Request Tracker, commonly abbreviated to RT, is a ticket-tracking software written in

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

used to coordinate tasks and manage requests among an

online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...

users Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing) A user is a person who ...

. RT's first release in 1996 was written by Jesse Vincent, who later formed Best Practical Solutions LLC to distribute, develop, and support the package. RT is open source (

FOSS Fos or FOSS may refer to: Companies * Foss A/S, a Danish analytical instrument company *Foss Brewery, a former brewery in Oslo, Norway * Foss Maritime, a tugboat and shipping company Historic houses * Foss House (New Brighton, Minnesota), Unite ...

) and distributed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

. Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR) is a special distribution of RT to fulfill the specific needs of CERT teams. It was initially developed in cooperation with JANET-CERT, and in 2006 was upgraded and expanded with joint funding from nine Computer Security Incident Response Teams (

CSIRT A computer emergency response team (CERT) is an expert group that handles computer security incidents. Alternative names for such groups include computer emergency readiness team and computer security incident response team (CSIRT). A more modern ...

s) in Europe.

Technology

RT is written in

and runs on the Apache and

lighttpd lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the c10k problem � ...

web servers using

mod_perl Mod, MOD or mods may refer to: Places * Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band * M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US ...

FastCGI FastCGI is a binary protocol for interfacing interactive programs with a web server. It is a variation on the earlier Common Gateway Interface (CGI). FastCGI's main aim is to reduce the overhead related to interfacing between web server and CGI ...

with data stored in either

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

, PostgreSQL, Oracle or

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

. It is possible to extend the RT interface using plug-ins written in Perl.

History

Jesse Vincent, while enrolled at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

in 1994, worked for Wesleyan's computing

help desk A help desk is a department or person that provides assistance and information usually for electronic or computer problems. In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University studied the value of an organization's help desks ...

and was responsible for improving the help desk and residential networking software infrastructure. This task included setting up a ticketing system for the help desk. Initially he set up a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

server to run "req", but later he identified that the command line interface was limiting usage. Over the next two years he created and maintained WebReq, a web based interface for req written in

. Eventually the req portions were removed and what was left became RT version 1.0. A complete rewrite occurred for RT version 2.0 when Jesse started to work on RT full-time in 2001 and founded Best Practical Solutions. RT was used by Perl's

CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a repository of over 250,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 12,000 contributors. ''CPAN'' can denote eit ...

, but because of declining use, a sunset date of March 1, 2021 was announced at the Perl NOC on December 4, 2020
rt.cpan.org will sunset on March 1st, 2021

Interface

RT has many interfaces for creating and updating tickets. A web interface is available for both logged in users and guest users. It is easily tailored by granting or denying specific permissions to users as well as by adding custom fields and data to tickets. Template callbacks allow the modification of the software's web pages without requiring extensive knowledge. Email is another primary interface to RT and is often the only interface many guest users see. The email system includes support for auto-responses, attachments, and full customization of the rules which govern to whom and when email is sent. Emails are stored in RT as correspondence on a ticket, and the software can make a distinction between public replies and private comments to show them as appropriate. A basic

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and enter ...

-like

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

and a command-line tool are also provided as another way to interact with RT.

Integration

* RT integrates with Best Practical's

knowledge base A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems. ...

application, the RT FAQ Manager ("RTFM"). As of RT 4.0.0, RTFM's functionality was integrated into RT itself as Articles. * RT also integrates with Best Practical's

IT asset management Data center management is the collection of tasks performed by those responsible for managing ongoing operation of a data center This includes ''Business service management'' and planning for the future. Historically, ''data center management'' wa ...

application, "Assets." As of RT 4.4.0, this functionality was integrated into RT itself. * RT supports the Networked Help Desk API.

References

* "RT Essentials", O'Reilly, 2005, 224 pages

Notes

External links

* {{Bug tracking systems Free software programmed in Perl Bug and issue tracking software Perl software