Re: [otrs] FW: OTRS Scheduler Daemon Cron: MailAccountFetch

[David Boyes]

> On Mar 9, 2016, at 10:26 AM, "dhils...@performair.com" 
>  wrote:
> 
> David;
> 
> The message is coming from OTRS, of course the MTA is unconfigured, the only 
> thing the server does is run OTRS.

The message you quoted is an Exchange message, so the problem is there. 
Exchange (stupidly) has filters for common misconfigurations which are usually 
not helpful.

> 
> Why is there a piece of OTRS that is trying to send mail to server superuser 
> account?  What does this email (from an OTRS daemon) likely indicate?

OTRS sends mail to root about configuration problems, as root is most likely to 
be the one that can fix it. 

>From the subject line, the message is probably a notification that the OTRS 
>scheduler is not running (just a guess) or that there's a problem fetching new 
>mail. It's probably sending the message to all the OTRS admin ids, which 
>include root by default.

> 
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Re: [otrs] FW: OTRS Scheduler Daemon Cron: MailAccountFetch

[David Boyes]

Look into configuring a real host name for outgoing mail (or rewrite all 
outgoing headers to u...@performair.com) in your MTA configuration. That 
message usually triggers due to Exchange detecting unconfigured mail servers. 
'Root@localhost' is usually a sign of an unconfigured system.

> On Mar 9, 2016, at 9:51 AM, "dhils...@performair.com" 
>  wrote:
> 
> All;
> 
> I'm receiving several of the below emails every day.
> 
> From: Dominic Hilsbos 
> Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2016 7:13 PM
> To: Dominic Hilsbos
> Subject: Undeliverable: OTRS Scheduler Daemon Cron: MailAccountFetch
> 
>  rejected your message to the following e-mail 
> addresses:
> root@localhost
>  gave this error:
> Hop count exceeded - possible mail loop 
> A problem occurred during the delivery of this message. Please try to resend 
> the message later. If the problem continues, contact your helpdesk.
> 
> Diagnostic information for administrators:
> Generating server: performair.com
> root@localhost
>  #554 5.4.6 Hop count exceeded - possible mail loop ##
> Original message headers:
> 
> Received: from otrs.performair.com () by  Exchange Server>
> (192.168.150.22) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 14.3.248.2; Tue, 8 Mar 2016
> 18:10:42 -0700
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> Content-Disposition: inline
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Subject: OTRS Scheduler Daemon Cron: MailAccountFetch
> X-Powered-BY: OTRS - Open Ticket Request System (http://otrs.org/)
> X-Mailer: OTRS Mail Service (5.0.5)
> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 18:10:46 -0700
> Message-ID: <1457485846.16460.3115273...@otrs.performair.com>
> To: 
> Organization: McGown Enterprises
> From: OTRS Notifications 
> Return-Path: o...@otrs.performair.com
> X-TM-AS-Product-Ver: SMEX-11.1.0.1239-7.500.1018-22178.006
> X-TM-AS-Result: No--0.464500-5.00-31
> X-TM-AS-User-Approved-Sender: No
> X-TM-AS-User-Blocked-Sender: No
> 
> How can I configure OTRS to either not send whatever this email is, or to 
> send it correctly (i.e. from a proper email address, and to a proper email 
> address)?
> 
> This behavior just started a couple days ago, though we've been running OTRS 
> for several months.  I upgrade OTRS from 5.0.5 to 5.0.7 last night, but 
> received 4 more of these this morning. 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Dominic L. Hilsbos, MBA, CSDA 
> Director - Information Technology
> Perform Air International Inc.
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Re: [otrs] Outbound email queue

[David Boyes]

On Feb 12, 2016, at 7:30 PM, John Meyer  wrote:
> Postfix and I usually get along very well, I'd like to continue using it if 
> at all possible.

It has its quirks for very large configurations, but if it works for you, go 
for it.

> If I remove the sendmail settings from the OTRS web interface will it then 
> simply send via the configured MTA, Postfix?

Yes. Every UNIX mail system emulates the Berkeley sendmail conventions for 
compatibility. 

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Re: [otrs] Outbound email queue

[David Boyes]

> On Feb 12, 2016, at 8:00 PM, John Meyer  wrote:
> It is still a mystery to me how the mails are being sent when SMTPTLS is in 
> use.  Either way, just using the system’s configured MTA is preferable.

Directly connect to the SMTPTLS port and build the protocol stream directly. 
It's mostly there for Windows installs where there is no system-wide MTA.

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Re: [otrs] Outbound email queue

[David Boyes]

I am using OTRS with SMTPTLS to send all email to an outbound mail relay 
(postfix) and this is working perfectly.  However, I am unable to locate where 
the logs are being stored.

Normally, /var/log/mail, or wherever syslog puts the mail.* entries. See 
/etc/syslog.conf.

Also, if by some chance my outbound relay isn't operating as expected, OTRS 
does not appear to be queueing the emails the way I would expect (like postfix 
does).

Working as designed. A MTA does queuing, not the application.


What is OTRS using to send mail?  Can I make it use postfix?  OS is Debian.

Consider using something a little less weird than postfix (exim comes to mind) 
but yes, that's the desired setup.

See https://otrs.github.io/doc/manual/admin/3.2/en/html/email-settings.html for 
details for at least one version.




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Re: [otrs] ITSM - service handling

[David Boyes]

> My understanding of ITIL tells me that these type of things should be handled 
> as problems under exact customer service.
>My boss on the other hand thinks that for these type of situations should 
>exist separate technical services like billing or customer care.
>Do you have any thought on how to handle this? I would be also interested in 
>hearing how you implemented this part of service desk with OTRS.

It really depends on how you want to report on them. If you have a set of 
predefined scopes (ie, how your boss wants to do it), reporting is easier. It's 
less cluttered for the people entering to use your way. Both work, but very few 
people understand their business well enough to really enumerate it as separate 
services, with all the documentation for a service.

We did a hybrid approach: do the service definition for common problems, and 
handle everything else as a problem. We then periodically go back, look at the 
"problem" entries, create new service definitions for them, and reclassify the 
"problem" entries accordingly. We did it this way to avoid having to think of 
every possible thing at the start, and to reinforce the culture of continuous 
improvement over time.
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Re: [otrs] OTRS behind Haproxy and GlusterFS

[David Boyes]

Out of the box, OTRS still has some rough edges for clustered configurations. 
It still stores some configuration info for individual nodes in node-local 
storage, which can be tricky to manage and still keep the cluster configuration 
consistent. We did some mods to move all configuration information into the 
database, but it was for an old version of otrs 3. I'm trying to bring those 
mods up to date in my copious free time (not!), but it's going slowly.

 
 Has anyone had any experience with OTRS on top of a cluster with GFS2?

Use gluster or Ceph if you try this. Both are better behaved than raw GFS2. If 
you have the Otrs configuration managed by something like puppet and do some 
unnatural things with unionfs, you can make it work, but it's a bit fragile for 
production use.


 
 Is my approach at least theoretically ok or am I doing something really wrong 
 in your opinion?

See above.  Right now, you need patches or some very creative configuration 
management to make this setup work.


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Re: [otrs] OTRS behind Haproxy and GlusterFS

[David Boyes]

 2015-05-23 9:02 GMT+02:00 
 Hi and thanks for the answer. What do you mean with some configuration info 
 for individual nodes? I was thinking that having a single otrs on a 
 clustered fs would avoid to have any file stored elsewhere than the cluster...

I probably should clarify. What we were trying to do was to have multiple 
copies (1 on each node). We kept finding places where the location and version 
of the syscofig blobs were getting overwritten, and unless you did some 
creative things with overlaying filesystems on node n1, the additional 
instances would come up as node 1 and Bad Things happened. 

I went hunting through the source, and moved every reference to a local file 
into a database object in a node-specific table. and added a --node option to 
identify which node that instance represented. That was in otrs 3.

Recent versions have been better. I should try it again.

I suspect if you only tried to run on one node at a time it probably would be 
ok, but that kinda defeats the point of the cluster. You probably could hunt 
down all the directory references in the source; I don't know if they're all 
exposed to syscofig.


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Re: [otrs] Request for return receipt or delivery status notification

[David Boyes]

Given that no email system reliably can deliver such a thing or can define what 
it actually means, I'm not sure it's all that useful. What does delivered 
mean? In the customer's inbox? Opened? Read? Understood (if you can do this 
one, you'd be super rich)?

 is it already in OTRS Request for return receipt or delivery status 
 notification
 for sending messages ?
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Re: [otrs] Request for return receipt or delivery status notification

[David Boyes]

 I would think long an deep before implementing it, though. It opens up a can
 of worms. If it works, which depends on the receiving side, OTRS will receive
 an answer to your agent's mail. As OTRS does not have much of a chance to
 know it's just the has been received notification (they look too different
 with different mail clients and different native language settings), the agent
 will be informed of a client's answer. Usually you only want such notification
 for human-sent replies. Those computer-sent replies will either result in your
 agents spending a lot of time coming back to tickets just because such
 recieved notifications came in, or it will result in your agents ignoring 
 OTRS's
 notifications about a customer's reply, expecting it to be yet another
 received notification.

Yes, exactly my point. Anything that relies on the receiving system to 
interpret and respond to such a  request is pretty much useless for the purpose 
-- there's no reliable standard to indicate what such a response should look 
like, and no leverage to force system updates to implement such a thing even if 
it did exist. The extra noise in the tickets will just cause important messages 
to get lost in the noise for no visible gain.

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Re: [otrs] Storing of large/binary data in Non-MySQL databases

[David Boyes]

 These are handled differently by OTRS - for
 databases other than MySQL, OTRS stores them in BASE64 encoding. The
 conversion can be done with Postgres using encode(column, 'base64').

I'd rather see MySQL use base64 too. All the world isn't Intel-based, and at 
least base64 is not ambiguous what the byte values really are. 

 My question is: Why do the other databases use character objects for all the
 LONGBLOBs including those that really contain binary data, so that for these
 databases, a BASE64 encoding is necessary, which costs performance when
 encoding and decoding and 33% more storage? Wouldn't it be much better
 and easier if OTRS used BLOBs consistently across all databases for the binary
 columns, and TEXT for the other large columns?

It would make it much more difficult to move data cross-platform. Try setting 
up a OTRS install on a Linux on POWER big-endian machine and moving the 
database from your Intel system. Those binary blobs are a royal pain. The 
base64 columns move perfectly and without any action on the admin's part.

 Also, would it be possible to use BYTEA in PostgreSQL instead of TEXT for the
 binary data columns, changing the database scheme accordingly and setting
 the DB::DirectBlob flag to 1 so that OTRS stops BASE64 encoding these
 columns?

Are you storing attachments in the database? If so, you might consider changing 
that. Most of the big blobs are related to that, and the non-existence of those 
big opaque blobs in the database makes this issue a lot less relevant (to the 
point of being almost not measurable). (in fact, I think that should be the 
default...)
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Re: [otrs] Storing of large/binary data in Non-MySQL databases

[David Boyes]

 LONGBLOBs are just streams of bytes. Intel or not (endianness) should not
 matter when you fetch and store the data using database methods.
 BLOBs are good for storing binary objects such as attachments or emails that
 you want to keep in their original encoding. Everything else should be stored
 as (unicode) text. Storing binary data BASE64 encoded is not optimal when
 the database supports BLOBs.

