HOWTO: Install Subversion, Ruby on Rails and Redmine on CentOS5 (& RHEL5)
[Update 17th Sept 2009]
I’ve just noticed that Redmine version 0.8.5 was released last week, while this HOWTO should still be valid, I have not yet tested it so please report any issues you experience with new installs in the comments and I’ll look into them and amend the HOWTO where necessary 
[Updated 3rd June 2009]
So since Assembla changed it’s strategy and forced a monetised service or your once private projects were to become public after some date in February I decided to set up my own subversion repos / web management interface.
I never really used the Assembla service to its full potential however and all I really needed was a basic SVN setup with a webinterface to show the diffs in an eye-friendly format. The only two real choices were Trac and Redmine. I’d already used Trac on Assembla and countless other project sites so I was more drawn to Redmine due to it’s good interface design (imo, the Trac interface looks like it’s stuck together with Lego pieces), its features are more integrated and well, I fancied a change. The only problem was that Redmine runs on Ruby on Rails which I’ve heard very bad things about. So I decided to take a plunge and find out wtf the hassle was all about. It turns out there weren’t any up-to-date, well written and well maintained HOWTO’s out there detailing how to get a functional RoR environment configured on CentOS / RHEL. So I wrote my own (after hitting several brick walls)…
HOWTO: Install Subversion, Ruby on Rails and Redmine on CentOS5 (& RHEL5)
NOTES
- This HOWTO is written for CentOS 5.2 [updates for 5.3 in purple text]
- Replace [FQDN] with either your IP address or the hostname (or FQDN) which you’ll be using to access the interface.
- Replace [user] with the username under whom’s home directory the Subversion repository database will be located. e.g. /home/[user]/svn-repos
- This HOWTO will be using the following variables:
- You already have the “httpd” (apache) package installed
- You will be running apache as the user ‘apache’
- The subversion repository root folder will be under /home/[user]/subversion/
- The vhost’s folder locationg will be /var/www/svn
- The subversion repository to be created will be called ‘example-repo’
Install and set up Subversion
yum install mod_dav_svn subversion
Add the group [user] to the user apache and make the subversion base URL readable and writable…
usermod -aG [user] apache chmod g+x /home/[user] mkdir /home/[user]/subversion chmod g+rwx /home/[user]/subversion chown -R [user]:[user] /home/[user]/subversion
Make the web directory:
mkdir /var/www/svn chown apache.apache /var/www/svn
Put the following into /etc/httpd/conf.d/svn.conf (this is for a sub-repo called ‘example-repo’)
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/var/www/svn"
ServerName [FQDN]
<Location /example-repo>
DAV svn
SVNPath /home/[user]/subversion/example-repo
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repo"
AuthUserFile /var/www/passwd
Require valid-user
</Location>
<Directory "/var/www/svn">
allow from all
Options +Indexes
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Add an HTTP auth user…
htpasswd -cm /var/www/passwd [user]
Create a proper SVN repository
cd /home/[user]/subversion su [user] -c "svnadmin create example-repo"
Import any SVN repos by doing:
su [user] -c "svnadmin load example-repo < /path/to/repo/dump/file"
Make sure the permissions are correct
chmod g+rwx /home/[user]/subversion chown -R [user].[user] /home/[user]
Install Ruby on Rails
*NOTE: Ruby on Rails installation requires the EPEL yum repository (at time of writing).
su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm'
Let’s get Ruby up and running first… [NOTE: not on an SElinux environment cba with that]
yum install httpd httpd-devel apr make gcc-c++ mysql-server mysql ruby ruby-devel ruby-docs ruby-ri \ ruby-libs ruby-mode ruby-tcltk ruby-irb ruby-rdoc fcgi fcgi-devel mod_fcgid rubygems subversion-ruby
Now we’ll install passenger (aka mod_rails)
gem install passenger passenger-install-apache2-module
Create and insert this text into /etc/httpd/conf.d/rails.conf (or alternatively edit the existing svn.conf created when we set up subversion)
NOTE:
- The below configuration is specific to the installation of redmine (hence the DocumentRoot)
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName 192.168.10.17
DocumentRoot /var/www/rails/redmine/public
</VirtualHost>
Now on to Redmine itself
Get Redmine 0.8 from http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Download
cd /usr/src svn co http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/0.8-stable redmine-0.8 mkdir /var/www/rails/ cd /var/www/rails/ cp -r /usr/src/redmine-0.8/ redmine/ chown -R apache.apache redmine cd redmine
Create a clean backup of source files
tar czf Redmine0.8-clean.tar.gz .
Initialise mySQL:
service mysqld start
To secure mysql:
mysql_secure_installation
Create a mysql database for redmine…
mysql -u[username] -p
At the prompt enter:
create database redmine character set utf8;
Quit with:
quit
Copy the example database file to the “live” location
cd /var/www/rails/redmine cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
Enter the appropriate settings for the [production] section ensuring that host is set to 127.0.0.1
vim /var/www/rails/redmine/config/database.yml
Set up email
cd /var/www/rails/redmine cp config/email.yml.example config/email.yml
Enter the appropriate settings for the [production] section ensuring that “address” is set to the IP address of the SMTP host
vim /var/www/rails/redmine/config/email.yml
Install rails for redmine using gem…
cd /var/www/rails/redmine/app/ gem install -v=2.1.2 rails
Import the redmine database into the live database specified in the above config file
cd /var/www/rails/redmine/app/ rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production"
Install default configuration data in database (this is entirely optional, but recommended).
cd /var/www/rails/redmine/app/ rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV="production"
Bring up the testing webserver, once loaded check your config by browsing to http://[FQDN]:3000
cd /var/www/rails/redmine/ ruby script/server -e production
Make sure your apache config file edits are ok and that the services will start at boot by doing:
service httpd configtest service httpd restart chkconfig httpd on chkconfig mysqld on
[Optional:] Add the following to your crontab which will create a database backup in the /home/[user] directory
/usr/bin/mysqldump -u <user> -p <password> <database> | gzip > /home/[user]/redmine_`date +%y_%m_%d`.gz
Make your subversion server configuration accessible to redmine by doing the following:
mkdir /etc/subversion cp -r /root/.subversion/* /etc/subversion/ vim /var/www/rails/redmine/lib/redmine/scm/adapters/subversion_adapter.rb
Change the line:
SVN_BIN = "svn"
to:
SVN_BIN = "svn --config-dir /etc/subversion"
Then restart apache:
service httpd restart
). You also get the peace of mind knowing that the car has a warranty and will last for a long time to come, and that parts will always be available for it, and that the tyres won’t wear down quickly etc. All because you know the car has been safety tested and engineered to withstand a crash and a break-down.
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