# Roundup

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- Roundup 1.6.1 documentation

# Installing Roundup

- Overview
- Prerequisites
- Optional Components
- Getting Roundup
- For The Really Impatient
- Installation
  - Basic Installation Steps
  - Configuring your first tracker
  - Choosing Your Template
  - Choosing Your Backend
  - Configure a Web Interface
  - Configure an Email Interface
  - UNIX Environment Steps
  - Public Tracker Considerations
- Maintenance
- Upgrading
- Further Reading
- Running Multiple Trackers
- Platform-Specific Notes
  - Windows command-line tools
  - Windows Server
  - Sendmail smrsh
  - Linux
  - Solaris
- Problems? Testing your Python...

## Overview

Broken out separately, there are several conceptual pieces to a Roundup installation:

Roundup trackers
  Trackers consist of issues (be they bug reports or otherwise), tracker configuration file(s), web HTML files etc. Roundup trackers are initialised with a “Template” which defines the fields usable/assignable on a per-issue basis. Descriptions of the provided templates are given in choosing your template.
Roundup support code
  Installed into your Python install’s lib directory.
Roundup scripts
  These include the email gateway, the roundup HTTP server, the roundup administration command-line interface, etc.

## Prerequisites

Roundup requires Python 2.7 or newer (but not Python 3) with a functioning anydbm module. Download the latest version from https://www.python.org/. It is highly recommended that users install the latest patch version of python as these contain many fixes to serious bugs.

Some variants of Linux will need an additional “python dev” package installed for Roundup installation to work. Debian and derivatives, are known to require this.

If you are using the Roundup Windows installer on a 64 bit system and you get the error message:

    "No Python installation found in the registry"

you need to install a 32 bit version of python. The 64 bit versions use a different registry key that the installer doesn’t detect. See: https://issues.roundup-tracker.org/issue2550718 for details.

## Optional Components

You may optionally install and use:

Timezone Definitions
  Full timezone support requires pytz module (version 2005i or later) which brings the Olson tz database into Python. If pytz is not installed, timezones may be specified as numeric hour offsets only. This is optional but strongly suggested.
An RDBMS
  Sqlite, MySQL and Postgresql are all supported by Roundup and will be used if available. One of these is recommended if you are anticipating a large user base (see choosing your backend below).
Xapian full-text indexer

  The Xapian full-text indexer is also supported and will be used by default if it is available. This is strongly recommended if you are anticipating a large number of issues (> 5000).

  You may install Xapian at any time, even after a tracker has been installed and used. You will need to run the “roundup-admin reindex” command if the tracker has existing data.

  Roundup requires Xapian 1.0.0 or newer.

  Note that capitalization is not preserved by the Xapian search. This is required to make the porter stemmer work so that searching for silent also returns documents with the word silently. Note that the current stemming implementation is designed for English.

Whoosh full-text indexer

  The Whoosh full-text indexer is also supported and will be used by default if it is available (and Xapian is not installed). This is recommended if you are anticipating a large number of issues (> 5000).

  You may install Whoosh at any time, even after a tracker has been installed and used. You will need to run the “roundup-admin reindex” command if the tracker has existing data.

  Roundup was tested with Whoosh 2.5.7, but earlier versions in the 2.0 series may work. Whoosh is a pure python indexer so it is slower than Xapian, but should be useful for moderately sized trackers. It uses the StandardAnalyzer which is suited for Western languages.

pyopenssl
  If pyopenssl is installed the roundup-server can be configured to serve trackers over SSL. If you are going to serve roundup via proxy through a server with SSL support (e.g. apache) then this is unnecessary.
pyme
  If pyme is installed you can configure the mail gateway to perform verification or decryption of incoming OpenPGP MIME messages. When configured, you can require email to be cryptographically signed before roundup will allow it to make modifications to issues.
jinja2
  To use the jinja2 template (may still be experimental, check out its TEMPLATE-INFO.txt file) you need to have the jinja2 template engine installed.
Windows Service
  You can run Roundup as a Windows service if pywin32 is installed. Otherwise it must be started manually.

