Setup Help Desk System Using OTRS On CentOS 6.5

Setup Help Desk System Using OTRS On CentOS 6.5

Introduction

Introduction

OTRS, stands for Open source Ticket Request System, is a popular help desk software that can be used to assign tickets to incoming queries, and tracks further communications when needed. using OTRS, we can manage incoming inquiries, complaints, support requests, defect reports, and other communications.

In this tutorial, let us see how to install OTRS latest version on CentOS 6.5. Here, my testbox details are given below:

• Operating System: CentOS 6.5 Minimal
• IP Address: 192.168.0.150/24
• Hostname: ansh.geniusansh.com

Prerequisites

• Before installing OTRS, we have to do couple of prerequisites first.
  First, make sure you have configured the proper FQDN name in /etc/hosts file.

  vi /etc/hosts

  Set the hostname as shown below:

  127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
  ::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
   192.168.0.150     ansh.geniusansh.com    ansh

  Log off or restart the system to take effect the saved changes.
  Install and enable EPEL repository.
  
  

  # wget http://epel.mirror.net.in/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
  # rpm -Uvh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

  Now list out the installed repositories using command:
   
• # yum repolist
• Log in as root user and Install Mysql server using the following command:
•  
• If you are new in MySql then use this Link.. 
• Install LAMP Server (Apache, MySQL, PHP) On RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux 6.5
• 
  
  Database configuration
  Log in to mysql as ‘root’ user:

  mysql -u root -p

  
  
  Create database and database user for otrs. Here, database name for OTRS  is ‘otrs‘ and MySQL user for OTRS is ‘otrsuser’.

  Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
  Your MySQL connection id is 2
  Server version: 5.5.35 MySQL Community Server (GPL) by Remi
  
  Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
  
  Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
  affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
  owners.
  
  Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the current input statement.
  
  mysql> create database otrs;
  Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)
  
  mysql> GRANT ALL ON otrs.* TO 'otrsuser'@'192.168.0.150' IDENTIFIED BY 'admin@123';

  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.09 sec)
  
  mysql> flush privileges;
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
  
  mysql> exit
  Bye

• 
  
  Edit file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf,

  cp /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.bak 

  vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

  
  
  Find the following lines and modify them as shown below:

  ServerAdmin root@domain.com
  ServerName [hostname or IP address]:80
  Listen IP-address-of-the-server:80

  Save and close file. Restart httpd service.
  service httpd restart

• Adjust iptables to allow apache default port 80.
   Edit file /etc/sysconfig/iptables,
   
• vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
•  
• Add the following line:
  
  
  -A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
• 
  
  Then, restart iptables to take effect the saved changes using the following command:
  service iptables restart
  
  
  Disable SELinux, otherwise you will get the following error:

  If you want to use the installer, set the Kernel/Config.pm writable for the webserver user!

  To disable SELinux, Edit file /etc/sysconfig/selinux,
   
• vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux
  
  
  Set value to disabled.
   
• SELINUX=disabled
  
  
  After that, reboot the system.

Download OTRS

• Go to the OTRS download page and download the latest version.

  wget http://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/RPMS/rhel/6/otrs-3.3.6-01.noarch.rpm

  
  
  The above will download and save the OTRS rpm file in the current directory. Install it using command:

  yum install otrs-3.3.6-01.noarch.rpm

  
  
  The above command will install otrs package along with all required packages.
  Finally, restart httpd service one more time after installing OTRS.

  service httpd restart

  
  
  During OTRS installation, keep attention on the installer. It will display the web installer URL for OTRS.
  
  
  Look at the following screenshot.

• 

  Install Additional PERL modules

  Before proceeding to configure OTRS, you should install additional perl modules. Run the following command to know the required modules by OTRS:

  /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl

  Sample output:

  o Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt.......Not installed! (optional - For strong password hashing.)
   o Crypt::SSLeay....................ok (v0.57)
   o Date::Format.....................ok (v2.22)
   o DBI..............................ok (v1.609)
   o DBD::mysql.......................ok (v4.013)
   o DBD::ODBC........................Not installed! (optional - Required to connect to a MS-SQL database.)
   o DBD::Oracle......................Not installed! (optional - Required to connect to a Oracle database.)
   o DBD::Pg..........................Not installed! (optional - Required to connect to a PostgreSQL database.)
   o Encode::HanExtra.................Not installed! (optional - Required to handle mails with several Chinese character sets.)
   o GD...............................Not installed! (optional - Required for stats.)
   o GD::Text.......................Not installed! (optional - Required for stats.)
   o GD::Graph......................Not installed! (optional - Required for stats.)
   o IO::Socket::SSL..................ok (v1.31)
   o JSON::XS.........................Not installed! (optional - Recommended for faster AJAX/JavaScript handling.)
   o List::Util::XS...................ok (v1.21)
   o LWP::UserAgent...................ok (v6.05)
   o Mail::IMAPClient.................Not installed! (optional - Required for IMAP TLS connections.)
   o IO::Socket::SSL................ok (v1.31)
   o ModPerl::Util....................ok (v2.000004)
   o Net::DNS.........................ok (v0.65)
   o Net::LDAP........................ok (v0.40)
   o Net::SSL.........................ok (v2.84)
   o PDF::API2........................Not installed! (optional - Required for PDF output.)
   o Compress::Zlib.................ok (v2.021)
   o Text::CSV_XS.....................Not installed! (optional - Recommended for faster CSV handling.)
   o Time::HiRes......................ok (v1.9721)
   o XML::Parser......................ok (v2.36)
   o YAML::XS.........................Not installed! (required - Please install this module - )

