Installing and Running Trac on Debian

Note from mgood: I am currently in the process of rewriting this page. It is not currently complete, but should cover the most common topics already. If you have more questions you may want to refer back to the previous revision of this page I have finished.

Note: This page does not provide step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring all of Trac. Use this page as a reference for installing the Debian software packages and the locations of configuration files, but you will need to read TracInstall and the other documentation sections for complete instructions on running and configuring Trac.

These instructions require the Debian Sarge release or newer. There are instructions below for installing Trac on Woody. Check ​http://packages.debian.org/trac to see the latest available Trac version for your Debian release.

These instructions use the commandline tool apt-get to install the packages which you will need to run as the root user. If you prefer to use a graphical tool such as synaptic you can search for the package names mentioned to install them.

Required Packages

 apt-get install trac

Apache

Trac can be run in standalone mode, or with a web server of your choice. ​Apache is a recommended choice and packages are available for Debian:

 apt-get install apache2

In addition to installing the server itself you will need to install one of the Apache modules mentioned below to allow the Trac application to run under Apache. Each subsection refers to the general Trac documentation for the Apache configuration necessary for that module. On Debian it is recommended to put your Trac Apache configuration statements into a new file called "/etc/apache2/sites-available/trac". Then use the following command to enable your Trac site:

 a2ensite trac

More detailed Apache documentation can be found in the package apache2-doc.

For Trac versions 0.8.x mod_python is recommended. Trac 0.9 also supports FastCGI. CGI instructions are provided, but this is not recommended since mod_python or FastCGI will give significantly better performance.

mod_python

 apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
 a2enmod mod_python

See TracModPython for further instructions.

FastCGI

Note: FastCGI requires Trac 0.9 or higher.

Note: Trac currently requires the Apache module listed below from the "non-free" Debian repository. There is another similar module called "fcgi" instead of "fastcgi". The "fcgi" module will not work.

 apt-get install libapache2-mod-fastcgi
 a2enmod fastcgi

See TracFastCgi for further instructions.

CGI

The CGI module is included with the Apache2 packages, but you will need to ensure that the module is loaded in order to run CGI scripts:

 a2enmod cgi

See TracCgi for further instructions.

Suggested Packages

TracSyntaxColoring requires enscript and WikiRestructuredText requires python-docutils:

    apt-get install enscript python-docutils

Woody (oldstable)

TODO

Ok what next? How do you setup the repository and browse through the website, or syncronize with the client?