Installing Roundup — Roundup 2.5.0 documentation
Description: Everything about installing the Roundup issue tracker web and mail interfaces and configuring a tracker. How to download and demonstrate Roundup using using command line or Docker. Optional software that adds functionality to Roundup.

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# Installing Roundup

## Overview

A Roundup installation is made up of several pieces.

Roundup scripts

  These include the Roundup HTTP server, email gateway, administration command-line interface, demo installer etc. These are usually placed in a directory that is on your path.

Roundup core code

  Is installed into your Python’s lib directory. We recommend using a virtual environment for your Roundup installation.

Roundup trackers

  Trackers consist of issues (be they bug reports or otherwise). Each tracker is put in its own directory (called a tracker home) and has its own:

  - configuration files,

  - HTML (web) files,

  - database,

  - logic files (detectors, schema, …)

  Roundup trackers are initialised with a “template” which defines the fields usable/assignable on a per-issue basis. Descriptions of the provided templates are given in choosing your template. Usually you start with a template then modify the tracker to implement your desired workflow. One Roundup instalation can support multiple trackers with different look/feel and workflow.

## For The Really Impatient

If you just want to give Roundup a whirl Right Now, follow these directions to run `demo.py`. Demo mode starts the classic tracker without installing Roundup on your system. If you have Docker installed, you can run demo mode using docker instead.

This is also a way to spin up a development environment or even deploy a tracker for a handful of users.

You can choose different templates and backend databases using demo mode. For example replacing `demo.py` (or `demo` if you are using docker) with:

    demo jinja2 anydbm

will start the tracker using the jinja2 template with the dbm database backend (rather then the default sqlite). See Choosing Your Template for a description of available templates.

(In the directions below, replace `-2.2.0` with the version number of the file you downloaded. On systems that don’t have a `python3` program you can run `python demo.py` instead.)

1. `python3 -m pip download roundup`

   - (If you are really impatient, you probably don’t want to verify the downloaded file.)

2. `tar -xzvf roundup-2.2.0.tar.gz`

   - if you don’t have a tar command, `python3 -c "import tarfile, sys; tarfile.open(sys.argv[1]).extractall();" roundup-2.2.0.tar.gz` can be used.

3. `cd roundup-2.2.0`

4. `python3 demo.py`

This will set up a classic demo tracker on your machine without installing Roundup. [1] When it’s done, it’ll print out a URL for your web browser at so you can explore a Roundup tracker. Three users are set up:

1. anonymous - the “default” user with permission to do very little

2. demo (password “demo”) - a normal user who may create issues

3. admin (password “admin”) - an administrative user who has complete access to the tracker

Note the demo tracker removes the detector (nosyreaction.py) that sends email notifications. If you later convert your demo tracker to production you will need to replace the detector to send notification emails.

Once you install Roundup, you can use the `roundup-demo` command to install new demo trackers.

[1] (1,2)

Demo tracker is set up to be accessed by localhost browser. If you run demo on a server host, please stop the demo (using Control-C) after it has shown the startup notice, open file `demo/config.ini` with your editor, change host name in the `web` option in section `[tracker]`, save the file, then re-run the demo.py program.

### Running in Demo Mode with Docker

You can either:

- use a published container from hub.docker.com with `rounduptracker/roundup:latest`

and start demo mode with:

    docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8917:8080 --name roundup_demo -v \
       $PWD:/usr/src/app/tracker rounduptracker/roundup:latest demo

or

- Use steps 1-3 to install the source then

- build a local docker container using:

      docker build -t roundup-app -f scripts/Docker/Dockerfile .

  (see Docker Support and Building a Docker Container for more details)

and start demo mode with:

    docker run --rm -p 127.0.0.1:8917:8080 --name roundup_demo -v \
       $PWD:/usr/src/app/tracker roundup-app:latest demo

This will create a `demo` subdirectory which is your tracker’s home. It will also print the URL for exploring your new tracker.

Caution

Removing `127.0.0.1:` will make the tracker accessible from any host with network access to your system. However the URL’s created by Roundup will still reference `localhost` unless you modify the `web` url in the `tracker` section of `config.ini` and restart the container [1].

In the docker run command we used port 8917 for Roundup. When starting Roundup, Docker may report a long error ending with: bind: address already in use. This means that port 8917 is in use. When running inside a Docker container, demo mode is unable to automatically find a free port. You have to provide an unused port to `-p`.

To fix this, you can change the change the port mapping provided with `-p`. If you do this you must set the docker PORT_8080 environment variable on the command line to match. (If Docker ever fixes https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/3778 we won’t need to worry about this.)

For example:

    docker run --rm -e PORT_8080=9090 -p 127.0.0.1:9090:8080 -v \
       --name roundup_demo $PWD:/usr/src/app/tracker \
       rounduptracker/roundup:latest demo

will run Roundup on port 9090 and Roundup will generate the correct URL.

To shut down the tracker and get your shell back, use control-c. You can remove the tracker using `rm -f` on the `demo` directory.

## Prerequisites

Roundup requires Python 3.7 or newer with a functioning anydbm or sqlite module. The version installed by most vendors should work if it meets the version requirements. If necessary, you can download the latest version from https://www.python.org/. It is highly recommended that users install the latest patch version of Python as these contain many fixes to serious bugs.

Some variants of Linux will need an additional ‘`python-dev`’ package installed for Roundup installation to work. Debian and derivatives, are known to require this.

## Optional Components

You may optionally install and use:

An RDBMS

  Sqlite, MySQL and Postgresql are all supported by Roundup and will be used if available. One of these is recommended if you are anticipating a large user base (see choosing your backend below). Sqlite should always be available.

Timezone Definitions

  Full timezone support requires pytz module (version 2005i or later) which brings the Olson tz database into Python. If pytz is not installed, timezones may be specified as numeric hour offsets only. This is optional but strongly suggested.

Xapian full-text indexer

  The Xapian full-text indexer is also supported and will be used by default if it is available. This is strongly recommended if you are anticipating a large number of issues (> 5000).

  You may install Xapian at any time, even after a tracker has been installed and used. You will need to run the “roundup-admin reindex” command if the tracker has existing data.

  Roundup requires Xapian 1.0.0 or newer.

  Note that capitalization is not preserved by the Xapian search. This is required to make the porter stemmer work so that searching for `silent` also returns documents with the word `silently`. Note that the current stemming implementation is designed for English.

Whoosh full-text indexer

  The Whoosh full-text indexer is also supported and will be used by default if it is available (and Xapian is not installed). This is recommended if you are anticipating a large number of issues (> 5000). It is also the only search backend that implements fuzzy search. It matches any word that has a 1 character difference from the search term.

  You may install Whoosh at any time, even after a tracker has been installed and used. You will need to run the “roundup-admin reindex” command if the tracker has existing data.

  Roundup was tested with Whoosh 2.5.7, but earlier versions in the 2.0 series may work. Whoosh is a pure Python indexer so it is slower than Xapian, but should be useful for moderately sized trackers. It uses the StandardAnalyzer which is suited for Western languages.

pyopenssl

  If pyopenssl is installed the roundup-server can be configured to serve trackers over SSL. If you are going to serve roundup via proxy through a server with SSL support (e.g. apache) then this is unnecessary.

gpg

  If gpg is installed you can configure the mail gateway to perform verification or decryption of incoming OpenPGP MIME messages. When configured, you can require email to be cryptographically signed before roundup will allow it to make modifications to issues. (Note with python 3.13 or newer on some platforms, you may need to install version 2.0 of gpg from test.pypi.org. See the gpg install directions in the upgrading document.

jinja2

  To use the jinja2 template (may still be experimental, check out its TEMPLATE-INFO.txt file) you need to have the jinja2 template engine installed.

defusedxml

  If you are going to enable and use the XMLRPC endpoint, you should install the defusedxml module. It will still work with the default xmlrpc standard library, but it will log a warning when used.

docutils

  To use ReStructuredText rendering you need to have the docutils package installed.

markdown, markdown2 or mistune

  To use markdown rendering (as supplied by the jinja2 template) you need to have the markdown, markdown2 (2.4.9 known to be broken, 2.3.3, 2.4.10+ known to work), or mistune (v0.8.4 tested; python3 only) package installed.

zstd, brotli

  To have roundup compress the returned data using one of these algorithms, you can install one or more of zstd or brotli. Roundup’s responses can always be compressed with gzip from the Python standard library. Also nginx and various wsgi server can compress the response from Roundup as they transmit/proxy it to the client.

redis

  Storing ephemeral data: session keys, CSRF tokens etc. can be performance bottleneck. You can choose to deploy a Redis database using the redis-py pypi package. See the section on Using Redis for Session Databases in the administration guide for details.

pyjwt

  To use JWT (JSON web tokens) for login (experimental), install pyjwt (v1.7.1, v2.0.1 tested). If you don’t have it installed, JWT’s are not supported.

polib

  Roundup includes translations in various languages. To extract strings designated for translation from your tracker’s HTML templates, you can utilize roundup-gettext. However, if you wish to extract translatable strings from the Python code in tracker’s detectors or extensions directories using roundup-gettext, you must install polib. See the developer’s guide for details on translating your tracker.

pywin32 - Windows Service

  You can run Roundup as a Windows service if pywin32 is installed. Otherwise it must be started manually.

pyreadline3

  When running roundup-admin on windows, installing pyreadline3 will allow history and editing on the command line.

requests

  If you are using OAuth authentication with the roundup-mailgw mail gateway you must install the requests library.

