    RT is an enterprise-grade issue tracking system. It allows organizations
    to keep track of what needs to get done, who is working on which tasks,
    what's already been done, and when tasks were (or weren't) completed.

    RT doesn't cost anything to use, no matter how much you use it; it is
    freely available under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public
    License.

    RT is commercially-supported software. To purchase support, training,
    custom development, or professional services, please get in touch with
    us at <sales@bestpractical.com>.

    REQUIRED PACKAGES
    -----------------

    o   Perl 5.10.1 or later (http://www.perl.org).

            RT won't start on versions of Perl older than 5.10.1.

    o   A supported SQL database

            Currently supported:  MySQL 5.7, 8 with InnoDB support
                                  MariaDB 10.2 or later with InnoDB support
                                  Postgres 9.5 or later
                                  Oracle 12c or later
                                  SQLite 3.0 or later; for testing only, no
                                               upgrade path guaranteed

    o   Apache version 2.x (https://httpd.apache.org)
            with mod_fcgid -- (https://httpd.apache.org/mod_fcgid/mod/mod_fcgid.html)
            or mod_perl -- (http://perl.apache.org)
            or nginx -- (https://nginx.org/)
            or another webserver with FastCGI support

            RT's FastCGI handler needs to access RT's configuration file.

    o   Various and sundry perl modules

            A tool included with RT takes care of the installation of most
            of these automatically during the install process.

            The tool supplied with RT uses Perl's CPAN (http://www.cpan.org)
            to install modules. Some operating systems package all or some
            of the modules required, and you may be better off installing
            the modules that way.

    OPTIONAL DEPENDENCIES
    ---------------------

    o   Full-text indexing support in your database

            The databases listed above all have options for full-text indexing
            (excluding SQLite). See docs/full_text_indexing.pod for details.

    o   An external HTML converter

            Installing an external utility to convert HTML can improve performance.
            See the $HTMLFormatter configuration option for details.

    GENERAL INSTALLATION
    --------------------

     1) Unpack this distribution other than where you want to install RT.
        Your home directory or /usr/local/src are both fine choices.
        Change to that directory and run the following command:

            tar xzvf rt.tar.gz

     2) Run the "configure" script.  To see the list of options, run:

            ./configure --help

        Peruse the options, then rerun ./configure with the flags you want.

        RT defaults to installing in /opt/rt5 with MySQL as its database. It
        tries to guess which of www-data, www, apache or nobody your
        webserver will run as, but you can override that behavior.  Note
        that the default install directory in /opt/rt5 does not work under
        SELinux's default configuration.

        If you are upgrading from a previous version of RT, please review
        the upgrade notes for the appropriate versions, which can be found
        in docs/UPGRADING-* If you are coming from 4.4.x to 5.0.x you should
        review both the UPGRADING-4.4 and UPGRADING-5.0 files.  Similarly, if
        you were coming from 4.2.x, you would want to review the UPGRADING-4.2,
        UPGRADING-4.4 and UPGRADING-5.0 documents.

        Any upgrade steps given in version-specific UPGRADING files should
        be run after the rest of the steps below; however, please read the
        relevant documentation before beginning the upgrade, so as to be
        aware of important changes.

        RT stores the arguments given to ./configure at the top of the
        etc/RT_Config.pm file in case you need to recreate your previous use
        of ./configure.

     3) Make sure that RT has the Perl and system libraries it needs to run.
        Check for missing dependencies by running:

            make testdeps

     4) If the script reports any missing dependencies, install them by
        hand, or run the following command as a user who has permission to
        install perl modules on your system:

            make fixdeps

        Some modules require user input or environment variables to install
        correctly, so it may be necessary to install them manually. Some modules
        also require external source libraries, so you may need to install
        additional packages.

        If you are having trouble installing GD, refer to "Installing GD libraries"
        in docs/charts.pod.  Ticket relationship graphing requires the graphviz
        library which you should install using your distribution's package manager.

        See docs/rt_perl.pod for additional information about installing perl and
        RT's dependencies.

     5) Check to make sure everything was installed properly.

            make testdeps

        It might sometimes be necessary to run "make fixdeps" several times
        to install all necessary perl modules.

    6a) If this is a NEW installation (not an upgrade):

          As a user with permission to install RT in your chosen directory,
          type:

              make install

          To configure RT with the web installer, run:

              /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-server

          and follow the instructions.  Once completed, you should now have a
          working RT instance running with the standalone rt-server.  Press
          Ctrl-C to stop it, and proceed to Step 7 to configure a recommended
          deployment environment for production.

          To configure RT manually, you must setup etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm in
          your RT installation directory.  You'll need to add any values you
          need to change from the defaults in etc/RT_Config.pm

          As a user with permission to read RT's configuration file, type:

              make initialize-database

          If the make fails, type:

              make dropdb

          and re-run 'make initialize-database'.

    6b) If you are UPGRADING from a previous installation:

          Before upgrading, always ensure that you have a complete current
          backup. If you don't have a current backup, upgrading your database
          could accidentally damage it and lose data, or worse.

          If you are using MySQL, please read the instructions in
          docs/UPGRADING.mysql as well to ensure that you do not corrupt
          existing data.

