News and Views from the Makers of Request Tracker
RT 4.0.3 contained a serious bug wherein upgrades from any version ofRT 3 to RT 4.0.3 broke template interpolation; please do not use it. If you had previously upgraded from RT 3 to RT 4.0.0, 4.0.1, or 4.0.2, before upgrading to RT 4.0.3, you are not affected by this bug.
If you are currently running RT 4.0.3 and are affected by this issue, upgrading to RT 4.0.4 will resolve it.
I'm happy to announce that RT 4.0.3 is now available.
This release contains a number of bugfixes and small improvements since the 4.0.2 release; a few of the more notable ones include:
Due to a change in RT 3.8.9, which also affected RT 4.0.0 and higher, TransactionBatch scrips were run twice; this has now been fixed.
A new toggle has been added to expand all quote folding in a ticket's transaction history.
New "On Forward", "On Forward Transaction" and "On Forward Ticket" conditions have been added.
Ticket searches no longer forget which saved search they were loaded from when being updated.
A new "make jsmin" target has been added to aid in downloading, compiling, and installing jsmin.
Improved threading for automatically generated emails concerning a ticket.
Improved detection of Outlook-style message fowarding headers.
No longer error when a user has supplied a non-existant RT style; instead, fall back to the default. This is particularly relevant for users coming RT 3.8 with the 3.6 stylesheet applied, which no longer exists in 4.0.
Improved handling of files named "0", and Unicode filenames, in file uploads.
Tickets can no longer be linked to deleted tickets.
Restore missing menus on simple search result pages.
Fix support for perl 5.12 and later by removing a deprecated use of "defined %hash".
I'm happy to announce that RT 3.8.11 is now available.
This release contains a number of bugfixes and a minor security update in one of our dependencies:
Adjust FCGI dependency to one which resolves FCGI's CVE-2011-2766
New WebHttpOnlyCookies option, enabled by default, which hides RT's cookie from direct Javascript access.
Compatibility with perl 5.12 and 5.14, by removing deprecated "for qw(...)" and "defined %hash" syntax.
MySQL 5.5 compatibility, by specifying ENGINE=InnoDB rather than TYPE=InnoDB
Ensure that RT::Interface::Web's _Overlay, _Local, and _Vendor files are loaded correctly.
Fix session cleaner for on-disk sessions, broken since 3.8.0.
Ensure that only one "Based on" attribute is stored for each custom field.
Fix the loading of Shredder plugins, broken in 3.8.10.
Ever wonder how a large organization uses RT? The University of Oxford's Computing Services, a very long time user of RT, published a blog post last week giving a peek into their use cases and workflows.
This is a reminder that on Friday September 30th, 2011 Best PracticalSolutions will cease support for the 3.6 series of Request Tracker.
We've talked our sales team into including free basic upgrades from RT 3 to RT 4 if you sign up for a new RT 4 support contract. The new RT 4 support contracts are less expensive and come with lots of great new features.
RT 4 adds many options you can put in your etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm totweak the way your RT looks and behaves for your users, as well as how RT works behind the scenes. Some of the new options are also available as individual user preferences by going to the Logged in as … → Settings → Options page.
In this blog post, we'll provide an overview of most of the new options.
These options are discussed in our blog post on autocompletion.
Enable this to redirect to the created ticket display page automatically when using QuickCreate.
These options affect the "More about requestors" box on the ticket display page and will be discussed in a separate upcoming blog post about customizing the displayed requestor information. (If you're eager to customize this, read the sections in etc/RT_Config.pm.)
This determines if the "More about requestors" box on the ticket display page shows information about privileged users. By default it only shows information about unprivileged users.
By default, the simple search in the upper right corner only searches active tickets. If you want to search for a specific status, you can include the status in your search. If you want to search all ticekts regardless of status, disable this option.
When only one ticket is found in search, use this to redirect to the ticket display page automatically. Disabled by default.
Display a simple list of who will receive any kind of mail on the ticket reply page, instead of a detailed breakdown by scrip. Disabled by default.
Remembers the last queue you created a ticket in using the "New ticket in" button and queue list at the top of the page. If you haven't created a ticket in your current session, the Default Queue preference is used. Disabled by default.
