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