## Installing Roundup

To get a production installation running will take 15-30 minutes. If you want to spend less than 5 minutes to test Roundup without installing it, see For The Really Impatient.

Note

Some systems, such as Gentoo and NetBSD, already have Roundup installed. Try running the command “roundup-admin -v”. If it runs and reports the current version, you may skip the Standard installation below and go straight to configuring your first tracker. However it may be an old version. If so you should probably install it in a virtual environment from the Roundup web site or pypi.

If Roundup is not installed on your system, or needs to be updated, there are multiple ways to install Roundup.

- Standard installation using pip in a Virtual Environment is the recommended standard.

- Installing from downloaded source allows more control over how things are installed (including overwriting a vendor install). But it also increases complexity as well.

- Use a prebuilt docker container from `rounduptracker/roundup:latest` and follow the steps in Running Your Container.

- Install in a docker container by downloading the source and following the steps in Docker Support.

There are several steps to get Roundup serving a tracker:

1. Install using one of the methods listed above.

2. Configure your tracker following configuring your first tracker for all install methods.

3. Optionally configure a web interface.

4. Optionally configure an email interface.

5. Follow UNIX environment steps to restrict local access to Roundup if you’re installing on a shared UNIX system.

For information about what Roundup installs, see the What does Roundup install section in the administration guide.

### Standard Installation

Installation of Roundup using Python3 in a virtual environment is recommended. Use:

    python3 -m venv /path/to/environment/roundup

Activate the Python environment (assuming a Bourne like shell) using:

    . /path/to/environment/roundup/bin/activate

To install the released Roundup core code into your Python tree and Roundup scripts into `/path/to/environment/roundup/usr/bin` run:

    python3 -m pip install roundup

If everything went well, you should now be able to run:

    roundup-admin help

and see the help text.

If you want to run Roundup commands in the future without activating the virtual environment, just call the commands using the full path. For example:

    /path/to/environment/roundup/usr/bin/roundup-admin

You can use the command `deactivate` to return to the normal Python environment. However, for now continue with configuring your first tracker.

### Installing from downloaded source

In general you should be installing from a released Roundup version into a virtual environment.

If you are installing a current development version or are a developer or are an expert you can use the manual installation method from a source install. From the unpacked source distribution, run:

    sudo python3 setup.py install

which will put the Roundup core code into your systems Python tree and the command scripts into `/usr/bin`

If you would like to place the Roundup scripts in a directory other than `/usr/bin`, then specify the preferred location with `--install-scripts`. For example, to install them in `/opt/roundup/bin`:

    sudo python setup.py install --install-scripts=/opt/roundup/bin

You can also use the `--prefix` option to install roundup into a completely different base directory. If you choose to do this, you will have to change Python’s search path (sys.path) yourself.

## Configuring your first tracker

Make sure the `roundup-admin` script location is on your `PATH` evironment variable. This is done automatically when you activate a virtual environment. You can also specify the full path to the command in the following steps.

1. To create a Roundup tracker (necessary to do before you can use the software in any real fashion), you need to set up a “tracker home”:

   1. (Optional) If you intend to keep your roundup trackers under one top level directory which does not exist yet, you should create that directory now. Example:

          mkdir /opt/roundup/trackers

   2. Install a new tracker with the command `roundup-admin install`. You will be asked a series of questions. Descriptions of the provided templates can be found in choosing your template below. Descriptions of the available backends can be found in choosing your backend below. The questions will be something like (you may have more templates or backends available):

          Enter tracker home: /opt/roundup/trackers/support
          Templates: minimal, jinja2, classic, responsive, devel
          Select template [classic]: classic
          Back ends: anydbm, sqlite
          Select backend [anydbm]: anydbm

      Note: “Back ends” selection list depends on availability of third-party database modules. Standard python distribution includes anydbm and sqlite module only.

      The “support” part of the tracker home can be anything you want - it is the directory where the tracker information will be stored.

      You will now be directed to edit the tracker configuration and initial schema. At a minimum, you must set “tracker :: web” (that’s the “web” option in the “tracker” section), “mail :: host”, and “mail :: domain”. You should also set “main :: admin_email” to your local admin address to get email on unusual occurances. If you get stuck, and get configuration file errors, then see the tracker configuration section of the reference documentation.

      If you just want to get set up to test things quickly (and follow the instructions in step 3 below), you can even just set the “tracker :: web” variable to:

          web = http://localhost:8080/support/

      The URL must end in a ‘/’, or your web interface will not work. See the Roundup reference for details on configuration and schema changes. You may change any of the configuration after you’ve initialised the tracker - it’s just better to have valid values for this stuff now.

   3. Initialise the tracker database with `roundup-admin initialise`. You will need to supply an admin password at this step. You will be prompted:

          Admin Password:
                 Confirm:

      Note: running this command will destroy any existing data in the database. In the case of MySQL and PostgreSQL, any existing database (or optionally database schema for PostgreSQL) will be dropped and re-created.

      Once this is done, the tracker has been created. See the note in the administration guide on how to initialise a tracker without being prompted for the password or exposing the password on the command line.

2. At this point, your tracker is set up, but doesn’t have a nice user interface. To set that up, we need to configure a web interface and optionally configure an email interface. If you want to try your new tracker out, assuming the `web` setting in the `[tracker]` [4] section of config.ini is set to `'http://localhost:8080/support/'`, run:

       roundup-server support=/opt/roundup/trackers/support

   then direct your web browser at:

   > http://localhost:8080/support/

   and you should see the tracker interface.

   To run your tracker on some interface other than 127.0.0.1 and port 8080 (make sure you change the “tracker :: web” option to match) use:

       roundup-server -p 1080 -n 0.0.0.0 support=/opt/roundup/trackers/support

   to run the server at port 1080 and bind to all ip addresses on your system. Then direct your web browser to `http://your_host_name:1080/support/`.

[4]

The rest of the documentation uses the abbreviated form “tracker :: web” for specifying a section and setting.

### Choosing Your Template

Roundup ships with 5 templates. A description of each follows. When Roundup is installed, you can also get a description of available templates using `roundup-admin templates`. You can use this to view additional templates that you create or download.

#### Classic Template

The classic template is the one defined in the Roundup Specification. It holds issues which have priorities and statuses. Each issue may also have a set of messages which are disseminated to the issue’s list of nosy users.

#### Minimal Template

The minimal template has the minimum setup required for a tracker installation. That is, it has the configuration files, defines a user database and the basic HTML interface to that. It’s a completely clean slate for you to create your tracker on.

#### Other Templates

There are three other templates distributed with Roundup:

devel

  This is a generic issue tracker that may be used to track bugs, feature requests, project issues or any number of other types of issues. Most users of Roundup will find that this template suits them, with perhaps a few customisations.

responsive

  This issue tracker uses the same schema as devel. The difference between devel and responsive templates is the use of Twitter bootstrap (https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap) in templates and HTML5 markup. Make sure the “static_files” setting in your config.ini of your instance is set to the directory where the static files live (the subdirectory “static” in the default of the template).

jinja2

  This is a generic issue tracker based on classic schema. It uses Jinja2 for templating and Twitter bootstrap for responsive markup. You will need jinja and gettext for this to work. See the wiki page https://wiki.roundup-tracker.org/Jinja2 for updates between releases.

