow the steps in the installation tutorial above.

Copy the saved files: 

# tar xzvf ~/redmine_files.tar.gz -C /usr/share/webapps/redmine/

Copy the installed plugins: 

# tar xzvf ~/redmine_plugins.tar.gz -C /usr/share/webapps/redmine/

Regenerate the secret token: 

# cd /usr/share/webapps/redmine
# bundle exec rake generate_secret_token

Check for any themes that you may have installed in the public/themes directory. You can copy them over but checking for updated version is ideal.

Warning: Do NOT overwrite config/settings.yml with the old one.

Update the database. This step is the one that could change the contents of your database. Go to your new redmine directory, then migrate your database: 

# RAILS_ENV=production REDMINE_LANG=pt-BR bundle exec rake db:migrate

If you have installed any plugins, you should also run their database migrations: 

# RAILS_ENV=production REDMINE_LANG=pt-BR bundle exec rake redmine:plugins:migrate

Now, it is time to clean the cache and the existing sessions: 

# RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake tmp:cache:clear tmp:sessions:clear

Restart the application server (e.g. puma, thin, passenger, etc). And finally go to "Admin -> Roles & permissions" to check/set permissions for the new features, if any.

Troubleshooting

Runtime error complaining that RMagick was configured with older version

If you get the following runtime error after upgrading ImageMagick This installation of RMagick was configured with ImageMagick 6.8.7 but ImageMagick 6.8.8-1 is in use. then you only need to reinstall (or rebuild as shown above if is the case).

Note: This is due to that when you install the RMagick gem it compiles some native extensions and they may need to be rebuilt after some ImageMagick upgrades.

Error when installing gems: Cannot load such file -- mysql2/mysql2

If you see an error like cannot load such file -- mysql2/mysql2, you are having a problem with the installation of the database gem. Probably a misconfiguration in the Database Access Configuration step. In this case you should verify the database.yml file.

If this does not work, you can manually install the database gem by: 

# gem install mysql2

As a last resort, you can try to comment the line of the database gem and add a new one as bellow: 

<path-to-mysql2-gem-directory>/lib/mysql2/mysql2.rb
# require 'mysql2/mysql2'
require '<path-to-mysql2-gem-directory>/lib/mysql2/mysql2.so'

Checkout SVN Source

Get the Redmine source (Download instructions). Here is method of installing Redmine directly from subversion in /srv/http/redmine/ 

# useradd -d /srv/http/redmine -s /bin/false redmine
# mkdir -p /srv/http/redmine
# svn checkout https://svn.redmine.org/redmine/branches/2.1-stable /srv/http/redmine
# chown -R redmine: /srv/http/redmine

Automating The Update Process

Example of an after-update script: 

#!/usr/bin/bash
export RAILS_ENV=production
grep -E "^gem 'thin'" Gemfile || echo "gem 'thin'" >> Gemfile
bundle update && bundle exec rake generate_secret_token db:migrate redmine:plugins:migrate tmp:cache:clear tmp:sessions:clear
Note: Note that this script uses Thin as application server, so you must change it to your needs.

Creating a Systemd Unit

If you want to automatic run you application server when system starts, you need to create a systemd unit file.

Note: This is not needed if you use apache or nginx with Passenger gem. Those servers already have their own unit file, so you have only to enable it.
/etc/systemd/system/redmine.service
[Unit]
Description=Redmine server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=redmine2
Group=redmine2
Environment=GEM_HOME=/home/redmine2/.gem/
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ruby /usr/share/webapps/redmine/bin/rails server webrick -e production

# Give a reasonable amount of time for the server to start up/shut down
TimeoutSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

See also