## Getting Roundup

Note

Some systems, such as Debian and NetBSD, already have Roundup installed. Try running the command “roundup-admin” with no arguments, and if it runs you may skip the Basic Installation Steps below and go straight to configuring your first tracker.

Download the latest version from http://www.roundup-tracker.org/.

## For The Really Impatient

If you just want to give Roundup a whirl Right Now, then simply unpack and run `demo.py` (it will be available as `roundup-demo` script after installation).

This will set up a simple demo tracker on your machine. [1] When it’s done, it’ll print out a URL to point your web browser at so you may start playing. Three users will be set up:

1. anonymous - the “default” user with permission to do very little
2. demo (password “demo”) - a normal user who may create issues
3. admin (password “admin”) - an administrative user who has complete access to the tracker

[1] | Demo tracker is set up to be accessed by localhost browser. If you run demo on a server host, please stop the demo when it has shown startup notice, open file `demo/config.ini` with your editor, change host name in the `web` option in section `[tracker]`, save the file, then re-run the demo program.

## Installation

Set aside 15-30 minutes. There’s several steps to follow in your installation:

1. basic installation steps if Roundup is not installed on your system
2. configuring your first tracker that all installers must follow
3. then optionally configure a web interface
4. and optionally configure an email interface
5. UNIX environment steps to take if you’re installing on a shared UNIX machine and want to restrict local access to roundup

For information about how Roundup installs, see the administration guide.

The following assumes that you are using the source distribution. If you are using the Windows installer, run it with Administrator privileges so it can correctly update the registry.

### Basic Installation Steps

To install the Roundup support code into your Python tree and Roundup scripts into /usr/bin (substitute that path for whatever is appropriate on your system). You need to have write permissions for these locations, eg. being root on unix:

    python setup.py install

If you would like to place the Roundup scripts in a directory other than `/usr/bin`, then specify the preferred location with `--install-scripts`. For example, to install them in `/opt/roundup/bin`:

    python setup.py install --install-scripts=/opt/roundup/bin

You can also use the `--prefix` option to use a completely different base directory, if you do not want to use administrator rights. If you choose to do this, you may have to change Python’s search path (sys.path) yourself.

### Configuring your first tracker

1. To create a Roundup tracker (necessary to do before you can use the software in any real fashion), you need to set up a “tracker home”:

   1. (Optional) If you intend to keep your roundup trackers under one top level directory which does not exist yet, you should create that directory now. Example:

          mkdir /opt/roundup/trackers

   2. Either add the Roundup script location to your `PATH` environment variable or specify the full path to the command in the next step.

   3. Install a new tracker with the command `roundup-admin install`. You will be asked a series of questions. Descriptions of the provided templates can be found in choosing your template below. Descriptions of the available backends can be found in choosing your backend below. The questions will be something like (you may have more templates or backends available):

          Enter tracker home: /opt/roundup/trackers/support
          Templates: classic
          Select template [classic]: classic
          Back ends: anydbm, mysql, sqlite
          Select backend [anydbm]: anydbm

      Note: “Back ends” selection list depends on availability of third-party database modules. Standard python distribution includes anydbm module only.

      The “support” part of the tracker name can be anything you want - it is going to be used as the directory that the tracker information will be stored in.

      You will now be directed to edit the tracker configuration and initial schema. At a minimum, you must set “main :: admin_email” (that’s the “admin_email” option in the “main” section) “mail :: host”, “tracker :: web” and “mail :: domain”. If you get stuck, and get configuration file errors, then see the tracker configuration section of the customisation documentation.

      If you just want to get set up to test things quickly (and follow the instructions in step 3 below), you can even just set the “tracker :: web” variable to:

          web = http://localhost:8080/support/

      The URL must end in a ‘/’, or your web interface will not work. See Customising Roundup for details on configuration and schema changes. You may change any of the configuration after you’ve initialised the tracker - it’s just better to have valid values for this stuff now.

   4. Initialise the tracker database with `roundup-admin initialise`. You will need to supply an admin password at this step. You will be prompted:

          Admin Password:
                 Confirm:

      Note: running this command will destroy any existing data in the database. In the case of MySQL and PostgreSQL, any existing database will be dropped and re-created.