Also other people have listed their trackers for different needs at: https://wiki.roundup-tracker.org/TrackerTemplates.

### Choosing Your Backend

The actual storage of Roundup tracker information is handled by backends.

Roundup supports basic full text search (FTS) for all backends. Some backends support a faster native FTS. Also Roundup supports using whoosh or xapian for FTS.

There are several backends to choose from, each with benefits and limitations:

Name | Speed | Users | Support
--- | --- | --- | ---
anydbm | Slowest | Few | Always available
sqlite | Fastest | Few | Always available
postgresql | Fast | Many | Needs install/admin (psycopg2)
mysql | Fast | Many | Needs install/admin (MySQLdb)

anydbm

  This was one of the original database backends. It is a simple key/value store and is a prototype implementation for NoSQL backends. It also used to be the only backend that was guaranteed to be present. These days using SQLite is preferred unless you have some reason for preferring a key/value backend (e.g. you are interested in adding support for MongoDB or other NoSQL persistence layer).

sqlite

  This uses the embedded database engine SQLite and the PySQLite driver to provide a very fast backend. This is not suitable for trackers which will have many simultaneous users, but requires much less installation and maintenance effort than more scalable postgresql and mysql backends.

  SQLite is supported via PySQLite version 2.1.0 and sqlite3 (the last being bundled with Python 2.5+)

  Installed SQLite should be the latest version available (3.9.0 or newer).

  Installation of Roundup 2.2.0 or newer requires that the installed SQLite supports FTS5. This is required even if you are not going to use FTS5 for full text searching. FTS5 was included in SQLite release 3.9.0 in October 2015. However some vendors choose not to include it. RedHat 7’s native sqlite3 is known to not work.

  You can check your SQLite by using the command line:

      echo 'pragma compile_options' | sqlite3 | grep FTS5

  it should output `ENABLE_FTS5` if FTS5 is supported.

  You can check using the same version of Python you use for running Roundup with:

      import sqlite3

      con = sqlite3.connect(':memory:')
      cur = con.cursor()
      cur.execute('pragma compile_options;')
      available_pragmas = cur.fetchall()
      con.close()

  The output should include `('ENABLE_FTS5',)` in the output.

  Roundup supports using SQLite’s full text search capability. This can improve searching if you are not installing another indexer like xapian or whoosh. It works best with English text.

postgresql

  Backend for popular RDBMS PostgreSQL. You must read doc/postgresql.txt for additional installation steps and requirements. You must also configure the `rdbms` section of your tracker’s `config.ini`. It is recommended that you use at least version 2.8 of psycopg2.

  Roundup supports using postgresql’s full text search capability. This can improve searching if you are not installing another indexer like xapian or whoosh. It can be tuned to work with different languages.

mysql

  Backend for popular RDBMS MySQL. You must read doc/mysql.txt for additional installation steps and requirements. You must also configure the `rdbms` section of your tracker’s `config.ini`

You may defer your decision by setting your tracker up with the anydbm backend (which is guaranteed to be available) and switching to one of the other backends at any time using the instructions in the administration guide.

Regardless of which backend you choose, Roundup will attempt to initialise a new database for you when you run the “`roundup-admin initialise`” command. In the case of MySQL and PostgreSQL you will need to have the appropriate privileges to create databases.

## Configure a Web Interface

There are multiple ways to deploy the web interface. If your tracker will be heavily used and accessible from the internet, we suggest using Apache or Nginx in WSGI mode or as a reverse proxy to the stand alone web server or WSGI server like Gunicorn.

A FastCGI deployment with an alternate web server is suitable for lower traffic sites.

If you already run Zope, Roundup should deploy nicely in that framework.

If you are internet accessible, but expect a few users, or are on a hosted web server, using cgi-bin is a reasonable deployment.

Using a true HTTP server provide tools including: DOS prevention, throttling, web application firewalls etc. that are worth having in an internet facing application.

If you are running on an internal intranet, you can use the stand alone server: roundup-server, but even in this environment, using a real web server to serve static files and other resources will perform better.

You may need to give the web server user permission to access the tracker home - see the UNIX environment steps for information. You may also need to configure your system in some way - see platform-specific notes.

### Web Server cgi-bin

A benefit of using the cgi-bin approach is that it’s the easiest way to restrict access to your tracker to only use HTTPS. Access will be slower than through the stand-alone web server though.

If your Python isn’t installed as “python” then you’ll need to edit the `roundup.cgi` script to fix the first line.

If you’re using IIS on a Windows platform, you’ll need to run this command for the cgi to work (it turns on the PATH_INFO cgi variable):

    adsutil.vbs set w3svc/AllowPathInfoForScriptMappings TRUE

The `adsutil.vbs` file can be found in either `c:\inetpub\adminscripts` or `c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminsamples\` or `c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminscripts\` depending on your installation.

See:

> https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/iis-docs/blob/main/iis/web-dev-reference/server-variables.md

More information about IIS setup may be found at:

> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/

Copy the `share/roundup/cgi-bin/roundup-cgi` (`frontends/roundup.cgi` in source tree) file to your web server’s `cgi-bin` directory. You will need to configure it to tell it where your tracker home is. You can do this either:

Through an environment variable

  Set the variable TRACKER_HOMES to be a colon (“:”) separated list of name=home pairs (if you’re using apache, the SetEnv directive can do this)

Directly in the `roundup.cgi` file itself

  Add your instance to the TRACKER_HOMES variable as `'name': 'home'`

The “name” part of the configuration will appear in the URL and identifies the tracker (so you may have more than one tracker per cgi-bin script). Make sure there are no spaces or other illegal characters in it (to be safe, stick to letters and numbers). The “name” forms part of the URL that appears in the tracker config “tracker :: web” variable, so make sure they match. The “home” part of the configuration is the tracker home directory.

If you’re using Apache, you can use an additional trick to hide the `.cgi` extension of the cgi script. Place the `roundup.cgi` script wherever you want it to be, rename it to just `roundup`, and add a couple lines to your Apache configuration:

    <Location /path/to/roundup>
      SetHandler cgi-script
    </Location>

### CGI-bin for Limited-Access Hosting

If you are running in a shared-hosting environment or otherwise don’t have permission to edit the system web server’s configuration, but can create a `.htaccess` file then you may be able to use this approach.

1. Install flup

2. Create a script `roundup_stub` in your server’s `cgi-bin` directory containing:

       #!/usr/bin/env python

       # if necessary modify the Python path to include the place you
       # installed Roundup
       #import sys
       #sys.path.append('...')

       # cgitb is needed for debugging in browser only
       #import cgitb
       #cgitb.enable()

       # obtain the WSGI request dispatcher
       from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher
       tracker_home = '/path/to/tracker/home'
       app = RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)

       from flup.server.cgi import WSGIServer
       WSGIServer(app).run()

3. Modify or created the `.htaccess` file in the desired (sub-)domain directory to contain:

       RewriteEngine On
       RewriteBase /
       RewriteRule ^(.*)$      /cgi-bin/roundup_stub/$1 [L]

Now loading the (sub-)domain in a browser should load the tracker web interface. If you get a “500” error then enable the “cgitb” lines in the stub to get some debugging information.

### Stand-alone Web Server

This approach will give you faster response than cgi-bin. You may investigate using ProxyPass or similar configuration in apache to have your tracker accessed through the same URL as other systems.

The stand alone serveris used by the Docker image.

The stand-alone web server is started with the command `roundup-server`. It has several options - display them with `roundup-server -h`.

The tracker home configuration is similar to the cgi-bin - you may either edit the script to change the TRACKER_HOMES variable or you may supply the name=home values on the command-line after all the other options.

To make the server run in the background, use the “-d” option, specifying the name of a file to write the server process id (pid) to.

### Zope Product - ZRoundup

ZRoundup installs as a regular Zope product. Copy the `share/roundup/frontends/ZRoundup` (frontends/ZRoundup in the source tree) directory to your Products directory either in INSTANCE_HOME/Products or the Zope code tree lib/python/Products.

When you next (re)start up Zope, you will be able to add a ZRoundup object that interfaces to your new tracker.

### Apache HTTP Server with mod_wsgi

This is a work in progress thanks to Garth Jensen.

