Installing Redmine¶

• Table of contents
• Installing Redmine
  • Requirements
    • Operating system
    • Ruby interpreter and supported databases
    • Optional components
  • Redmine Version
  • Installation procedure
    • Step 1 - Redmine application
    • Step 2 - Create an empty database and accompanying user
      • MySQL
      • PostgreSQL
      • SQLite
      • SQL Server
    • Step 3 - Database connection configuration
    • Step 4 - Dependencies installation
      • Optional dependencies
      • Additional dependencies (Gemfile.local)
    • Step 5 - Session store secret generation
    • Step 6 - Database schema objects creation
    • Step 7 - Database default data set
    • Step 8 - File system permissions
    • Step 9 - Test the installation
    • Step 10 - Logging into the application
  • Configuration
    • Email / SMTP server settings
    • SCM settings
    • Attachment storage settings
  • Logging configuration
  • Backups
  • Notes on Linux/Unix installation
  • Notes on Windows installation
  • Alternative to manual installation

This is the installation documentation for Redmine 4.0 and higher. You can still read the document for older versions: 3.x , 1.4.x - 2.6.x, 1.3.x

Requirements¶

Operating system¶

Redmine should run on most Unix, Linux, macOS and Windows systems as long as Ruby is available on this platform. See specific installation HowTos here.

Ruby interpreter and supported databases¶

The required Ruby versions and supported database back-ends for a given Redmine version are:

¹ Support of Ruby 2.7 and earlier has been ended by the Ruby community. See the official announcements for details: 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7.

² Redmine 4.2 does not support Ruby 2.7.0 and 2.7.1. Use Ruby 2.7.2 or higher (see #31500#note-13).

³ Redmine >= 5.1.1 MySQL requires to change the transaction_isolation to READ COMMITTED in order to properly work MySQL_configuration.

⁴ On Redmine < 5.1.1 MySQL 5.6 or higher and MariaDB have known issues (#19344, #19395, #17460)

⁵ PostgreSQL 9.2 or higher required. Make sure your database datestyle is set to ISO (Postgresql default setting). You can set it using: ALTER DATABASE "redmine_db" SET datestyle="ISO,MDY";

Important notices:

• Redmine does not support JRuby.

• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 or higher
  • Redmine 4.0.0 to 4.0.6 and 4.1.0 don't support SQL Server (#30285, #32737).

• SQLite 3 (not for multi-user production use!)

Optional components¶

• SCM binaries (eg. svn), for repository browsing (must be available in your PATH). See RedmineRepositories for SCM compatibility and requirements.
• ImageMagick (to enable Gantt export to PNG image and thumbnails generation).
• Ghostscript (to enable thumbnails generation for PDF attachments in Redmine 4.1 or later).
• Sidekiq, recommended queue backend for production environment.

Redmine Version¶

It is recommended that the majority of users install the proper point releases of redmine. Redmine currently releases a new version every 6 months, and these releases are considered very usable and stable. It is not recommended to install redmine from trunk, unless you are deeply familiar with Ruby on Rails and keep up with the changes - Trunk does break from time-to-time.

Installation procedure¶

Step 1 - Redmine application¶

Download a released package and extract it to an appropriate destination on your system.
As an alternative one can checkout the files directly from the version control system.

Please visit the download page for further information on how to download Redmine.

Step 2 - Create an empty database and accompanying user¶

Redmine database user will be named redmine hereafter but it can be changed to anything else.

MySQL¶

CREATE DATABASE redmine CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
CREATE USER 'redmine'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON redmine.* TO 'redmine'@'localhost';

For versions of MySQL 5.5.2 or lower - use utf8 instead of utf8mb4

CREATE DATABASE redmine CHARACTER SET utf8;
CREATE USER 'redmine'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON redmine.* TO 'redmine'@'localhost';

For versions of MySQL 5.0.2 or lower - skip the 'CREATE USER' step and instead:

CREATE DATABASE redmine CHARACTER SET utf8;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON redmine.* TO 'redmine'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_password';

PostgreSQL¶

CREATE ROLE redmine LOGIN ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'my_password' NOINHERIT VALID UNTIL 'infinity';
CREATE DATABASE redmine WITH ENCODING='UTF8' OWNER=redmine;

SQLite¶

Skip this step. A database file will be created during Step 6.

SQL Server¶

The database, login and user can be created within SQL Server Management Studio with a few clicks.