No argument that it's not optimal, but at least it's the *same* representation 
regardless of database engine or platform. And base64 encoding guarantees that 
the same input string is interpreted identically on all platforms and all 
databases. I have a few sites that deal in full 32 bit ISO 10646 character 
sets, which add a whole another dimension to the annoyance of dealing with 
binary blobs. Use of base64 also allows databases on non-ASCII platforms to 
deliver and store the data in a portable form (for example, z/OS DB/2 makes a 
really nice OTRS back end if you have it, and DFSMShsm knows what to do with 
USS files, so automatic recall from tape works like a champ. I don't have to 
worry about attachment file sizes at all. 8-)). 

 The difficulties only appeared because OTRS
 treats Postgres and the other databases differently from MySQL, as if they
 would not support binary data, for no apparent reason.

I think we're arguing for the same point, but from different starting 
positions. I agree that there shouldn't be a difference between how MySQL and 
the other databases store the data. Given that the parsing is (and should be) 
done in the application logic, the overhead should be fairly minimal, and 
distributed. 
 
  Are you storing attachments in the database? If so, you might consider
  changing that.
 
 Thanks for mentioning that, I'll consider it. Found the script
 ArticleStorageSwitch.pl which should make this possible. However, it may
 also have disadvantages. You need to backup database and filesystem
 separately, and consistency between the two is not automatically
 guaranteed through foreign keys. Also, there are some other BASE64
 encoded columns besides those for storing the attachments.

Yes,  you're correct, but the vast majority of the performance impact you're 
commenting on is going to be dealing with the attachment blobs. The other 
columns are tiny in comparison. 

I also think you'll find that your backup load is much smaller with attachments 
outside the database -- every time you change the database, the whole file has 
to get dumped (unless you have a fairly smart backup system and are doing 
table-level backups from inside the database). Having the attachments outside 
the database will significantly reduce the amount of data backed up, in that 
change detection is much more effective with external files. Most databases are 
really not optimized for use as opaque object stores.

Keep in mind that the attachments are referenced only when opened. It's just 
opening an opaque object reference, so I don't see what consistency guarantees 
(other than the correct file gets opened when clicked on) you need. The object 
exists, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you know what to do, and it's 
operationally a lot easier to manage whether a file exists or not. It also 
allows you to use much more intelligent object stores (such as Ceph or DFSMShsm 
on z/OS) with corresponding improvements in storage performance and compliance 
auditing capabilities.

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Re: [otrs] question

[David Boyes]

The 15 minutes can be to get a logon screen.
Or if already logged in to switch screens.

That sounds more like a resource constraint problem on the server running the 
OTRS code than a database problem - OTRS is a relatively large application, and 
can be fairly demanding on application server resources. Try monitoring CPU, 
swap and memory utilization at 5 minute intervals on the OTRS server for a few 
days and see if there's any correlation to the problem periods - if the OTRS 
server is thrashing, the database response is irrelevant. Eliminate that 
possibility first, and then start looking at database performance.
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Re: [otrs] question

[David Boyes]

Is it possible that your Apache is configured to try to do reverse lookups on 
incoming connections, and you're getting timeouts from DNS on the reverse 
lookup?
Or that one or more of your DNS servers is not responding?

At least in that example, if something is trying to do reverse lookups, the 5 
minute delay would be about right if one or more of the DNS servers weren't 
reachable/not responding.

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Re: [otrs] question

[David Boyes]

We are using a remote MySQL database (remote as in not on the same machine as 
the OTRS installation but in the same network vlan).
Is this a recommended or supported setup? We are seeing slowdowns of up to 15 
minutes on the OTRS system occasionally.


Yes, that's a perfectly fine setup, but it's usually a good idea to not 
share the same database server instance with other workload unless you really 
understand how the different workloads use the database server and you can 
really measure how the different workloads behave. Naively-constructed queries 
from other workloads to other tables in a shared database server can make OTRS 
unhappy if the other workload uses long-lasting locks on system catalog 
resources, or other shared resources in the database server. Very few 
developers play nice in shared environments these days - designing good code is 
hard; throwing more hardware at the problem is lots easier. Recent versions of 
OTRS have been much, much better about playing nice - kudos to the OTRS devs.

When you say 15 minutes, is that wait time for searches or adding new records 
or ??? If that's adding new records, there's definitely something not cool with 
the database server or application server configuration.  Do you have a 
performance monitor on the database server? If so, what does it say? Is your 
database server set for table or record-level locking? How many simultaneous 
sessions? Average ticket volume?

Need more data.



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Re: [otrs] Sending email from OTRS with elevated priority

[David Boyes]

I don’t think there’s a standard method to do this – SMTP doesn’t really have 
the concept of message priority, so the user agents do it in different (and 
incompatible) ways. Your best option would be to see if you can get a look at a 
raw message with all the headers and see what your most common user agent 
(probably Outlook?) is inserting to set priority (probably an X-Outlook: header 
or something like that).

I also don’t think it’s really going to help; if the user doesn’t care enough 
such that they’re just deleting the messages, then changing the priority won’t 
change that fact. I suspect the only thing that will is personal visitation. 8-)

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of 
Jefferson Davis
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 3:07 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.org
Subject: [otrs] Sending email from OTRS with elevated priority

I'm looking for a way to send the notices, etc on agent responses to users, 
with a HIGH email priority.  I'm not referring to the TICKET priority.

We have users that never respond and after checking, I am finding that they are 
just deleting them.

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Re: [otrs] Reg : How to setup ITIL Helpdesk in otrs 3.3.7

[David Boyes]

ITIL is a set of guidelines, not a destination, and it’s as much a  business 
process evolution as it is a technical implementation. Have  you planned what 
the business should look like at the end of the transition? If you haven’t done 
that, then starting to configure the tool is wasted effort because you don’t 
know how you want it to work and you’ll need to redo a lot of things.

Start with the business design, and then worry about the tool.


From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of 
chandrasekar.M
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2014 2:10 PM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] Reg : How to setup ITIL Helpdesk in otrs 3.3.7


Hi



  I have installed and configured OTRS 3.3.7 in CentOS6.5, Where I need some 
help how to setup a Helpdesk ITIL process .



  Help me to setup the process accordingly.



 Regards

 Chandrasekar.M
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Re: [otrs] SSO

[David Boyes]

I notice the link you provided uses RADIUS for authentication instead of the 
others I pointed to that use Kerberos.  Would you say that this is a simpler 
and more supported way of handling the SSO issue?

I’m not Gerald, but I’ll speak up: No, unless you have another REALLY 
compelling reason to use RADIUS (like a dialup terminal server that uses it for 
AAA), it’s not the direction you want to go. RADIUS is REALLY complicated to 
get working right, and it’s increasingly rare. Kerberos/AD (AD is just a 
integrated Kerberos/LDAP server) is the way to go.
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Re: [otrs] Client includes multiple queue email addresses in email; only goes to one

[David Boyes]

Error Error Message: POP3: Auth for 
useritsupp...@m.com.lr/mail.m.com.lrhttp://itsupp...@m.com.lr/mail.m.com.lr
 failed!.

Your userid or password is wrong.

Test this by using a normal mail client. If you can't access the mailbox from a 
normal mail client, contact your mail server admin.

You're trying to make this too complicated . Check the simple stuff first.
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Re: [otrs] Can send but cannot receive mail.

[David Boyes]

Thanks, but this is where I believe my problem is
[From Otrs Portal: If you cannot use mail accounts to get the email into OTRS, 
the command line program bin/otrs.PostMaster.plhttp://otrs.PostMaster.pl 
might be a way around the problem. It takes the mails via STDIN and pipes them 
directly into OTRS. That means email will be available in your OTRS system if 
the MDA (mail delivery agent, e.g. procmail) executes this program]. To test 
bin/otrs.PostMaster.plhttp://otrs.PostMaster.pl without an MDA, execute the 
command of the following script.

linux:/opt/otrs# cd bin

linux:/opt/otrs/bin# cat ../doc/sample_mails/test-email-1.box | 
./otrs.PostMaster.plhttp://otrs.PostMaster.pl

linux:/opt/otrs/bin#

I want you please better explain with steps how can i solve this

mail problem considering bin/otrs.PostMaster.plhttp://otrs.PostMaster.pl. 
Note that i working
in windows 7 not linux and runnuing Otrs 3.3.6.



You cannot use this solution on your Windows box. It relies on the mail system 
executing the PostMaster.pl Perl script when delivering the message. You don’t 
have the capability to implement this on your Windows system, since apparently 
you don’t control the mail system delivering the messages to your POP mailbox 
and your Win7 system doesn’t have the capability to receive mail directly. 
(Also note that Win7 is a *single-user* desktop operating system; it’s not 
designed for the purpose of running services accessed by other people. Even if 
you DO get this working, it’s not going to be particularly reliable or usable. )



I’ll cut you some slack for being new to the professional IT world, but there’s 
some basic stuff that you need to learn to do to survive out here in the Real 
World. One is step-by-step problem analysis and diagnostics. Your university 
clearly failed you miserably here. If I were you, I’d be annoyed at that 
failure.



Beyond what Gerald already suggested (particularly the Read The Fine Manual 
step), take a step back and look at the problem. First, visualize what you’re 
trying to do: configure OTRS to pull messages from a remote mailbox server – 
essentially to act like any other POP client interacting with a mail server run 
by someone else.



First thing to do: open a text editor or MS Word and step-by-step, record what 
you typed and what the system responded. Screen shots are good.



Second is take 5 minutes to write down what your understanding of the problem 
is and what you think is actually happening in text form – like you would 
explain it to your mother. You’ll understand it better if you do it in plain 
text in complete sentences.



Third, you need to look up the protocols that you’re trying to use and 
understand at least the basics of what they do and are intended to provide. 
Without that research step, you won’t ever understand how this is SUPPOSED to 
work, and you won’t get any further. You get that from the protocol docs and 
from the manuals that come with your product. Write that understanding in your 
text file too – it’s going to make your life easier if all this is in one 
place. Draw yourself a picture of how you think it should work.



So, with that in mind:



OTRS gets incoming messages either by direct execution of the PostMaster.pl 
script when the message is delivered, or by polling a remote mail server 
periodically via POP or IMAP. You can’t use the direct execution model because 
you don’t control the mail system delivering the message, so you have to use 
the polling method. There are two tasks here, transmitting messages outbound 
via SMTP, and receiving inbound messages via POP. You’ve told us that you can 
send outbound messages, which implies that the SMTP component is working.  OK, 
don’t mess with that part.



That means that the problem exists in the POP3 configuration. As again, Gerald 
already pointed out, POP != SMTP. Those services do not run on the same TCP 
ports (POP3 runs on port 110) and they do two completely different things. If 
you have the POP client (your OTRS system) configured to connect to port 25 
(the SMTP port), it will NEVER WORK. It’s like asking for a Irish stout beer in 
Philadelphia using the Urdu language. SMTP doesn’t understand the same commands 
as POP. Wrong place, wrong language.



Next, can your Windows box connect to the POP server? Make sure the OTRS POP 
client is configured for port 110, the POP3 service port on your mailbox server 
(the machine that gets your mail).



If you do have the OTRS POP3 client configured to use port 110, then the next 
step is to check whether the userid and pw you are using is correct for the 
POP3 server you are trying to connect to. If not, it will NEVER WORK. You can 
test this using telnet from your Windows machine: “telnet pop3.server.host 110” 
and using USER “youruserid” and PASS “your password” (without the double 
quotes, and using your userid and pw in place of youruserid and yourpassword). 
If you get OK as a response, then move on. Make sure the 

Re: [otrs] : ITSM Change Management

[David Boyes]

that's exactly what I followed. My first impression is that with such a setup, 
changes cannot be created/executed in a sane way. I'm a developer myself, so 
conditions and actions are not foreign for me, but if I have to define this 
huge number of conditions for each change I have to manage, that's a bit of an 
overkill (even with using templates). However, it is likely that I didn't 
understand the whole change thing in ITSM :-) Isn't it a bit over-complicated?