          First, stop your webserver.  You may also wish to put incoming email
          into a hold queue, to avoid temporary delivery failure messages if
          your upgrade is expected to take several hours.

          Next, install new binaries, config files and libraries by running:

              make upgrade

          This will also prompt you to upgrade your database by running:

              make upgrade-database

          You should back up your database before running this command.
          When you run it, you will be prompted for your previous version of
          RT (such as 4.4.1) so that the appropriate set of database
          upgrades can be applied.

          If 'make upgrade-database' completes without error, your upgrade
          has been successful; you should now run any commands that were
          supplied in version-specific UPGRADING documentation.  You should
          then restart your webserver.

          Depending on the size and composition of your database, some upgrade
          steps may run for a long time. You may also need extra disk space or
          other resources while running upgrade steps. It's a good idea to run
          through the upgrade steps on a test server so you know what to expect
          before running on your production system.

     7) Configure the web server, as described in docs/web_deployment.pod,
        and the email gateway, as described below.

        NOTE: The default credentials for RT are:
            User: root
            Pass: password
        Not changing the root password from the default is a SECURITY risk!

     8) Set up users, groups, queues, scrips and access control.

        Until you do this, RT will not be able to send or receive email, nor
        will it be more than marginally functional.  This is not an optional
        step.

     9) Set up automated recurring tasks (cronjobs):

        Depending on your configuration, RT stores sessions in the database
        or on the file system. In either case, sessions are only needed until
        a user logs out, so old sessions should be cleaned up with this utility:

            perldoc /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-clean-sessions

        To generate email digest messages, you must arrange for the provided
        utility to be run once daily, and once weekly. You may also want
        to arrange for the rt-email-dashboards utility to be run hourly.

        RT automatically creates temporary short URLs for searches and these
        can be cleared from the system periodically as well. See the documentation
        for the sbin/rt-clean-shorteners script for options. You can schedule
        this to run regularly if desired.

        If your task scheduler is cron, you can configure it by
        adding the following lines as /etc/cron.d/rt:

            0 0 * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-clean-sessions
            0 0 * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m daily
            0 0 * * 0 root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-digest -m weekly
            0 * * * * root /opt/rt5/sbin/rt-email-dashboards

        Other optional features like full text search indexes, external
        attachments, etc., may also have recurring jobs to schedule in cron.
        Follow the documentation for these features when you enable them.

    10) Configure the RT email gateway.  To let email flow to your RT
        server, you need to add a few lines of configuration to your mail
        server's "aliases" file. These lines "pipe" incoming email messages
        from your mail server to RT.

        Add the following lines to /etc/aliases (or your local equivalent)
        on your mail server:

            rt:         "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action correspond --url http://rt.example.com"
            rt-comment: "|/opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate --queue general --action comment --url http://rt.example.com"

        You'll need to add similar lines for each queue you want to be able to
        send email to. To find out more about how to configure RT's email
        gateway, type:

               perldoc /opt/rt5/bin/rt-mailgate

    11) Set up full text search

        Full text search (FTS) without database indexing is a very slow operation,
        and is thus disabled by default. You'll need to follow the instructions in
        docs/full_text_indexing.pod to enable FTS.

    12) Set up automatic backups for RT and its data as described in
        the docs/system_administration/database.pod document.

    GETTING HELP
    ------------

    If RT is mission-critical for you or if you use it heavily, we recommend
    that you purchase a commercial support contract.  Details on support
    contracts are available at http://www.bestpractical.com or by writing to
    <sales@bestpractical.com>. We also offer managed hosting plans if you
    prefer to have someone else manage the RT server.

    If you're interested in having RT extended or customized or would like
    more information about commercial support options, please send email to
    <sales@bestpractical.com> to discuss rates and availability.

    COMMUNITY FORUM AND WIKI
    ------------------------

    To keep up to date on the latest RT tips, techniques and extensions, you
    may wish to join the RT Community Forum website.  You can find it here:

          https://forum.bestpractical.com

    You'll find many different categories of discussion there including the
    RT Users category for general RT topics. If you're interested
    in customizing RT code, there is a category for RT Developers with more
    technical topics.

    The RT wiki, at https://rt-wiki.bestpractical.com, is also a potential
    resource.

    SECURITY
    --------

    If you believe you've discovered a security issue in RT, please send an
    email to <security@bestpractical.com> with a detailed description of the
    issue, and a secure means to respond to you (such as your PGP public
    key).  You can find our PGP key and fingerprint at
    https://bestpractical.com/security/

    BUGS
    ----

    RT's a pretty complex application, and as you get up to speed, you might
    run into some trouble. Generally, it's best to ask about things you run
    into on the Community Forum (or pick up a commercial support
    contract from Best Practical). But, sometimes people do run into
    bugs. In the exceedingly unlikely event that you hit a bug in RT, please
    report it! We'd love to hear about problems you have with RT, so we can
    fix them.  To report a bug, send email to <rt-bugs@bestpractical.com>.

    Note that this sends email to our public RT instance. Do not include any
    information in your email that you don't want shown publicly, including
    contact information in your email signature.

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