Installing OTRS 5 under CentOS 7 with ISPConfig 3.1

Because I must work with best IT practices, I decide to install my ticketing and support system. I have known OTRS since 2012. As they claim on their website, OTRS with ITMS satisfies ITIL processes, one of them has to be with Incident Management. OTRS, if installed with the correct add-on, can give support for a DBMS, in other words, it can keep track of your inventory and link dependencies and issues to them. OTRS can be linked to a Nagios system as well.

So, if you invest the enough time, you can have a pretty good ticketing system.

For starters, I will talk here how I installed. Since I am an ISPConfig3 fan, there are some particularities in the installation process.

1. Edit your MySQL/MariaDB settings and add the following parameters:
   max_allowed_packet = 20M
   innodb_log_file_size = 256MB In case of any error, you can run the following query:
   SET GLOBAL innodb_fast_shutdown = 1; and then delete all the logs (ib_logfile*). Then apply the settings again.
2. Install all the dependencies with the command: yum install "perl(Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt)" "perl(Crypt::SSLeay)" "perl(DBD::Pg)" "perl(Encode::HanExtra)" "perl(JSON::XS)" "perl(ModPerl::Util)" "perl(Template)" "perl(Template::Stash::XS)" "perl(Text::CSV_XS)" "perl(Time::Piece)" "perl(XML::LibXML)" "perl(XML::LibXSLT)" "perl(XML::Parser)" "perl(YAML::XS)"
3. Restart Apache
4. Download the OTRS tarball and unzip it in the directory where you are going to publish. Call that directory otrs/.
5. In the ISPConfig console, create a database and a username. Take not of them, you will need them.
6. In the ISPConfig concole, edit the Apache directives and put something like this:
   ScriptAlias /otrs/ "/var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs/bin/cgi-bin/"
   Alias /otrs-web/ "/var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs/var/httpd/htdocs/"
   
   <Directory "/var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs/">
   AllowOverride None
   Options +ExecCGI -Includes
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
   </Directory>
   
   AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
   AddHandler cgi-script .pl
   PerlOptions +Parent
   PerlSwitches -I/var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs -I/var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs/Kernel/cpan-lib/
7. Copy the otrs/Kernel/Config.pm.dist to otrs/Kernel/Config.pm. Edit it and add or change the following parameters: DatabaseHost, Database, DatabaseUser, DatabasePw and Home (in my case it is /var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs)
8. Finish your installation accessing to your WEB browser to /otrs/installer.pl
9. In the ISPConfig console, add the following crontab:
   */5 * * * * /var/www/clients/client0/web3/web/otrs/bin/otrs.Daemon.pl start

Good Luck!