See the main web site for mod_wsgi which include directions for using mod_wsgi-express which is easier if you are not used to apache configuration. Also there is the main mod_wsgi for more detailed directions.

#### Background

These notes were developed on a Microsoft Azure VM running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The instructions below assume:

- python and roundup are already installed

- roundup is running in the system python instance (e.g. no virtual environment)

- the tracker `mytracker` is installed in the `trackers` folder of home directory of a user called `admin`. Thus, the absolute path to the tracker home directory is `/home/admin/trackers/mytracker`.

- the server has a static public IP address of 198.51.100.25

#### Install mod-wsgi

You can install/build it using the python package manager pip, or install using the OS package manager (apt).

##### Pip install of mod_wsgi

This is the tested method, and offers an easier path to get started, but it does mean that you will need to keep up to date with any security or other issues. If you use the packages supplied by your OS vendor, you may get more timely updates and notifications.

The mod_wsgi docs talk about two installation methods: (1) the so-called CMMI method or (2) with pip. The pip method also provides an admin script called `mod_wsgi-express` that can start up a standalone instance of Apache directly from the command line with an auto generated configuration. These instructions follow the pip method.

1. The mod_wsgi PyPi page lists prerequisites for various types of systems. For Ubuntu, they are apache2 and apache2-dev. To see installed apache packages, you can use `dpkg -l | grep apache`. If apache2 or apache2-dev are not installed, they install them with:

   - `sudo apt update`

   - `sudo apt install apache2 apache2-dev`

2. If `pip` is not already installed, install it with `sudo apt install python-pip`

   If you are using python 3, use `sudo apt-install python3-pip` and change references to pip in the directions to pip3.

3. `sudo pip install mod_wsgi`. In my case, I got warnings about the user not owning directories, but it said it completed “successfully.”

4. For testing, open port 8000 for TCP on the server. For an Azure VM, this is done with Azure Portal under `Networking` > `Add inbound port` rule.

5. Test with `mod_wsgi-express start-server`. This should serve up content on localhost port 8000. You can then direct a browser on the server itself to `http://localhost:8000/` or on another machine at the server’s domain name or ip address followed by colon then 8000 (e.g. `http://198.51.100.25:8000/`). If successful, you should see a Malt Whiskey image.

##### Package manager install of mod_wsgi

On debian (which should work for Ubuntu), install apache2 with libapache2-mod-wsgi:

> - `sudo apt update`

> - `sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi`

this is the less tested method for installing mod_wsgi and may not install mod_wsgi-express, which is used below. However there is an example apache config included as part of WSGI Variations that can be used to hand craft an apache config.

You should make sure that the version you install is 3.5 or newer due to security issues in older releases.

#### Configure web interface via wsgi_handler

1. In the tracker’s home directory create a `wsgi.py` file with the following content (substituting `/home/admin/trackers/mytracker` with the absolute path for your tracker’s home directory):

       from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher
       tracker_home = '/home/admin/trackers/mytracker'
       application = RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)

##### To run the tracker on Port 8000 as a foreground process

1. Change the `tracker.web` url in `config.ini` to port 8000 at the server domain name or ip address (e.g. `http://198.51.100.25:8000/`).

2. Open port 8000 for TCP on the server if you didn’t already do so.

3. `cd` to your tracker home directory, then run `mod_wsgi-express start-server wsgi.py`.

4. Test by directing a browser on another machine to the url you set `tracker.web` to in `config.ini`.

##### Run tracker as background daemon

To run the tracker on Port 80 or as a background process, you’ll need to configure a UNIX group with appropriate privileges as described in UNIX environment steps. These steps are summarized here:

1. To add a group named “mytrackergrp” run: `sudo groupadd mytrackergrp`.

2. Add the owner of the tracker home (admin in this example) run: `sudo usermod -a -G mytrackergrp admin`

3. Add user that runs Apache (the default on Ubuntu is www-data) run: `sudo usermod -a -G mytrackergrp www-data`

4. Add user mail service runs as (e.g. daemon) run: `sudo usermod -a -G mytrackergrp daemon`

5. Change group of the database in the tracker folder run: `sudo chgrp -R mytrackergrp ~/trackers/mytracker`.

6. Make sure group can write to the database, and any new files created in the database will be owned by the group run: `sudo chmod -R g+sw ~/trackers/mytracker/db`

##### To run mod_wsgi on PORT 80

1. Change the `tracker.web` url in `config.ini` to the server url with no port designator. E.g. `http://198.51.100.25`.

2. Open port 80 on the server for TCP traffic if it isn’t open already.

3. Stop the system instance of Apache to make sure it isn’t holding on to port 80 run: `sudo service apache2 stop`.

###### To run as a foreground process

1. From the tracker home directory, run `sudo mod_wsgi-express start-server wsgi.py --port 80 --user admin --group mytrackergrp`

###### To run as a background process

1. From the tracker home directory, bash `sudo mod_wsgi-express setup-server wsgi.py --port=80 --user admin --group mytrackergrp --server-root=/etc/mod_wsgi-express-80`

2. Then, run `sudo /etc/mod_wsgi-express-80/apachectl start`

3. To stop, run `sudo /etc/mod_wsgi-express-80/apachectl stop`

#### Apache HTTP Server with mod_python

As of roundup 2.0, mod_python support is deprecated. The apache.py file is still available, but may be limited to working for Python 2 only. Using mod_wsgi with Apache is the recommended way to deploy roundup under apache.

Mod_python is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server. Running Roundup this way is much faster than all above options and, like web server cgi-bin, allows you to use HTTPS protocol. The drawback is that this setup is more complicated.

The following instructions were tested on apache 2.0 with mod_python 3.1. If you are using older versions, your mileage may vary.

Mod_python uses OS threads. If your apache was built without threads (quite commonly), you must load the threading library to run mod_python. This is done by setting `LD_PRELOAD` to your threading library path in apache `envvars` file. Example for gentoo linux (`envvars` file is located in `/usr/lib/apache2/build/`):

    LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libpthread.so.0
    export LD_PRELOAD

Example for FreeBSD (`envvars` is in `/usr/local/sbin/`):

    LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libc_r.so
    export LD_PRELOAD

Next, you have to add Roundup trackers configuration to apache config. Roundup apache interface uses the following options specified with `PythonOption` directives:

TrackerHome:

  defines the tracker home directory - the directory that was specified when you did `roundup-admin init`. This option is required.

TrackerLanguage:

  defines web user interface language. mod_python applications do not receive OS environment variables in the same way as command-line programs, so the language cannot be selected by setting commonly used variables like `LANG` or `LC_ALL`. `TrackerLanguage` value has the same syntax as values of these environment variables. This option may be omitted.

TrackerDebug:

  run the tracker in debug mode. Setting this option to `yes` or `true` has the same effect as running `roundup-server -t debug`: the database schema and used html templates are rebuilt for each HTTP request. Values `no` or `false` mean that all html templates for the tracker are compiled and the database schema is checked once at startup. This is the default behaviour.

TrackerTiming:

  has nearly the same effect as environment variable `CGI_SHOW_TIMING` for standalone roundup server. The difference is that setting this option to `no` or `false` disables timings display. Value `comment` writes request handling times in html comment, and any other non-empty value makes timing report visible. By default, timing display is disabled.

In the following example we have two trackers set up in `/var/db/roundup/support` and `/var/db/roundup/devel` and accessed as `https://my.host/roundup/support/` and `https://my.host/roundup/devel/` respectively (provided Apache has been set up for SSL of course). Having them share same parent directory allows us to reduce the number of configuration directives. Support tracker has russian user interface. The other tracker (devel) has english user interface (default).

Static files from `html` directory are served by apache itself - this is quicker and generally more robust than doing that from python. Everything else is aliased to dummy (non-existing) `py` file, which is handled by mod_python and our roundup module.

