MantisBT

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MantisBT (Mantis Bug Tracker) is a bug tracker written in PHP. For a list of features, visit its website.

Installation

Install the mantisbt^AUR package.

Choose your favorite web server and/or application server (such as UWSGI) for making the application available.

Configuration

mantisbt has a decent administration guide, that can be followed for setting it up.

All configuration is exposed in /etc/webapps/mantisbt/config_inc.php.

Setup a compatible DBMS and use the 'Database Configuration' section to connect mantisbt with it.
The 'Anonymous Access / Signup' section needs special attention, if you are not planning on disabling CAPTCHAs for new signups (see #PHP extensions and #TTF fonts).
If you want to use SMTP you can set it up in the 'Email Configuration' section. mantisbt defaults to a phpmailer setup, which has the downside of not reaching mail servers that use grey listing.

In any case, you will need to meet some requirements for mantisbt to work properly:

PHP extensions

mysqli (if you are using MySQL/MariaDB)
gd (if you plan on using CAPTCHA for user signup)

TTF fonts

make sure to install a TrueTypeFont, that you would like to use for the creation of CAPTCHAs
setup the paths and names of the fonts, you would like to use:

/etc/webapps/mantisbt/config_inc.php

# trailing slash is important!
$g_system_font_folder = '/usr/share/fonts/TTF/';

# here DroidSans.ttf from the package ttf-droid is used for illustration
$g_font_per_captcha = 'DroidSans.ttf';

Note: Make sure to also include the TTF path (e.g. /usr/share/fonts/TTF) in the open_basedir of your PHP instance!

Web server

nginx + uwsgi

This example shows a basic setup using a subdomain for the bug tracker, with some handson redirects. The below mentioned file needs of course to be sourced within /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. For a subfolder-based setup for mantisbt, some modifications are needed.

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name bugs.mydomain.org www.mydomain.org;
  return 301 https://bugs.mydomain.org$request_uri;
}
server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;
  server_name www.bugs.mydomain.org;
  return 301 https://bugs.mydomain.org$request_uri;
}
server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;
  server_name bugs.mydomain.org;
  include tls.conf;
  root /usr/share/webapps/mantisbt;
  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.bugs.mydomain.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/error.bugs.mydomain.log;
  include letsencrypt-challenge.conf;

  location ~ ^/(admin|core|doc|lang) {
    deny all;
  }

  location / {
    index index.php;
    try_files $uri $uri/ @mantisbt;
  }

  location @mantisbt {
    include uwsgi_params;
    uwsgi_modifier1 14;
    uwsgi_pass unix:/run/uwsgi/mantisbt.sock;
  }

  location ~  \.php?$ {
    include uwsgi_params;
    uwsgi_modifier1 14;
    uwsgi_pass unix:/run/uwsgi/mantisbt.sock;
  }

  # Deny serving files beginning with a dot, but allow letsencrypt acme-challenge
  location ~ /\.(?!well-known/acme-challenge) {
    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
    deny all;
  }
}

UWSGI can be used to achieve a resource preserving setup with dedicated PHP settings.

/etc/uwsgi/mantisbt.ini

[uwsgi]
procname-master = mantisbt
plugins = php
master = true
socket = /run/uwsgi/%n.sock
uid = http
gid = http
processes = 10
cheaper = 2
cheaper-step = 1
idle = 600
die-on-idle = true

php-allowed-ext = .php
php-docroot = /usr/share/webapps/mantisbt
php-index = index.php
php-set = date.timezone=Europe/Berlin
php-set = open_basedir=/tmp/:/usr/share/fonts/TTF:/usr/share/webapps/mantisbt:/usr/share/webapps/mantisbt/core:/etc/webapps/mantisbt
php-set = session.save_path=/tmp
php-set = session.gc_maxlifetime  21600
php-set = session.gc_divisor      500
php-set = session.gc_probability  1
php-set = post_max_size=64M
php-set = upload_max_filesize=64M
php-set = always_populate_raw_post_data=-1
php-set = extension=curl
php-set = extension=gd
php-set = extension=imagick
php-set = extension=intl
php-set = extension=mysqli

If your (modified) versions of these files are in place, you should restart your nginx and start/enable a uwsgi socket for mantisbt using systemd.

Database

After making the application available, go to /admin/install.php with a web browser to setup the database. Follow the instructions on that page and let mantisbt generate the tables.

Note: You have to modify your #Web server settings temporarily to be able to visit that page. Here this is shown according to the example of using #nginx + uwsgi.

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

  location ~ ^/(core|doc|lang) {
    deny all;
  }

Administrator

The initial account generated by mantisbt is called administrator and has the password root.

Warning: Make sure to change the password for the administrator user and set it up properly, right after logging in for the first time!

Note: Modify your #Web server settings again, to make the admin settings unavailable again. The example of using #nginx + uwsgi shows you how.

Usage

mantisbt should be all setup now. The administrator user is able to create new projects and give user rights to signed up users.