Motivation

I like redmine and use it for many project - private and professional as well. Some time ago I became a happy owner of I chose Synology DS111 so one of the next steps was to install redmine on it :-).

I did this few months ago, so I hope I remember all steps well ;-)

Redmine on the Synology DS111

Perhaps there is an easier way to do it, however I did it as follows:

• Install gcc on the unit using ipkg (in order to compile ruby) - please follow instructions on Synology page how to do install ipkg and use it for installing packages.
• Install openssl and openssl-dev using ipkg - it will be needed for ruby
• Get ruby v1.8.7 sources, edit ext/Setup file enabling: digest/md5, digest/sha1, digest/sha2, openssl, socket, thread. And compile it (./configure --prefix=/opt; make; make install). This may take some time, so relax :-).
• Get rubygems v1.8.2 and install it.
• Use gem command to install other ruby stuff: rake v0.8.7, ruby-mysql v2.9.4 and rails v2.3.5 which will install more things. On my system gem list shows this:

  actionmailer (2.3.5)
  actionpack (2.3.5)
  activerecord (2.3.5)
  activeresource (2.3.5)
  activesupport (2.3.5)
  i18n (0.4.2)
  rack (1.0.1)
  rails (2.3.5)
  rake (0.8.7)
  ruby-mysql (2.9.4)
  

• Using your unit's web interface create a new user - redmine.
• Using phpmysqladmin create a new mysql database for the redmine and an user who can access it.
• Fetch redmine v1.1.3 and follow its instruction to install, providing user and password for accessing DB in config/database.yml, etc.
• Test it using its server (ruby script/server -e production) and if it works - great! If it does not please check the above steps - maybe something went wrong.
• If the test went well - make a script for automatic starting. I'm using something like this placed in /opt/etc/init.d/S85redmine :

  #! /bin/sh
  
  REDMINE=/volume1/homes/redmine/redmine
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib/:/opt/lib
  export PATH=/opt/sbin:/opt/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
  
  case "$1" in
      start)
          echo -n "Starting redmine server: "
          if [ ! -d $REDMINE ]
          then
              echo "Directory $REDMINE does not exist"
              exit 1
          fi
          
          su redmine -c "cd $REDMINE && ./script/server -d -e production"
          echo "done."
          ;;
      stop)
          echo -n "Stopping redmine : "
          killall -SIGINT ruby
          echo "done."
          ;;
      restart)
          echo -n "Restarting redmine server: "
          $0 stop
      sleep 2
          $0 start
          echo "done."
          ;;
      *)
          echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
          exit 1
          ;;
  esac
  
  exit 0
  

Conclusion

As you can see it is not a very efficient way - since it uses redmine's own web server which should actually be used for development only. However it works great for my needs so I'm happy with this solution.

I hope this description can be helpful for some other redmine AND synology lovers ;-)