OTRS Helpdesk Installation in 5 Minutes

What You Need Before You Start

OTRS runs on a Linux server - there is no Windows installer for it. The stack it needs is the Apache web server, Perl, and a database: MariaDB or MySQL, with PostgreSQL also supported. A small VPS is honestly enough for a small team - this is a classic, light application, not a heavy platform. If your only machine runs Windows, install it inside a Linux virtual machine or on a small Linux VPS instead.

Give the server a name your staff can remember, like a support subdomain, and keep the server clock and timezone correct - ticket times and mail fetching both depend on them.

OTRS or Znuny - Install the Maintained Build

One honest point before any download: the original OTRS Community Edition is no longer maintained - OTRS AG ended its support at the start of 2021, so that old code receives no security patches. The system itself lives on as Znuny, the community fork of the same code, which is still releasing updates and is also free and open source.

Download the Build and Verify the Checksum

Download the release from the official Znuny download page, along with the matching checksum file published next to it:

curl -LO https://download.znuny.org/releases/znuny-7.3.8.tar.gz

Then verify the download against its checksum before installing anything:

sha256sum -c znuny-7.3.8.tar.gz.sha256

It must report OK. The check takes ten seconds and proves the file on your server is exactly the file Znuny published - not a corrupted or tampered copy.

Install the Web Server and Database

On a RHEL-family server, the base stack - Apache and the MariaDB database server - installs with one command:

sudo dnf install -y httpd mariadb-server

Start both services now, and set them to start automatically at every boot:

sudo systemctl enable --now httpd mariadb

Create the Database for the Helpdesk

Create an empty database for the helpdesk, signed in to MariaDB as its root user:

CREATE DATABASE otrs DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

The utf8 encoding is not optional decoration - the manual is strict that the database encoding must be utf8, or ticket text in other languages will break later. One database setting from the installation notes is worth adding before you install, because big email attachments will hit it later: set max_allowed_packet = 64M in the database server configuration, then restart MariaDB so it takes effect.

Run the Web Installer

The rest of the installation happens in the browser. Open the web installer at http://your-server/otrs/installer.pl - replace the address with your own server name. The wizard checks the system, connects to the database you just created, and sets up the first administrator account, root@localhost.

When the wizard finishes, start the background services exactly as the installer instructs - the OTRS daemon and its cron watchdog, running as the otrs user. The video shows these on screen. Do not skip them: without the daemon running, mail is never fetched and the automatic jobs never run, and the helpdesk only looks finished.

First Login - Change the Admin Password Immediately

Log in at the index page with root@localhost - and do the very first job before anything else:

Working day to day in a shared all-powerful account also means no ticket action can ever be traced to a person - one more reason the named account matters from day one.

First Agent, First Queue and Your First Test Ticket

An installed system is not a working helpdesk yet. Finish these in the same sitting: create your first agent account if you have not already, create the first queue - for example Support - because queues are where tickets live, and set the system email address the helpdesk will send from.

Then prove the whole chain works: send a test request and watch the ticket appear in your queue, open it, and reply to it.