If you're looking for a powerful, in-house project management tool, look no further than Orangescrum.

Most often, the one thing that separates a well-oiled development team from the rest of the competition is a good project management tool. For this particular solution, your company can either turn to a cloud-based tool or host it in-house.
If you happen to know your way around Linux, you can install one particular project management solution that offers nearly every feature you might want. That solution is Orangescrum, a tool that is ideal for small to mid-sized business project management.
OrangeScrum features:
- Project Backlog
- Story and Epics
- Story Points
- Scrum Board
- Sprint Planning
- Sprint Reports
- And more
What you need
I'm going to walk you through the process of installing Orangescrum on Ubuntu 18.04. The only things you need are the Ubuntu Server 18.04 platform and a user with sudo privileges.
Let's install.
SEE: Disaster recovery and business continuity plan (Tech Pro Research)
Update/upgrade
The first thing to do is update and upgrade your server. Do note that, should the kernel be updated in the process, a restart of the server will be required. Because of this, run the update/upgrade process during a time when an update is possible.
To run the update/upgrade process, log into your Ubuntu server and issue the following command:
sudo apt-update sudo apt-get upgrade -y
Should your kernel be upgraded, reboot the server at this time.
LAMP
The next step is installing the LAMP server. Log into Ubuntu and issue the following command:
sudo apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server php7.2 php7.2-bcmath php7.2-cgi php7.2-cli php7.2-common php-curl php7.2-dba php7.2-enchant php7.2-fpm php7.2-gd php7.2-imap php7.2-intl php7.2-ldap php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-opcache php-imagick php-memcache php7.2-soap php7.2-tidy php7.2-xml php7.2-zip libapache2-mod-php7.2 xvfb libfontconfig wkhtmltopdf unzip wget -y
Configure PHP
Once the LAMP installation completes, PHP must be configured for Orangescrum. Issue the command:
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini
Make the following changes to these lines:
post_max_size = 200M upload_max_filesize = 200M max_execution_time = 300 memory_limit = 512M max_input_vars = 5000
Save and close the file.
Start and enable the web and database servers with the following commands:
sudo systemctl start apache2 sudo systemctl enable apache2 sudo systemctl start mariadb sudo systemctl enable mariadb
Database
It's time to configure MariaDB and create the database. The configuration is a simple matter of issuing the command:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Make sure to set an admin password for MariaDB and answer y to the questions. Once you've done that, enter the database prompt with the command:
mysql -u root -p
Create the database and user with the following commands:
CREATE DATABASE orangescrumdb; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON orangescrumdb.* TO 'orangescrumuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit
Where PASSWORD is a unique and strong password.
Orangescrum
It's now time to install Orangescrum. Download the latest release from the download page. Make sure to select Ubuntu 18.x for PHP 7. Assuming your Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI, download that to another Linux machine on your network and the use scp to copy the file like so:
scp orangescrum-ubuntu18-php.zip USER@SERVER_IP:/home/USER/
Where USER is a username on the Orangescrum server and SERVER_IP is the IP address of the Orangescrum server.
On the Orangescrum server, change into the directory housing the zip file with the command cd /home/USER (Where USER is the username you used to copy the file.) Extract the contents of the downloaded file with the command:
unzip orangescrum-ubuntu18-php7.zip
Copy the newly-created folder into the Apache document root with the command:
sudo cp -r orangescrum-orangescrum-ubuntu18-php7 /var/www/html/orangescrum-master
Change into the newly-moved folder with the command:
cd /var/www/html/orangescrum-master
Import the database with the command:
sudo mysql -u orangescrumuser -p orangescrumdb < database.sql
You'll be required to enter the password you created for the orangescrumuser. When the import completes, open the Orangescrum database.php file with the command:
sudo nano app/Config/database.php
Edit the contents of that file to reflect the following:
class DATABASE_CONFIG { public $default = array( 'datasource' => 'Database/Mysql', 'persistent' => false, 'host' => 'localhost', 'login' => 'orangescrumuser', 'password' => 'PASSWORD', 'database' => 'orangescrumdb', 'prefix' => '', 'encoding' => 'utf8', ); }
Where PASSWORD is the password you created for orangescrumuser.
Save and close that file.
If you need to add SMTP server information, you can open the configuration file with the command:
sudo nano app/Config/config.ini.php
Add your SMTP details in the [EMAIL INFO] block. Save and close that file.
Change the permissions of the orangescrum-master folder with the commands:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/orangescrum-master/ sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/orangescrum-master/
Configure Apache
It's time to make Apache aware of Orangescrum. Create a new configuration file with the command:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/orangescrum.conf
In that file, paste the following:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@example.com DocumentRoot /var/www/html/orangescrum-master/ ServerName example.com <Directory /var/www/html/orangescrum-master/> DirectoryIndex index.php index.html AllowOverride All Allow from all Order allow,deny Options Indexes FollowSymlinks </Directory> </VirtualHost>
Make sure to replace the ServerAdmin email address with your address and change ServerName to reflect your own domain name. Save and close that file.
Enable the site and the necessary modules with the commands:
sudo a2ensite orangescrum.conf sudo phpenmod mbstring sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo a2enmod headers
Restart Apache with the command:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Accessing the web interface
You can now point a web browser to http://SERVER_IP (where SERVER_IP is the IP address of your Orangescrum server) and provide a site name, email address, and password to create an account. Once you've done that, you'll find yourself on the Orangescrum Dashboard, where you can finish up the configuration (Figure A).
Figure A
The Orangescrum Dashboard.
Make it yours
Congratulations, you now have a powerful, flexible, in-house project management server that can be configured to perfectly suit your company needs. Happy managing of those projects.
Also see
- How to enable SSL on NGINX (TechRepublic)
- How to install Apache on Fedora server (TechRepublic)
- How to get started with Vagrant on Ubuntu 18.04 (TechRepublic)
- How to install MS SQL on a Ubuntu server (TechRepublic)
- Mark Shuttleworth reveals Ubuntu 18.04 will get a 10-year support lifespan (ZDNet)
- Executive's guide to the software defined data center (TechRepublic download)
- The data center is dead: Here's what comes next (ZDNet)
- Best cloud services for small businesses (CNET)