      Once this is done, the tracker has been created. See the note in the user_guide on how to initialise a tracker without being prompted for the password or exposing the password on the command line.

2. At this point, your tracker is set up, but doesn’t have a nice user interface. To set that up, we need to configure a web interface and optionally configure an email interface. If you want to try your new tracker out, assuming “tracker :: web” is set to `'http://localhost:8080/support/'`, run:

       roundup-server support=/opt/roundup/trackers/support

   then direct your web browser at:

   > http://localhost:8080/support/

   and you should see the tracker interface.

   To run your tracker on some interface other than 127.0.0.1 and port 8080 (make sure you change the “tracker :: web” changes to match) use:

       roundup-server -p 1080 -n 0.0.0.0 support=/opt/roundup/trackers/support

   to run the server at port 1080 and bind to all ip addresses on your system. Then direct your web browser to `http://your_host_name:1080/support`.

### Choosing Your Template

#### Classic Template

The classic template is the one defined in the Roundup Specification. It holds issues which have priorities and statuses. Each issue may also have a set of messages which are disseminated to the issue’s list of nosy users.

#### Minimal Template

The minimal template has the minimum setup required for a tracker installation. That is, it has the configuration files, defines a user database and the basic HTML interface to that. It’s a completely clean slate for you to create your tracker on.

### Choosing Your Backend

The actual storage of Roundup tracker information is handled by backends. There’s several to choose from, each with benefits and limitations:

Name | Speed | Users | Support
--- | --- | --- | ---
anydbm | Slowest | Few | Always available
sqlite | Fastest(*) | Few | May need install (PySQLite)
postgresql | Fast | Many | Needs install/admin (psycopg)
mysql | Fast | Many | Needs install/admin (MySQLdb)

sqlite

  This uses the embedded database engine PySQLite to provide a very fast backend. This is not suitable for trackers which will have many simultaneous users, but requires much less installation and maintenance effort than more scalable postgresql and mysql backends.

  SQLite is supported via PySQLite versions 1.1.7, 2.1.0 and sqlite3 (the last being bundled with Python 2.5+)

  Installed SQLite should be the latest version available (3.3.8 is known to work, 3.1.3 is known to have problems).

postgresql
  Backend for popular RDBMS PostgreSQL. You must read doc/postgresql.txt for additional installation steps and requirements. You must also configure the `rdbms` section of your tracker’s `config.ini`. It is recommended that you use at least version 1.1.21 of psycopg.
mysql
  Backend for popular RDBMS MySQL. You must read doc/mysql.txt for additional installation steps and requirements. You must also configure the `rdbms` section of your tracker’s `config.ini`

You may defer your decision by setting your tracker up with the anydbm backend (which is guaranteed to be available) and switching to one of the other backends at any time using the instructions in the administration guide.

Regardless of which backend you choose, Roundup will attempt to initialise a new database for you when you run the roundup-admin “initialise” command. In the case of MySQL and PostgreSQL you will need to have the appropriate privileges to create databases.

### Configure a Web Interface

There are multiple web interfaces to choose from:

1. web server cgi-bin
2. cgi-bin for limited-access hosting
3. stand-alone web server
4. Zope product - ZRoundup
5. Apache HTTP Server with mod_python
6. WSGI handler

You may need to give the web server user permission to access the tracker home - see the UNIX environment steps for information. You may also need to configure your system in some way - see platform-specific notes.

#### Web Server cgi-bin

A benefit of using the cgi-bin approach is that it’s the easiest way to restrict access to your tracker to only use HTTPS. Access will be slower than through the stand-alone web server though.

If your Python isn’t installed as “python” then you’ll need to edit the `roundup.cgi` script to fix the first line.

If you’re using IIS on a Windows platform, you’ll need to run this command for the cgi to work (it turns on the PATH_INFO cgi variable):

    adsutil.vbs set w3svc/AllowPathInfoForScriptMappings TRUE

The `adsutil.vbs` file can be found in either `c:\inetpub\adminscripts` or `c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminsamples\` or `c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminscripts\` depending on your installation.

