How to install redmine on Ubuntu 12.10

Redmine is a free and open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. I would recommend Redmine for everybody working on private projects, and I will guide you through the installation process on Ubuntu.

The Redmine version on the Ubuntu repositories is quite outdated at the time of writing. To install the last stable version we need to add the Redmine repository to apt. You can skip this step if you prefer a package from the ubuntu repositories:

> sudo apt-get install software-properties-common	
> sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/redmine

Because there is no quantal release for Redmine (yet), we need to use the precise one for now. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ondrej-redmine-quantal.list and change quantal to precise:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/redmine/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ondrej/redmine/ubuntu precise main

Update the available packages:

> sudo apt-get update

Now you are ready to install redmine. I decided to install redmine with SQLite. When using SQLite, redmine will store all its information in a single file, and keep your MySQL database clean. If you want to use MySQL instead of SQLite, just replace redmine-sqlite with redmine-mysql.

> sudo apt-get install redmine redmine-sqlite

Redmine is now installed and all that is left to do is to configure apache. To access redmine (which is is a ruby application) using apache we will need the passenger mod:

> sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger
> sudo a2enmod passenger

By default, passenger runs as 'nobody', we will need it to run it as the same user as apache is running on. Edit /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf like this:

<IfModule mod_passenger.c>
  PassengerDefaultUser www-data
  PassengerRoot /usr
  PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby
</IfModule>

To access redmine you need a symlink in your web folder. I made a separate virtual host, but this is the quickest way to test the installation:

> sudo ln -s /usr/share/redmine/public /var/www/redmine

You willl also need to configure the /var/www/redmine location in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default by adding:

<Directory /var/www/redmine>
    RailsEnv production
    RailsBaseURI /redmine
    PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
</Directory>

Reload your apache with sudo service apache2 reload and redmine should be available on http://localhost/redmine.

How to install redmine on Ubuntu 12.10

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