OTRS CVS - Manual
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# Chapter 26. FAQ

1. I installed the otrs.rpm from SuSE 8.0. But it doesn't work. Why?
2. What ist OTRS?
3. What stands OTRS for?
4. What does OTRS cost?
5. This document refers to agents. What is an agent in the context of OTRS?
6. How can I delete a user, who is no longer needed? (asked by Andreas Haase - Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:17:01 +0200 (CEST))
7. Can OTRS receive email?
8. Can OTRS send email?
9. Fulltext Index Searching?
10. Is OTRS multi user and multi group able?
11. Is it possible to use different domains?
12. Can I use OTRS only with SuSE Linux?
13. What software will be needed?
14. How stable is OTRS?
15. What hardware do I need?
16. How does OTRS scale and how big can it become?
17. Can I use my nice Oracle or DB2?
18. Which programming language is used?
19. What is the default admin account?
20. Does OTRS work with mod_perl?
21. Is it possible to customize OTRS?
22. Can I install OTRS on a Windows box?
23. How can I become a part of the OTRS developer comunity?
24. I do like the OTRS but would feel more comfortable by using a commercial product.
25. What browser do I need?
26. Is it possible to generate my own ticket number format?
27. Do you support the RFC 1297?
28. Can I add my own ticket states?
29. More then one OTRS on one machine?
30. Which changes are made to my system when using the otrs4win32 installer?
31. What about the services' installations on Win32?
32. Why should I install the servers as system services at all on Win32?
33. Is it wise to keep all files under one directory on Win32?

1. I installed the otrs.rpm from SuSE 8.0. But it doesn't work. Why?

The default SuSE 8.0 rpm is buggy (which is not a SuSE mistake). Please visit our website and download the newest rpm. Your can install the rpm with YaST or manually

    rpm -Uvh otrs.rpm

2. What ist OTRS?

OTRS is a Ticket Request System with many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails.

3. What stands OTRS for?

Open Trouble-Ticket Request System.

4. What does OTRS cost?

Nothing, it`s GPL.

5. This document refers to agents. What is an agent in the context of OTRS?

An Agent is a human being who works with the system. User would be an alternative term.

Geeks: Of course a script could act like an agent. Feel free to do so!

6. How can I delete a user, who is no longer needed? (asked by Andreas Haase - Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:17:01 +0200 (CEST))

OTRS is working with database id references. If you would delete a user (or queue, ...) from the database, your delete the reference info. Important infos like owner or queue.

Set the data record to invalid and the record is still visible (e. g. for ticket history, ...) but not activ for the application.

7. Can OTRS receive email?

Yes, (with MIME support).

The $HOME/bin/PostMaster.pl program receive the emails and sorts the email to the right ticket or queue.

8. Can OTRS send email?

Yes. Autoresponders per queue or per X-Header and standard responders via mouse click.

Note: You can add/delete/modify the system email addresses at AdminView::System.

9. Fulltext Index Searching?

Yes.

10. Is OTRS multi user and multi group able?

Yes, of course.

11. Is it possible to use different domains?

Yes, you can use different emails 'support@yourdomain.com', 'sales@yourdomain.com' and different domains 'marketing@clientdomain.com' with one system!

12. Can I use OTRS only with SuSE Linux?

No, but we developed it on a SuSE Linux and frankly we did not do much testing on a Redhat, Debian, ...

But we will provide additional installation information on http://www.otrs.org/. And we are more that happy to recieve some feedback from you about how you installed OTRS on other platforms.

13. What software will be needed?

Minimum: Perl5 (with a few CPAN modules, more: INSTALL), MySQL and Apache.

But again, your are on the safe side by using SuSE Linux. It will provide you with all the needed stuff.

14. How stable is OTRS?

Please be aware of the fact that you are dealing with a beta-version. New versions are anounced on http://www.otrs.org/. But never the less it is quite a stable system and you shouldn't run in any trouble. But we can not guarantee it!

15. What hardware do I need?

We suggest an IBM s390. *SCNR* ;-)

Some of our test enviroments are Pentium II 300 with 64 MB RAM and they do a pretty good job. Of course the more RAM and the faster the CPU the better.

