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Installing GNATS

See also Where the tools and utilities reside.

There are several steps you need to follow to fully configure and install GNATS on your system. You need root access in order to create a new account for gnats and to install the GNATS utilities. You may need root access on some systems in order to set up mail aliases and to allow this new account access to cron and at.

If you are updating an older version of GNATS rather than installing from scratch, see Upgrading from older versions.

GNATS installation relies on two other freely available software packages, which should be installed before you go on to configure and build GNATS. These are GNU make and Texinfo (version 4.2 or higher). Both are available from the GNU FTP site at <ftp://ftp.gnu.org>.

To build and install GNATS, you must:

• Run configure, with correct options if the defaults are unsuitable for your site. See Configuring and compiling the software. Default installation locations are in Where GNATS lives.
• Compile the GNATS programs on your system. See Configuring and compiling the software.
• Create an initial database by using the mkdb command. See Setting up the default database.
• Set up periodic jobs, using cron, to handle Problem Reports arriving by mail. See Setting up periodic jobs.
• Set up mail aliases for GNATS. See Setting up mail aliases.
• Install the GNATS tools and utilities locally, and install the user tools (query-pr, edit-pr, send-pr) on every machine in your local network. See Installing the user tools.
• Install the GNATS daemon gnatsd. See Installing the daemon.
• If there are people outside your organization who will be submitting PRs or who are supposed to be able to query and/or edit PRs, you may need to instruct them to obtain and build the GNATS tools query-pr, edit-pr and send-pr for their systems. However, for many sites, setting up a remote access interface to GNATS, such as Gnatsweb is a better solution since this requires no configuration on the remote side.

• Configure and make: Configuring and compiling the software
• Installing utils: Installing the utilities
• Setting up the default database: Setting up the default database
• Setting up periodic jobs: Setting up periodic jobs
• Aliases: Setting up mail aliases
• Installing the daemon: Installing the daemon
• Installing tools: Installing the user tools
• Upgrading: Upgrading from older versions