Trac

Summary

• As of September 4th, 2024 Trac upgraded to 1.6
• As of August 19th, 2024 Trac upgraded to 1.4.4
• As Of May 8th, 2022 Trac upgraded to 1.4.3
• October 12, 2018 tracvm was migrated to lxd container called tracsvn on osgeo7
• As of February 2017 Trac 1.2.1dev (r15513 patched) is running at http://trac.osgeo.org/ (the tracsvn VM at OSU OSL).

• Trac Guide
• Configurations are in /var/www/trac/*/conf/trac.ini and inherit /etc/trac/trac-common.ini
• All data lives under /var/www/trac and in trac_* PostgreSQL databases
• Authentication uses the OSGeo LDAP database
• virtual server configurations are under /etc/apache2/includes/trac/*.conf, included by /etc/apache2/sites-available/trac.conf
• Existing Instances
• Actual python is installed in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/Trac*.egg (May 2015)
• Frank Warmerdam and Howard Butler have configuration experience, and can help maintain instances.
• Sandro Santilli is helping with trac since late 2015, driving the upgrade from 1.0.5 to 1.2.1dev in Feb 2017

Procedures

Ansible Deploy

As of August 2024 we have a "trac" ansible role for use to deploy the service with support for both production and staging environments. See deployment/deploy-trac.yml in https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/sac/ansible-deployment

Staging

Staging host exists for testing upgrades or configuration changes: https://dev.trac.osgeo.org/

Local Customizations

As of 2017-02-01, after upgrading to Trac-1.2.1, there is a minor modifications to allow notifying OSGeo users who have never logged into trac yet.

See https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/1863

Creating a trac instance

  $ sudo -u postgres createdb -O trac trac_<proj_name>
  $ sudo trac-admin \
    /var/www/trac/env/<proj_name> initenv \
    --inherit=/etc/trac/trac-common.ini 

• Make sure to set the db connection to postgres://trac@/trac_<proj_name> (password for the user is kept in ~www-data/.pgpass)
• Use /var/www/svn/repos/<proj_name> for the svn path or /var/www/git/repos/<proj_name> for the git path
• For SVN, write a /var/www/repos/<proj_name>/post-commit with this content:

 REPOS="$1"
 REV="$2"
 TRAC_ENV=`basename ${REPOS}`
 /var/www/svn/hookscripts/osgeo-post-commit-hook "${TRAC_ENV}" "${REPOS}" "${REV}" &

• Set the project admin user:

  $ sudo trac-admin /var/www/trac/<proj_name> permission add <osgeo_userid> TRAC_ADMIN

• Set permissions on the trac environment dir:

  $ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/trac/<proj_name>

• Update /var/www/trac/<proj_name>/conf/trac.ini to enable email notification (TODO: move to /etc/trac/trac-common.ini)
• Add virtual host file /etc/apache2/conf.d/trac/<proj_name>.conf enabling LDAP based authentication.
• Logo can be referenced in /var/www/trac/<proj_name>/conf/trac.ini and placed in /var/www/trac/<proj_name>/htdocs
• Add to /var/www/trac/index.html
• Add to /var/www/trac/trac_instances.txt
• Add to /etc/trac/intertrac.ini
• Regenerate the robots.txt file with the command:

 $ sudo /var/www/trac/mkrobots.sh

Permissions

Recommended Trac permissions:

       anonymous       BROWSER_VIEW
       anonymous       CHANGESET_VIEW
       anonymous       FILE_VIEW
       anonymous       LOG_VIEW
       anonymous       MILESTONE_VIEW
       anonymous       REPORT_SQL_VIEW
       anonymous       REPORT_VIEW
       anonymous       ROADMAP_VIEW
       anonymous       SEARCH_VIEW
       anonymous       TICKET_VIEW
       anonymous       TIMELINE_VIEW
       anonymous       WIKI_VIEW
       authenticated   TICKET_CHGPROP
       authenticated   TICKET_CREATE
       authenticated   TICKET_MODIFY
       authenticated   WIKI_CREATE
       authenticated   WIKI_MODIFY
       developers      DOXYGEN_VIEW
       developers      MILESTONE_ADMIN
       developers      REPORT_ADMIN
       developers      REPORT_CREATE
       developers      WIKI_ADMIN
       warmerdam       developers
       warmerdam       TRAC_ADMIN
       strk            TRAC_ADMIN
       ...

SQL Compatability Issue with Postgres

You will have to modify the SQL statement of the All Ticket by Milestone report. This can be done by accessing the trac report page and click the Edit report button (You need to be an admin of the trac instance). Check the sql statement of another trac instance and replace the one of the new instance.

Permissions Reference

Plugins

Shared plugins are installed in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/ (usually having a name starting with "Trac") and need be explicitly enabled for each project (can be done by trac admin).

Project specific plugins (discouraged) are under /var/www/trac/<project>/plugins/ and are enabled by default.

For more info see the plugin install guide.