16. How does OTRS scale and how big can it become?

This is depending on the hardware and the enviroment you are using. At the moment OTRS is a one box system. With little work you can set up a webserver-cluster and you can split the database to a seperate box. We are planing to support some sort of clustering mechanism. But this is not the highest priority for the development.

There are OTRS installations which handle 20,000 tickets (e-mails) a day and don't show any sign of stress.

17. Can I use my nice Oracle or DB2?

At the moment we only support MySQL as the default database and additionally PostGreSQL. Frankly we do trust in the two as much as in a DB2 (for this application). Anybody who is willing to spend some time to port it to other databases is more than welcome to the OTRS team!

Note: The code is designed to support different databases!

18. Which programming language is used?

Perl OO, SQL and dtl.

19. What is the default admin account?

User: root@localhost Password: root

Of course it is a very good idea to change this default password!

20. Does OTRS work with mod_perl?

Of course.

21. Is it possible to customize OTRS?

Of course. You can customize OTRS like you want. Take advantage of the dtl (dynamic template language) to customize the OTRS frontend release independently (more: README.dtl)!

22. Can I install OTRS on a Windows box?

Yes, we provide a step-by-step installation guide for manually setting up OTRS, as well as an automated installer.

23. How can I become a part of the OTRS developer comunity?

Welcome! Anybody who is willing to help us and has the time is more than welcome. Please send us an e-mail.

24. I do like the OTRS but would feel more comfortable by using a commercial product.

There is commercial support for otrs provided by ((otrs.de)).

25. What browser do I need?

OTRS is working with the most browser such lynx, w3m, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, IE and Konqueror (You don't need Java Script or Java Applets!).

26. Is it possible to generate my own ticket number format?

Yes it's possible. You can choose between four different OTRS formats. AutoIncrement ("SystemID.Counter" e. g. 1010138 or 1010139), Date ("Year.Month.Day.SystemID.Counter" e. g. 200206231010138 or 200206231010139), Random ("SystemID.Random" e. g. 100057866352 or 103745394596) and my favorite one DateChecksum ("Year.Month.Day.SystemID.Counter.CheckSum" e. g. 2002070110101520 and 2002070110101535).

Further it's possible to create a own ticket number format (like you want). See the OTRS documentation.

27. Do you support the RFC 1297?

Yes, OTRS supports this RFC.

28. Can I add my own ticket states?

Yes, but be carefully with the existing states (OTRS needs basic states).

29. More then one OTRS on one machine?

Yes, you can do that. Just install the second, third, ... in different paths ( e.g. /opt/otrs01, /opt/otrs02, /opt/otrs03, ...). And configure the webserver like README.webserver.

30. Which changes are made to my system when using the otrs4win32 installer?

MySQL requires it's configuration file to be in the 'Windows' directory, the Start Menu entries are located somewhere in your profile. No other file outside the root directory holding all files will be written or even modified. Your system's registry will only be touched when installing some or all of the servers as a system service.

31. What about the services' installations on Win32?

We wanted to provide an installation that doesn't change much in the target system's configuration. Although a service installation dives deep into the system, we won't let you do this on your own. We decided to install any service during the installation procedure needed for OTRS to run.

32. Why should I install the servers as system services at all on Win32?

We strongly recommend this when using OTRS. It is very convenient to have the servers running in the background without any annoying control windows. Additionally, no user has to be logged in on the machine when services are used!

33. Is it wise to keep all files under one directory on Win32?

There is nothing wrong with that. Some of you do not even think about those circumstances, but: There are people out there to be taken seriously when saying a mail server should reside on it's own partition, a database server should store on a RAID, a busy webserver requires a mirrored partition and so on. You're absolutely right - go on, use Windows' facilities to build all of these and other scenarios. The keywords are Dynamic Disks and DFS here. In other words, you may certainly move the subdirectories of the root directory of otrs4win32 to partitions, RAIDs or whatever you like and you are hereby encouraged to. You just have to configure your box to do it. Feel free to contact us if you need assistance whith generally setting up the Windows operating system on your box.

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