Month: June 2010

If you are trying to setup Best Practical’s Request Tracker (RT) system (originally written by Jesse Vincent, but I more associate Dave Rolsky with it), to work with a Google Apps hosted domain (so you have Google Mail/Gmail for your domain), you may find the following useful.

1. First of all, install “rt” on your Linux box and install “fetchmail” using your package manager if it isn’t already installed
2. Setup an email account something like “support@” or “rt@” (I’ll use “rt@” in these examples) in Google Apps. Make a note of the password you set
3. In /opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm (if you used the default install location), you’ll need to set the following:
   Set( $RTAddressRegexp,'^rt(\+[a-z]+)?\@example\.com$');
4. Do the basic configuration of “rt” and make your queues – I made the following queues:
   

   Queue name	Reply address	Comment address
   Backend	rt+backend@example.com	rt+backendcomments@example.com
   Frontend	rt+frontend@example.com	rt+frontendcomments@example.com
   Billing	rt+billing@example.com	rt+billingcomments@example.com
   General	rt@example.com	rt+comments@example.com

5. Log into your new Google Apps Gmail account with the details you created and agree to the terms of service etc
6. Click on “Settings” and “Filters” and create a series of filters such as:
   • To: rt+backend@example.com [Next step]
   • Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
   • Apply the label: backend
   • Never send it to Spam [Create filter]
   • To: rt+backendcomments@example.com [Next step]
   • Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
   • Apply the label: backend-comments
   • Never send it to Spam [Create filter]
7. For the “general” queue’s “Reply” address (rt@example.com), do not setup a filter
8. Once done, on your Linux server where you have installed the Request Tracker, edit /etc/fetchmailrc to read similar to:
   
   set daemon 60
   set invisible
   set no bouncemail
   set no syslog
   set logfile /var/log/fetchmail
   poll imap.gmail.com
   proto IMAP service 993 user rt@example.com pass PA55W0RD
   folder Inbox ssl
   mda "/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --url http://rt.example.com/ --queue General --action correspond"
   poll imap.gmail.com
   proto IMAP service 993 user rt@example.com pass PA55W0RD
   folder general-comments ssl
   mda "/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --url http://rt.example.com/ --queue General --action comments"

   poll imap.gmail.com
proto IMAP service 993 user rt@example.com pass PA55W0RD
folder backend ssl
mda "/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --url http://rt.example.com/ --queue Backend --action correspond"
poll imap.gmail.com
proto IMAP service 993 user rt@example.com pass PA55W0RD
folder backend-comments ssl
mda "/opt/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --url http://rt.example.com/ --queue Backend --action comments"

   Of course changing rt@example.com to the email account you created, PA55W0RD to the password set for that email account, http://rt.example.com to the location of your Request Tracker installation (it has to be accessible from the server you are creating this file on), the “folder” name to correspond with the label you set for that queue and comments, etc and repeating for as many queues as you have.

9. Save the file and start fetchmail using /sbin/service fetchmail start or your Linux distribution’s service starter
10. Watch the log file using tail -f /var/log/fetchmail

    And that should be RT up and running with Google Apps for you!