Sane is variable depending on to whom you’re talking to. Build a telephone 
central office someday if you want to encounter totally fascist change 
management. They worry about what Velcro straps need to be opened and closed. 
8-)

That said, change *IS* complicated if done right and you have to answer for the 
results, no excuses allowed. I admit, the *setup* process is a PITA, but once 
you have the conditions running, it’s workable. You do have to put in the 
thought up front, though.

Look at creating a small-ish number of change categories and fit the changes 
you need to make into one of the categories instead of having a different 
change template for each possible change. We have a total of 5 categories, and 
that works pretty well.
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Re: [otrs] Prevent Escalation if ticket is locked

[David Boyes]

 If a ticket HAS an escalation SLA, it should be impossible to circumvent the 
escalation without a update to the ticket  saying why and who authorized the 
exception. One simple way to work with that: create a script that can be run to 
update the ticket via email. That should reset the counter and document who's 
responsible for the SLA exception.



 On Mar 28, 2014, at 7:26 PM, Leah Kelly lke...@tenstreet.com wrote:
 
 We have a set up to where a ticket that has gone 60 minutes or over without a 
 response is escalated.
 Once an action item is made, the time is supposed to reset, but it seems to 
 be keeping the tickets in 
 escalated view regardless. 
 
 I am looking for a different way to say ‘I am working on this ticket’ - one 
 that actually keeps it out
 of escalation and one that preferably doesn’t involve opening the ticket 
 first.
 
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Re: [otrs] Duplicate Ticket Creation

[David Boyes]

Short version: tell the agents not to do that. OTRS isn't intended to be a 
general purpose messaging system. If it's ticket-related, the sending agent 
should post it directly into the ticket as a comment. 

 On Feb 17, 2014, at 4:26 PM, Leah Kelly lke...@tenstreet.com wrote:
 
 Hi all - you’ve all been so great in helping me and I really appreciate it. I 
 hope you can help me again!
 
 How can I prevent OTRS from creating duplicate tickets when one agent emails 
 another agent from inside OTRS? 
 
 Currently, it will create an ‘open’ ticket in the sender’s queue, and a ‘new’ 
 ticket in the receiver’s queue. 
 Usually they are just one number off from each other. Then when the agent 
 responds, the sender has 
 a ticket in New and one in Open (the original email). 
 
 It would be most desirable if the ticket wouldn’t be created for the sender 
 agent. How can I accomplish this?
 
 Thank you!
 Leah
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Re: [otrs] Problems when working from another person's queue

[David Boyes]

IMHO, this is one of the arguments for structuring queues based on a service 
type, rather than an individual, but... 

If you've structured things with one queue per person, isn't this what you WANT 
to happen (the original person maintains the overall responsibility for the 
ticket, and the other person is acting on their behalf)? You want the responses 
to go back to the original owner so they get the info on actions taken on their 
behalf. 

If not, then have the stand-in person (Amanda) move the ticket to her own 
queue, update/work it, and transfer it back to Elizabeth when she has returned. 
That way there is an explicit chain of custody/responsibility, and it's clear 
that Amanda is the responsible person while Elizabeth is out. The end customer 
will have to deal with the change in email address for issue correspondence 
while Amanda is in charge of Elizabeth's stuff, but that's a logical 
consequence of how you've set up your queues.
 
 Since signatures and email addresses are connected to queues, it's not so
 easy to work another person's queue when somebody is out. For example,
 when Elizabeth is out, Amanda works Elizabeth's queue. Amanda tries to
 reply to the customer, and the email says Amanda
 elizab...@domain.com, and the signature is Elizabeth's as well, not
 Amanda's.
 
 How can we fix this or work around?
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Re: [otrs] Installing other software on OTRS machine

[David Boyes]

Don't put them on the same server, for resilience reasons. You could do it, but 
it's easier to run 3 separate machines so that functions are isolated.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of James 
Carroll
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2014 10:05 AM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] Installing other software on OTRS machine

I'd like to install some other things on my OTRS host (namely Nagios and a 
Maven repository) and am concerned about conflicting ports and services, etc.


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Re: [otrs] Installing other software on OTRS machine

[David Boyes]

Exactly this. It (virtual machines) also makes cloning the production instance 
for upgrades ( especially major updates ) which is a LOT safer. If we can over 
time move ALL the configuration stuff into the database, it'll be even more 
handy. VMware ESXi is plenty good enough for this application, even standalone 
without vCenter.

Also, with Microsoft making hyper-v easily available, you don't have the 
argument about virtualization costs, and you don't have to have the 'must run 
on windows' argument either -- look, the machine boots windows :)

I still prefer VMware, but, if the choice is hyperv or no virtualization, I'll 
live with hyperv.

In any case, you'll be a lot happier if you at least separate the database from 
the application. Lots less weird interactions.



On Feb 7, 2014, at 3:57 PM, Marty Hillman 
mhill...@equuscs.commailto:mhill...@equuscs.com wrote:

I have two VMs running under Hyper-V 2012 R2 (free) on Ubuntu 12.04.3 (free) 
with one running the MySQL portion (free) and the other running the Apache 
processes (free).  It allows me to conserve resources and configure individual 
server instances so that there is one server for one process.  Much easier to 
maintain and repair.

From: Gerald Young [mailto:cryth...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, February 7, 2014 2:30 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Installing other software on OTRS machine

virtualmachines ... vmware server, virtualbox...

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 3:07 PM, James Carroll 
james.carr...@idmworks.commailto:james.carr...@idmworks.com wrote:
I agree, but there are other considerations...

**cough** boss is a cheapskate **cough**

:)
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Re: [otrs] Postmaster Filtering -- Set CustomerID = CC Mailadress

[David Boyes]

Do you have some database that would map arbitrary user A to the customer 
entity in OTRS? If the domain is the same for all users and you have no 
information about the relationship between incoming message from user A and 
customer ID B, I don't see how OTRS could do this -- it has to be able to 
determine the relationship somehow, and if user B is the actual customer, then 
they should be the one formally responsible in the database. 

One thought: if your authentication source is something like Active Directory, 
and you have the relationships (user A is admin for user B) in AD, you could 
probably query AD and substitute the source of the message as if it came from 
user B, and add user A as a CC.  Or you could set up something external to OTRS 
that user B could say these are my designated proxies who can submit issues on 
my behalf and check that during postmaster processing. 



 -Ursprüngliche Nachricht-
 Von: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] Im Auftrag von
 Grzella, Mark
 Gesendet: Freitag, 31. Januar 2014 15:42
 An: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
 Betreff: [otrs] Postmaster Filtering -- Set CustomerID = CC Mailadress
 
 Hey all,
 
 i need an advice regarding otrs postmaster filtering.
 Task is to set the proper customer identification to the email address listed 
 in
 CC on an inbound e-mail.
 As we are getting mails via different communication channels, we can get e-
 mails that are not directly send to otrs from the original customer but rather
 via an alternative address, for example management assistents reporting for
 a manager.
 
 Therefor it´ll be quite helpful to have the customer id not set to the e-mail
 responsible, but to the one listed in cc.
 
 I tried something like this, but with no effect at all.
 OTRS still sets customer id to its original sender, not to the cc one.
 
 Filter condition
 Headline 1 : CC   value  (sample)
 Headline 2 : From value myadr...@mydomain.de
 
 Set E-Mail Header
 Headline 1 : X-OTRS-CustomerUser value [***]

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[otrs] FWIW: New install of RPM on Centos 6

[David Boyes]

Following install of ITSM packages on RPM version of current release, Centos 6 
x86_64:

Forwarding for documentation purposes.


 One additional change was needed:
 
 # cd /opt/otrs
 # bin/otrs.SetPermissions.pl --otrs-user=otrs --otrs-group=apache --web-
 user=apache --web-group=apache /opt/otrs
 
 Also, their startup script is a little squirrely, and talks about the PID 
 being
 registered in the database. That may be, but they also have a PID file in
 /opt/otrs/var/run/ that needs to be maintained.
 
 Running
 
/opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Scheduler.pl -a stop --force
 
 then manually using ps to verify it's really dead, seems to be a reliable 
 way
 of getting it to reset itself completely. If you run service 
 otrs-scheduler-linux
 start and get anything other than Starting OTRS Scheduler [OK] as a result,
 then it was *not* properly reset first.
 
 This was working fine until I did the installation of ITSM module. I think 
 their
 package manager tried and failed to restart the scheduler and didn't recover
 gracefully afterward.
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Re: [otrs] Statistics Scheduled

[David Boyes]

It would help if you showed us what errors you are receiving

But Error showing , can anybody help me or  give Exmple :

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Re: [otrs] OTRS version 3.2.7 on CentOS 6.4

[David Boyes]

Have a look at the actual error messages:

Your storage engine is InnoDB.
These tables use a different storage engine:

Your current MySQL default storage engine is set to InnoDB. The listed tables 
are not using InnoDB. MySQL doesn't like databases that use mixed storage 
engines. Consult the MySQL documentation for how to convert tables to the 
InnoDB storage engine.

Short version: dump the database contents, recreate the tables using InnoDB, 
and reload the data. The health check script will then stop complaining.

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Re: [otrs] OTRS version 3.2.7 on CentOS 6.4

[David Boyes]

Checking OTRS Scheduler service Not Running!
 Error!
 Maybe your database isn't configured yet?

Did you do the setup steps in the documentation for the OTRS Scheduler service?

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Re: [otrs] Google contacts database

[David Boyes]

google contacts database

I think you'll need to be a bit more specific here. Do you want to access a 
users' contacts, or something stored in Google Docs, or ???

If a user's contacts, then there is a Google API for this, but you'll need to 
write some code to do it. An easier way is to use one of the open source Google 
contacts management utilities and periodically replicate the contacts into a 
local LDAP server. Then follow the instructions in the OTRS docs for making 
OTRS talk to LDAP. That way you can still function if Google does something 
stupid, and you don't have to write code other than a periodic cron job to sync 
up the LDAP server.
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Re: [otrs] Google contacts database

[David Boyes]

Thanks David for the quick reply. Any open source Google contacts management 
utilities which you can point me to work on it.


Google linux google contacts sync LDAP. There are several good choices. 
Choose the one that fits your environment best.
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Re: [otrs] CKEDITOR is not found

[David Boyes]

Well, I'd suggest:


1)  Capturing whatever error messages you can with some context. Just 
posting the error, it's impossible to tell.

2)  Grep the source for CKEDITOR

3)  Try some things yourself

4)  Hire some support. You're really beyond the community support level; 
given the number of questions and the amount of hand-holding required over the 
last few weeks, you need a commercial support contract. We can't give you the 
support you need.
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Re: [otrs] Erro: SMTP authentication failed: 5355.7.8 Error: authentication failed: authenticatio[..]

[David Boyes]

The information OTRS has for authenticating to your outbound SMTP server is 
incorrect. Verify you have the correct userid and password, and enter them in 
the OTRS control panel.

If you still get this error, then your SMTP provider has changed your 
information and you need to pursue it with the person running the SMTP server.


From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Marcos S
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 3:15 PM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] Erro: SMTP authentication failed: 5355.7.8 Error: 
authentication failed: authenticatio[..]

Hi,

I need help with this issue

Erro: SMTP authentication failed: 5355.7.8 Error: authentication failed: 
authenticatio[..]


