How To Implement a Help Desk System using osTicket on CentOS/RHEL 8

Prerequisites

You will need one CentOS/RHEL 8 (physical or virtual) machine with root user privileges.

Disabling Selinux

It is entirely my recommendation that you should disable selinux before proceeding to install software and packages. However, you should enable it later when you are done with your installation and configuration:

sudo vi /etc/selinux/config

and change SELINUX=enforcing parameter to SELINUX=disabled

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#     enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#     permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#     disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these three values:
#     targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
#     minimum - Modification of targeted policy. Only selected processes are pro
tected.
#     mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Save and close file when your finished.

You must reboot your server now to make changes into effect:

reboot

Once reboot completed, proceed with the following steps.

Adding EPEL Repository

It is always recommended to add extra packages for enterprise Linux repository before proceeding to install any other software or packages.

dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
ARCH=$( /bin/arch )
dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools

If you are on RHEL 8 server, execute the following command as well:

subscription-manager repos --enable "codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-${ARCH}-rpms"
dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools

Installing PHP

You will need to install PHP and its required extensions commonly used with osTicket.

dnf -y install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm
dnf -y install php php-fpm php-mysqlnd php-gd php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc php-mbstring php-snmp php-apcu php-intl php-opcache php-json php72-php-imap zip unzip tar wget

Start the PHP service and make it persistent even when system reboots by typing the following commands:

systemctl start php-fpm
systemctl enable php-fpm

Installing Apache

dnf -y install httpd httpd-devel openssl mod_ssl

systemctl start httpd
systemctl enable httpd

Installing MySQL

dnf -y install mysql-server

systemctl start mysqld
systemctl enable mysqld

Securing MySQL

mysql_secure_installation

mysql_secure_installation

Now follow on screen instruction like below to complete it:

Securing the MySQL server deployment.

Connecting to MySQL using a blank password.

VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component?

Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: y

There are three levels of password validation policy:

LOW    Length >= 8
MEDIUM Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, and special characters
STRONG Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, special characters and dictionary                  file

Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG: 0
Please set the password for root here.

New password:
Re-enter new password:

Estimated strength of the password: 100
Do you wish to continue with the password provided?(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.

Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
Success.

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
Success.

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.

Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
 - Dropping test database...
Success.

 - Removing privileges on test database...
Success.

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.

Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
Success.

All done!

Downloading osTicket

wget https://github.com/osTicket/osTicket/releases/download/v1.14.1/osTicket-v1.14.1.zip

When download finished, extract it into the following directory and set the appropriate permission:

mkdir /var/www/osTicket
unzip -d /var/www/osTicket/ osTicket-*.zip
cp /var/www/osTicket/upload/include/ost-sampleconfig.php /var/www/osTicket/upload/include/ost-config.php
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/osTicket
chmod 0666 /var/www/osTicket/upload/include/ost-config.php

Creating Database

At this point, you need to create a database and a user for osticket:

mysql -u root -p

create database osticket;
create user 'osticket'@'localhost' identified by 'osticket';
grant all privileges on osticket.* to 'osticket'@'localhost';
flush privileges;
exit

Configuring Apache

Now, you need to make osticket web directory available to Apache. Replace highlighted parameters to reflect yours.

vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/osticket.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin webmaster@techsupportpk.com
DocumentRoot "/var/www/osTicket/upload"
ServerName labserver.techsupportpk.com

ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/error_log"
CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/access_log" combined

<Directory "/var/www/osTicket/upload">
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride All
Require all granted

</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save and close file when you are finished.

Now type the following command to backup Apache default index page file as we don't need it

mv /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/bkpwelcome

Now restart Apache service to take changes into effect:

systemctl restart httpd

Updating Firewall Rules

firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=80/tcp
firewall-cmd --reload

Open up your favorite web browser and navigate to http://your_server_name or http://your_server_ip and it will take you to osTicket web installer page like below:


If you encounter (PHP IMAP Extension — Required for mail fetching) is missing as you can see in the above screenshot then you will need to perform the following additional step to make it work:

find / -name imap.so

The above command will return you an absolute path to imap.so which you need to copy and make a symbolic links like below:

ln -s /opt/remi/php72/root/usr/lib64/php/modules/imap.so /usr/lib64/php/modules/imap.so
ln -s /opt/remi/php72/root/usr/lib64/php/modules/imap.so /usr/lib64/php/modules/imap.so.so

Now edit /etc/php.ini and add the extension = imap.so directive anywhere in the file:

vi /etc/php.ini

extension = imap.so

Save and close file when you are finished.

Now restart php-fpm service to take changes into effect:

systemctl restart php-fpm

Go back to your browser, refresh the osticket installer page and you will see (PHP IMAP Extension — Required for mail fetching) is now turn green.

Make sure all the prerequisites are green like below before Continue


Fill out the information below with yours, make sure you provide correct credentials in database field as you have created in earlier step. Also, do not change MySQL Table Prefix and keep it default. When done, click Install Now button.


Please wait while, the installer will take few minutes to complete:


You will see the following page contains information to access osTicket administrative control panel and users/customer support link:

Write it down to remember it


Now go back to command line terminal and change permission of ost-config.php to remove write access as shown below:

chmod 0644 /var/www/osTicket/upload/include/ost-config.php

Also remove setup directory as we do not need it anymore:

rm -rf /var/www/osTicket/upload/setup

Now navigate back to http://your_server_name/scp or http://your_server_ip/scp and you will see the following login page. Login with the username and password you created in earlier web installer step.

In our case, the username is helpdesk and password also helpdesk



Navigate to http://your_server_name or http://your_server_ip and you will see the following support center page. From here users and customers can create support ticket, check status of already created tickets etc.

Wrapping up

Your osTicket installation has been completed successfully. Your next step is to fully configure your new support ticket system for use.