When set to 1, the ticket display page will omit the ticket history until a link is clicked to load and display the history. This can be useful if you routinely browse long-running tickets but don't need to always read the history. Disabled by default.
Display the ticket create and update pages using two columns on screens that are wide enough. The new two column pages are much more effective at making more information visible on a single page, especially with many custom fields. Enabled by default.
Enable this option to display the Articles search and selection interface on the Ticket Create page in addition to the Reply/Comment page.
Enable this option to hide the search and include boxes from the Article UI. This assumes you have enabled the Article Hotlist feature on at least one of your Classes, otherwise you will have no access to Articles. This option does not hide the Articles link in the Tools menu.
The available flags under %FullTextSearch are discussed in our blog post on fast full-text searching in RT.
Lifecycles are a powerful way to describe custom workflows for your tickets on a per-queue basis. We'll be covering them in depth in an upcoming blog post. If you're feeling adventurous and would like to dive in early, there is a decent amount of documentation in the Lifecycles section of perldoc etc/RT_Config.pm.
Files in this list will be included in the CSS (squished and unsquished) that RT serves. Recommended if you want local CSS changes that apply to all themes. Alternatively, you can use the advanced section of the Theme editor if you don't need a file on disk.
If set to 0, framekiller javascript will be disabled and the X-Frame-Options: DENY header will be suppressed from all responses. This disables RT's clickjacking protection. It is highly recommended you leave this option set to 1 unless you are embedding RT in an iframe from a different domain.
A handful of options were removed in 4.0, because they were made obsolete by new features or we added a better way to change the behaviour. The most used options that are unsupported in 4.0:
The first three of these options affect what is now controlled by lifecycles. By defining your own lifecycle or modifying the default, you can reapply the functionality. The last option, $SuppressAutoOpenOnUpdate, can be customized by modifying the stock scrip On Correspond Open Tickets that ships with RT.
All the options RT supports are documented in etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm, along with their defaults. To set any of them to a different value for your installation, add the appropriate Set( $OptionName, 'value' ); line to your etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm, clear the mason cache, and restart your webserver. Be sure to only have one Set(...) line for each option, otherwise only the first one will take affect.
I'm happy to announce that RT 4.0.2 is now available.
Continuing with our goal of faster release cycles and smaller changes between releases in a stable series, this release primarily contains fixes for a number of minor bugs. It also includes documentation updates and removal of an inefficient javascript minification option. Notable changes include:
Ability to reference global CFs by Name in RT::Action::CreateTickets
Installation of the docs/ directory into /opt/rt4/docs
Removal of the incomplete --binary flag option for the full-text search indexer
Fixes for a regression that caused group dashboards to vanish after creation and not appear in the list of dashboards
Rewritten forward functionality to generate mail that better represents the original messages received by RT
Removal of the pure Perl Javascript::Minifier module which slowed down
the first request to new webserver children. jsmin or another
external minifier is now required to minify RT's javascript. Refer to
the section about $JSMinPath in perldoc /opt/rt4/etc/RT_Config.pm
for how to configure jsmin.
Best Practical Solutions provides unparalleled instruction in how to get the most out of RT.
2011 will bring two-day training sessions to six cities across the world. As we like to keep class sizes relatively intimate, register soon or we may not be able to guarantee you a seat.
These sessions will be offered in:
If you can't make it to these cities, please drop us a line to request a public training for your area in 2012.
This training will introduce you to the new features in RT 4 as part of a comprehensive overview of RT. Whether you're an old hand at RT or a recent convert, you'll have a good understanding of all of RT's features and functionality by the end of the session.
The first day starts off with a tour of RT's web interface and continues with a detailed exploration and explanation of RT's functionality, workflows and configurability. We'll touch on basic administration, but concentrate largely on helping you and your team get the most out of your RT instance.
The second day of training picks up with RT administration and dives into what you need to safely customize and extend RT. We'll cover point-and-click configuration, upgrading and installing RT, development best practices, RT's API, building an extension, and database tuning.
It goes without saying that you'll get the most out of training if you attend both days of the course, but we've designed the material so that you can step out after the first day with a dramatically improved understanding of how to use RT or show up on the second day and get quickly up to speed on how to make RT do your bidding.
Pricing and Payment
The cost of the class includes training materials, a continental breakfast and an afternoon snack. Please note that lunch will not be provided.