If you prefer the command line option with SQLCMD, here's some basic example:

Show SQLHide SQL

USE [master]
GO

-- Very basic DB creation
CREATE DATABASE [REDMINE]
GO

-- Creation of a login with SQL Server login/password authentication and no password expiration policy
CREATE LOGIN [REDMINE] WITH PASSWORD=N'redminepassword', DEFAULT_DATABASE=[REDMINE], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF
GO

-- User creation using previously created login authentication
USE [REDMINE]
GO
CREATE USER [REDMINE] FOR LOGIN [REDMINE]
GO
-- User permissions set via roles
EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datareader', N'REDMINE'
GO
EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datawriter', N'REDMINE'
GO

Step 3 - Database connection configuration¶

Copy config/database.yml.example to config/database.yml and edit this file in order to configure your database settings for "production" environment. For MySQL, please read this guide as well MySQL_configuration.

Example for a MySQL database (default port):

production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  username: redmine
  password: "my_password" 
  variables:
    transaction_isolation: "READ-COMMITTED" 

If your server is not running on the standard port (3306), use this configuration instead:

production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  port: 3307
  username: redmine
  password: "my_password" 
  variables:
    transaction_isolation: "READ-COMMITTED" 

Example for a PostgreSQL database (default port):

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: <your_database_name>
  host: <postgres_host>
  username: <postgres_user>
  password: "<postgres_user_password>" 
  encoding: utf8
  schema_search_path: <database_schema> (default - public)

Example for a SQLite database:

production:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/redmine.sqlite3

Example for a SQL Server database (default host localhost, default port 1433):

production:
  adapter: sqlserver
  database: redmine
  username: redmine # should match the database user name
  password: "redminepassword" # should match the login password

Step 4 - Dependencies installation¶

Redmine uses Bundler to manage gems dependencies.

You need to install Bundler first if you use Ruby 2.5 or earlier:

gem install bundler

Then you can install all the gems required by Redmine using the following command:

bundle config set --local without 'development test' 
bundle install

Optional dependencies¶

RMagick¶

RMagick is an interface between the Ruby programming language and the ImageMagick image processing library. The library is necessary for Redmine prior to 4.1.0 to export gantt charts to PNG or PDF.

If ImageMagick (6.4.9 - 6.9.10) is not installed on your system and you are installing Redmine 4.0 or earlier, you should skip the installation of the rmagick gem using:

bundle config set --local without 'development test rmagick' 
bundle install

If you have trouble installing rmagick on Windows, refer to this HowTo.

Database adapters¶

Redmine automatically installs the adapter gems required by your database configuration by reading it from the config/database.yml file (eg. if you configured only a connection using the mysql2 adapter, then only the mysql2 gem will be installed).

Don't forget to re-run bundle install --without development test ... after adding or removing adapters in the config/database.yml file!

Queues adapter¶

Redmine uses ActiveJob::QueueAdapters::AsyncAdapter as default queue adapter which is not recommended for production environment. Recommended adapter is Sidekiq which uses Redis for persistance. A configuration guide can be found "here":SidekiqConfiguration.

Additional dependencies (Gemfile.local)¶

If you need to load gems that are not required by Redmine core (eg. Puma, fcgi), create a file named Gemfile.local at the root of your redmine directory. It will be loaded automatically when running bundle install.

Example:

# Gemfile.local
gem 'puma'

Step 5 - Session store secret generation¶

This step generates a random key used by Rails to encode cookies storing session data thus preventing their tampering.
Generating a new secret token invalidates all existing sessions after restart.

bundle exec rake generate_secret_token

Alternatively, you can store this secret in config/secrets.yml:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#config-secrets-yml

Step 6 - Database schema objects creation¶

Create the database structure, by running the following command under the application root directory:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate

Windows syntax:

set RAILS_ENV=production
bundle exec rake db:migrate

It will create tables by running all migrations one by one then create the set of the permissions and the application administrator account, named admin.

Step 7 - Database default data set¶

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

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data

Redmine will prompt you for the data set language that should be loaded; you can also define the REDMINE_LANG environment variable before running the command to a value which will be automatically and silently picked up by the task.

E.g.:

Unices:

RAILS_ENV=production REDMINE_LANG=fr bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data

Windows:

set RAILS_ENV=production
set REDMINE_LANG=fr
bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data

Step 8 - File system permissions¶

NB: Windows users can skip this section.