More information about ISS setup may be found at:

> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B276494

Copy the `frontends/roundup.cgi` file to your web server’s `cgi-bin` directory. You will need to configure it to tell it where your tracker home is. You can do this either:

Through an environment variable
  Set the variable TRACKER_HOMES to be a colon (”:”) separated list of name=home pairs (if you’re using apache, the SetEnv directive can do this)
Directly in the `roundup.cgi` file itself
  Add your instance to the TRACKER_HOMES variable as `'name': 'home'`

The “name” part of the configuration will appear in the URL and identifies the tracker (so you may have more than one tracker per cgi-bin script). Make sure there are no spaces or other illegal characters in it (to be safe, stick to letters and numbers). The “name” forms part of the URL that appears in the tracker config “tracker :: web” variable, so make sure they match. The “home” part of the configuration is the tracker home directory.

If you’re using Apache, you can use an additional trick to hide the `.cgi` extension of the cgi script. Place the `roundup.cgi` script wherever you want it to be, rename it to just `roundup`, and add a couple lines to your Apache configuration:

    <Location /path/to/roundup>
      SetHandler cgi-script
    </Location>

#### CGI-bin for Limited-Access Hosting

If you are running in a shared-hosting environment or otherwise don’t have permission to edit the system web server’s configuration, but can create a `.htaccess` file then you may be able to use this approach.

1. Install flup

2. Create a script `roundup_stub` in your server’s `cgi-bin` directory containing:

       #!/usr/bin/env python

       # if necessary modify the Python path to include the place you
       # installed Roundup
       #import sys
       #sys.path.append('...')

       # cgitb is needed for debugging in browser only
       #import cgitb
       #cgitb.enable()

       # obtain the WSGI request dispatcher
       from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher
       tracker_home = '/path/to/tracker/home'
       app = RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)

       from flup.server.cgi import WSGIServer
       WSGIServer(app).run()

3. Modify or created the `.htaccess` file in the desired (sub-)domain directory to contain:

       RewriteEngine On
       RewriteBase /
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$      /cgi-bin/roundup_stub/$1 [L]

Now loading the (sub-)domain in a browser should load the tracker web interface. If you get a “500” error then enable the “cgitb” lines in the stub to get some debugging information.

#### Stand-alone Web Server

This approach will give you faster response than cgi-bin. You may investigate using ProxyPass or similar configuration in apache to have your tracker accessed through the same URL as other systems.

The stand-alone web server is started with the command `roundup-server`. It has several options - display them with `roundup-server -h`.

The tracker home configuration is similar to the cgi-bin - you may either edit the script to change the TRACKER_HOMES variable or you may supply the name=home values on the command-line after all the other options.

To make the server run in the background, use the “-d” option, specifying the name of a file to write the server process id (pid) to.

#### Zope Product - ZRoundup

ZRoundup installs as a regular Zope product. Copy the ZRoundup directory to your Products directory either in INSTANCE_HOME/Products or the Zope code tree lib/python/Products.

When you next (re)start up Zope, you will be able to add a ZRoundup object that interfaces to your new tracker.

#### Apache HTTP Server with mod_python

Mod_python is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server. Running Roundup this way is much faster than all above options and, like web server cgi-bin, allows you to use HTTPS protocol. The drawback is that this setup is more complicated.

The following instructions were tested on apache 2.0 with mod_python 3.1. If you are using older versions, your mileage may vary.

Mod_python uses OS threads. If your apache was built without threads (quite commonly), you must load the threading library to run mod_python. This is done by setting `LD_PRELOAD` to your threading library path in apache `envvars` file. Example for gentoo linux (`envvars` file is located in `/usr/lib/apache2/build/`):

    LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libpthread.so.0
    export LD_PRELOAD

Example for FreeBSD (`envvars` is in `/usr/local/sbin/`):

    LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libc_r.so
    export LD_PRELOAD

Next, you have to add Roundup trackers configuration to apache config. Roundup apache interface uses the following options specified with `PythonOption` directives:

> TrackerHome:
>   defines the tracker home directory - the directory that was specified when you did `roundup-admin init`. This option is required.
> TrackerLanguage:
>   defines web user interface language. mod_python applications do not receive OS environment variables in the same way as command-line programs, so the language cannot be selected by setting commonly used variables like `LANG` or `LC_ALL`. `TrackerLanguage` value has the same syntax as values of these environment variables. This option may be omitted.
> TrackerDebug:
>   run the tracker in debug mode. Setting this option to `yes` or `true` has the same effect as running `roundup-server -t debug`: the database schema and used html templates are rebuilt for each HTTP request. Values `no` or `false` mean that all html templates for the tracker are compiled and the database schema is checked once at startup. This is the default behaviour.
> TrackerTiming:
>   has nearly the same effect as environment variable `CGI_SHOW_TIMING` for standalone roundup server. The difference is that setting this option to `no` or `false` disables timings display. Value `comment` writes request handling times in html comment, and any other non-empty value makes timing report visible. By default, timing display is disabled.

In the following example we have two trackers set up in `/var/db/roundup/support` and `/var/db/roundup/devel` and accessed as `https://my.host/roundup/support/` and `https://my.host/roundup/devel/` respectively (provided Apache has been set up for SSL of course). Having them share same parent directory allows us to reduce the number of configuration directives. Support tracker has russian user interface. The other tracker (devel) has english user interface (default).

Static files from `html` directory are served by apache itself - this is quicker and generally more robust than doing that from python. Everything else is aliased to dummy (non-existing) `py` file, which is handled by mod_python and our roundup module.

Example mod_python configuration:

    #################################################
    # Roundup Issue tracker
    #################################################
    # enable Python optimizations (like 'python -O')
    PythonOptimize On
    # let apache handle static files from 'html' directories
    AliasMatch /roundup/(.+)/@@file/(.*) /var/db/roundup/$1/html/$2
    # everything else is handled by roundup web UI
    AliasMatch /roundup/([^/]+)/(?!@@file/)(.*) /var/db/roundup/$1/dummy.py/$2
    # roundup requires a slash after tracker name - add it if missing
    RedirectMatch permanent ^/roundup/([^/]+)$ /roundup/$1/
    # common settings for all roundup trackers
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/*>
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
      AllowOverride None
      Options None
      AddHandler python-program .py
      PythonHandler roundup.cgi.apache
      # uncomment the following line to see tracebacks in the browser
      # (note that *some* tracebacks will be displayed anyway)
      #PythonDebug On
    </Directory>
    # roundup tracker homes
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/support>
      PythonOption TrackerHome /var/db/roundup/support
      PythonOption TrackerLanguage ru
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/devel>
      PythonOption TrackerHome /var/db/roundup/devel
    </Directory>

Notice that the `/var/db/roundup` path shown above refers to the directory in which the tracker homes are stored. The actual value will thus depend on your system.

On Windows the corresponding lines will look similar to these:

    AliasMatch /roundup/(.+)/@@file/(.*) C:/DATA/roundup/$1/html/$2
    AliasMatch /roundup/([^/]+)/(?!@@file/)(.*) C:/DATA/roundup/$1/dummy.py/$2
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/*>
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/support>
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/devel>

In this example the directory hosting all of the tracker homes is `C:\DATA\roundup`. (Notice that you must use forward slashes in paths inside the httpd.conf file!)

The URL for accessing these trackers then become: http://<roundupserver>/roundup/support/` and `http://<roundupserver>/roundup/devel/`

Note that in order to use https connections you must set up Apache for secure serving with SSL.

#### WSGI Handler

The WSGI handler is quite simple. The following sample code shows how to use it:

    from wsgiref.simple_server import make_server

    # obtain the WSGI request dispatcher
    from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher
    tracker_home = 'demo'
    app = RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)

    httpd = make_server('', 8917, app)
    httpd.serve_forever()

To test the above you should create a demo tracker with `python demo.py`. Edit the `config.ini` to change the web URL to “http://localhost:8917/”.

