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