Example mod_python configuration:

    #################################################
    # Roundup Issue tracker
    #################################################
    # enable Python optimizations (like 'python -O')
    PythonOptimize On
    # let apache handle static files from 'html' directories
    AliasMatch /roundup/(.+)/@@file/(.*) /var/db/roundup/$1/html/$2
    # everything else is handled by roundup web UI
    AliasMatch /roundup/([^/]+)/(?!@@file/)(.*) /var/db/roundup/$1/dummy.py/$2
    # roundup requires a slash after tracker name - add it if missing
    RedirectMatch permanent ^/roundup/([^/]+)$ /roundup/$1/
    # common settings for all roundup trackers
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/*>
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
      AllowOverride None
      Options None
      AddHandler python-program .py
      PythonHandler roundup.cgi.apache
      # uncomment the following line to see tracebacks in the browser
      # (note that *some* tracebacks will be displayed anyway)
      #PythonDebug On
    </Directory>
    # roundup tracker homes
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/support>
      PythonOption TrackerHome /var/db/roundup/support
      PythonOption TrackerLanguage ru
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/db/roundup/devel>
      PythonOption TrackerHome /var/db/roundup/devel
    </Directory>

Notice that the `/var/db/roundup` path shown above refers to the directory in which the tracker homes are stored. The actual value will thus depend on your system.

On Windows the corresponding lines will look similar to these:

    AliasMatch /roundup/(.+)/@@file/(.*) C:/DATA/roundup/$1/html/$2
    AliasMatch /roundup/([^/]+)/(?!@@file/)(.*) C:/DATA/roundup/$1/dummy.py/$2
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/*>
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/support>
    <Directory C:/DATA/roundup/devel>

In this example the directory hosting all of the tracker homes is `C:\DATA\roundup`. (Notice that you must use forward slashes in paths inside the httpd.conf file!)

The URL for accessing these trackers then become: `http://<roundupserver>/roundup/support/` and `http://<roundupserver>/roundup/devel/`

Note that in order to use https connections you must set up Apache for secure serving with SSL.

### Nginx HTTP Server

This configuration uses Gunicorn to run Roundup behind an Nginx proxy. The proxy also compresses the data using gzip. The url for the tracker in config.ini should be `https://tracker.example.org`.

    user nginx;
    worker_processes auto;
    worker_rlimit_nofile 10000;

    error_log /var/log/nginx/global-error.log;
    pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

    events {
        worker_connections 1024;
    }

    upstream tracker-tracker {
      # Gunicorn uses this socket for communication
      server unix:/var/run/roundup/tracker.sock fail_timeout=0;
    }

    http {
      include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
      default_type application/octet-stream;

      log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

      access_log /var/log/nginx/global-access.log main;
      sendfile on;
      tcp_nopush on;
      tcp_nodelay on;
      server_tokens off;

      gzip_http_version 1.1;
      gzip_proxied      any;
      gzip_min_length   500;
      # default comp_level is 1
      gzip_comp_level   6;
      gzip_disable      msie6
      gzip_types        text/plain text/css
                        text/xml application/xml
                        text/javascript application/javascript
                        text/json application/json;
      # upstream proxies need to match Accept-Encoding as
      # part of their cache check
      gzip_vary         on

      server {
        listen 80;
        server_name tracker.example.org;

        location /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
            alias /etc/lego/.well-known/acme-challenge/;
            try_files $uri =404;
        }

        location / {
          return 301 https://$http_host$request_uri;
        }
      }

      server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        server_name tracker.example.org;
        include mime.types;

        # By default use the snakeoil certificate...
        # change this if you are using a real SSL cert
        ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key;

        # These are useful for @@files where roundup is bypassed.
        # but can be set by roundup as well. See:
        #    https://wiki.roundup-tracker.org/AddingContentSecurityPolicy
        # which also sets other security headers.
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload";
        add_header X-Frame-Options "sameorigin";
        add_header X-Xss-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
        add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none";

        error_log /var/log/nginx/roundup-tracker.error.log;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/roundup-tracker.access.log

        root /home/roundup/trackers/tracker/;

        # have nginx return files from @@file directly rather than
        # going though roundup
        location /@@file/ {
          rewrite ^/@@file/(.*) /html/$1 break;
          # note that you can not use cache control (see customising doc)
          # in roundup to set the expires headers since we are
          # bypassing roundup. Consider using a map or different
          # location stanzas to vary the expiration times.
          expires 1h;
        }

        location / {
          # must define tracker-tracker in upstream stanza
          proxy_pass http://tracker-tracker/;
          proxy_set_header Host $host;
          proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
          proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }
      }
    }

### FastCGI (Cherokee, Hiawatha, lighttpd)

The Hiawatha and lighttpd web servers can run Roundup using FastCGI. Cherokee can run FastCGI but it also supports wsgi directly using a wsgi server like uWSGI, Gnuicorn etc.

To run Roundup using FastCGI, the flup package can be used under Python 2 and Python 3. We don’t have a detailed config for this, but the basic idea can be found in the wayback machine archive.

If you have deployed Roundup using FastCGI and flup we welcome example configuration files and instructions.

### WSGI Variations

#### Apache Alternate

This method from Thomas Arendsen Hein goes into a bit more detail and is designed to allow you to run multiple roundup trackers each under their own user.

The tracker instances are read-only to the tracker user and located under /srv/roundup/. The (writable) data files are stored in the home directory of the user running the tracker.

To install roundup, download and unpack a distribution tarball and run the following as user “roundup”:

    python setup.py build_doc
    python setup.py sdist --manifest-only
    python setup.py install --home="/home/roundup/install" --force

Create a user roundup-foo, group roundup-foo to run the tracker. Add the following apache config to /etc/apache2/sites-available/roundup-foo (under debian/Ubunutu, modify as needed):

    ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

    LogLevel notice

    DocumentRoot /var/www/

    <VirtualHost *:80>
            CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log vhost_combined

            # allow access to roundup docs
            Alias /doc/ /home/roundup/install/share/doc/roundup/html/

            # make apache serve static assets like css rather than
            # having roundup serve the files
            Alias /foo/@@file/ /srv/roundup/foo/html/

            # make /foo into /foo/
            RedirectMatch permanent ^/(foo)$ /$1/

            # start a wsgi daemon process running as user roundup-foo
            # in group roundup-foo. This also changes directory to
            # ~roundup-foo before it starts roundup.wsgi.
            WSGIDaemonProcess roundup-foo display-name=roundup-foo user=roundup-foo group=roundup-foo threads=25

            # make tracker available at /foo and tie it into the
            # wsgi script below.
            WSGIScriptAlias /foo /srv/roundup/foo/roundup.wsgi
            <Location /foo>
                    WSGIProcessGroup roundup-foo
            </Location>
    </VirtualHost>

The directory ~roundup-foo should have:

> - a `db` subdirectory where messages and files will be stored

> - a symbolic link called `instance` to /srv/roundup/foo which has been initialised using `roundup-admin`.

The Apache HTTP Server with mod_wsgi section above has a simple WSGI handler. This is an enhanced version to be put into `/srv/roundup/foo/roundup.wsgi`.

    import sys, os
    sys.stdout = sys.stderr

    enabled = True

    if enabled:
        # Add the directory with the roundup installation
        # subdirectory to the python path.
        sys.path.insert(0, '/home/roundup/install/lib/python')

        # obtain the WSGI request dispatcher
        from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher

        tracker_home = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), 'instance')
        application = RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)
    else:
        def application(environ, start_response):
            status = '503 Service Unavailable'
            output = 'service is down for maintenance'
            response_headers = [('Content-type', 'text/plain'),
                                ('Content-Length', str(len(output)))]
            start_response(status, response_headers)
            return [output]

This handler allows you to temporarily disable the tracker by setting “enabled = False”, apache will automatically detect the changed roundup.wsgi file and reload it.

One last change is needed. In the tracker’s config.ini change the db parameter in the [main] section to be /home/roundup-foo/db. This will put the files and messages in the db directory for the user.

#### Gunicorn Installation

To run with Gunicorn use `pip install gunicorn`. This configuration uses a front end web server like nginx, hiawatha, or apache configured as a reverse proxy. See your web server’s documentation on how to set it up as a reverse proxy.

The file wsgi.py (obtained from `frontends/wsgi.py`) should be in the current directory with the contents:

    # if roundup is not installed on the default PYTHONPATH
    # set it here with:
    import sys
    sys.path.append('/path/to/roundup/install/directory')

    # obtain the WSGI request dispatcher
    from roundup.cgi.wsgi_handler import RequestDispatcher
    tracker_home = '/path/to/tracker/install/directory'

    app =  RequestDispatcher(tracker_home)

Assuming the proxy forwards /tracker, run Gunicorn as:

    SCRIPT_NAME=/tracker gunicorn --bind 127.0.0.1:8917 --timeout=10 wsgi:app

this runs roundup at port 8917 on the loopback interface. You should configure the reverse proxy to talk to 127.0.0.1 at port 8917. If you want you can use a unix domain socket instead. Example: `--bind unix:///var/run/roundup/tracker.sock` would be used for the nginx configuration below.

