Having tried several open source project management and bug tracking tools, such as dotProject, mantis  etc, Ruby based Redmine is a good solution.

Redmine is a flexible project management web application written using Ruby on Rails framework. It should run on most Unix, Linux, Mac and Windows systems as long as Ruby & Ruby on Rails and RubyGems are available on that platform.

Step 1

For setting up Redmine on your server, you need SSH access. Log into your shell using putty or any other tool, and create a folder for rails application inside your user account but outside your public root, for instance if you are using CPanel to manage your hosting account, create a folder “rails_apps” inside your “/home” folder beside “/public_html “ folder.

First of all, change your directory to “rails_apps” by typing:

cd /home/your-user-account/rails_apps/

Step 2

Once inside folder “rails_apps”, download and extract the Redmine archive. First get the Redmine files by typing following command at shell:

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/69449/redmine-0.9.3.tar.gz

Please make sure that you get the latest version of Redmine. You can get the latest version file path from here http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1850

Type following command to uncompress the Redmine file:

tar zxvf redmine-0.9.3.tar.gz

It will uncompress and create the directory redmine-0.9.3.

Step 3

Now set up your MySQL Database/user for Redmine installation. After setting up your mysql db and db user, rename “config/database.yml.example” to “config/database.yml” and edit this file in order to configure your database settings for “production” environment. Add your DB information here.

Sample DB information for MySQL

production:
  adapter: mysql
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  port: 3307
  username: redmine
  password: my_password

Step 4

Change your directory to Redmine by typing following command:

cd  /redmine-0.9.3

Step 5

Redmine stores session data in cookies by default, which requires a secret to be generated. This can be done by running following command but make sure you are under the application root directory:

RAILS_ENV=production rake config/initializers/session_store.rb

Step 6

Create the database structure, by running the following command to create tables and an administrator account under the application root directory:

RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

Step 7

Insert default configuration data in database, by running the following command:

RAILS_ENV=production rake  redmine:load_default_data

This step is optional but highly recommended, as you can define your own configuration from scratch. It will load default roles, trackers, statuses, workflows and enumerations.

Step 8

Test the installation by running WEBrick web server:

ruby script/server webrick -e production -d

Once WEBrick has started, point your browser to http://yourdomain.com:3000/. You should now see the application welcome page. Take special care to run above WEBrick command with –d to detach otherwise when you close the shell window, application will also shut down.

Step 9

Use default administrator account to log in:

login: admin
password: admin

Step 10

To get email notifications, set up SMTP server configuration.

Rename “config/email.yml.example” to “config/email.yml “ and edit this file to adjust your SMTP or pop email settings.

#Outgoing email settings
production:
  delivery_method: :smtp
  smtp_settings:
  address: mail.yourdomain.com
  port: 25
  domain: yourdomain.com
  authentication: :login
  user_name: redmine@yourdomain.com
  password: redmine

Don’t forget to restart the application after any change.

Cheers!

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