This guide will explain how to install Trac on your account, and assumes you have knowledge of MySQL and Trac. Installing Trac is not for the faint-hearted. It is not easy to install and to administer. If you are up for the challenge, by all means carry on! If this seems a bit too complex for you, give some other bug/project management software a go.
Note: you will be using SSH (shell) and raw Linux commands for this guide.

This guide uses the following software versions:

• Trac 0.10

• ​ClearSilver (Python) 10.3 binary

• Python 2.4

We will be running Trac on FastCgi and using the experimental MySQL database support for Trac. This guide does not install SVN bindings for Trac.

Get Everything Ready

Let's go ahead and get our files together and organize them. To get started:

1. Log in to your account via SSH, ensuring that you are in the HOME directory

   wget http://ftp.edgewall.com/pub/trac/trac-0.10.tar.gz
   tar zxf trac-0.10.tar.gz
   cd trac-0.10
   python ./setup install --prefix=$HOME/trac

    

   That will get Trac and install it into your HOME directory under the folder called "trac".

2. Install ClearSilver

   You will only need one file called 'neo_cgi.so'. As ClearSilver website does not provide downloads for binaries, you will have to search on the web for that file. Please refer to the forum post listed at the start of this guide for help in finding the file. Please note that you will have to search for 'Python ClearSilver binary' which is the file 'neo_cgi.so'.

3. Once you find the correct 'neo_cgi.so', run the following command:

   cp neo_cgi.so $HOME/trac/lib/python-2.4/site-packages/

    

Note: if the server you are in is a 64-bit OS you'll have to find a 64-bit binary version. To find out the OS you are running, log into your website's cPanel and look for General Server Information. You should see a field labeled Machine Type, which will list whether it is a 64-bit or 32-bit OS.

32-bit

• i386

• ​i686

• x86_32

64-bit

• x86_32

Set Up the Database

Trac will use one database per project. So if you have more than one project, please create the necessary amount of databases needed.

1. Log into your cPanel and click MySQL Databases

2. Scroll down to the New Database input box and enter a name for your new database

3. Click Create Database

   If all goes well, you should see a page telling you that 'ASOusername_databasename' was created. Of course, ASOusername is your ASO Username, and databasename is the name you entered in the input box. Before Trac can access the database, it needs a user.

4. Return to the MySQL Databases pageIf you already have a global user created (mine is called main) you can just scroll down to Add Users To Your Databases

   Note: if you don't have a user created yet, scroll down to Current Users, enter a username and a password, then click Create User. Then follow the steps for adding a user to the database.

5. Choose your user and then the new database you just created and click Add User to Database 

Initialize Trac Environment

1. Create our project directory:

   cd $HOME/trac
   mkdir myproject

   That will bring us to our trac installation directory and create a folder call 'myproject'.

2. Set up the appropriate paths:

   export PATH=$HOME/trac/bin/:$PATH
   export PYTHONPATH=$HOME/trac/lib/python2.4/site-packages

    

3. The command provides us the necessary path to run 'trac-admin'

4. We are ready to initialise our project environment; run the following command:

   trac-admin $HOME/trac/myproject initenv

    

Follow the output below and correct where necessary in your case.

Run Trac

Make sure you are in your 'public_html' directory and execute the following:

mkdir trac
cd trac

We will create a directory where trac will run from. Then make sure we are in that folder.

Now create a file call 'index.fcgi' in that folder ($HOME/public_html/trac) and enter the following lines:

#!/bin/bash
export PATH=/home/{user}/trac/bin:$PATH
export PYTHONPATH=/home/{user}/trac/lib/python2.4/site-packages
export TRAC_ENV=/home/{user}/trac/myproject
exec /home/{user}/trac/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi

Please change {user} where necessary. Now create an '.htaccess' file in the folder ($HOME/public_html/trac) with the following contents:

DirectoryIndex index.fcgi 

Resources

ClearSilver 32-bit Binary

Troubleshooting

To check if Trac is installed properly. Navigate to '$HOME/public_html/trac' and run the following command:

exec ./index.fcgi

This will execute the file in SSH. If the output spits out HTML tags, it means you have successfully installed Trac. If the last few lines contains 'TracError: ClearSilver not installed (/lib/tls/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found' or something with 'ClearSilver', it means that you have the wrong version of ClearSilver.

500 Error

Check that the following files are chmod 755:

• $HOME/trac/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi

• $HOME/public_html/trac/index.fcgi

   

Check that the "index.fcgi" has proper Unix newline.