The user account running the application must have write permission on the following subdirectories:

1. files (storage of attachments)
2. log (application log file production.log)
3. tmp and tmp/pdf (create these ones if not present, used to generate PDF documents among other things)
4. public/plugin_assets (assets of plugins)

E.g., assuming you run the application with a redmine user account:

mkdir -p tmp tmp/pdf public/plugin_assets
sudo chown -R redmine:redmine files log tmp public/plugin_assets
sudo chmod -R 755 files log tmp public/plugin_assets

Note: If you have files in these directories (e.g. restore files from backup), make sure these files are not executable.

sudo find files log tmp public/plugin_assets -type f -exec chmod -x {} +

Step 9 - Test the installation¶

Test the installation by running Puma web server:

bundle exec rails server -e production

Step 10 - Logging into the application¶

Use default administrator account to log in:

• login: admin
• password: admin

You can go to Administration menu and choose Settings to modify most of the application settings.

Configuration¶

Redmine settings are defined in a file named config/configuration.yml.

If you need to override default application settings, simply copy config/configuration.yml.example to config/configuration.yml and edit the new file; the file is well commented by itself, so you should have a look at it.

These settings may be defined per Rails environment (production/development/test).

Important : don't forget to restart the application after any change.

Email / SMTP server settings¶

Email configuration is described in a dedicated page.

SCM settings¶

• override default commands names if the SCM binaries present in the PATH variable doesn't use the standard name (Windows .bat/.cmd names won't work)
• specify the full path to the binary

Examples (with Subversion):

Command name override:

scm_subversion_command: "svn_replacement.exe"

Absolute path:

scm_subversion_command: "C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin\svn.exe"

Attachment storage settings¶

You can set a path where Redmine attachments will be stored which is different from the default 'files' directory of your Redmine instance using the attachments_storage_path setting.

Examples:

attachments_storage_path: /var/redmine/files

attachments_storage_path: D:/redmine/files

Logging configuration¶

Redmine defaults to a log level of :info, writing to the log subdirectory. Depending on site usage, this can be a lot of data so to avoid the contents of the logfile growing without bound, consider rotating them, either through a system utility like logrotate or via the config/additional_environment.rb file.

To use the latter, copy config/additional_environment.rb.example to config/additional_environment.rb and add the following lines. Note that the new logger defaults to a high log level and hence has to be explicitly set to info.

#Logger.new(PATH,NUM_FILES_TO_ROTATE,FILE_SIZE)
config.logger = Logger.new('/path/to/logfile.log', 2, 1000000)
config.logger.level = Logger::INFO

Backups¶

• data (stored in your redmine database)
• attachments (stored in the files directory of your Redmine install)

Please refer to Backing up and restoring Redmine for more details.

Notes on Linux/Unix installation¶

Be sure to disable security hardenning tools during the installation process if you run into bizarre permission problems. These problems are mostly silent and can be caused by tools like extended ACLs, SELinux, or AppArmor. There tools are mostly used in big companies with a strict security policy, default Linux/Unix distributions settings shouldn't be a problem.

Notes on Windows installation¶

There is an prebuilt installer of Ruby MRI available from http://rubyinstaller.org.
After installing it, select Start Command Prompt with Ruby in the start menu.

Specifying the RAILS_ENV environment variable:

When running command as described in this guide, you have to set the RAILS_ENV environment variable using a separate command.

I.e. commands with the following syntaxes:

RAILS_ENV=production <any commmand>

<any commmand> RAILS_ENV=production

have to be turned into 2 subsequent commands:

set RAILS_ENV=production
<any commmand>

MySQL gem installation issue:

You may need to manually install the mysql gem using the following command:

gem install mysql

And in some case it is required to copy the libmysql.dll file in your ruby/bin directory.
Not all libmysql.dll are ok this seem to works http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/InstantRails-win/InstantRails/mysql/bin/libmySQL.dll.

Important note for Win7 and later
On Win7 and later, localhost is commented out in the hosts file⁵ and IPV6 is the default⁶. As the mysql2 gem does no support IPV6 addresses⁷, a connection can't be established and you get the error "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)".
You can confirm this by pinging localhost, if ping targets "::1:" IPV6 is being used.

Workaround:
Replace localhost with 127.0.0.1 in database.yml.

⁵ http://serverfault.com/questions/4689/windows-7-localhost-name-resolution-is-handled-within-dns-itself-why

⁶ http://www.victor-ratajczyk.com/post/2012/02/25/mysql-fails-to-resolve-localhost-disable-ipv6-on-windows.aspx

⁷ https://github.com/brianmario/mysql2/issues/279

Alternative to manual installation¶

Some users may prefer to skip manual installation by using one of the third-party Redmine bundles on the download page.