### Configure an Email Interface

If you don’t want to use the email component of Roundup, then remove the “`nosyreaction.py`” module from your tracker “`detectors`” directory.

See platform-specific notes for steps that may be needed on your system.

There are five supported ways to get emailed issues into the Roundup tracker. You should pick ONE of the following, all of which will continue my example setup from above:

#### As a mail alias pipe process

Set up a mail alias called “issue_tracker” as (include the quote marks): “`|/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw <tracker_home>`” (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed).

In some installations (e.g. RedHat Linux and Fedora Core) you’ll need to set up smrsh so sendmail will accept the pipe command. In that case, symlink `/etc/smrsh/roundup-mailgw` to “`/usr/bin/roundup-mailgw`” and change the command to:

    |roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support

To test the mail gateway on unix systems, try:

    echo test |mail -s '[issue] test' support@YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE

Be careful that some mail systems (postfix for example) will impost a limits on processes they spawn. In particular postfix can set a file size limit. This can cause your Roundup database to become corrupted.

#### As a custom router/transport using a pipe process (Exim4 specific)

The following configuration snippets for Exim 4 configuration implement a custom router & transport to accomplish mail delivery to roundup-mailgw. A configuration for Exim3 is similar but not included, since Exim3 is considered obsolete.

This configuration is similar to the previous section, in that it uses a pipe process. However, there are advantages to using a custom router/transport process, if you are using Exim.

- This avoids privilege escalation, since otherwise the pipe process will run as the mail user, typically mail. The transport can be configured to run as the user appropriate for the task at hand. In the transport described in this section, Exim4 runs as the unprivileged user `roundup`.
- Separate configuration is not required for each tracker instance. When a email arrives at the server, Exim passes it through the defined routers. The roundup_router looks for a match with one of the roundup directories, and if there is one it is passed to the roundup_transport, which uses the pipe process described in the previous section (As a mail alias pipe process).

The matching is done in the line:

    require_files = /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw:ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/schema.py

The following configuration has been tested on Debian Sarge with Exim4.

Note

Note that the Debian Exim4 packages don’t allow pipes in alias files by default, so the method described in the section As a mail alias pipe process will not work with the default configuration. However, the method described in this section does. See the discussion in `/usr/share/doc/exim4-config/README.system_aliases` on any Debian system with Exim4 installed.

For more Debian-specific information, see suggested addition to README.Debian in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343283, which will hopefully be merged into the Debian package eventually.

This config makes a few assumptions:

- That the mail address corresponding to the tracker instance has the same name as the directory of the tracker instance, i.e. the mail interface address corresponding to a Roundup instance called `/var/lib/roundup/trackers/mytracker` is `mytracker@your.host`.
- That (at least) all the db subdirectories of all the tracker instances (ie. `/var/lib/roundup/trackers/*/db`) are owned by the same user, in this case, ‘roundup’.
- That if the `schema.py` file exists, then the tracker is ready for use. Another option is to use the `config.ini` file (this changed in 0.8 from `config.py`).

Macros for Roundup router/transport. Should be placed in the macros section of the Exim4 config:

    # Home dir for your Roundup installation
    ROUNDUP_HOME=/var/lib/roundup/trackers

    # User and group for Roundup.
    ROUNDUP_USER=roundup
    ROUNDUP_GROUP=roundup

Custom router for Roundup. This will (probably) work if placed at the beginning of the router section of the Exim4 config:

    roundup_router:
        driver = accept
        # The config file config.ini seems like a more natural choice, but the
        # file config.py was replaced by config.ini in 0.8, and schema.py needs
        # to be present too.
        require_files = /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw:ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/schema.py
        transport = roundup_transport

Custom transport for Roundup. This will (probably) work if placed at the beginning of the router section of the Exim4 config:

    roundup_transport:
        driver = pipe
        command = /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/
        current_directory = ROUNDUP_HOME
        home_directory = ROUNDUP_HOME
        user = ROUNDUP_USER
        group = ROUNDUP_GROUP

#### As a regular job using a mailbox source

Set `roundup-mailgw` up to run every 10 minutes or so. For example (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support mailbox <mail_spool_file>

Where the `mail_spool_file` argument is the location of the roundup submission user’s mail spool. On most systems, the spool for a user “issue_tracker” will be “`/var/mail/issue_tracker`”.