ERROR: OTRS-CGI-10 Perl: 5.8.8 OS: linux Time: Thu Apr 25 16:15:15 2013

Message: SMTP authentication failed: 5355.7.8 Error: authentication failed: 
authentication failure
! Enable Net::SMTP debug for more info!

Traceback (7239):
   Module: Kernel::System::Email::SMTP::Send (v1.25) Line: 103
   Module: Kernel::System::Email::Send (v1.64.2.1) Line: 690
   Module: Kernel::System::Ticket::Article::ArticleSend (v1.232.2.1) Line: 2027
   Module: Kernel::Modules::AgentTicketEmail::Run (v1.99.2.3) Line: 812
   Module: Kernel::System::Web::InterfaceAgent::Run (v1.43.2.1) Line: 819
   Module: /opt/otrs/bin/cgi-bin/index.plhttp://index.pl (v1.88) Line: 48


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Re: [otrs] How to find tickets that have no followup in 2 days

[David Boyes]

As suggested by Steven , if searching article update solves, i tested, can we 
run the search using command line?

Since you're writing the code, make it work the way YOU want it to work.

Just like reports , can the searches be run using some pl file?

He's suggesting you do direct SQL queries against the database - outside of 
OTRS - using your own code. If you do that, then how it is run depends on how 
you write the code and what tool you use to do it.

The key point is that OTRS data is just data in database tables. You install a 
ODBC connector to the database (if you want to use Windows-based tools) or use 
the direct API to access the underlying OTRS database tables, and then you can 
use whatever reporting tool suits you in whatever way it suits you. I've had 
good success with Jasper Reports, MS Access and Crystal Reports. All will let 
you run things in batch from the command line, but that's coincidental that the 
data happens to come from OTRS; the reporting tool governs how the reports can 
be run, not OTRS.




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Re: [otrs] Report For Survey

[David Boyes]

 still how can make reports for survey I need to
 the Survey results can be exported to excel (csv) file with the individual
 ratings, which includes ticket number, customer name, SLA response, SLA
 resolution and average score of the questions.

You've been told this several times.

There's no OTRS supplied code to do this. You have to either:

1) write it yourself
2) pay someone to write it for you

Asking repeatedly isn't going to change that answer. 

Your best option is to access the data directly from the database via a 
reporting tool. The OTRS database schema isn't all that complicated, and it is 
documented. Any reasonably-competent MS Access or Excel user should be able to 
construct a SQL query against the ticket table that produces the desired 
result. Documentation for using ODBC data sources is in the reporting tool 
manuals, and setting up ODBC access to the database is usually not difficult to 
find (google: ODBC MySQL or ODBC your database name here) . That will let 
you create any report or data you want. 

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Re: [otrs] Migrating Tickets to OTRS

[David Boyes]

The old system is home grown, so I can export the data in whatever format that 
OTRS accepts. I want to know how the import would work and what the limitations 
are.

Unless you're prepared to do a lot of internal database manipulation, and you 
REALLY understand the OTRS database schema, I'd do the following:


1)  Leave the existing system up, but force it into a read-only mode so 
that new entries cannot be made.

2)  In OTRS, open new tickets to correspond with the old system tickets, 
with the entire new ticket content being a URL pointing to the entry in the old 
system. The easiest way to do that is probably to forge incoming emails to OTRS 
with the old ticket information (write a script to fake up a SMTP message and 
inject it into the incoming message queue in OTRS. Do not include headers that 
would generate outbound emails to the original ticket initiators).

3)  Edit the database entries to have the date information from the old 
tickets (ie, let OTRS create all the new ticket structure entries, then alter 
them to reflect the dates from the old system.)

4)  Start creating all  your new tickets in the new OTRS.

5)  Aggressively expire the information in the old system. You shouldn't 
keep that stuff forever anyway, and if there are specific items, develop a 
strategy for extracting the important problem cause data into OTRS and expire 
the old information.

Otherwise, you're facing writing a custom import tool. I doubt your old entries 
look enough like OTRS entries that any generic import tool will be possible.

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Re: [otrs] OTRS and JIRA Integration

[David Boyes]

There's so many possible workflows here that I don't think any generic tool 
would work. The OTRS API is fairly good about providing abstract access to 
ticket objects, but you have to explicitly understand what workflow you're 
trying to implement to do something like this. There is certainly enough 
functionality in both tools to implement something, but you'd have to do it.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Darshak 
Modi
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 3:57 AM
To: OTRS User Mailing List
Subject: [otrs] OTRS and JIRA Integration

Is there any plug in available for integration with JIRA   OTRS.

Or any other way to related JIRA and OTRS ? like ticket created in OTRS can be 
sent to JIRA, and after closing come back to JIRA?

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Re: [otrs] copy paste not working

[David Boyes]

It's a question of browser configuration. Most Windows browsers ship with lax 
security. Most Unix browsers ship with more sensible settings that don't expose 
the entire universe by default.
Check the security settings in the browser you use and see if they are set to 
Medium (the default for Firefox). If not, try that.
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Re: [otrs] Filtering out undisclosed-recipient/non-addressed spam

[David Boyes]

Does anyone know of a combination of Postmaster Filters that I can use to 
filter this type of email out/drop it into the Postmaster queue, I'd rather do 
this with OTRS if possible as the mail server is a managed service so I have no 
admin access for this type of thing.
Static filters aren’t going to be worth your time. This kind of thing is a 
totally moving target, and you need something more robust to have a prayer of 
doing any good. Even with running our own mail server, we had to implement 
whitelisting (accept only from known, preapproved sources) to get this problem 
down to a manageable size.
I would suggest front-ending the OTRS server with a Linux box and running 
spamassassin and very aggressive DNS RBLs on that (which will knock off about 
80% of the truly egregious crap), and then blocking anything that isn’t sent by 
a preapproved user.  Fetchmail does a fine job of grabbing mail from a hosted 
server, so you still get the benefit of them being online and active all the 
time, but it gives you the level of control you need to do something effective 
about this. Same with outgoing mail; the front-end box also does a decent job 
of queuing mail so you can survive outages upstream.
I should set up a bootable live CD or USB distribution for this. Too many 
people need something like it these days.
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Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL

[David Boyes]

Did you run tests that showed PostgreSQL would be better performance-wise or, 
if not, why did you move?

Oracle’s new licensing TCs for use of MySQL for business tasks in one big 
reason. The lawyers here think the new language implies that using MySQL with 
other applications that have a business purpose now requires a MySQL commercial 
license, which is .
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Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL

[David Boyes]

I'll see your TCs and raise you window functions

?? window functions? Not sure I follow.
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Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL

[David Boyes]

Neat. Hadn’t considered using something like that for reporting.


From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Bogdan 
Iosif
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 3:51 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_functions
Very useful for some queries used mostly with reports (e.g. when you need that 
Nth occurence in ticket_history)

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 9:46 PM, David Boyes 
dbo...@sinenomine.netmailto:dbo...@sinenomine.net wrote:


I'll see your TCs and raise you window functions

?? window functions? Not sure I follow.

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Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL

[David Boyes]

Another good option. I haven't been all that impressed with it yet, but it's 
improving rapidly as they clean-room reimplement some of the stuff Oracle did 
on the performance front.

It'd just be good for Oracle to get what's coming to them.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 4:11 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Database Conversion from MySQL to PostgreSQL

May I point out MariaDBhttps://mariadb.org/ while we're talking about MySQL? 
Just in case you want a different MySQL that isn't encumbered by Oracle, but is 
a drop-in replacement for MySQL.


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Re: [otrs] IP from header

[David Boyes]

Given that most customers don't control their mail servers (or use someone 
else's), can you explain a bit more what you're trying to accomplish? Listing 
the IP addresses of Google's mail servers really won't give you much useful 
information.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Jean 
BROW
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 8:57 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: [otrs] IP from header

Hello,

Is it any easy way I can display the IP from the header to the agent? Today the 
agent need to click Plain format if he want to see the IP that the customer 
sending the email from. I would like to display the IP in the menu right at all 
time.

Thanks.
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Re: [otrs] IP from header

[David Boyes]

Yeah. Parsing mail headers won't give him a reliable indicator of the source IP 
he'd need for that, and If you had a static IP address, there's already a way 
to handle those.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 10:51 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] IP from header

I think he's got an internal situation where he needs the ip of the submitting 
user... If dhcp, I don't see how that's necessarily going to help, and if it's 
static, (IMO), This can be stored with the Customer information as an 
additional field.

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Re: [otrs] Any other way to control the size of LogModule::LogFile except via LogModule::LogFile::Date?

[David Boyes]

You don't have to use LogFile. You can use SysLog and handle that way

Second this suggestion. Individual log files for applications are a bloody 
nightmare (particularly if any automation or monitoring is done) and should be 
stamped out wherever possible.

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Re: [otrs] Any other way to control the size of LogModule::LogFile except via LogModule::LogFile::Date?

[David Boyes]

In newer releases of the OTRS Windows installer I made sure Sys::Syslog is 
installed, so you can use it if you want. Also I'd like to switch to using the 
Windows event log by default in the 'future', meaning probably for OTRS 3.3.

Great news. There’s no excuse these days for inventing your own logging 
mechanism. That’s what OS logging facilities are for.

(Didn’t we learn this lesson in OS/360, say, 40+ years ago? *sigh*)
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Re: [otrs] Any other way to control the size of LogModule::LogFile except via LogModule::LogFile::Date?

[David Boyes]

The only problem is to use a logging framework that is advanced enough to make 
it easy for admins when deciding what goes into the file and how size is 
managed. Look at log4j as a model. I see there's a version for Perl also ( 
http://mschilli.github.com/log4perl/ ). If it's good enough and it has followed 
the log4j mantra (as expected from any log4* project) then it is the perfect 
tool for the job.

That would be a good compromise solution. It disconnects the application log 
API from the sinks used to receive it, so we could make the choice w/o the app 
having to know or care.

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Re: [otrs] OTRS helpdesk vs OTRS ITSM

[David Boyes]

Short version: OTRS helpdesk is the core technology of recording and allowing 
agents to respond to requests. OTRS ITSM imposes additional IT service 
management tools and concepts on the processing of requests to help you 
implement a ITIL-based process customized to your organization. ITSM is not 
ITIL-in-a-box (you won't be magically ITIL-compliant if you implement it). 
Think of it as a toolkit to use in implementing your own ITIL-compliant 
processes.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Kaushal 
Shriyan
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 5:40 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: [otrs] OTRS helpdesk vs OTRS ITSM

Hi,

Can someone please help me understand the difference between OTRS helpdesk vs 
OTRS ITSM. At present i am using OTRS helpdesk version 3.2.3 on CentOS Linux 
version 6.4.

Regards,

Kaushal

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Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

[David Boyes]

Ok.  I am going to start over from scratch with a fresh Config.pm and report 
back.  Brand new day.  The ultimate goal would be for the site to automatically 
log the user in based on the context of the user logged in to the workstation.

Adding GSSAPI support to OTRS has been on my to-do list for quite a while. That 
would allow security and identity tokens (like the Kerberos 5 principal and 
service tickets that Windows uses) to be securely passed from lots of different 
authentication sources w/o special code for each.

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Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

[David Boyes]

I've done this... it works nicely.

Goody! Is the code committed? I'll have some VERY happy people here if it is.
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Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

[David Boyes]

That's not GSSAPI. That's using mod_kerb to supply the user information via 
basic mode. Not the same animal, although it produces a similar-looking effect.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:33 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found 
in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

http://forums.otterhub.org/viewtopic.php?f=81t=15422

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Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

[David Boyes]

Authentication and authorization are two different things (one is can you 
access this system, the other is what are you allowed to do). I agree that 
on first authentication, OTRS should create a stub record in the database for 
the authorized entity, but I actually think the no privileges until explicitly 
assigned is a good thing in that you don't accidentally disclose things that 
that customer has no business seeing.

