These instructions were derived from the official Freeside installation documentation but have been updated to help provide an error-free installation.
These instructions have only been tested with Debian 9, and testing on Debian 10 will be taking place very soon.
I try to keep this documentation up to date but we all need to keep the lights on so if you find this useful I would much appreciate it if you could leave a donation.
Table of Contents
Prep the system for Install
Install Debian 9 on your server using a single filesystem for all files and only choose the ssh server option when prompted for task selection.
These steps will get apt configured and install a few packages to help smooth out the process
Add Freeside Apt Repositories
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/freeside.list and add the following entries:
deb [trusted=yes] http://pkg.freeside.biz/freeside-stretch/ ./
deb [trusted=yes] http://pkg.freeside.biz/freeside4-stretch-testing/ ./
Update apt and system
sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade
Install some preliminary packages
sudo apt install exim4- exim4-base- exim4-config- exim4-daemon-light- fdutils- hotplug- ppp- pppconfig- pppoe- pppoeconf- tasksel- tasksel-data- task-ssh-server- doc-debian- debian-faq- ibritish- procmail- mutt- inetutils-inetd- task-english- adduser diffutils grep gzip hostname less lftp lsof nano nmap nvi passwd procps psmisc rsync screen openssh-client openssh-server strace sudo tar telnet traceroute zsh ssmtp
Install and Bootstrap Freeside
Now that the system is prepared we are ready to install the actual Freeside software and bootstrap the initial users
Install Freeside
sudo apt install freeside freeside-lib freeside-webui liblocale-subcountry-perl=1.63-1 libparams-classify-perl=0.013-5.3 libev-perl- texlive-fonts-recommended-doc- texlive-latex-base-doc- texlive-latex-extra-doc- texlive-latex-recommended-doc- texlive-pictures-doc- texlive-pstricks-doc-
note: If errors are encountered about package versions use apt-cache to determine the proper version number of the package and make the necessary adjustments.
Create the database user
sudo -u postgres createuser -d freeside
Create the freeside database
sudo -u freeside createdb -E UTF8 freeside
Initialize the freeside database
(replace the domain example.com with your companies domain. This will be used as the initial domain for the system and Ticketing)
sudo -u freeside freeside-setup -d example.com
Initialize the RT tables
sudo su freeside -c '/opt/rt3/sbin/rt-setup-database --action schema; /opt/rt3/sbin/rt-setup-database --action coredata; /opt/rt3/sbin/rt-setup-database --action insert --datafile /opt/rt3/etc/initialdata'
When prompted for a password just press enter
Create the Freeside system users
Create a shell script fsusers.sh
vi fsusers.sh
Paste this in the file and save
#!/bin/bash
for u in fs_queue fs_daily fs_selfservice fs_api; do
printf "Creating user $u\n"
freeside-adduser -g 1 $u
printf "\n"
done
Run the script as the freeside user
chmod +x fsusers.sh; sudo -u freeside ./fsusers.sh
Create your user
(Use a temporary password and reset it to your secure password in the UI as this will be in plain text and could be hacked later on)
sudo -u freeside freeside-adduser -g 1 username password
Configure Apache
The user and group Apache runs as needs to be changed to the freeside user as well as enabling the Freeside configuration files and a few modules.
sudo sed -i 's/APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data/APACHE_RUN_USER=freeside/' /etc/apache2/envvars
sudo sed -i 's/APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data/APACHE_RUN_GROUP=freeside/' /etc/apache2/envvars
sudo a2enconf freeside-base2.4 freeside-rt
sudo a2dismod mpm_event
sudo a2enmod mpm_prefork rewrite perl ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo chown freeside /var/lock/apache2
Redirect insecure connections to https
Add rewrite directives
sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Paste the following directives above the closing VirtualHost directive </VirtualHost>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^127.0.0.1$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^\:\:1$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/ [L,R]
Start up freeside and restart apache
sudo /etc/init.d/freeside start
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Thank You
A big thank you goes to the Freeside team for creating this software and the initial Documentation as well as the freeside-users mailing list for providing additional information that helped create this document.