#### As a regular job using a POP source

To retrieve from a POP mailbox, use a cron entry similar to the mailbox one (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support pop <pop_spec>

where pop_spec is “`username:password@server`” that specifies the roundup submission user’s POP account name, password and server.

On windows, you would set up the command using the windows scheduler.

#### As a regular job using an IMAP source

To retrieve from an IMAP mailbox, use a cron entry similar to the POP one (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support imap <imap_spec>

where imap_spec is “`username:password@server`” that specifies the roundup submission user’s IMAP account name, password and server. You may optionally include a mailbox to use other than the default `INBOX` with “`imap username:password@server mailbox`”.

If you have a secure (ie. HTTPS) IMAP server then you may use `imaps` in place of `imap` in the command to use a secure connection.

As with the POP job, on windows, you would set up the command using the windows scheduler.

### UNIX Environment Steps

Each tracker ideally should have its own UNIX group, so create a UNIX group (edit `/etc/group` or your appropriate NIS map if you’re using NIS). To continue with my examples so far, I would create the UNIX group ‘support’, although the name of the UNIX group does not have to be the same as the tracker name. To this ‘support’ group I then add all of the UNIX usernames who will be working with this Roundup tracker. In addition to ‘real’ users, the Roundup email gateway will need to have permissions to this area as well, so add the user your mail service runs as to the group (typically “mail” or “daemon”). The UNIX group might then look like:

    support:*:1002:jblaine,samh,geezer,mail

If you intend to use the web interface (as most people do), you should also add the username your web server runs as to the group. My group now looks like this:

    support:*:1002:jblaine,samh,geezer,mail,apache

The tracker “db” directory should be chmod’ed g+sw so that the group can write to the database, and any new files created in the database will be owned by the group.

If you’re using the mysql or postgresql backend then you’ll need to ensure that the tracker user has appropriate permissions to create/modify the database. If you’re using roundup.cgi, the apache user needs permissions to modify the database. Alternatively, explicitly specify a database login in `rdbms` -> `user` and `password` in `config.ini`.

An alternative to the above is to create a new user who has the sole responsibility of running roundup. This user:

1. runs the CGI interface daemon
2. runs regular polls for email
3. runs regular checks (using cron) to ensure the daemon is up
4. optionally has no login password so that nobody but the “root” user may actually login and play with the roundup setup.

If you’re using a Linux system (e.g. Fedora Core) with SELinux enabled, you will need to ensure that the db directory has a context that permits the web server to modify and create files. If you’re using the mysql or postgresql backend you may also need to update your policy to allow the web server to access the database socket.

### Public Tracker Considerations

If you run a public tracker, you will eventually have to think about dealing with spam entered through both the web and mail interfaces.

See the section on Preventing SPAM in the customisation documentation that has a simple detector that will block lot of spam attempts.

## Maintenance

Read the separate administration guide for information about how to perform common maintenance tasks with Roundup.

## Upgrading

Read the separate upgrading document, which describes the steps needed to upgrade existing tracker trackers for each version of Roundup that is released.

## Further Reading

If you intend to use Roundup with anything other than the default templates, if you would like to hack on Roundup, or if you would like implementation details, you should read Customising Roundup.

## Running Multiple Trackers

Things to think about before you jump off the deep end and install multiple trackers, which involve additional URLs, user databases, email addresses, databases to back up, etc.

1. Do you want a tracker per product you sell/support? You can just add a new property to your issues called Product, and filter by that. See the customisation example adding a new field to the classic schema.
2. Do you want to track internal software development issues and customer support issues separately? You can just set up an additional “issue” class called “cust_issues” in the same tracker, mimicing the normal “issue” class, but with different properties. See the customisation example tracking different types of issues.

## Platform-Specific Notes

### Windows command-line tools

To make the command-line tools accessible in Windows, you need to update the “Path” environment variable in the Registry via a dialog box.

