Installing VMtools on a Binnami Redmine appliance

Here's how to install VMtools into a Redmine bitnami appliance, running OpenSuse 11.1.

1. Use "zypper" (the OpenSuse equivalent of aptget) to install the following packages...

1. "zypper install tar, make, gcc, linux-kernel-headers, linux-sources

2. Use the VIclient to right-click the Redmine appliance, and select "Install VMtools"

3. Then just mount the virtual CD that includes vmtools, and install the rpm.

1. "mkdir /mnt/virtual"

2. "mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/virtualcd"

3. "ls /mnt/virtualcd"

4. "rpm -ivh VMwareTools-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm"

5. Reboot ("shutdown -r now")

6. "vmware-config-tools.pl -default"

After the installer completes, open the VMware Infrastructure Client and verify that Vmware Tools is listed as being installed on the summary tab.

Redmine: Email Configuration of Bitnami Appliance

If you need to configure Redmine so that it will send email notifications to users when they update issues, or projects this might be helpful configuration information. I’m using Redmine 0.8.7 as a Bitnami appliance running under OpenSuse 11.1.

The email configuration is located in this directory: /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/config . What I recommend is that you copy the example configuration file from email.yml.example to email.ym, and edit the email.ym configuration file with vi. I didn’t see any of the more user-friendly editors like pico, or nano pre-installed on the appliance so you can install them, or just use vi… it really isn’t that difficult to use. If you need a good tutorial you can check out Wikipedia's vi info. In any event, edit the file using vi… “vi email.ym”.. Press “a” to enter edit mode and make the below changes, then press colon “:”, and type “x!” and hit enter to write and exit. If you made a mistake, and want to abandon your changes type “q!” and hit enter to quit. After you’re finished, just restart the Redmine services (or the server).

Also, make sure that your SMTP server is setup to either allow relay from the IP of your Redmine server, or make other arrangements for SMTP delivery.

Production:
delivery_method: :smtp
smtp_settings:
address: SMTPServerIP
port: 25
domain: yourdomainname.com
authentication: :login
user_name: ServiceAccountRedmine01
password: SavedPassword


Redmine LDAP Integration - Active Directory Configuration

After you have Redmine installed and configured to the point where you can log in - go ahead and do so. Browse to Administration>Settings>Authentication tab>LDAP Configuration (in the bottom right).

Before you go and start changing things here, there are a few things you should keep in mind that will save you some time. Realize that you can't do an anonymous bind to Active Directory. So, you need to actually specify a valid set of credentials for the service account. Now, I suppose they could have done something different here to reduce the configuration work... like relying on user login credentials and passing them to query AD. But in any event, you just need a normal domain user account should do just fine - anything that can query Active Directory. Why a domain account? Think about it another way... if someone plugged their laptop into your network, would they be able to query AD for user or computer objects? No... they wouldn't, because they'd be anonymous. Even if they knew your domain name, had a domain controller's IP address, the distinguished name, etc... no luck. So create a service account. Just FYI, my domain was at 2003 domain functional level.

As far as the Base DN - keep it simple... base DN means base. You probably don't want CN=users, or CN=MyBusiness, or anything like that. In my case, I specified DC=domain,DC=local. As for the the attributes, they all come right out of Active Directory... there's a bunch of places you could find these if you wanted to spend the time to find them. Or, there's a bunch of sites that already have this stuff listed (see the below for my config).

When you're specifying the attributes, keep in mind that you don't want any extra spaces (blank spaces) after the attributes. For instance, it should be 'SAMAccountName' (no quotes), NOT 'SAMAccountName '. If you add a space, it breaks. If you don't have those "optional" attributes, it breaks. Also - just FYI... if you're under Authentication, and trying to run a "Test" of authentication, and it say's successful - that doesn't mean it's actually working. You need to test Active Directory account logins from back on the main menu.

If you want to use on-the-fly account creation... you'll need to make sure all of your Attributes are set correctly and that within Active Directory the attribute fields actually contain data for your users. This is very important. For example, if you have a user trying to login, but their account has "First Name", and/or "Last Name", and/or "E-mail" address fields blank (like if you have a "test" user account) - automatic user account creation in Redmine will fail. On top of that - it's not very verbose about why it failed. So that might be something to file away in the back of your mind, so that when you find one account (or a group of accounts) somewhere that won't login - you can make sure to check that they have all of the Active Directory attributes specified (just open up Active Directory Users and Computers and check-out the user object that is having a problem).

My Settings:

• Name: YourDomainOrWhateverYouWant
• Host: IP address of a Domain Controller (name is probably best)
• Port: 389
• Account: Domain\ServiceAccountRedmine01
• Password: SavedPassword
• Base DN: DC=domain,DC=local
• Login: SAMAccountName
• First Name: givenName
• Last Name: SN
• Email: mail

Redmine BitNami Appliance Intro

I’ve been checking out Project Management platforms lately, and came across Redmine. It’s an open-source project management and issue tracking tool (e.g. bug tracking, feature request, etc.)using a Ruby on Rails framework, with support for multiple databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite). The core features like Project Management and Issue tracking look pretty good, and it includes some nice details like Atom feeds, e-mail notifications, a per-project wiki, basic time tracking, and LDAP support. According to Wikipedia, Redmine is heavily influenced by Trac – which appears to have been around a bit longer, and is fairly mature... probably worth checking out as well (plus Trac it’s written in Python).

In any event, if you’re coming at this from a Microsoft-centric perspective, you can think of Redmine as being “Sharepoint-like”, although by no means is it a Sharepoint-replacement. In working with Redmine a bit, one thing immediately apparent is that Redmine makes sense… the web-based interface is uncluttered, it’s easy to navigate and wrap your head-around. After digging in, you’ll find that there are components to the tool that are obviously still immature but as far as the core functionality goes – it’s there.

The other thing that’s kind of interesting is that I’m running the Redmine stack using a Bitnami appliance on my ESX cluster. The Redmine virtual machine is running OpenSuse 11.1. So far, the Bitnami-appliance experience has been good, and if you haven’t checked out any of their stacks, they're worth investigating. The appliances are fairly light with the excesses trimmed out (no GUI, etc.). Since getting this machine built-out, I also saw that Turnkey Linux also has an Ubuntu-based appliance with the Redmine stack. While I’ve worked with OpenSuse, and Ubuntu, my more recent experience has been Debian-centric so Ubuntu is probably the more natural fit. I’ll follow-up with some How-To posts based on my notes and work so far over soon.