I think the compromise approach would be to use the authorization exit to check 
whether the customer is in the database and then add a default entry from a 
site-assigned template (queue access, permissions, etc).

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Marty 
Hillman
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 4:06 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Authentication succeeded, but no customer record is found 
in the customer backend. Please contact your administrator.

Come to think of it, if it does not add the customers to the database, the 
feature is pretty worthless.  Why validate against LDAP/AD at all for customers 
if everything has to exist in the database?  That would just be adding useless 
complexity.

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Re: [otrs] Is OTRS Helpdesk ITIL Compliant?

[David Boyes]

  Actually till now we were using OTRS 3.1.7 which is not ITIL compliant.

Remember that ITIL is not a product, it's a description of a process for 
handling IT-related activities. There's no such thing as a ITIL-compliant 
product; there's just a product that makes it easier for you to implement  
ITIL-described process in your organization.

  But I am not sure if existing functionalities may work smoothly.
  We are using generic interface for webservices for ticket creation  and
 using some method like creating services or customers using rpc.pl.
  So what would be the impact of adding  this new package?

Adding the packages will have zero impact on the existing functions if you do 
not have the relevant processes implemented.


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Re: [otrs] Migrate

[David Boyes]

Some steps I collected during our last upgrade; not definitive cookbook, but it 
worked for us:


1)  If possible (and you haven't done so already), move your OTRS server to 
a virtual machine, preferably VMWare-based. Makes cloning in the future a lot 
easier.

2)  Build a new VM image, and install all the patches/OS stuff

3)  Install the new version of OTRS on the new VM image and make sure it 
has all the prereqs.

4)  Schedule an outage of the old OTRS server, shut it down and take a 
backup of the database.

5)  Import the database backup into the new OTRS machine

6)  Run the migration scripts on the new OTRS machine. Fix any errors and 
note what you did.

7)  Test and tweak the new OTRS machine to make sure any customizations you 
did still work. Note what you did.

8)  Schedule another outage of the old OTRS and take another database backup

9)  Drop the test DB, and import the new backup to the new server

10)   Run the migration scripts again, and use your notes from #6 to complete 
the  import.

11)   Apply tweaks from #7

12)   Swap IP addresses for old and new OTRS servers

13)   Declare victory and march home.

In the future, you can take a snapshot of the running OTRS server and test the 
upgrade from that snapshot.  Steps 6 and 7 are really critical because you have 
to do the steps twice. Take good notes (in fact, if you use the ITSM add on, 
use the change request doc to note them, and you'll have good docs for the 
local tweaks for next time).

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of 
Luchtman, Kurt
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 10:34 AM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] Migrate

Does anyone have any tips on how to migrate OTRS 3.1.11 to a new server running 
3.2.2-01?

Kurt


Kurt Luchtman
NC FAST Desktop Support Manager
3724 National Drive #200
Raleigh NC 27612
919-707-4198




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Re: [otrs] GenericAgent

[David Boyes]

 I did but doesn't work. Please, I have to finish this project on Thursday , 
 can
 you show me step  by step .

You should contact one of the professional services organizations and purchase 
some of their time. This list is volunteers answering questions in our spare 
time after/on top of our day jobs. You need professional, dedicated support. 

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Re: [otrs] How can I reset passwords for all customers?

[David Boyes]

A password expiration date would be a useful addition to OTRS (or the option to 
defer authentication to PAM, where we can already do that). If the password is 
expired, OTRS could force the password change on expiration, setting the field 
to zero would be never expire.
I like the PAM idea a lot better, though - that would permit this to work with 
any authentication method, and be a much more general solution to the problem.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 9:02 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] How can I reset passwords for all customers?

I need to reset passwords to values that are later communicated to customers
I don't see how this is good security, especially since the passwords aren't 
forced to reset and you've now generated a list of passwords for all your users 
in plain text after a potential security breach.

I realize you have to do what you have to do, but having the users reset their 
own password is (IMO) a safer tactic.
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Re: [otrs] Tickets not re-opening on customer reply.

[David Boyes]

One reason: by using an alias and processing the stuff immediately as it comes 
in, he doesn't have any exposure to DOS attacks on an actual userid on the 
system with the potential to fill /var/mail before the postmaster filter runs, 
and it increases the responsiveness of the system as a whole (with the 
postmaster filter, your reaction time to a incoming ticket can be no shorter 
than the period of the postmaster filter runs, which may be significant for 
some providers). His approach runs in real time.

This using polling for POP/IMAP mailboxes may be necessary for Windows systems, 
but it's icky in a system that can do better.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:28 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Tickets not re-opening on customer reply.

why not just
helpdesk: otrs
and do a Postmasterfilter?
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Re: [otrs] Modify Criticality on a ticket basis

[David Boyes]

Prefix this by it depends on your organization's priorities, but...

 Let's say that our OTRS system has a service called OTRS with a criticality of
 4 high because, if it fails, no agent can work.
 Let's say there is a problem in OTRS: the company logo is mirrored and
 unreadable. It's a problem that affects both customers and agents, all of
 them, so its impact is 5 very high. So now I have a very high priority ticket
 that is nothing more than a GUI nuisance.

No, you have a low impact/low criticality issue that is misclassified. It may 
be highly visible, but it is not impacting the availability or functionality of 
the service, thus it does not rate critical. 

 I know I can manually change the ticket 's priority, but what I would be 
 really
 doing is saying Although the impact is really 4, the criticality should be 1,
 not 4.

That's why you have priority. It should be fixed ASAP (and thus be high up on 
the list of low impact issues to fix), but it is not impacting 
usage/availability of the service, and thus, not critical by definition. 

 Now, my question: do you think that there should be a way to adjust the
 criticality of the service for the current ticket?

In general, the value of the Severity/Criticality value matrix is that 
*everyone* has a common set of definitions of what is critically impacting 
services and how to respond to certain levels of criticality. If agents can 
edit criticality, then you lose that common definition and your response (and 
SLA compliance) to the issue can be confused, and thus recovery is delayed 
because everyone no longer shares the definition of critical. If there are 
non-trivial resources involved in the response to a critical event, that can be 
VERY expensive. Sev 1 or sev 2 fire drills where they aren't really necessary 
tends to lead to the cry wolf syndrome. 

So, no, I don't think it's a good idea. I'd argue that instead, you need to 
turn the OTRS service into a composite service made up of presentation, 
function, and throughput. The logo issue is really relevant only to the OTRS 
presentation service component; function and throughput are not affected, and 
the function and throughput of the OTRS system ARE critical services that 
should require high-severity response. The presentation service component is 
lower priority, and should be defined as such. Your business dashboard can 
reflect the overall OTRS service for SLA reporting. 

Focus your agents on whether the service delivery is impacted, and you'll be 
able to use the current setup effectively without change. 


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Re: [otrs] Couldn't send mail: 550 5.7.1 Client does not have permissions to send as this sender

[David Boyes]

unfortunatelly, there is no error. The the last entry in SMTP log 
(of Exchange server) is successfull authentication and that´s all.
Besides, the install script http://localhost/otrs/installer.pl found IMAPS and 
SMTPS is working fine

Then the problem is in the list of hosts that that SMTP server(s) are allowed 
to relay. You may be allowed to authenticate, but that doesn't mean that the 
SMTP server will relay your mail.
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Re: [otrs] OTRS now on github

[David Boyes]

 Would it be possible to have the .gitignore updated to exclude all locations
 that OTRS writes to (or what settings are required so can I configure OTRS
 to store it's data/configuration in a completely separate location). So that I
 can keep my local OTRS installation up-to-date with git but not have to worry
 about wiping out any data/configuration settings.

That's a pretty cool idea. I'll have to try that. 

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Re: [otrs] Couldn't send mail: 550 5.7.1 Client does not have permissions to send as this sender

[David Boyes]

That error is coming from the remote SMTP server. There should be a message 
logged on their side as to what address you are actually sending in the SMTP 
envelope and the address it's coming from. Contact your SMTP provider and ask 
them for that data and what IP ranges from which you are authorized to send. 
Are you using SPF records in your DNS? If so, then default config of modern 
versions of sendmail enforces SPF declared mail servers. I doubt that your new 
OTRS server is declared as a legitimate source of email if you're in early 
testing.
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Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.

[David Boyes]

 One of my big issues with OTRS is the configuration is utter crap. Too many
 places to configure things, everything should really be just configured
 through Sysconfig instead of having to mess about with text files (and perl
 based text files at that), and ideally stored in the database to make upgrades
 a lot easier than worrying about which config files you need and don't need.

Amen, brother. 

Software this complex needs to have settings in one, migrateable place with 
clear exit points for customized processing of those settings. The database is 
the only logical place for that information to live. 

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Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.

[David Boyes]

Actually, it's not that bad.

At the most basic level, you can treat the static info as an array of text 
lines and read/interpret them sequentially. That at least doesn't bind the 
information to a file on a specific server and gives you much more granular 
control of configuration management on operating systems that have essentially 
only two privilege levels (root/non-root).

As an interim step on that clustered OTRS system I mentioned in another thread, 
we've stored the config files in git and modified the OTRS startup script to 
check out the configuration files from the git server based on the node id at 
startup and a current configuration tag. The basic principle is sound (and 
you get very detailed configuration control) - it wouldn't be too hard to 
migrate to storing the static info in a table.

Where do you see the big problems?

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Gerald 
Young
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 10:56 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.

The database is the only logical place for that information to live
Static connection information? Maybe not. Configuration? ... I'd be inclined to 
concur. The problem with the database method with a table based data source is 
the freeform data. Move it to something non-sql, like perhaps ldap or other 
NoSQL, and this should be much better handled as desired.
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Re: [otrs] Resetting a Dynamic Field when Escalation Update timer resets

[David Boyes]

Can somebody help me on this, I really need this.

You should probably look into a paid support contract with a vendor if you have 
time-critical requirements for responses. This is a volunteer forum, and 
there's no guarantees.  You also just posted your note yesterday, so you might 
want to give people time to even have *read* it, let alone think about good 
answers.

What have you tried so far?
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Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.

[David Boyes]

 -Original Message-
 From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of
 Steven Carr
 Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 12:48 PM
 To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
 Subject: Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.
 
 On 8 February 2013 16:37, David Boyes dbo...@sinenomine.net wrote:
  Actually, it’s not that bad.
 
  At the most basic level, you can treat the static info as an array of
  text lines and read/interpret them sequentially. That at least doesn’t
  bind the information to a file on a specific server and gives you much
  more granular control of configuration management on operating systems
  that have essentially only two privilege levels (root/non-root).
 
  As an interim step on that clustered OTRS system I mentioned in
  another thread, we’ve stored the config files in git and modified the
  OTRS startup script to check out the configuration files from the git
  server based on the node id at startup and a “current configuration”
  tag. The basic principle is sound (and you get very detailed
  configuration control) – it wouldn’t be too hard to migrate to storing the
 static info in a table.
 
  Where do you see the big problems?
 
 With all due respect David your system is highly customised and you must
 have the people power (or skills) to maintain your custom setup.
 I don't want to have to do any of that custom piece, and more to the point I
 shouldn't have to do that.
 
