HowTo: Openproject 3.x why Debian Wheesy (7.x)

By | 11. August 2014
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Why?

I wanted to install OpenProject 3.x to Debian Wheezy. This was not an easy task since Wheesys Ruby Packages are way too old. Additionally all the User-Guides I found were only partly helpful. The user guide provided by OpenProject was considering an installation with a separate user and not in an more hosting-aware production environment – even though the headline of the guide stated different.

Hence, here is my approach on an Debian Wheesy ISPConfig 3.x server environment.

Caviats

I assume that you are familiar with MySQL, Apache and other server stuff. I will not provide commands that are obvious to administrators.

Installation

The installation is separated into different parts. You can follow them step by step and end up with OpenProject running and having rails updated to Version 2.1.x.

Ruby 2.1.x

Install required packages:

apt-get install git curl build-essential libxslt1-dev libxml2-dev libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev libpq-dev libsqlite3-dev libyaml-0-2 libmagickwand-dev libmagickcore-dev libmagickcore5-extra libgraphviz-dev libgvc5 libmysqlclient-dev libsqlite3-dev libpq-dev

Install Ruby:

curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby=2.1
source /usr/local/rvm/scripts/rvm
rvm autolibs disable

Check Ruby version, should be 2.1.x:

ruby -v

Install bundler. this might fail a few times. Than you are missing to have the correct -dev libs:

gem install bundler

Apache Mod Passenger

Since we do not use the build-in Ruby Webserver, we need to use Apache mod_passenger. This module is present in Wheesy, but I did not trust it to work properly with OpenProject. If you have knowledge about it, I am happy to hear from you.

Install Gem of passenger

gem install passenger

 

Compile Passenger Module

passenger-install-apache2-module

 

At the end of the compiling process you will be presented with the configuration lines for Apache. Put them in the file /etc/apache2/mods-available/mypassenger.load:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/gems/passenger-4.0.48/buildout/apache2/mod_passenger.so
   <IfModule mod_passenger.c>
     PassengerRoot /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/gems/passenger-4.0.48
     PassengerDefaultRuby /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/wrappers/ruby
   </IfModule>

Enable Mod Passenger

a2enmod mypassenger
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

MySQL

You can use many different SQL server, but I chose the pre-existing MySQL already installed as a standard.

  • Create a user
  • Create a DB with uft-8 encoding (best for all environments). It is probably enough to create on for the production environment.

 

OpenProject

As mentioned, I use ISPConfig on my Server. OpenProject was supposed to run on the root of the domain. Since it is not that easy to protect all files and directories but a few in combination with the passenger Mod of Apache, I chose to install OpenProject in the path “private“. This way, it is not directly accessible from the docroot.

git clone https://github.com/opf/openproject.git
cd openproject
git checkout stable

 

Change the database setup (config/database.yml)

cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: openproject
  host: localhost
  username: openproject
  password: openproject
  encoding: utf8

development:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: openproject_dev
  host: localhost
  username: openproject
  password: openproject
  encoding: utf8

test:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: openproject_test
  host: localhost
  username: openproject
  password: openproject
  encoding: utf8

 

Setup SMTP settings

cp config/configuration.yml.example config/configuration.yml
development:
  #email_delivery_method: :letter_opener
  email_delivery_method: :smtp

# Configuration for the test environment
test:
  email_delivery_method: :test

# specific configuration options for production environment
production:
  session_store: :cache_store
  email_delivery_method: "smtp"       #setting for default
  smtp_address: "localhost"           #setting for default
  smtp_port: 25
  smtp_domain: YOURHOSTNAME
  #smtp_user_name: ***@gmail.com
  #smtp_password: ****
  #smtp_enable_starttls_auto: true
  #smtp_authentication: plain

You can use the following setting for better performance. I have not tested it in my setup:

rails_cache_store: :memcache

You can now add plugins. I will handle them in a sub-section.

 

Install all bundle that are necessary to OpenProject.

bundle pack
bundle install --path vendor/cache

 

Run the following commands to prepare and setup OpenProject

bundle exec rake generate_secret_token
# Not necessary, we done it ourself: bundle exec rake db:create:all
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake db:migrate
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake db:seed
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake assets:precompile

 

If you installed the software as root, do not forget to change the permissions.

chown webXX.clientXX -R *
chown webXX.clientXX -R .[a-z]*

 

Set a symbolic link from the website docroot to the public folder

cd ../../web
ln -s ../private/openproject/public public
chown -h webXX.clientXX public

 

Website

In the Apache configuration of the website you need to add the following lines

#PassengerRuby /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/wrappers/ruby
PassengerAppRoot /var/www/WEBSITEPATH/private/openproject
RailsEnv production
RailsBaseURI /

 

Plugins

Plugins are not installed using the web interface. You need to add them by editing the file Gemfile.plugins in the OpenProject root.

The following plugins are very useful:

# Required for each plug-in
gem "openproject-plugins", :git => "https://github.com/opf/openproject-plugins.git", :branch => "stable" 

# Help-links
gem 'openproject-help_link', :git => 'https://github.com/finnlabs/openproject-help_link.git', :branch => 'stable'

# Translations
gem 'openproject-translations', :git => 'https://github.com/opf/openproject-translations.git', :branch => 'stable'
# Allows add-in documents to projects
#gem 'openproject-documents', :git => 'https://github.com/opf/openproject-documents.git', :branch => 'stable'
gem 'openproject-translations', :path => './vendor/openproject-translations'

# Meetings
gem 'openproject-meeting', :git => 'https://github.com/finnlabs/openproject-meeting.git', :branch => 'stable'

# PDF export is useful and required by backlogs
gem "openproject-pdf_export", git: "https://github.com/finnlabs/openproject-pdf_export.git", :branch => "stable" 

# backlogs
gem "openproject-backlogs", git: "https://github.com/finnlabs/openproject-backlogs.git", :branch => "stable"

Be aware: The translations plugin currently has some issues (11/08/2014). Therefor you need to fetch it yourself and change the .gemspec file.

cd vendor
git clone https://github.com/opf/openproject-translations.git

Change the following line (vendor/openproject-translations/openproject-translations.gemspec)

s.add_dependency "openproject-plugins", "~> 3.0"

❗ You always need to run the install command afterwards.

source /usr/local/rvm/scripts/rvm
#bundle pack
bundle install --path vendor/cache
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake assets:precompile

 

Tips

Here I list a few tips for OpenProject, actually they are also concerning Ruby on Rails.

Clear on any change

Whenever you change a configuration or similar, you need to execute the following commands to make them active:

RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake tmp:cache:clear
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake tmp:sessions:clear
RAILS_ENV="production" bundle exec rake db:sessions:clear

❗ You always have to restart the entire web server.

 

 

 

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