If you are customizing a docker continer to use gunicorn, see https://pythonspeed.com/articles/gunicorn-in-docker/.

#### uWSGI Installation

For a basic roundup install using uWSGI behind a front end server, install uwsgi and the python3 (or python) plugin. Then run:

    uwsgi --http-socket 127.0.0.1:8917 \
        --plugin python3 --mount=/tracker=wsgi.py \
        --manage-script-name --callable app

using the same wsgi.py as was used for Gunicorn. If you get path not found errors, check the mount option. The /tracker entry must match the path used for the [tracker] web value in the tracker’s config.ini.

## Configure an Email Interface

If you don’t want to use the email component of Roundup, then remove the “`nosyreaction.py`” module from your tracker “`detectors`” directory.

See platform-specific notes for steps that may be needed on your system.

There are five supported ways to get emailed issues into the Roundup tracker. You should pick ONE of the following, all of which will continue my example setup from above:

### As a mail alias pipe process

Set up a mail alias called “issue_tracker” as (include the quote marks): “`|/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw <tracker_home>`” (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed).

In some installations (e.g. RedHat Linux and Fedora Core) you’ll need to set up smrsh so sendmail will accept the pipe command. In that case, symlink `/etc/smrsh/roundup-mailgw` to “`/usr/bin/roundup-mailgw`” and change the command to:

    |roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support

To test the mail gateway on unix systems, try:

    echo test |mail -s '[issue] test' support@YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE

Be careful that some mail systems (postfix for example) will impose limits on processes they spawn. In particular postfix can set a file size limit that is inherited by the mailgw. If the database files (anydbm, sqlite) exceed this limit, this can cause your Roundup database to become corrupted.

### As a custom router/transport using a pipe process (Exim4 specific)

The following configuration snippets for Exim 4 configuration implement a custom router & transport to accomplish mail delivery to roundup-mailgw. A configuration for Exim3 is similar but not included, since Exim3 is considered obsolete.

This configuration is similar to the previous section, in that it uses a pipe process. However, there are advantages to using a custom router/transport process, if you are using Exim.

- This avoids privilege escalation, since otherwise the pipe process will run as the mail user, typically mail. The transport can be configured to run as the user appropriate for the task at hand. In the transport described in this section, Exim4 runs as the unprivileged user `roundup`.

- Separate configuration is not required for each tracker instance. When a email arrives at the server, Exim passes it through the defined routers. The roundup_router looks for a match with one of the roundup directories, and if there is one it is passed to the roundup_transport, which uses the pipe process described in the previous section (As a mail alias pipe process).

The matching is done in the line:

    require_files = /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw:ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/schema.py

The following configuration has been tested on Debian Sarge with Exim4.

Note

The Debian Exim4 packages don’t allow pipes in alias files by default, so the method described in the section As a mail alias pipe process will not work with the default configuration. However, the method described in this section does. See the discussion in `/usr/share/doc/exim4-config/README.system_aliases` on any Debian system with Exim4 installed.

For more Debian-specific information, see suggested addition to README.Debian in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343283, which will hopefully be merged into the Debian package eventually.

This config makes a few assumptions:

- That the mail address corresponding to the tracker instance has the same name as the directory of the tracker instance, i.e. the mail interface address corresponding to a Roundup instance called `/var/lib/roundup/trackers/mytracker` is `mytracker@your.host`.

- That (at least) all the db subdirectories of all the tracker instances (ie. `/var/lib/roundup/trackers/*/db`) are owned by the same user, in this case, ‘roundup’.

- That if the `schema.py` file exists, then the tracker is ready for use. Another option is to use the `config.ini` file (this changed in 0.8 from `config.py`).

Macros for Roundup router/transport. Should be placed in the macros section of the Exim4 config:

    # Home dir for your Roundup installation
    ROUNDUP_HOME=/var/lib/roundup/trackers

    # User and group for Roundup.
    ROUNDUP_USER=roundup
    ROUNDUP_GROUP=roundup

Custom router for Roundup. This will (probably) work if placed at the beginning of the router section of the Exim4 config:

    roundup_router:
        driver = accept
        # The config file config.ini seems like a more natural choice, but the
        # file config.py was replaced by config.ini in 0.8, and schema.py needs
        # to be present too.
        require_files = /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw:ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/schema.py
        transport = roundup_transport

Custom transport for Roundup. This will (probably) work if placed at the beginning of the router section of the Exim4 config:

    roundup_transport:
        driver = pipe
        command = /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw ROUNDUP_HOME/$local_part/
        current_directory = ROUNDUP_HOME
        home_directory = ROUNDUP_HOME
        user = ROUNDUP_USER
        group = ROUNDUP_GROUP

### As a regular job using a mailbox source

Set `roundup-mailgw` up to run every 10 minutes or so. For example (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support mailbox <mail_spool_file>

Where the `mail_spool_file` argument is the location of the roundup submission user’s mail spool. On most systems, the spool for a user “issue_tracker” will be “`/var/mail/issue_tracker`”.

### As a regular job using a POP source

To retrieve from a POP mailbox, use a cron entry similar to the mailbox one (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support pop <pop_spec>

where pop_spec is “`username:password@server`” that specifies the roundup submission user’s POP account name, password and server.

apop (authenticated) and pops (pop over ssl) methods are also supported. See the section on mailgw in the admin guide.

On windows, you would set up the command using the windows scheduler.

### As a regular job using an IMAP source

To retrieve from an IMAP mailbox, use a cron entry similar to the POP one (substitute `/usr/bin` for wherever roundup-mailgw is installed):

    0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support imap <imap_spec>

where imap_spec is “`username:password@server`” that specifies the roundup submission user’s IMAP account name, password and server. You may optionally include a mailbox to use other than the default `INBOX` with:

    imap username:password@server mailbox

If you have a secure (ie. HTTPS) IMAP server then you may use `imaps` in place of `imap` in the command to use a securnae connection. To use imap with CRAM or OAUTH, see the section on mailgw in the admin guide .

As with the POP job, on windows, you would set up the command using the windows scheduler.

## UNIX Environment Steps

Each tracker ideally should have its own UNIX group, so create a UNIX group (edit `/etc/group` or your appropriate NIS map if you’re using NIS). To continue with my examples so far, I would create the UNIX group ‘support’, although the name of the UNIX group does not have to be the same as the tracker name. To this ‘support’ group I then add all of the UNIX usernames who will be working with this Roundup tracker. In addition to ‘real’ users, the Roundup email gateway will need to have permissions to this area as well, so add the user your mail service runs as to the group (typically “mail” or “daemon”). The UNIX group might then look like:

    support:*:1002:jblaine,samh,geezer,mail

If you intend to use the web interface (as most people do), you should also add the username your web server runs as to the group. My group now looks like this:

    support:*:1002:jblaine,samh,geezer,mail,apache

The tracker “db” directory should be chmod’ed g+sw so that the group can write to the database, and any new files created in the database will be owned by the group.

If you’re using the mysql or postgresql backend then you’ll need to ensure that the tracker user has appropriate permissions to create/modify the database. If you’re using roundup.cgi, the apache user needs permissions to modify the database. Alternatively, explicitly specify a database login in `rdbms` -> `user` and `password` in `config.ini`.

An alternative to the above is to create a new user who has the sole responsibility of running roundup. This user:

1. runs the CGI interface daemon

2. runs regular polls for email

3. runs regular checks (using cron) to ensure the daemon is up

4. optionally has no login password so that nobody but the “root” user may actually login and play with the roundup setup.

If you’re using a Linux system (e.g. Fedora Core) with SELinux enabled, you will need to ensure that the db directory has a context that permits the web server to modify and create files. If you’re using the mysql or postgresql backend you may also need to update your policy to allow the web server to access the database socket.

## Public Tracker Considerations

If you run a public tracker, you will eventually have to think about dealing with spam entered through both the web and mail interfaces.

See the section on Preventing SPAM in the customisation documentation that has a simple detector that will block lot of spam attempts.

