Configuring OpenProject services (revision 1.2)

Introduction

This page describes how Alexis Huxley installed OpenProject Community Edition. This is based on the official upgrade procedure, which, in turn, references large parts of the official installation procedure.

Procedure

1. To allow concurrent operation of an existing production OpenProject server and the installation of a replacement OpenProject server, in the appropriate front-end webserver’s configuration, replace the simple proxying code:

   ProxyPass        / <production-server-url-including-trailing-slash>
   ProxyPassReverse / <production-server-url-including-trailing-slash>

   with something like:

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !=<webmaster-client-ip>
   RewriteRule       "^/(.*)" "<production-server-url-including-trailing-slash>$1" [P]
   ProxyPassReverse  /         <production-server-url-including-trailing-slash>
   
   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} =<webmaster-client-ip>
   RewriteRule      "^/(.*)" "<replacement-server-url-including-trailing-slash>$1" [P]
   ProxyPassReverse /         <replacement-server-url-including-trailing-slash>

2. Do the basic installation:

   apt-get -y install apt-transport-https ca-certificates wget gpg
   wget -qO- https://dl.packager.io/srv/opf/openproject/key | gpg --dearmor > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/packager-io.gpg
   wget -qO /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openproject.list https://dl.packager.io/srv/opf/openproject/stable/14/installer/debian/12.repo
   apt-get update
   apt-get -y install openproject
   mkdir /var/db/openproject/backup
   chown openproject:openproject /var/db/openproject/backup
   

3. Install the database software:

   apt -y install postgresql
   sleep 30
   ss -tlpn

   and verify that the postgres server is listening on port 5432.

4. Dump data on the existing production OpenProject server as follows:
   1. To prevent tickets being created or changing state while the dump is in progress, stop the service:

      systemctl stop openproject

   2. Make the dump:

      openproject run backup
      

   3. Run the following command and verify you get similar output:

      paccheri# ls -lrtc /var/db/openproject/backup
      ...
      -rw-r----- 1 openproject openproject 660598 Aug 5 16:10 postgresql-dump-20240805161020.pgdump
      -rw-r----- 1 openproject openproject 8991774 Aug 5 16:10 attachments-20240805161020.tar.gz
      -rw-r----- 1 openproject openproject 1127 Aug 5 16:10 conf-20240805.tar.gz
      paccheri#

      (If OpenProject manages GIT or SVN repositories then there will be additional corresponding files present.)

   4. Additionally, backup the configuration files under /etc/openproject with:

      tar cvzCf /etc/openproject /var/db/openproject/backup/etc-openproject-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).tar.gz .

      (Note that the conf-*.tar.gz file created above contains only a subset of the files we’ve just tarred.)

   5. At this point the existing production OpenProject server could be restarted, but somehow blocking the creation of new tickets.
5. Copy the backup files over to the new machine as in this example:

   farfalle# scp -3 paccheri:/var/db/openproject/backup/*20240805* piombi:/var/db/openproject/backup/
   attachments-20240805161020.tar.gz 100% 8781KB 28.5MB/s 00:00 
   conf-20240805161020.tar.gz 100% 1127 601.6KB/s 00:00 
   etc-openproject-20240805161907.tar.gz 100% 2133 1.4MB/s 00:00 
   postgresql-dump-20240805161020.pgdump 100% 645KB 31.0MB/s 00:00 
   farfalle#

6. Load the dump on the replacement OpenProject server as follows:
   1. Unpack the etc-openproject-*.tar.gz file by running something like:

      tar xvzCf /etc/openproject /var/db/openproject/backup/etc-openproject-20240805*.tar.gz

   2. Retrieve information about the previously-used database:

      openproject config:get DATABASE_URL

      and note the database name, the database user and the database password.

   3. Create a database using the same credentials:

      su - postgres
      psql -U postgres
      create user openproject with superuser createrole createdb replication bypassrls password '<the-password>'; 
      create database openproject with owner openproject encoding 'UTF8' LC_COLLATE 'en_GB.UTF-8' LC_CTYPE 'en_GB.UTF-8';
      \q
      exit

   4. Restore the database by running something like:

      pg_restore --host=127.0.0.1 --username=openproject --dbname=openproject --clean \
          /var/db/openproject/backup/postgresql-dump-20240805*.pgdump

      (Expect a lot of errors about attempting to drop things that don’t exist.)

   5. Retrieve information about the location for attachments:

      openproject config:get OPENPROJECT_ATTACHMENTS__STORAGE__PATH

   6. Restore the attachments by running something like:

      mkdir -p /var/db/openproject/files
      chown openproject:openproject /var/db/openproject/files
      tar xvzCf /var/db/openproject/files /var/db/openproject/backup/attachments-20240805161020.tar.gz
      

   7. (In my configuration OpenProject does not manage GIT or SVN repositories so there are no further files to restore.)
7. Run:

   openproject configure
   top
   

   and wait for CPU consumption to return to normal levels.

8. Go the the OpenProject installation’s URL.

   For me this did not work correctly, redirecting me to the real pasta.net, until I had restored the original front-end web server configuration, but now pointing to the new server, as detailed below.

9. Restore the original front-end web server configuration, but now pointing to the new server:

   ProxyPass        / <replacement-server-url-including-trailing-slash>
   ProxyPassReverse / <replacement-server-url-including-trailing-slash>
   

10. Make any necessary changes to DNS.

See also

• Computing