CIT 470 Advanced Network and System Administration: Lab #10: OTRS

Lab #10: OTRS
Date: March 17, 2008

In this lab, we'll install and configure the Open Ticket Request System (OTRS), a request tracking system that can be used to manage requests received from users. You'll find that installing OTRS is a bit more difficult than most of our previous service installs. Like many system management applications, OTRS provides a web interface and stores requests and other information in a database, so it requires the installation and configuration of two simpler services, the Apache web server and the MySQL database server before it can function.

You'll find the OTRS 2.2 Manual useful in completing this lab.

Installing OTRS
1. Download the OTRS 2.2 RPM from otrs.org.
2. Install the OTRS RPM.
```
rpm -ivh otrs*
```
3. When the install fails, read the error messages to determine what dependencies you need to install before installing OTRS. Note that some of these RPMs may require the use of third party repositories like the Dag RPMs repository that we set up in the RPM lab. Use yum to install the updates.
```
yum install ...
```
4. Install the OTRS RPM. If you're still missing dependencies, return to the previous step until you've installed all of them. Record the "next steps" instructions it provides on installation, as you'll need to do those steps in a few minutes.
```
rpm -ivh otrs*
```
5. When you install OTRS, it prints a message about creating a new user. What are the username and the UID of that user?
6. OTRS will install successfully despite missing some of the perl modules it needs to run. It comes with a command that will list what modules it needs. All of these are available via the Dag RPMs repository, but note that the RPM package names are different than the perl module names. In particular, :: is often replaced by - and capitalization differs.
```
/opt/otrs/bin/otrs.checkModules
yum install ...
```
7. Start the web server. You'll get an error message, which you'll need to resolve in the next step.
```
service httpd start
```
8. Comment out any lines in the additional web server configuration file that OTRS installed. You can identify the file by using rpm to list the configuration files that came with OTRS and finding the one that relates to the HTTP server.
```
rpm -qc otrs | less
vim ...
```
9. Start the web server. If you encounter more error messages, use the technique above to fix them, then attempt to start the web server again.
```
service httpd start
```
10. Start the database server.
```
service mysql start
```
11. Disable SElinux, then reboot the system so this change will take effect.
```
vim /etc/selinux/config
reboot
```
12. Use Firefox to run the web installer that was mentioned to you when you installed OTRS with rpm. You can accept the defaults for most items, but set the following items as specified below. Save the URL given when the web installer finishes.
```
FQDN: localhost
email: root@localhost
CheckMX: No
```
13. Restart the web server.
```
service httpd restart
```
14. Start OTRS services.
```
service otrs start
```
15. Go to the URL given to you by the web installer and log into OTRS as root@localhost.
16. Click on "Raw" to see the queued welcome message from the configuration system.
Configuring OTRS
1. Create a new user by clicking on the warning "Don't work with UserId 1". Use your kosh account's username and fill in sensible defaults. This will be the account for you to access the help system as an ordinary system administrator. The root account is for managing OTRS itself, not for managing requests. What group should your new user belong to and what rights should your new user have?
2. Create a new customer user named student.
3. Login as your new customer user from another machine. If this doesn't work, you may have to reconfigure iptables to permit HTTP access to your OTRS server.
4. When you login as your customer user, notice that the interface is designed by customized with placeholders like LOGO, COMPANY NAME, FOOTER, and FOOTER2. Customize these by altering the proper dtl files. Use rpm -qc otrs to find these files and grep to find the ones you need to modify.
5. Create a new queue named cit470.
Using OTRS
1. As student, create a new request to the cit470 queue.
2. Login as your sysadmin user and view the contents of the cit470 queue.
3. As your sysadmin user, add a note to the request.
4. As student, check whether you can view the note and put the answer in your lab file.
5. As your sysadmin user, compose a reply to the request. Notice the template that OTRS provides for you. You can configure the template for your organizational needs.
6. As student, check whether you can view the reply and put the answer in your lab file.
7. Submit another request as student. Notice how the queue view looks for both customer and sysadmin users. Check out the other functionality of OTRS as both users, such as viewing the history of the request and moving it between queues.
8. As your sysadmin user, close student's original request. How does this change the view of requests for both student and the sysadmin user?