 I want OTRS to focus on putting an enterprise/more
 manageable/maintainable slant on things, rather than it still feeling very
 much like a pet project that needs constant nurturing. And yes there is the
 argument that it is free/open source so take it or leave it, but even the 
 paid
 version doesn't really offer any advantages other than 101 unnecessary add-
 ons and someone on the end of a phone to answer questions, and I'm
 technically competent enough not to need to pay someone for that.
 
 Since the change of hands it's beginning to feel very much like a closed
 application they just happen to release the code to, the community
 development side of the project has gone leaving very little ability to
 request/influence development.
 
 Steve
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Re: [otrs] Need to set customers/agents's auth witn LDAP.

[David Boyes]

 On 8 February 2013 16:37, David Boyes dbo...@sinenomine.net wrote:
  Actually, it’s not that bad.
 With all due respect David your system is highly customised and you must
 have the people power (or skills) to maintain your custom setup.
 I don't want to have to do any of that custom piece, and more to the point I
 shouldn't have to do that.

I think you misinterpreted my reply. I was replying to Gerard's note on the 
difficulty level of storing connection info with the not that bad comment to 
illustrate that a solution like we're discussing wouldn't be that hard to 
implement. I'm totally with you on the we shouldn't have to invent hacks like 
this -- that idea with git is a workaround, and for enterprise-grade 
infrastructure such as OTRS purports to be, hacks like that shouldn't be 
necessary. We're not breaking new ground here; most of what we're discussing 
has long ago been done in other tools, and there's little excuse for not 
learning from the past. (I'm coming from a mainframe background, so the fact we 
have to do any of this HA stuff at the application level continues to amaze -- 
the mainframe world had this kind of basic system integrity stuff in 1982 for 
*everything*, not just single apps inventing it as they go along. ) 

I tossed out the git idea as one way we worked around the problem. It's fugly, 
but it does work as a stopgap solution. There is some unavoidable formalism 
that it assumes in terms of administrative practice, but nothing that you 
wouldn't expect from good practice where downtime has a substantial price 
attached to it. We built it on git precisely because we didn't have to invent 
the management of the configuration versioning, and we used it elsewhere, and 
it didn't require modifying OTRS beyond a simple init script change, which is 
easily managed (in fact, if I were doing it now, I'd pull that step out of the 
OTRS init script and put it into a new script with appropriate dependencies). 
It shouldn't be necessary, but it lets us cope with the problem without 
rewriting the universe.

There are a lot of things I'd like to see added for HA and system resilience in 
OTRS. Matter of time and resources, I'd say. It probably would be a good idea 
to discuss it here, and help them define some requirements for what a really 
resilient enterprise OTRS system would look like. 

My starter list would be: 

1) tolerate/exploit clustered database engines
2) explicit interaction with load balancing solutions (start with LVS, move on 
to the hardware solutions later)
3) rationalization of configuration data
4) management of configuration data
5) work on lock management in the database (there are a lot of places where a 
table-level lock is used by default that could be much more efficiently use 
row-level locks)
6) More work on index definition for high-use tables
7) Allow explicit use of different database extent storage pools in the 
database scripts to tune data placement (indexes on SSD, data on slower disk, 
for example).
8) More formal work on the SOAP interface. XML-RPC only goes so far. 
9) a instrumentation interface to determine how well the application is 
performing (per-request timing, transaction overhead would be a good start)

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Re: [otrs] OTRS Manager

[David Boyes]

Looks like as of April, 2012, this gadget has been sold to a private company 
and the open source version is no longer maintained. Looks kinda cool, though.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Jean 
BROW
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 2:19 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: [otrs] OTRS Manager

Hi,

Anyone using this tool? OTRS Manager
http://sourceforge.net/projects/otrs-manager/

Is it a good tool? Possible to see any screenshot?

Thanks.

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Re: [otrs] otrs 3.1.11

[David Boyes]

 Edit Kernel/System/Ticket.pm and change line 3944, update the message
 returned, change from 'Need StateID or State!' to Need StateID or State!
 Ticket: $Param{TicketID}.

He does have a point, though. An good error message should give as much context 
as possible (answering the basic journalism questions: who, what, when, where, 
why).
Not quite as bad as the all-purpose Syntax error from the BSD C compiler, but 
... 

Call it a usability APAR. 


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Re: [otrs] NLB (load balancing) OTRS

[David Boyes]

Thoughts:

Rather than invent a application-specific solution, look at Linux-HA 
(www.linux-ha.orghttp://www.linux-ha.org). They’ve solved most of these 
problems in a neatly packaged way.
There’s existing code to handle session affinity and most of the request 
distribution process.

If you store everything in the database (including attachments), you can easily 
separate the application logic from the database server; that introduces a bit 
more database management, but it easily allows multiple otrs instances to use 
the same data safely. It also lets you take advantage of the clustering 
features in the dbms software. You also eliminate any need for shared storage.

If you use shared storage, you MUST use a cluster-aware filesystem like GFS2 or 
OCFS. NFS won’t work reliably.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Bogdan 
Iosif
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 5:21 AM
To: OTRS User Mailing List
Subject: [otrs] NLB (load balancing) OTRS

Hi,
Can anyone help with some obvious issues around setting up a load balanced OTRS?
- Does last db write always win?
  I imagine there's no built in protection against it.
- Are HTTP sticky sessions required and if so, how can they be configured?
  I imagine OTRS needs some built in support to allow identification of user 
sessions in the balancer so that it maps them on the same app server.

- To what extent is shared storage required?
  An older mailing list message proposes sharing the whole /var dir through a 
storage that support file locks (mainly to safely use TicketCounter.log but 
this could be worked around by setting up different SystemIDs (via SysConfig) 
on each app server). While sharing storage is required for /var/article (when 
attachments are stored on disk) I don't know if it's required or even safe for 
the other subfolders in /var (especially /tmp).
Thanks,
Bogdan
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Re: [otrs] NLB (load balancing) OTRS

[David Boyes]

I'm not familiar with LVS or Linux-HA (mostly used MS platforms until ~ 
recently) so the next question may be born out of confusion: You have the load 
balancing performed by machines runnings LVS and the Linux-HA is running on the 
app nodes?

Correct. LVS handles session distribution and session affinity. Linux-HA 
handles resilience for the application nodes (if one node fails or goes 
unresponsive, Linux-HA can do things like move the workload to the other 
server, shoot the unresponsive node in the head, and take over). In the future, 
I plan to have it be able to provision an entirely new server node in one of 
the virtual machine pools once I get a decent grasp on the VMWare orchestration 
API.

Just to make sure I understood some of your points:
a. You have a load balancer in front of your app nodes using a generic sticky 
sessions algorithm that you didn't have to configure in any way for the OTRS 
nodes. Correct?
Correct.
We took the simple approach of assigning affinity based on incoming IP address 
because that’s how the Cisco boxes we had before did it. We had to do a bit of 
fiddling and measuring of our traffic load to tell LVS how often to time out 
the affinity relationship (how long a IP is associated with a specific OTRS 
server instance). You also have to accept that SSL protection of the session 
ends at the LVS systems, but in our case, that’s acceptable (if you have 
physical access to the wires, we’re already screwed). I suspect that OTRS 
session data in the database is sufficient nowadays, but we’ve never bothered 
to change the LVS setup. Ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

b. In addition, because of your clever attachment juggling and because the user 
session is stored in the db you did not have to set up shared storage between 
the app nodes. Correct?
Correct. Data management really shouldn’t be OTRS’ job.
One last question: If you have no shared storage, how did you solve the default 
ticket number generator's dependency of TicketCounter.log file? A custom 
generator?
Yes. Simple piece of code that uses a autoincrement field in a database table. 
I’ll see if I can get approval to post it. OTRS mainline really should move to 
something like it.
One thing that is a bit weird if you use DB replication (rather than cluster 
mode) is that your autoincrement values are a function of the number of 
replicated nodes (ie, our ticket #s increment by 3, not one). That’s a MySQL 
thing, though.
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Re: [otrs] NLB (load balancing) OTRS

[David Boyes]

bogdan: I think if the shared file system would be required just for 
attachments, it wouldn't need to be very fancy. I think OTRS doesn't modify 
what it has already written on disk for articles / attachments. So it only does 
reads and additional writes. No editing.

It does rely on a consistent view of what files exist in a directory on all 
nodes; that’s the thing that drives the cluster filesystem requirement. Another 
reason we moved to the transactional approach with the DMS.

bogdan: I'm certain they have. Right now, my installation is not monstrous. It 
will handle ~30 agents and 100 daily tickets. For a while, I hope I'll be able 
to keep things in check with a single app server node. The bigger problem is 
that I have to get it off the ground with a db injected with 75000 tickets, 
20 articles and 1000 customer accounts from our custom legacy system. But I 
also want to be prepared for unexpected success and that's why I ask about 
load balancing. If that comes to be, maybe I'll have the budget for official 
support.
Even in the simple configuration, the Linux-HA stuff might be worth looking at. 
It’s pretty impressive to kill the primary server and watch the other node 
pretty much assume the position without human intervention. 8-)
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Re: [otrs] Audit trail of system changes

[David Boyes]

Delegate privileges to specific users and disable the built-in administration 
user.  Pretty much the same steps you would take to control the use of the 
generic root/Administrator ids at the OS level. That will at least give you 
some idea of who was logged in at the time, and OTRS does capture restart 
commands for the OTRS software itself.   It's never a good idea to use generic 
userids, even if it is more work to track and delegate privileges and revoke 
them if someone leaves or misuses them.

Note that some of the information you want is not in OTRS's logging capability 
- eg, some is in the Apache and DBMS logs. Configuration control those in a 
similar manner.

Or is there another way I can track who made changes to the
system.


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[otrs] OTRS Authentication against Samba 4 AD implementation?

[David Boyes]

Now that Samba 4 implements Active Directory protocols to the point of being 
able to implement full AD function without any Windows servers or licenses, has 
anyone done any work with getting OTRS to authenticate against a Samba 4 AD 
domain? I'm looking into it here, but if someone's already done it, I'd like to 
exchange notes about how you did it.

(this is a big deal, because it effectively makes doing effective Kerberos and 
LDAP authentication for OTRS a LOT easier, especially since the Samba 4 servers 
can be directly integrated into an existing AD domain and managed with the 
Windows AD tools. The licensing implications of having a fully open-source 
implementation of AD without per-client license requirements is a Really Big 
Deal).
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Re: [otrs] respect foreign ticket IDs

[David Boyes]

http://www.otrs.com/en/software/otrs-help-desk/features/otrs-feature-add-ons/feature-add-on-external-ticket-number-recognition/
Neat! Haven’t encountered that one before. Should have figured that the OTRS 
folk had encountered this before... 8-)
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Re: [otrs] respect foreign ticket IDs

[David Boyes]

I think that's Utopia, isn't it? Are there any other ways? Do I have to modify 
the sources to let OTRS recognize the foreign numbers?

I would do this outside OTRS. If you control the mail server that receives mail 
for OTRS, give the client a specific alias for the automated reports and make 
sure their ticket number is in the Subject line. Write a script that extracts 
the subject line, parses out the foreign ticket # and looks it up in a database 
table. If not found, make an entry, and use the SOAP interface to create a 
ticket in OTRS. Capture the ticket # and put in the database table. If the 
foreign ticket # IS found, append it to the OTRS ticket # recorded in the 
database table.

No OTRS magic required, and no additional configuration to carry over to the 
next version of OTRS. Also pretty much transparent to the client, and can be 
easily replicated for multiple clients.

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Re: [otrs] open ticket forwarding mail

[David Boyes]

That's more a question of what email client you use. Some clients (elm, pine, 
etc) provide a function that redelivers messages to another destination with 
the original headers intact (as if it were originally sent to that destination).

