OTRS is a free and open source ticketing tool available for Linux like operating systems. OTRS stands for “Open Source Trouble Ticket System“. In opensource world it is one of the most popular trouble ticketing tool used by help desk, call centers and IT service management team in various organizations.
In this article we will demonstrate how to install and configure OTRS 6 (Community Edition) on a CentOS 7 & RHEL 7 System. To Install OTRS community edition on a Linux system we need one database server (MariaDB, MySQL & PostgreSQL), Web Server (Apache & Ngnix) and Perl modules.
Following are the recommended hardware and software requirements for OTRS 6
- 8 GB RAM
- 3 GHZ Xenon
- 256 GB Disk space
- Perl 5.16 or higher
- Web Server (Apache 2 or NGINX)
- Database (MariaDB, MySQL & PostgreSQL 9.2 or higher)
Details of my lab setup for OTRS 6
- Minimal CentOS 7 Or RHEL 7 System
- Hostname: otrs.linuxtechi.lan
- IP Address: 192.168.1.30
- RAM: 4 GB
- vCPU: 2
- Disk Space: 40 GB
Let’s jump into the OTRS 6 installations steps,
Step:1) Apply all system updates and reboot the system
Login to your CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 system and execute the beneath yum update command to apply all the system updates and then reboot it,
[[email protected] ~]# yum update && reboot
Note: Put SELinux in permissive mode, even OTRS official web site suggests to disable SELinux, execute the below command.
[[email protected] ~]# setenforce 0 [[email protected] ~]# sed -i --follow-symlinks 's/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/g' /etc/sysconfig/selinux
Step:2) Install Web Server (Apache) and Database Server (MariaDB)
Install Apache Web Server and MariaDB database server using the beneath yum command,
[r[email protected] ~]# yum install httpd httpd-devel gcc mariadb-server -y
Start and enable the Apache Web service using below commands,
[[email protected] ~]# systemctl start httpd [[email protected] ~]# systemctl enable httpd Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/httpd.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service. [[email protected] ~]#
Update the following parameters under the [mysqld] directive in /etc/my.cnf file for OTRS
[[email protected] ~]# vi /etc/my.cnf [mysqld] datadir=/var/lib/mysql socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock max_allowed_packet=64M query_cache_size=32M innodb_log_file_size=256M character-set-server=utf8 collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
Save & exit the file
Start and enable the database (mysql) service using the beneath systemctl commands,
[[email protected] ~]# systemctl start mariadb [[email protected] ~]# systemctl enable mariadb Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mariadb.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service. [[email protected] ~]#
Configure the root password of mariadb database, remove the test database, remove anonymous users and disable root login remotely.
Run “mysql_secure_installation” command to accomplish above said tasks
[[email protected] ~]# mysql_secure_installation
Output of above command should be something like below,
Step:3) Install Community Edition OTRS 6 using yum command
At time of writing of this article community edition of OTRS 6 is available, use the below yum command to install it from command line.
[[email protected] ~]# yum install https://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/RPMS/rhel/7/otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch.rpm -y
Above command will also install the dependencies of OTRS 6 automatically,
Once the OTRS 6 package is installed successfully then restart apache web service,
[[email protected] ~]# systemctl restart httpd [[email protected] ~]#
Step:4) Allow http & https ports in OS firewall
In case OS firewall is running and enabled on your system then execute the following firewall-cmd command to allow http (80) and https (443) port, else you can skip this step.
[[email protected] ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http success [[email protected] ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https success [[email protected] ~]# firewall-cmd --reload success [[email protected] ~]#
Step:5) Verify and install required perl modules for OTRS
OTRS to work properly, perl modules are required, to verify whether all required perl modules are installed or not run the below command
[[email protected] ~]# /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl
Output of above command would be something like below,
As we can see above there are number of perl modules which are not installed. So to proceed with installation first install the missing perl modules.
Some of the perl modules are not available in the default yum centos 7 / RHEL 7 repositories, so enable the epel repository using following yum command,
[[email protected] ~]# yum install epel-release -y
Now install the missing perl modules using the following yum command,
[[email protected] ~]# yum install "perl(Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt)" "perl(DBD::Pg)" "perl(Encode::HanExtra)" "perl(JSON::XS)" "perl(Mail::IMAPClient)" "perl(Authen::NTLM)" "perl(ModPerl::Util)" "perl(Text::CSV_XS)" "perl(YAML::XS)" -y
Re-run the command “/opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl” to verify whether all the required perl modules are installed successfully or not.
[[email protected] ~]# /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl
Step:5) Access OTRS 6 Web Installer GUI
Type the following URL in your web browser
http://<OTRS-Server-IP-Adrress>/otrs/installer.pl
In my case URL is “http://192.168.1.30/otrs/installer.pl”
Click on Next …
In the Next Window, Accept the License
In the Next Step select the database you want to use for OTRS, so in my case I am selecting as “MySQL” and select option to create a new database for OTRS and then click on Next…
In the next window specify the root password of mariadb database server, host where mariadb is running and rest of the things installer will automatically pick like OTRS database name, user name and its password.
Click on Next to proceed further,
As we can see above, Installer has successfully setup Database for OTRS, Click on Next…
Specify the FQDN of your OTRS server, admin email address, Organization and Choose “No” against CheckMXRecord option in case your domain don’t have MX record .
In the next window SKIP mail configuration, In case you have already configured MTA or SMTP relay server then specify the details else skip
In Next window you will get message that OTRS has been installed successfully, OTRS Start Page URL, user name and its password.