Also you can consider adding reCaptcha to reduce bot logins as described on the wiki. The wiki also documents how to add multi-factor (MFA)/one time keys/password using TOTP/HOTP. If you have a single sign on system see: the wiki page on using Shibboleth or LDAP with Roundup. More customisation can be found under the Security headings of the CustomisationExamples wiki page and AdminstrationExample pages on the wiki.

## Docker Support

If you don’t want to install Roundup on a host, you can create a Docker container or use the pre-built container on hub.docker.com. Docker hub images support multiple tags. Docker images run Roundup using the stand-alone web server method. The image only supports http. We suggest putting an https terminating proxy in front of it.

This is a work in progress and patches to improve it are welcome. You can find the docker config files under the scripts/Docker directory of the source tree.

The Roundup container uses the 64 bit Alpine Python distribution. It includes database drivers for anydbm, SQLite, MySQL and Postgresql (Postgresql is untested). It also includes additional libraries that are listed in scripts/Docker/requirements.txt (including redis client support).

Email support is a work in progress. Outgoing email to an external SMTP server should work. Receiving email should work by using a scheduled (cron) job to access email:

- As a regular job using a mailbox source

- As a regular job using a POP source

- As a regular job using an IMAP source

However running cron in a container is problematic (running busybox crond as root vs. non-root, requiring setgrp privs etc).

Using the host’s crontab with a command like:

    docker exec roundup-tracker roundup-mailgw tracker \
          mailbox /var/spool/mail/roundup

might be a solution if you can mount a mail spool directory or use pop/imap. Patches for implementing better email support are welcome.

If you want to use a MySQL backend, see Docker-compose Deployment to deploy a Roundup container and a MySQL container backend for use with Roundup.

We recommend you follow the OSWAP Docker Security practices for your production Roundup instance.

### Building a Docker Container

You can build a docker container in one of 4 modes defined by the `source` build-arg.

`--build-arg="source=local"`

  the default if no source is defined. Build using the version in the source tree by running `setup.py install`.

`--build-arg="source=pypi"`

  build the newest production release version deployed to pypi. If you want to build using a pre-release, you can append pip version specifiers to pypi without embedding any spaces. For example:

      # install 2.2.0 if available or 2.2.0b1 or 2.2.0b2 etc.
      --build-arg="source=pypi~=2.2.0b1"

      # install only a 2.2.0 beta
      --build-arg="source=pypi~=2.2.0b1,!=2.2.0"

  Note that versions of Roundup before 2.2 may not run correctly in a Docker container.

`--build-arg="source=pip_local"`

  Build using the version in the source tree by running `pip install`. This places some files (e.g. man pages, templates) in different directories from the local install but is preferred by some Python users.

`--build-arg="source=pip_sdist"`

  Disabled - hopefully it will be available in the future. This is meant for maintainer/developer use. It installs using pip from a source distribution (sdist) tarball built by following the RELEASE.txt. It is meant for testing releases or building a docker image that installs a new pending source distribution release. Normal users/admins should not use it. Use `local` or `pip_local` instead.

Build a docker container using the code in the current directory, with this build command from the top of the source tree:

    docker build -t roundup-app -f scripts/Docker/Dockerfile .

Build a container using the newest production (non pre-release) Roundup release on PyPI, by running:

    docker build -t roundup-app --build-arg="source=pypi" \
         -f scripts/Docker/Dockerfile .

Change the `build-arg` for building in other modes.

The Dockerfile declares a single volume mounted at `/usr/src/app/tracker` inside the container. You will mount your tracker home directory at this location. The `/usr/src/app` path can be changed by adding:

    --build-arg="appdir=/new/path"

You can also add additional modules to the docker container by using:

    --build-arg="pip_mod=requests setproctitle"

Because of deficiencies in the docker program (see: https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/29110#issuecomment-1100676306), there is no way to determine the version of Python inside the container and make that available as part of the build process. If your build fails because the `pythonversion does not match`, add the suggested `--build-arg` to the `docker build` command line.

By default the container runs Roundup using UID 1000. By setting `--build-arg="roundup_uid=2000"` you can change the UID and GID.

### Configuring Roundup in the Container

Caution

Docker modifies iptables firewall rules. This allows access to the container from your local network. See the official documentation for details. UFW rules are known to be be ignored (see: https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/4737). Use `-p 127.0.0.1:ext_port:container_port` in your docker run commands or implement suggestions like: https://github.com/chaifeng/ufw-docker.

Once the docker image is created using one of the build commands above, run an interactive session with:

    docker run -it --rm -p 127.0.0.1:9017:8080 \
       -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker roundup-app:latest

The `-v` option maps a directory from the host into the docker container. Note that uid 1000 is used by roundup by default. The uid of the directory (and all files under it) must match the uid. You can set the UID at image build time. This example assumes your tracker configs are in the tracker subdirectory. Replace `$PWD/tracker` with the full path name to the directory where the tracker home(s) are to be stored.

The `-p` option maps an external port (9017) to proxy the roundup server running at port 8080 to the outside. Note if you remove `127.0.0.1:` from the -p argument, any host on the network will be able to access the tracker at port 9017.

If the tracker directory is empty, the docker container will prompt you to install a tracker template (step 3) and prompt you for the database type.

Then you need to configure the tracker by editing `template/config.ini`. Make sure that the tracker web setting ends in `/issues/` See Configuring your first tracker and the top of `config.ini` for other settings.

Once you have configured the tracker, run another interactive session to initialise the tracker (step 4) with:

    docker run -it --rm -p 127.0.0.1:9017:8080 \
         -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker roundup-app:latest

this will initialise the database and attempt to start the server. If that is successful, use control-c to exit the server.

Now start the server non-interactively (note no -it option) with:

    docker run -p 9017:8080 -d \
       -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker roundup-app:latest

Your tracker will be available at: `http://yourhost:9017/issues/`.

If you need to access your container while the server is running you can use:

    docker exec -it c0d5 sh

where `c0d5` is the id prefix for the running container obtained from `docker container ls`.

You should place a web server in front of Roundup (in reverse proxy mode) for production use. See the proxy_pass example below:

> - Nginx HTTP Server

You can expose the port directly to your intranet by removing `127.0.0.1` from the `-p` option. See Stand-alone Web Server for more details.

### Running Your Container

Note

The examples below use the locally built docker container specification: `roundup-app`. You can replace it with the docker hub specification `rounduptracker/roundup:latest` (provided latest is newer than 2.3.0).

As of version 2.3.0 the Docker container has multiple entry points.

#### Guided install

By default, running:

    docker run -it --rm -p 127.0.0.1:9017:8080 \
       -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker roundup-app:latest

3 times will install, initialize and serve a Roundup tracker at `..../issues/` using `$PWD/tracker` as the tracker home. This is the “guided install” method described in Configuring Roundup in the Container.

#### Arguments for roundup-server

Once you have initialized your tracker, any arguments placed at the end of the `docker run` command are passed to the `roundup-server`. These arguments replace the default arguments of `issues=tracker`.

#### Brief Help

You can get help running the docker image:

    docker run -it \
        -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest help

#### Invoking a Shell

You can invoke a shell inside the container without exec’ing into the container using:

    docker run -it \
        -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest shell

Then you can manually configure your tracker using `roundup-admin -i tracker` using the directions for Configuring your first tracker. This is also how you would access tools like `roundup-gettext` which do not have direct entry points like `admin` for `roundup-admin` and `demo` for `roundup-demo`.

#### Invoke roundup-admin

You can run `roundup-admin` directly by using:

    docker run -it \
        -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest admin -i tracker/tracker1

to start `roundup-admin` using the directory `$PWD/tracker/tracker1`. This is one way to create multiple trackers in subdirectories. It is no different from starting a shell and invoking `roundup-admin` manually.

One possibly useful command is:

    docker run -it \
        -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest admin templates

to list description of all the installed templates.

#### Invoke roundup-demo

Lastly you can:

    docker run -it -p 127.0.0.1:8917:8080 \
        -v $PWD/tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest demo anydbm responsive

to create a directory `$PWD/tracker/demo` and autoconfigure a server using the anydbm backend based on the responsive tracker template. See demo mode using docker for steps to change the server port.

#### Debugging

If you add `-e SHELL_DEBUG=1` to the docker command, it sets the `SHELL_DEBUG` environment variable which will enable debugging output from the startup script.

