OTRS on CentOS 6: Setting up the System

In this post, we will be discussing about setting up OTRS, an open source helpdesk/ticketing system. It is a web based application, which is very handy, as I personally found it robust, client database support, email notifications and automatic ticket escalations. For more details about OTRS, this site can be checked http://www.otrs.com/en/

In this post, we will be demonstrating how to set up the system. Configuring and tuning would be discussed in later posts.

Phase 1: Setting up packages

I have said it before, and I will say it again, adding repoforge repository for yumserver is a very good idea. This link may be helpful: http://repoforge.org/use/

yum install wget mysql-server mysql php-mysql httpd perl-URI perl-Net-DNS perl-IO-Socket-SSL perl-XML-Parser mod_perl perl-TimeDate perl-Net-DNS procmail

Phase 2: Installing OTRS

Just googling would give us a tons of link to download OTRS. I am providing with a copy that I uploaded to my Ubuntu One.

wget http://ubuntuone.com/39dFh9EZeDcroaJEkYAYfx

 rpm -ivh otrs-3.1.8-01.noarch.rpm

Phase 3: Preparing mySQL

We would be starting the mySQL service and setting up the root password for it.

mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD
service mysqld restart; chkconfig mysqld on

That should do the trick

Phase 5: Tuning the Webserver

That's easy as well. Here's how it's done-

cd /etc/httpd/conf.d/
mv zzz_otrs.conf otrs.conf
service  httpd restart; chkconfig httpd on

Phase 6: Tuning firewall and SELinux

I am still not comfortable in working with SELinux. So, I have disabled it.
The firewall needs to be tuned as well, and in this case, I am flushing the firewall. Make sure that your firewall matches your requirements.

iptables -F
service iptables save

Phase 7: Finalizing

This is the final step. OTRS has a web based installer, which makes installation of the software a very easy task. The web installer can be accessed through the following url:

http://192.168.97.0/otrs/installer.pl

Web Installer

Of course, you need to use your own IP address. Just following the on screen instructions should be enough.

And that's it. In the next section, we would be discussing about how to configure and tune OTRS.

Hope that helps.