How to Install OTOBO on OpenBSD

OTobo is an open-source ticketing software for business and customer support. Installing it on OpenBSD can be tricky, but this tutorial will help you through the process.

Prerequisites

  • A fresh install of OpenBSD
  • A user account with sudo privileges
  • Internet connection

Install Required Packages

Before we can begin installing OTOBO, we need to install some required packages.

Open a terminal and run the following command to install perl and associated packages:

sudo pkg_add perl p5-Apache-Session p5-Template-Toolkit \
    p5-Apache-DBI p5-DBD-mysql

Next, we need to install mysql which is the database backend for OTOBO. Run the following command to install it:

sudo pkg_add mysql-server

Configure MySQL

After installing MySQL, we need to configure it.

Open a terminal and run the following commands to start the MySQL daemon and create a database for OTOBO:

sudo /etc/rc.d/mysqld start
sudo mysql -u root -e "CREATE DATABASE otobo;"

By default, MySQL is not configured with a root password, so we need to set one. Run the following command to set a root password:

sudo mysqladmin -u root password 'yourpassword'

Make sure to replace 'yourpassword' with a strong password of your choice.

Install OTOBO

First, we need to download the OTOBO source code. Open a terminal and run the following commands to download and extract the latest version of OTOBO:

cd ~
wget https://download.otobo.de/otobo-10.0.4.tar.gz
tar -xzf otobo-10.0.4.tar.gz

Next, we need to configure OTOBO to use the MySQL database we created earlier. Run the following command to edit the OTOBO configuration file:

cd otobo-10.0.4
sudo cp Kernel/Config.pm.dist Kernel/Config.pm
sudo nano Kernel/Config.pm

Find the following lines in the configuration file:

# Database backend.
# At the moment only MySQL is supported.
# $Self->{DatabaseBackend} = 'PostgreSQL'; # e. g. 'PostgreSQL' or 'DB2'
$Self->{DatabaseBackend} = 'mysql';

Uncomment the second line and change the value to 'mysql':

# Database backend.
# At the moment only MySQL is supported.
# $Self->{DatabaseBackend} = 'PostgreSQL'; # e. g. 'PostgreSQL' or 'DB2'
$Self->{DatabaseBackend} = 'mysql';

Next, find the following lines:

# Database user (create this user manually!)
$Self->{DatabaseUser} = 'otobo';
# Database password.
$Self->{DatabasePw} = 'APasswordGoesHere';

Uncomment the first line and change the value to 'root':

# Database user (create this user manually!)
$Self->{DatabaseUser} = 'root';
# Database password.
$Self->{DatabasePw} = 'yourpassword';

Make sure to replace 'yourpassword' with the root password you set for MySQL earlier.

Save and close the file.

Finally, run the following command to install OTOBO:

sudo sh scripts/install.sh

This command will take a while to complete and will perform a number of checks and configurations.

Start OTOBO

After the installation completes, we can start OTOBO.

Run the following command to start the OTOBO daemon:

sudo su - otobo -c '/opt/otobo/bin/otobo.Console.pl -f'

This command will start the OTOBO daemon in the foreground. You will see log messages scrolling by in your terminal. If everything is working correctly, you should see a message like this:

(otobo.Console.pl 97) [Notice] OTOBO Daemon started (PID: 12345)

Access OTOBO

Finally, we can access OTOBO from a web browser.

Open a web browser and navigate to http://<your-server-ip>/otobo. You should see the OTOBO login screen.

Enter the username root@localhost and the root password you set for MySQL earlier to log in.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed OTOBO on OpenBSD.