Please contact us at training@bestpractical.com for discounted pricing if you are from an academic institution or if you'd like to send more than 3 people.
If you'd like to pay with Visa, MasterCard or Discover, please visit Best Practical's online store.
If you'd prefer to pay with a purchase order, please email us at training@bestpractical.com.
Be sure to include:
We rolled out a few changes to the defaults on rt.cpan.org today. You'llnotice that all of your plain text mail and attachments are now monospaced and wrapped. This should make reading examples and patches much friendlier. If you preferred the old behavior, you can switch back from the Preferences link available to users logged in with their PAUSE credentials.
We've also turned on the RT feature to automatically make the links in ticket history clickable. Let us know if this causes any display issues for you by using the rt-cpan-admin email address on each page of rt.cpan.org.
Maintainers and Requestors can now link their tickets to another ticket in rt.cpan.org. This makes it easier to flag dependencies between tickets. Previously, you could only link tickets on rt.cpan.org if you were a Maintainer in both rt.cpan.org Queues.
We've heard a few questions from folks who are confused about upgradingto RT 4. You can upgrade to RT 4 and keep all of your data that you created with your current RT. There are no restrictions on bringing that data forward. If you've made local customizations to RT, you'll need to review those and see if we've added your favorite feature. If you're using extensions, you should check to see if those extensions are available for RT 4.
To learn more about what's new in RT 4, consider joining us at one of our training sessions.
While preparing for your upgrade, you should start by reviewing the README file we ship to see if anything has changed since the last time you installed or upgraded RT. You should also review our upgrading docs; there is one such file per major version of RT. You will want to be sure that you read the file for your current version, as well as each following version. If you're upgrading from RT 3.6 to RT 4.0, this means reviewing UPGRADING-3.6 UPGRADING-3.8 and UPGRADING-4.0. These documents are all included in the tarball you downloaded, as well as on github from the links above.
If you're using MySQL and upgrading from RT 3.6 or older, you'll notice that the documentation points you to UPGRADING.mysql. This is a standalone step for MySQL, and you must complete all of the other upgrading steps in addition to the MySQL specific steps. There are no extra steps for PostgreSQL or Oracle which is why we have not included UPGRADING.pg or UPGRADING.oracle files.
We highly recommend that you do a test upgrade. If you're using VMs, you can just snapshot your current RT server and test on that. This will give you a sense of how long your downtime window will be, as well as giving you an opportunity to build a checklist of exact steps for upgrading your specific install of RT. If you're not in a VM, you'll need to find some spare hardware. If you must upgrade on the same hardware, please test your backups.
Now that you have a test system and have extracted the relevant steps
from our documentation, you're ready to start migrating. First review
the output of ./configure --help and see if you need to change any of
the defaults (such as your database name or local users or web
handlers). You'll note that we strongly recommend installing into
/opt/rt4, not installing over the top of /opt/rt3, since we've
removed a number of files and renamed others; things will break if you
install over the top of an existing RT with all of its files intact.
We recommend that you turn off access to RT during your upgrade. This means taking down your webserver. You may also want to configure your mail transport agent to queue mail rather than trying to deliver while RT is down. Make sure you have a final known-good backup and you're ready to begin the final cutover.
Once you've installed into /opt/rt4 and checked
/opt/rt4/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm to port over your local changes and add
any new features you
want to take advantage of, you can start on your database migration.
You'll use the rt-setup-database command from step 6 of the
README. You
may be stopping halfway through to follow the
UPGRADING.mysql
steps, and then you'll run rt-setup-database again to finish all the
steps. The rt-setup-database command takes care of upgrading core
data inside RT, as well as adding new columns and indexes that RT 4 relies on.
After rt-setup-database, you'll run any of the standalone upgrade
steps (such as the articles importer if you previously used RTFM, the
transactions shrinker or the password upgrader if you haven't installed
the previous security updates).
After that, you're ready to review the web deployment documentation and update your current Apache configuration or switch to one of the other systems we support.
After you've completed your upgrade, you may need to reroute your mail (if you've changed server names or actual servers) and ensure that any cron jobs are running successfully.
If you're having any trouble, please post to the mailing list with details of the errors you're encountering. If you need professional support, don't hesitate to drop us a line at sales@bestpractical.com.