Step:6) Access Your OTRS Startup page
Now it’s time to access your otrs startup page, type the following URL in your web browser. Use the user name as “[email protected]” and password which is displayed in above step.
http://192.168.1.30/otrs/index.pl
Replace the IP address that suits to your environment.
As we can see on the dashboard OTRS daemon is not running, so let’s start it using otrs user,
[[email protected] ~]# su - otrs [[email protected] ~]$ /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Daemon.pl start Manage the OTRS daemon process. Daemon started [[email protected] ~]$ /opt/otrs/bin/Cron.sh start (using /opt/otrs) done [[email protected] ~]$
Now refresh the page, “OTRS daemon not running” message should go away.
This confirm that Community Edition OTRS 6 has been installed successfully, that’s all from this article, please do share your feedback and comments in the comments sections below.
thanks
Endless thanks for you. Your article has been very useful for me
Blessings
Hi Carlos,
How did you configure email settings?
Thanks Pradeep. I very much needed the OTRS system for my internal organization work. Although I dont have CentOS, I will be able to make use of the post here.
Thanks for a wonderful step by step guide. I faced a problem in installing the modules using the following command string
# yum install “perl(Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt)” “perl(DBD::Pg)” “perl(Encode::HanExtra)” “perl(JSON::XS)” “perl(Mail::IMAPClient)” “perl(Authen::NTLM)” “perl(ModPerl::Util)” “perl(Text::CSV_XS)” “perl(YAML::XS)” -y
I tried using the alternative way but no success, however, OTRS still got installed
Have you installed Epel-release?
What type of OS you are using?
Hi Pradeep,
Really thank you allot for such a wonderful article.
Can you create an article on the OTRS email configuration?
Really thank you a lot for such a wonderful job. It’s very useful article.
What is the default “otrs” user password? In my case I had to reset the new password though.
Otherwise, overall installation was straight forward with these steps.
Thanks
Anwar
Got it. It is shown during Web Installer phase
Another problem; I cannot open ‘http://MyIPAdrress/otrs/customer.pl’
Getting error as below:
——————————-
An Error Occurred
Access denied for user ‘otrs’@’localhost’ (using password: YES)
Please contact the administrator.
For this, had to reinstall OTRS. Earlier, I made changes to hosts file, resulting in this problem. I came to know of it later.
It works perfect!!!
Thank you very much
Simone
Facing an issue with my.cnf file. getting below error,
‘Error: Please set the value for innodb_log_file_size on your database to at least 256 MB (current: 48 MB, recommended: 512 MB). For more information, please have a look at ‘http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-data-log-reconfiguration.html.’
When I changed the value to 256 MB, MariaDB Service is in a failed state.
Please help.
followed the instructions…. but for mail configuration what will i do? have already configured imap server. but dont know any solution how to create a outbound mail server so that OTRS agent can reply.
please help
Thanks for this article!
How to configure mail plz clearify ?
what step I will follow for mail INBOUND and OUTBOUND setting
Thank You
Great article, saved my day, thank you very much for sharing.
I would only like to point out 2 things:
1. Internet access
2. extra perl modules (OTRS otrs-6.0.27-02)
ad 1. Internet access
I have been installing OTRS inside private network with no direct internet access, only through HTTP forward proxy — the forward proxy configuration at OS level is fine and is working as expected, howerer, I was unable to pass those settings to mod_perl executing the OTRS itself, for some reason the standard OS environment variables (http_proxy, https_proxy) are not taken into account. The setup wizard and first login has been pain — it tried to contact otrs public website, which did not succeed.
Temporarily I was forced to break the security policy and configure direct Internet access to the instance and complete the setup with full Internet access enabled.
ad 2. extra modules
yum -y install https://harbottle.gitlab.io/epmel/7/x86_64/epmel-release.rpm
yum update
yum install “perl(Moo)” “perl(namespace::clean)” “perl(Exporter::Tiny)” “perl(Math::Random::ISAAC)” “perl(Module::Find)” -y
Good afternoon guys, I am trying to install perl on my server and I am facing this error below.
[[email protected] otrs]# yum -y ‘http://mirror.globo.com/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-r release-7-9.noarch.rpm’
Não existe este comando: ‘http://mirror.globo.com/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-r’. Por favor utilize /bin/yum –help
It could be a YUM plugin command, try: “yum install ‘dnf-command(‘http://mirror.globo.com/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-r’)'”
[[email protected] otrs]# yum install ‘https://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/RPMS/rhel/7/otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch.rpm’ -y
Última verificação de expiração de metadados: 2:57:53 em qua 13 jan 2021 12:12:26 UTC.
otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch.rpm 45 MB/s | 24 MB 00:00
Erro:
Problema: conflicting requests
– nothing provides perl(DateTime) needed by otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch
– nothing provides perl(Crypt::SSLeay) needed by otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch
(try to add ‘–skip-broken’ to skip uninstallable packages or ‘–nobest’ to use not only best candidate packages)
I’m use CentOS8 in my server.
As you are using CentOS 8 system. So enable EPEL repository for CentOS 8 only. Run below command to enable it.
# dnf install -y epel-release
For Installing OTRS rpm package use below command
# dnf install -y ‘https://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/RPMS/redhat/8.0/otrs-2.4.15-01.noarch.rpm’
hi ,
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Cannot open: ‘https://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/RPMS/rhel/7/otrs-6.0.17-01.noarch.rpm.’ Skipping.
i am getting above error while downlading otrs
On Almalinux i installed MariaDB by dnf, mysql and maridb command work properly, service work fine, but otrs*.sh can`t see my mariadb instance. I can`t get what is wrong 🙁