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Re: [otrs] open ticket forwarding mail

[David Boyes]

...still interested in a OTRS way to rewrite the From: in forwarded email

OTRS can't perform miracles. When you forward a message, you're creating a 
completely new message and new headers, and that is completely under the 
control of your mail client.  If your mail client can't resend it 
transparently, your only options are to create something like a mail alias on 
your OTRS server that runs a procmail filter to strip out the headers generated 
by forwarding the message and resubmit the original message to OTRS as if it 
had come from the customer directly, or add some kind of special header that 
the OTRS postmaster filter can trap.  You then forward the message to the mail 
alias when you want this to happen, or add the magic header when you forward 
the message.

The alias idea won't work unless you have control of the incoming mail server 
(and given that you say you're using gmail's mail servers, you probably don't), 
and the gmail interface isn't conducive to adding specialized headers. Note 
that you also will need to configure your mail client to not modify the 
forwarded message in any way (eg, no indents, adding  notations, etc.) if you 
want the stripping to work reliably.


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Re: [otrs] open ticket forwarding mail

[David Boyes]

So do I. But to do that, you have to have some way of conveying the original 
address in a way that OTRS can understand it, and that's not possible in your 
configuration without supplying that information in another form than the 
RFC822 email headers.

The postmaster filter approach outlined in another email is probably your only 
hope if you don't run your own mail server, but as you noted, that allows 
pretty much anyone on the planet to do it unless you build in some additional 
authentication in the postmaster script, which is not a trivial task.  There 
are a lot of complex edge cases.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of 
Francesco Pasqualini
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 10:23 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] open ticket forwarding mail

Nowadays many people use gmail and gmail does not provides redeliver.

I think  the ability to open a ticket via mail forwarding is an interesting 
feature for OTRS.
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Re: [otrs] Fetching mails from Lotus Domino without POP/IMAP access

[David Boyes]

Except she said that she is specifically forbidden to do that by corporate 
policy. This isn’t a technical problem, it’s a political one.

The suggestion I made works because if the separate Notes server is a separate 
administrative domain, there is no way to compromise the existing server ids, 
because it is essentially a separate environment (with no common userids, etc). 
It can communicate with the other server only via a private unpublished 
protocol, and it can be completely audited.  There are no other userids that 
can be collected or compromised. If someone is that paranoid, that should be 
enough audit trail for anyone.



You could configure an MTA such as Postfix on the OTRS server, accepting emails 
for supp...@otrs.yourdomain.commailto:supp...@otrs.yourdomain.com and pipe 
this directly into OTRS.
Then, you can configure on the Lotus Notes side to forward all mail to this 
address: 
http://robpegoraro.com/2011/06/08/lotus-notes-liberation-how-to-forward-everything-to-gmail/
It would still not be the most elegant solution, it would require a bit of 
configuration, but it'll work fine!

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Re: [otrs] Fetching mails from Lotus Domino without POP/IMAP access

[David Boyes]

If they've got the Notes server locked down that severely, you're pretty much 
stuck. The Notes replication protocol is not published, and the only thing that 
will provide a OTRS server access to that internal resource is the Notes 
POP/IMAP server.

Your only option is pretty much getting them to designate a separate Notes 
server for use only by OTRS and enabling POP/IMAP on that server.  If they 
designate it as a separate organizational unit in the Notes directory and turn 
on full message logging on that server, then they should be able to make the 
case to the auditors that the designated server is a controlled access point 
and they have sufficient audit trails for any messages sent. It will run very 
slowly if you have the full audit log turned on in Notes, and cost them a Notes 
server license and a separate machine/virtual machine - not cheap, but that's 
the price for using a totally closed proprietary email system.



From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of 
Gabriele D'Andrea
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 9:46 AM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] Fetching mails from Lotus Domino without POP/IMAP access

Hi,

I need to configure OTRS for fetching emails from a Lotus Domino server.
Unfortunately, the Domino server cannot be configured for use with IMAP or POP3 
protocols.
Whats' more, even forwarding emails to a different account on another domain is 
not an option.
These limitations depend on severe company policies, that I cannot superseed.

Is there a way to allow OTRS fetching mails from Domino, using the native 
domino protocol?
Alternatively, is there some kind of sowtware that can act as a gateway to the 
domino server?

Thank you very much for any kind of support
--
Gabriele D'Andrea
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Re: [otrs] How to setup customer users,

[David Boyes]

Another interesting note: Samba 4 (with the full independent AD implementation 
mandated by the EU judgment against MS) was released this week. No Windows CALs 
required to do authentication against it, and can be managed directly with the 
MS tools *and* it supports replication of AD forests. He may be able to do this 
more easily using a Samba 4 domain controller.

I'm setting up a lab system to test this today.

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Re: [otrs] restore article_attachment from article_plain after table crash

[David Boyes]

. Also, I'd consider whether filesystem/FS storage of attachment would be a 
better choice if they're that important to your workflow, as they'd be out of 
the database and able to be backed up via filesystem.

I would probably concur.

Wrt to where attachments are stored, if storing the attachments in the 
filesystem isn't the default (haven't looked), it should be. Storing the 
attachments in the DBMS is almost always a Bad Idea for a number of reasons (DB 
performance, backup size explosion, etc, etc, etc,), and the default should be 
the smart option.
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[otrs] FW: OTRS 3.2 beta – statement from Manuel Hecht, Vice President Global Software Development

[David Boyes]

A suggestion:

Something that would be really helpful if you’d like to encourage beta testing: 
a network-accessible repository (either yum or apt, preferably both) that can 
be added to a system, and then used to install, eg a repository definition file 
that can be retrieved with wget, and then being able to do ‘yum update; yum 
install otrs’. This is enterprise software, and the “download a RPM and 
figure out how to bolt it into the various install systems” is a real PITA.

At least for the RPM variants, you just need to take the dir that contains the 
RPM and run ‘createrepo’ on it. It’s a little more work for Debian based 
systems, but IMHO it would REALLY help the uptake on beta testing. It’s also 
becoming a hallmark of a serious enterprise application to operate this way.

Feed: OTRS Community Blog
Posted on: Monday, November 26, 2012 6:54 AM
Author: Mike
Subject: OTRS 3.2 beta – statement from Manuel Hecht, Vice President Global 
Software Development


On 30th October, we have released beta 1 of OTRS 3.2. Today we have released 
the third 
betahttp://www.otrs.com/en/open-source/community-news/releases-notes/release-notes-otrs-help-desk-320-beta3/,
 together with beta’s of our ITSM modules. After some more beta releases we’ll 
finally release the stable release on January 29th, 2013.

One of the new features Shawn already showed in an earlier blog post 
http://blog.otrs.org/2012/10/29/something-is-brewing-on-the-horizon/ is the 
all-new Customer Information Center. One other feature we’ll write more about 
in the upcoming weeks is the new Process Management features, with a nice GUI 
where you can design interfaces and actions.

Apart from that, we have the usual smaller and bigger performance- and UI 
improvements.

Below a video statement from Manuel Hecht, our Vice President Global Software 
Development, who talks about the new OTRS 3.2 release and more.


Please try out the 
betahttp://www.otrs.com/en/open-source/community-news/releases-notes/release-notes-otrs-help-desk-320-beta3/
 now. We recommend that you do not use this software in production yet, 
although we are ‘dogfooding’ ourselves and have upgraded our internal portal to 
3.2.x recently. But installing it on a test environment is absolutely something 
you could consider, and plan your move to 3.2 accordingly. Obviously, OTRS 
Group can support you with 
upgradinghttp://www.otrs.com/en/solutions/services/ if you want, just contact 
us to discuss. And if you are an existing customer with a Professional or 
Enterprise subscriptionhttp://www.otrs.com/en/solutions/subscriptions/, we’ll 
perform your upgrade free of charge.


View 
article...http://blog.otrs.org/2012/11/26/otrs-3-2-beta-statement-from-manuel-hecht-vice-president-global-software-development/?utm_source=rssutm_medium=rssutm_campaign=otrs-3-2-beta-statement-from-manuel-hecht-vice-president-global-software-development
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Re: [otrs] RPM repo (was: FW: OTRS 3.2 beta – statement from Manuel Hecht, Vice President Global Software Development)

[David Boyes]

To go further, the files needed to do the repository definition RPM are 
attached to this message. Put the OTRS RPM in a dir on your WWW server.. Fix 
your WWW server configuration to make that directory available via the WWW 
server

Then, edit the .repo files attached to reflect the URL of that dir (the 
baseurl= line is the critical one, although the one in the spec file should 
match) and run rpmbuild on the spec file. Put the resulting RPM somewhere on 
the WWW site  (the same dir as the OTRS RPM is fine) and run ‘createrepo’ in 
that directory.

You can then have people do ‘rpm –Uvh 
http://whereveryouputit.otrs.com/otrs-stable-repo.x.noarch.rpm’.  That will 
install the repository and integrate it into yum.

Then ‘yum listrepo’ to check that it installed correctly. Then ‘yum install 
otrs-rpm-name’ and watch the fun.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Michiel 
Beijen
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 1:55 PM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] RPM repo (was: FW: OTRS 3.2 beta – statement from Manuel 
Hecht, Vice President Global Software Development)


Hi David,

Thanks for the suggestion - I appreciate your concern. Better packaging has 
been long on our wish list but the list is long and the amount of hours in a 
day is not.

Anyway, to be able to pull this off the upgrade process for patch level updates 
should be fool proof and should not require manual actions. Currently, it would 
still require manual reinstallation of packages via the OTRS package manager in 
case you are using ITSM, for instance. This should be taken care of by the RPM. 
That is totally fixable.

And we should create different repositories for the different minor revisions, 
so if you would like to upgrade from OTRS 3.1 to 3.2 you could do that by 
changing your package repository and running yum upgrade plus any post install 
actions, and if you would not change the repo you will keep on receiving 3.1.x 
updates.

One other topic is that we currently do not ship with an SELinux profile, which 
forces people to set selinux to permissive.

Would there be any RHEL syadmin that can help with the SElinux profile?

Would there be people interested in testing such an RPM repo?

--
Mike.
Op 27 nov. 2012 16:35 schreef David Boyes 
dbo...@sinenomine.netmailto:dbo...@sinenomine.net het volgende:
A suggestion:

Something that would be really helpful if you’d like to encourage beta testing: 
a network-accessible repository (either yum or apt, preferably both) that can 
be added to a system, and then used to install, eg a repository definition file 
that can be retrieved with wget, and then being able to do ‘yum update; yum 
install otrs’. This is enterprise software, and the “download a RPM and 
figure out how to bolt it into the various install systems” is a real PITA.

At least for the RPM variants, you just need to take the dir that contains the 
RPM and run ‘createrepo’ on it. It’s a little more work for Debian based 
systems, but IMHO it would REALLY help the uptake on beta testing. It’s also 
becoming a hallmark of a serious enterprise application to operate this way.

Feed: OTRS Community Blog
Posted on: Monday, November 26, 2012 6:54 AM
Author: Mike
Subject: OTRS 3.2 beta – statement from Manuel Hecht, Vice President Global 
Software Development


On 30th October, we have released beta 1 of OTRS 3.2. Today we have released 
the third 
betahttp://www.otrs.com/en/open-source/community-news/releases-notes/release-notes-otrs-help-desk-320-beta3/,
 together with beta’s of our ITSM modules. After some more beta releases we’ll 
finally release the stable release on January 29th, 2013.