### Running Multiple Trackers

If you want to run multiple trackers, create a subdirectory for each tracker home under the volume mount point (`$PWD/tracker`). Then invoke `docker run` passing the roundup-server tracker specifications like:

    docker run --rm -p 9017:8080 \
        -v /.../issue.tracker:/usr/src/app/tracker \
        roundup-app:latest tracker1=tracker/tracker1_home \
          tracker2=tracker/tracker2_home

This will set up two trackers that can be reached at `http://yourhost:9017/tracker1/` and `http://yourhost:9017/tracker2/`. The arguments after `roundup-app:latest` are arguments including tracker paths that are passed to `roundup-server`.

### Docker-compose Deployment

If you want to run using the mysql backend, you can use docker-compose with `scripts/Docker/docker-compose.yml`. This will run Roundup and MySQL in containers. Directions for building using docker-compose are at the top of the yml file.

### Tags for Dockerhub Docker Images

The docker images available from https://hub.docker.com/r/rounduptracker/roundup are tagged with: version-build, version, and `latest` tags. Only production releases (not pre-releases) are tagged this way. For example, the tags when 2.3.0 is released will be:

`rounduptracker/roundup:latest`

  is a moving tag that tracks the latest build with the newest production version of Roundup using the current newest Alpine release with the versions of Python packages at the time of the build.

`rounduptracker/roundup:2.3.0`

  is a moving tag that tracks the latest build of version 2.3.0 of Roundup. The Roundup software in this build will match the 2.3.0 version released on PyPi, but the underlying Alpine image or versions of the supporting Python libraries (redis, xapian, psycopg2, …) will change.

`rounduptracker/roundup:2.3.0-1`

  is a static tag and marks the first build of the version 2.3.0 docker image. When a new release of the image is done, it will get the tag `2.3.0-2` etc. This is an alternative to pulling using a sha256 sum. However it is possible to overwrite this image/tag. So it does not provide the same security guarantees that using a sha256 sum does.

In addition to the release tags, there may be one or more development tags available. All tags will include devel. For example: `rounduptracker/roundup:2.3.0b1-devel`, `rounduptracker/roundup:devel`

You should not assume that any `devel` tag is static. They are mainly for use by Roundup developers/maintainers/testers for testing. There may be alternate tags ending with `-devel` to indicate builds from specific Mercurial versions/hashes. Also the tag may be overwritten to change the underlying Python libraries or images. Unless you like the bleeding edge, these should not be used in production.

## Maintenance

Read the Tasks section of the administration guide for information about how to perform common maintenance tasks on Roundup.

## Upgrading

Read the separate upgrading document, which describes the steps needed to upgrade existing tracker trackers for each version of Roundup that is released.

## Further Reading

If you intend to use Roundup with anything other than the default templates, if you would like to hack on Roundup, or if you would like implementation details, you should read Customising Roundup and the Roundup reference.

## Running Multiple Trackers

Things to think about before you jump off the deep end and install multiple trackers, which involve additional URLs, user databases, email addresses, databases to back up, etc.

1. Do you want a tracker per product you sell/support? You can just add a new property to your issues called Product, and filter by that. See the customisation example adding a new field to the classic schema.

2. Do you want to track internal software development issues and customer support issues separately? You can just set up an additional “issue” class called “cust_issues” in the same tracker, mimicing the normal “issue” class, but with different properties. See the customisation example tracking different types of issues.

## Platform-Specific Notes

### Windows

#### Configure session database

By default the session and one time key (OTK) databases default to using anydbm as the session store. Because GNU dbm and Ndbm are available on Linux, this is a reasonable default. However Windows doesn’t have compiled libraries for these databases. So it defaults to “dumb” dbm which is written in Python and is slow. So we recommend using some other backend for your session database. SQLite or Redis can be used if you don’t want to run a separate supported RDBMS database server.

#### Windows command-line tools

To make the command-line tools accessible in Windows, you need to update the “Path” environment variable in the Registry via a dialog box.

On Windows 2000 and later:

1. Press the “Start” button.

2. Choose “Settings”

3. Choose “Control Panel”

4. Choose “System”

5. Choose “Advanced”

6. Choose “Environmental Variables”

7. Add: “<dir>Scripts” to the “Path” environmental variable.

Where <dir> in 7) is the root directory (e.g., `C:\Python27\Scripts`) of your Python installation.

I understand that in XP, 2) above is not needed as “Control Panel” is directly accessible from “Start”.

I do not believe this is possible to do in previous versions of Windows.

Use pip to install pyreadline3 for roundup-admin line editing

If you install pyreadline3 using pip, roundup-admin will support command line editing and history.

This will remove the dreaded:

    Note: command history and editing not available

warning when starting roundup-admin.

#### Windows Server

To have the Roundup web server start up when your machine boots up, there are two different methods, the scheduler and installing the service.

##### 1. Using the Windows scheduler

Set up the following in Scheduled Tasks (note, the following is for a cygwin setup):

Run

  `c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -c "roundup-server TheProject=/opt/roundup/trackers/support"`

Start In

  `C:\cygwin\opt\roundup\bin`

Schedule

  At System Startup

To have the Roundup mail gateway run periodically to poll a POP email address, set up the following in Scheduled Tasks:

Run

  `c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -c "roundup-mailgw /opt/roundup/trackers/support pop roundup:roundup@mail-server"`

Start In

  `C:\cygwin\opt\roundup\bin`

Schedule

  Every 10 minutes from 5:00AM for 24 hours every day

  Stop the task if it runs for 8 minutes

##### 2. Installing the roundup server as a Windows service

This is more Windows oriented and will make the Roundup server run as soon as the PC starts up without any need for a login or such. It will also be available in the normal Windows Administrative Tools.

For this you need first to create a service ini file containing the relevant settings.

1. It is created if you execute the following command from within the scripts directory (notice the use of backslashes):

       roundup-server -S -C <trackersdir>\server.ini -n <servername> -p 8080 -l <trackersdir>\trackerlog.log software=<trackersdir>\Software

   where the item `<trackersdir>` is replaced with the physical directory that hosts all of your trackers. The `<servername>` item is the name of your roundup server PC, such as w2003srv or similar.

2. Next open the now created file `C:\DATA\roundup\server.ini` file (if your `<trackersdir>` is `C:\DATA\roundup`). Check the entries for correctness, especially this one:

       [trackers]
       software = C:\DATA\Roundup\Software

   (this is an example where the tracker is named software and its home is `C:\DATA\Roundup\Software`)

3. Next give the commands that actually installs and starts the service:

       roundup-server -C C:\DATA\Roundup\server.ini -c install
       roundup-server -c start

4. Finally open the AdministrativeTools/Services applet and locate the Roundup service entry. Open its properties and change it to start automatically instead of manually.

If you are using Apache as the webserver you might want to use it with mod_python instead to serve out Roundup. In that case see the mod_python instructions above for details.

### Linux

Make sure you read the instructions under UNIX environment steps.

#### Sendmail smrsh

If you use Sendmail’s `smrsh` mechanism, you will need to tell smrsh that roundup-mailgw is a valid/trusted mail handler before it will work.

This is usually done via the following 2 steps:

1. make a symlink in `/etc/smrsh` called `roundup-mailgw` which points to the full path of your actual `roundup-mailgw` script.

2. change your alias to `"|roundup-mailgw <tracker_home>"`

### Solaris

You’ll need to build Python.

Make sure you read the instructions under UNIX environment steps.

## Problems? Testing your Python…

Note

The `run_tests.py` script is not packaged in Roundup’s source distribution anymore. You should install:

- pytest,

- requests, and

- mock

using your distributions package manger or using pip/pip2/pip3 to install pytest etc. for your Python version. See the administration guide for details.

Remember to have a database user ‘rounduptest’ prepared (with password ‘rounduptest’). This user must have at least the rights to create and drop databases. Documentation: details on adding MySQL users, for PostgreSQL you want to call the `createuser` command with the `-d` option to allow database creation.

This can only be done if you install the source distribution (steps 1-3) or from a mercurial checkout. It will not work if you used pip install as the test suite is not installed. Once you’ve unpacked roundup’s source, if you have pytest installed, run `python -m pytest test` in the Roundup source directory and make sure there are no errors. If there are errors, please let us know!

Note that redis tests uses database 15 of the redis server running on localhost.The tests verify that the database is empty before the redis tests start. If you use a password on your redis database it can be specified in the `pytest_redis_pw` environment variable when you run the test.

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