osticket, realms, php, mysql, and tech related blog

I have been running a Debian server here at work for a several years now mostly as a web server, but also as a way for me to have quick access to some of the old cli tools like whois, dig, etc.  While running updates I ran across this error:

Fetched 199 B in 1s (122 B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
W: GPG error: http://debian.opennms.org stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be 
verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 57801F6F5B9EFD43

With the release of osTicket version 1.8.1ST and of course the first three official plugins many people have been curious how to install them and configure them.  This is especially true of the auth-ldap plugin. I've written a lot of responses on the forums, and thought that it might be good to actually collect some of the better snippets and put them in one place.  So here is that place.  As a side note I run Active Directory so this article is probably slanted towards that usage.

I post a lot of information here about the Open Source project called osTicket. Much of which is my own hacking, information, FAQs that I have compiled from the forums, directions and howTo's to try to help the osTicket software community.  It is my hope that my posts help spread the word about osTicket, broaden the community, as well as help the members of the community.

Recently a lot of people who have upgraded to 1.8.1rc1 or 1.8.1ST have reported getting an error when an existing user (client) tries to open a ticket via email. Due to a small coding error the user_id is being stored as 0. This results in a screen that looks like:

The good folks over at osTicket.com have just made the 1.8.1 Stable tag over on the github project.  This of course means that 1.8.1ST will be announced shortly.  Here is a brief over view of the new enhancements, bug fixes, etc.

The up coming osTicket 1.8.1 has a couple features that many in the community have been waiting for.. for a very long time.  One of those features is plugin support.  Similar to the way that  WordPress handles plugin you will be able to install plugins easily by simply unzipping the plugin and putting it in the plugin directory.

With new versions of osTicket coming out so fast recently, some times the documentation fails to keep pace with the features. So I did a little digging and have collected a slew of new undocumented Email Template Variables.

Earlier tonight the osTicket developers announced that the current branch of osTicket 1.8 has it's newest child with the release of 1.8.0.2.  This version features several new enhancements and a bunch of bug fixes. In this same announcement they release a bug patch for the 1.7 tree (1.7.5) which fixes some bugs. Then in almost the same breath they announced the Developer Preview Release (DPR) of the much anticipated 1.8.1!