Introduction

The osTicket is a popular open-source ticketing system that helps organizations manage customer support requests efficiently. It allows support teams to track and prioritize customer issues, collaborate on solutions, and provide timely responses.

In this article, we will discuss how to install an osTicket on CentOS 7.

Prerequisites

A CentOS 7 machine with root access.
PHP 8 is required to install the latest version of the osTicket.
A LAMP stack is installed (Apache, PHP, and MySQL/MariaDB).

Install LAMP

Update the system.
```
# sudo yum update
```

Run the below commands to install EPEL and Remi repositories.

# sudo yum -y install epel-release
# sudo yum -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Next, Enable the PHP8.0 Remi repositories

# sudo yum install yum-utils
# sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php80

To install the LAMP dependencies required for osTicket to run.

# sudo yum -y install httpd mariadb-server php php-cli php-common php-devel php-fpm php-gd php-mbstring php-mysqlnd php-opcache php-pdo php-xml php-imap php-zip php-apcu

Once the installation is complete, start and enable the MariaDB and Apache services by running the following commands.

# sudo systemctl start httpd
# sudo systemctl enable httpd
# sudo systemctl start mariadb
# sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Configure MariaDB/MySQL

Next, you need to create a new database and user for osTicket. Log in to your MariaDB/MySQL server as the root user and create a new database and user.

CREATE DATABASE osticket;
CREATE USER 'osticketuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON osticket.* TO 'osticketuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Next, we need to secure the MariaDB installation by running the following command.
```
# sudo mysql_secure_installation
```
This command will prompt you to set a root password for the database server and configure some security settings. Follow the prompts and answer the questions to secure the MariaDB installation.

Download and Install osTicket

Download the latest version of osTicket from the official website. You can use "wget" to download it.

# sudo yum -y install wget
# wget https://github.com/osTicket/osTicket/releases/download/v1.17.3/osTicket-v1.17.3.zip

Extract the downloaded file and move the extracted folder to the Apache document root directory.
```
# sudo yum -y install unzip
# sudo unzip osTicket-v1.17.3.zip -d /var/www/html/
```

Copy the sample configuration file to ost-config.php set the correct ownership and permission.

# sudo cp /var/www/html/upload/include/ost-sampleconfig.php /var/www/html/upload/include/ost-config.php
# sudo chown apache:apache /var/www/html/upload/include/ost-config.php
# sudo chmod 0666 /var/www/html/upload/include/ost-config.php

Change the ownership of the osTicket directory to the "apache" user.

# sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/upload/
# sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/upload/

Configure Apache

Create a new Apache virtual host configuration file for osTicket.
```
# sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/osticket.conf
```

Add the following lines to the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin admin@example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/upload
  ServerName 207.199.149.101
  <Directory "/var/www/html/upload">
     AllowOverride All
     Require all granted
  </Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/osticket_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/osticket_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Note: - Replace "admin@example.com" with your email address and "207.199.149.241" with your domain name or server IP address.

Disable SELinux.
```
# sudo setenforce 0
```
Restart the Apache service.
```
# sudo systemctl restart httpd
```
Open your web browser and navigate to your server's IP address or domain name followed by /setup/. You should see the osTicket web installer page. Click on the continue button and Follow the prompts to complete the installation.