Available shared plugins (updated September '24):

• TracLDAPEmailResolverPlugin _0.1 - uses LDAP lookup to resolve OSGeo users email. WORKS with Trac 1.6
• TracStatsPlugin _0.6.1 - shows project statistics. WORKS with Trac 1.6
• TracTocMacro _12.0.0 - multi page tables of contents. WORKS with Trac 1.6
• TracSectionEditPlugin _1.3.0dev - ability to edit one section in a wiki page. WORKS with Trac 1.6
• TracBackLinkPlugin _{1.0.15</dub> - show incoming links on tickets. WORKS with Trac 1.6}
• TracDoxygen _0.11.0 - mix doxygen docs into trac interface (needs extra admin support). . WORKS with Trac 1.4 REMOVED in Sep 2024 as not compatible with Trac-1.6
• TracSpamFilter _1.0.10dev - spam filtering plugin. WORKS with Trac 1.4 ```REMOVED in Sep 2024 as not used```
• TracSecureTickets _0.1.4 - The authz policy mechanism provides fine-grained permissions for tickets. REMOVED in Jan 2017
• Tracticketsstats _3.0.0dev - visualizes trac ticket statistics REMOVED in Jan 2017
• TracAdvParseArgsPlugin _1.0.5 - dependency of TicketStatsMacro REMOVED in Jan 2017
• sensitivetickets 0.22 (deprecated by SecureTicketsPlugin ?) REMOVED in Jan 2017
• MediaWikiMacro - provides media wiki like format support (link? details?) NOT FOUND as of Nov 2015
• TracMetrixPlugin _0.1.8dev - quality metrix and progress statistics. REMOVED in Jan 2017 as it FAILED with Trac 1.2 - https://trac-hacks.org/ticket/13041

Custom fields

See http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracTicketsCustomFields

for example, in trac.ini:

    [ticket-custom]
    platform = select
    platform.label = Platform
    platform.options = Unspecified|MSWindows 2K|MSWindows XP|MSWindows Vista|MSWindows CygWin|MacOSX|Linux|Other Unix|All
    platform.value = Unspecified

    cpu = select
    cpu.label = CPU
    cpu.options = Unspecified|x86-32|x86-64|OSX/PPC|OSX/Intel|Other|All
    cpu.value = Unspecified

ZIP support for directories

Docs: https://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracIni#browser-section

Used in GRASS GIS trac instance to enable zip download support for g.extension addon manager downloads: Directories are to be enabled as a comma separated list.

# file: /var/www/trac/grass/conf/trac.ini
[browser]
downloadable_paths = /grass-addons/grass7/*/*,/sandbox/*/*

Making Trac Read-Only

It appears the usual way of making Trac read-only is to remove all permissions on the "authenticated" group in the Admin/Permissions dialog. This will remove the authenticated group and then only those with special admin priviledges can edit the wiki, create tickets, etc.

Timeline with filename indication

 [timeline]
 changeset_long_messages = false
 changeset_show_files = 1
 changeset_files_count = 3
 default_daysback = 30
 ticket_show_details = false

(see for example here)

Hotcopy a trac instance

  $ sudo trac-admin /var/www/html/trac/<proj_name> hotcopy /path/to/copy/trac/to

Trac Spam

We have had problems with trac spam when ticket create and ticket modify permissions were set to anonymous (the default). To get around this most (all?) instances have been changed to require authenticated users to do these actions.

But some projects strongly desire to support anonymous ticket creation and modification and at some point this might be viable using image captcha technology to keep out the spammers. A Trac plugin for this is currently installed, see SpamFilter for usage.

SpamFilter management

The bare minimum that each instance admin should take care of:

• Edit of a BadContent page, made read-only, for example: https://trac.osgeo.org/XXXX/wiki/BadContent
• Frequently check the monitoring page training bayes for ham/spam: https://trac.osgeo.org/XXXX/admin/spamfilter/monitor

A global SpamFilter configuration is used unless any instance admin changed the configuration via the GUI ("Apply Changes"). The global configuration (in /etc/trac/spamfilter.ini) sets, other than the defaults:

• SessionFilterStrategy: 0
• Karma of authenticated users: 0

Instructions to delete a spam user from LDAP: see SAC:LDAP#Editing_the_LDAP_database

Trac notification forward to project mailing list

To fwd notifications from trac to e.g. a project developers mailing list, you need to

• set in trac the mailing list address as default (trac Admin section)
• add the trac@osgeo.org address (or trac_osgeo@.., or ...) in Mailman to
  • "Privacy options"
    • "Subscription rules"
    • "[Sender filters]"
      • "Non-member filters"
        • "List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted."

• As the mail may be addressed to "undisclosed recipients" instead of directly to the list, the messages may be held for moderator approval. To avoid this add "undisclosed recipients" to the list of acceptable aliases at
  • "Privacy options"
    • "[Recipient filters]"
      • acceptable_aliases