I am trying to do this right now. 5 years after this questions there is still almost no information on how to do this.

I have OpenProject installed on my CentOS 7 VPS. When I run 'sudo openproject run check' all is OK, except 'Web server is NOT running'.

Ruby apps like OpenProject need Phusion Passenger to run on Apache. Apache's Virtual Host needs to be edited to point the browser to the OpenProject app files; "deploy" the app.

Here are some instructions what it should look like if done manually:

https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/deploy/apache/deploy/ruby/

But WHM/cPanel has its own ways to install Passenger and deploy Ruby apps, via EasyApache4. There are some instructions here:

https://www.liquidweb.com/kb/using-passenger-cpanel-centos-7/

And more confusing instructions here:

https://www.knownhost.com/wiki/developmental/ruby-rails-apps-cpanel

I think/hope I am nearing the end of this ordeal. I am now trying to configure the Virtual Host via Application Manager in cPanel:

https://blog.cpanel.com/cpanel-application-manager-and-app-deployment-101/

When I enter my details, I still get nothing in the browser.

Is Passenger actually installed? Following the Liquidweb instructions you can check with this:

scl enable ea-ruby24 'passenger-config validate-install'

That results in 'Everything looks good. :-)'. But when I try these commands:

passenger-status

Or

sudo passenger-status

I get 'command not found'.

And I still get 'Web server is NOT running'. Does that error mean Passenger is not running? Or does it just mean that I entered the wrong application address in cPanel's Application Manager?

Where the hell are the application files anyway? I see there is a /home/openproject folder on my server, but it only has a few weird files in it. Should I point Application Manager somewhere else?

I think you're engaged in an uphill battle here. Openproject is not really meant to be run through Ruby directly, like lets say Redmine is meant to. It's meant to be installed through its packages or Docker.  You're better off getting a dedicated VM to run Openproject, or a different machine to run Docker containers and OPJ being one of them.

If you insist on plowing through, you'll need to use cPanel's Apache to reverse proxy to OPJ's Unicorn http server. I'm not sure if cPanel supports reverse proxy through its UI however, so you'd probably need to do it manually and risk further problems with cPanel changing anything in the future.

Thanks Ukamaka Azikiwe. I am not going to get a dedicated VM. I want my project management tool to run in a subfolder of my company website, just like a few other business applications I have. If OpenProject can't do that, that is a deal breaker - and I am annoyed that the documentation does not make this clear. I have already moved on.

The URL structure isn't really dictated by OpenProject but there is some overlap, but for simplicity sakes you'd be able to run openproject as a subdomain of your company website, such as openproject.companywebsite.com.

None the less, you're missing out on not using OpenProject as it's one of the best PM platforms I've encountered and well worth even the Enterprise pricing.

Peter Verkooijen wrote:

Thanks Ukamaka Azikiwe. I am not going to get a dedicated VM. I want my project management tool to run in a subfolder of my company website, just like a few other business applications I have. If OpenProject can't do that, that is a deal breaker - and I am annoyed that the documentation does not make this clear. I have already moved on.