On Windows 2000 and later:

1. Press the “Start” button.
2. Choose “Settings”
3. Choose “Control Panel”
4. Choose “System”
5. Choose “Advanced”
6. Choose “Environmental Variables”
7. Add: “<dir>Scripts” to the “Path” environmental variable.

Where <dir> in 7) is the root directory (e.g., `C:\Python22\Scripts`) of your Python installation.

I understand that in XP, 2) above is not needed as “Control Panel” is directly accessible from “Start”.

I do not believe this is possible to do in previous versions of Windows.

### Windows Server

To have the Roundup web server start up when your machine boots up, there are two different methods, the scheduler and installing the service.

#### 1. Using the Windows scheduler

Set up the following in Scheduled Tasks (note, the following is for a cygwin setup):

Run

> `c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -c "roundup-server TheProject=/opt/roundup/trackers/support"`

Start In

> `C:\cygwin\opt\roundup\bin`

Schedule

> At System Startup

To have the Roundup mail gateway run periodically to poll a POP email address, set up the following in Scheduled Tasks:

Run

> `c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -c "roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support pop roundup:roundup@mail-server"`

Start In

> `C:\cygwin\opt\roundup\bin`

Schedule

> Every 10 minutes from 5:00AM for 24 hours every day

> Stop the task if it runs for 8 minutes

#### 2. Installing the roundup server as a Windows service

This is more Windows oriented and will make the Roundup server run as soon as the PC starts up without any need for a login or such. It will also be available in the normal Windows Administrative Tools.

For this you need first to create a service ini file containing the relevant settings.

1. It is created if you execute the following command from within the scripts directory (notice the use of backslashes):

       roundup-server -S -C <trackersdir>\server.ini -n <servername> -p 8080 -l <trackersdir>\trackerlog.log software=<trackersdir>\Software

   where the item `<trackersdir>` is replaced with the physical directory that hosts all of your trackers. The `<servername>` item is the name of your roundup server PC, such as w2003srv or similar.

2. Next open the now created file `C:\DATA\roundup\server.ini` file (if your `<trackersdir>` is `C:\DATA\roundup`). Check the entries for correctness, especially this one:

       [trackers]
       software = C:\DATA\Roundup\Software

   (this is an example where the tracker is named software and its home is `C:\DATA\Roundup\Software`)

3. Next give the commands that actually installs and starts the service:

       roundup-server -C C:\DATA\Roundup\server.ini -c install
       roundup-server -c start

4. Finally open the AdministrativeTools/Services applet and locate the Roundup service entry. Open its properties and change it to start automatically instead of manually.

If you are using Apache as the webserver you might want to use it with mod_python instead to serve out Roundup. In that case see the mod_python instructions above for details.

### Sendmail smrsh

If you use Sendmail’s `smrsh` mechanism, you will need to tell smrsh that roundup-mailgw is a valid/trusted mail handler before it will work.

This is usually done via the following 2 steps:

1. make a symlink in `/etc/smrsh` called `roundup-mailgw` which points to the full path of your actual `roundup-mailgw` script.
2. change your alias to `"|roundup-mailgw <tracker_home>"`

### Linux

Make sure you read the instructions under UNIX environment steps.

### Solaris

You’ll need to build Python.

Make sure you read the instructions under UNIX environment steps.

## Problems? Testing your Python...

Note

The `run_tests.py` script is packaged in Roundup’s source distribution - users of the Windows installer, other binary distributions or pre-installed Roundup will need to download the source to use it.

Remember to have a database user ‘rounduptest’ prepared (with password ‘rounduptest’). This user must have at least the rights to create and drop databases. Documentation: details on adding MySQL users, for PostgreSQL you want to call the `createuser` command with the `-d` option to allow database creation.

Once you’ve unpacked roundup’s source, run `python run_tests.py` in the source directory and make sure there are no errors. If there are errors, please let us know!

If the above fails, you may be using the wrong version of python. Try `python2 run_tests.py` or `python2.7 run_tests.py`. If that works, you will need to substitute `python2` or `python2.7` for `python` in all further commands you use in relation to Roundup – from installation and scripts.

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