One of the new features Shawn already showed in an earlier blog post 
http://blog.otrs.org/2012/10/29/something-is-brewing-on-the-horizon/ is the 
all-new Customer Information Center. One other feature we’ll write more about 
in the upcoming weeks is the new Process Management features, with a nice GUI 
where you can design interfaces and actions.

Apart from that, we have the usual smaller and bigger performance- and UI 
improvements.

Below a video statement from Manuel Hecht, our Vice President Global Software 
Development, who talks about the new OTRS 3.2 release and more.

Please try out the 
betahttp://www.otrs.com/en/open-source/community-news/releases-notes/release-notes-otrs-help-desk-320-beta3/
 now. We recommend that you do not use this software in production yet, 
although we are ‘dogfooding’ ourselves and have upgraded our internal portal to 
3.2.x recently. But installing it on a test environment is absolutely something 
you could consider, and plan your move to 3.2 accordingly. Obviously, OTRS 
Group can support you with 
upgradinghttp://www.otrs.com/en/solutions/services/ if you want, just contact 
us to discuss. And if you are an existing customer with a Professional or 
Enterprise subscriptionhttp://www.otrs.com/en/solutions/subscriptions/, we’ll 
perform your

Re: [otrs] reg: session cookie to set as secure

[David Boyes]

Define secure. What are their requirements? What audit trail do they require? 
What have you tried so far?

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of ravi 
shanker
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 9:33 PM
To: otrs@otrs.org
Subject: [otrs] reg: session cookie to set as secure

Hi

i need help to set session cookie as secure as this one of recommendation from 
our testing team.


Ravi Shankar
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Re: [otrs] Multiple LDAP Authentication Sources

[David Boyes]

If you're already copying AD information into a local database, why not sync it 
to different branches of a pair of local LDAP servers using slapd, and have two 
sources that start at a common branch and search downward?  That would give you 
only 2 sources to check (a primary and a backup), but all the data in one 
(replicated) place. You might have to deal with userid collisions, though (ie 
two jsmiths).

Another option would be to set up OTRS to use Apache authentication and use 
something like CoSign to get a credential and pass it to OTRS for 
authentication. That would work for OTRS and a lot of other things too (single 
sign on = goodness). CoSign can handle an arbitrarily large number of 
authentication sources. OTRS would still need the user details and 
authorizations for different OTRS functions in its database, but then you could 
use your existing code to prepopulate that.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Nick 
Lapp
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 5:43 PM
To: 'otrs@otrs.org'
Subject: [otrs] Multiple LDAP Authentication Sources

Hello all,

I am in the process of setting up OTRS for my organization.  We provide tech 
support to about 20 different organizations and are currently using WebHelpdesk 
as our helpdesk solution with each customer organization connected to 
WebHelpdesk with LDAP sync.  We would like to accomplish the same thing with 
OTRS allowing users within the different organizations to login to OTRS with 
their local AD account.

In order to improve the speed of OTRS, I have set up a separate service that 
syncs AD user information from the various organizations with the OTRS user 
database.  That way OTRS is relying on its own database for user information 
and it doesn't have to go out over an LDAP connection.  I have then set up LDAP 
authentication so the user is authenticated with AD and the user information is 
already in the OTRS database.  This has been working successfully with the 
first 10 organizations, but as soon as a user from the 11th organization tries 
to authenticate, it fails.  I know there is hard limit of 10 set for LDAP back 
ends so I'm assuming that same limit is also on LDAP authentication back ends 
which is causing the failure.  I'm also seeing in the system logs that the 10th 
organization is the last one OTRS attempts to authenticate against.

My question is, does anyone know of a way to override that limit of 10?  I've 
already come up with a successful workaround for the slowness caused by 
multiple LDAP customer data back ends and we're okay with slower login times 
due to multiple LDAP authentication sources.  Our real goal is a seamless 
experience for our customers.  Any help is much appreciated!

Best regards,

Nick
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Re: [otrs] otrs auto merge feature

[David Boyes]

Well, it DOES check the subject line - for the OTRS ticket # that would 
associate those emails. Does the subject line contain that?

Otherwise is there some unique identifier that OTRS could use to tell they were 
associated? You could try to scan for it in the postmaster input, but there has 
to be some unique identifier that ties the issues together that OTRS can be 
programmed to find.

From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Neil 
Simpson
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 10:01 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: [otrs] otrs auto merge feature

Hi,

We are using a drop system for mails that we want in otrs, if there's an 
email chain of 5 emails however and then you drop them all into otrs, you get 5 
new tickets, not one ticket with 5 articles which is what i'd like as they all 
have same subject and relate to same issue.  i know otrs like's to match by 
OTRS number but is there no way for it to check subject line aswell?

thanks

Neil
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Re: [otrs] otrs auto merge feature

[David Boyes]

the unique identifier is the subject of the email.
There are a lot of ugly failure and/or race condition scenarios here. What 
would happen if another agent dropped in an email from another customer that 
happened to have the same subject line while you were dropping a batch in? 
Would you want that email incorporated into the same ticket as well? Somehow, I 
don't think that's what you want to happen, but that would be the result.
You're going to have to create something else in each email that indicates that 
the multiple messages are somehow associated, either a custom header or 
manipulating the subject line in some special way outside OTRS. What implements 
your drop box? Is there a way that a script could be run when an item is 
dropped into the folder? If so, you could generate a unique id that would be 
applied to all messages dropped until it received a message with a special 
subject line that indicated a batch was complete and then obtained a OTRS 
ticket # and appended the messages to that ticket. Also, what should happen if 
another agent decides to do the same thing at the same time? Does every agent 
get a separate drop folder?
Short of that, I don't think there's a viable way to do what you want to do out 
of the box. Incoming messages are individual transactions, and OTRS can't read 
your mind. Somehow you have to link them together in a consistent way, and that 
would involve a lot of custom code outside OTRS, maybe like this idea:
If you have MS OneNote, look at how MS did the Send to OneNote button in 
Outlook. You'd have to write something like that, but you'd still have to have 
a unique identifier better than just the subject line.
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Re: [otrs] otrs auto merge feature

[David Boyes]

 Not quite true David, like I commented, try enabling SearchInReferences.

I have. It still misses fairly frequently (at least for us), which is why I 
didn't mention it. But, that may be a function of our customer base often 
having very old MUA/MTAs that don't reliably implement a lot of the newer mail 
headers in consistently useful ways. We have to have a 100% solution.

SearchInReferences relies a lot on things out of your control (eg the algorithm 
that generates message ids at the sending MTA). It's a partial solution, but 
not a complete one.  It also doesn't really address the race conditions of 
multiple agents dropping into the same folder from different customers. 

Maybe a better approach would be to write something that you use to post 
process a private folder for each agent on an IMAP server (eg, dump a copy of 
all the related messages into a subfolder, then run a separate app that opened 
a OTRS ticket, iterated through the folder items posting them to that ticket # 
and deleting them from the folder).  All further correspondence is then done 
via OTRS (key point -- otherwise your statistics are going to get progressively 
more useless over time because OTRS can't measure response times, etc for stuff 
submitted this way). 

That should be fairly easy to write with the Perl IMAP library and the Perl 
SOAP library, and would be fairly easily to make work against any IMAP server 
implementation. Could be fairly easily batched if you used subfolders for each 
group of messages (schedule it in cron or something). 




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Re: [otrs] OTRS : Duplicate emails gets via POP3

[David Boyes]

Depends a lot on the POP server implementation, too. If the POP server is set 
to rate-limit incoming connections (default on recent versions of Exchange, and 
most of the “free” email providers these days), the client (in this case, OTRS) 
will see the full list of messages in the mailbox, but will be allowed to get 
only a certain number per connection attempt, and will not be able to connect 
more than once per X minutes. This confuses the OTRS POP client a lot.

The best permanent solution we’ve found is to use fetchmail to interact with 
the POP server, and a local SMTP server listening only on the loopback address 
with local aliases for the OTRS queues. Fetchmail is much smarter about dealing 
with obscure remote mailbox problems, and has super-helpful logging if it has 
problems.

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Re: [otrs] OTRS : Duplicate emails gets via POP3

[David Boyes]

 -Original Message-
 From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of
 Gerald Young
 And in my case, I use procmail which has none of these issues and receives
 mail instantly into OTRS.

Agreed. Procmail wins big. 

But, if you're stuck with the POP option (a horrible, horrible idea, IMHO), 
procmail doesn't help w/o the local MTA to invoke it, at which point the local 
aliases file works about equally well, and it's one less thing to maintain. 

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Re: [otrs] OTRS : Duplicate emails gets via POP3

[David Boyes]

One thing I did use procmail for at one implementation was to alert a 
department manager (cc email) when a ticket request came from a department 
employee. Of course, it didn't have the ticket number, but otherwise it was a 
good-enough workaround.

Yeah - there is where procmail really shines. You can do all sorts of useful 
things to the incoming email before it hits OTRS.
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[otrs] FW: Tweaking the Richtext Editor

[David Boyes]

Nifty hack to enable lots of goodness – any reason why this shouldn’t be the 
default setting? It does no harm and a LOT of good.



Feed: OTRS Community Blog
Posted on: Monday, October 01, 2012 8:47 PM
Author: Jens
Subject: Tweaking the Richtext Editor
[nifty hack snipped]
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Re: [otrs] Query regarding CustomerTicketMessage

[David Boyes]

Fetchmail requires a local MTA install. You need to pick one (sendmail, 
postfix, etc) and install it.


Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5602]: (otrs) CMD (/usr/bin/fetchmail -a 
--ssl  /dev/null)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5603]: (otrs) CMD ([ -x /usr/bin/fetchmail 
]  /usr/bin/fetchmail -a  /dev/null)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5604]: (otrs) CMD 
($HOME/bin/otrs.PostMasterMailbox.pl  /dev/null)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5600]: (CRON) error (grandchild #5602 
failed with exit status 5)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5600]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, 
discarding output)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5601]: (CRON) error (grandchild #5603 
failed with exit status 5)
Oct  1 16:02:01 otrs /USR/SBIN/CRON[5601]: (CRON) info (No MTA installed, 
discarding output)

And I don't know , what are do, I upgrade to 3.1.10 and no fix them.
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Re: [otrs] Problems with group of email

[David Boyes]

I'm not totally sure if it is an OTRS problem or not, since the customer 
received the email when he asked for his password.

Like I said, at this point, it's not your server. Something outside the OTRS 
environment is intercepting the mail, based on some criteria you can't see. If 
he got the password email, then the OTRS server is working and your SMTP 
service is working. It's something on the receiving side - pretty much your 
only hope is to get the postmaster of the receiving site to work with you.
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Re: [otrs] Problems with group of email

[David Boyes]

Public or not, they still do some analysis on the *content* of the incoming 
message, and that's the likely thing that's biting you. Something in the 
content of the message is triggering a filter at the receiving site. There's 
nothing OTRS can do about that.


From: otrs-boun...@otrs.org [mailto:otrs-boun...@otrs.org] On Behalf Of Carlos 
Ribas
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 10:45 AM
To: User questions and discussions about OTRS.
Subject: Re: [otrs] Problems with group of email

I don't know Steve, because It works when the customer asks for his password. 
If the customer receives the password and his email is from a google group, why 
he can not receive an auto response? The group is set to be public.

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Re: [otrs] Problems with group of email

[David Boyes]

 But what about the MTA logs? can you see that the email was accepted by
 the mail server and then sent on to it's next destination? If your MTA has
 sent it on then it's not your system that is causing the problem but the
 remote system (in which case poke their postmaster to check their logs to
 find out why it's not being delivered).

Yeah. At this point, it's not your server. 

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