  As you see in the above output, some perl modules are missing. Install them all at once or one by one as shown below.

  yum install "perl(Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt)" "perl(DBD::ODBC)" "perl(DBD::Oracle)" "perl(DBD::Pg)" "perl(Encode::HanExtra)" "perl(GD)" "perl(GD::Text)" "perl(GD::Graph)" "perl(JSON::XS)" "perl(Mail::IMAPClient)" "perl(PDF::API2)" "perl(Text::CSV_XS)" "perl(YAML::XS)"

  Now, check again for any missing modules.

  /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl

  Sample output:

  o Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt.......ok (v0.009)
   o Crypt::SSLeay....................ok (v0.57)
   o Date::Format.....................ok (v2.22)
   o DBI..............................ok (v1.609)
   o DBD::mysql.......................ok (v4.013)
   o DBD::ODBC........................ok (v1.48)
   o DBD::Oracle......................Not installed! (optional - Required to connect to a Oracle database.)
   o DBD::Pg..........................ok (v2.15.1)
   o Encode::HanExtra.................ok (v0.23)
   o GD...............................ok (v2.44)
   o GD::Text.......................ok (v0.86)
   o GD::Graph......................ok (v1.44)
   o IO::Socket::SSL..................ok (v1.31)
   o JSON::XS.........................ok (v2.27)
   o List::Util::XS...................ok (v1.21)
   o LWP::UserAgent...................ok (v6.05)
   o Mail::IMAPClient.................ok (v3.34)
   o IO::Socket::SSL................ok (v1.31)
   o ModPerl::Util....................ok (v2.000004)
   o Net::DNS.........................ok (v0.65)
   o Net::LDAP........................ok (v0.40)
   o Net::SSL.........................ok (v2.84)
   o PDF::API2........................ok (v2.019)
   o Compress::Zlib.................ok (v2.021)
   o Text::CSV_XS.....................ok (v0.85)
   o Time::HiRes......................ok (v1.9721)
   o XML::Parser......................ok (v2.36)
   o YAML::XS.........................ok (v0.38)

  If everything seems good, proceed to web installer.

  Begin OTRS Web installer

  OTRS development team has made a simple way web based installer to make the installation lot easier.
  Open up the web browser and navigate to http://ip-address/otrs/installer.pl.
  The following screen will appear. Click Next to continue.
  Accept the License agreement.
  Select the database type. In my case, I select the MySQL database.
  Enter the MySQL root user name and password etc. Click Check database settings button.
  Once you check the button “Check database settings”, a default database and user  will be automatically created. You can change these values as per your liking, or leave the default selection and click next to continue.
  
  Now the new database will be created. Click Next to continue.
  Enter the administrator Email for OTRS, system FQDN, organization name etc. And, click Next.
  Next, you’ll be prompted to enter the inbound and outbound mail settings. Also, You can setup this option later in the administration dashboard.
  Congratulations! We have successfully implemented the OTRS system. Note down the the default username and password of the administrative account.
  As you see in the above screenshot, the installer shows you the the administrative login URL, default username and password.

  Access OTRS dashboard

  Navigate to http://ip-address/otrs/otrs/index.pl from your browser. Enter the default user name and password.
  This is how the OTRS administrative dashboard looks.
  
  After successful installation, we have to do some installation tasks. The first one is to start the scheduler. Click on the warning link that says: “Scheduler is not running” on the top.
  Click Start Scheduler button.
  
  Next change the default password of the admin account(root@locahost) by clicking on the username on the upper top right corner.
  Enter the current password, and enter the new password twice. Finally, click Update.
  

  OTRS Administration

  As you may know, working on OTRS with admin user is not recommended. So, create new users(agents).
  Go to the Admin section on the top menu bar, and select Agents to create new user.
  
  Click on the Add Agent Link on the left.
  Fill up the details such as first name, last name, password, and email id etc. Then, click Submit button.
  
  Next choose the group relations for the new agent. Then, click Submit button.
  The new agent will be created now.
  
  By this way, you create more users(agents), groups, roles, customers etc from the Admin section.
  Customer user:
  

  Create Tickets

  Let us create a sample ticket, and assign this ticket to Agent sk. Navigate to Tickets -> New email ticket or Phone ticket.
  Enter the customer user mail id, subject and body of the mail. Click on the Owner drop down box and select the Agent name. Finally, click Send mail. A new ticket will be created and assigned to the agent sk.
  Sample Email ticket:
  Whenever, the agent sk, log in to the PTRS, he will see a ticket has been assigned to him in his dashboard.
  The agent can see the full details of the new ticket by clicking on it.