the exclamake! blog

I recently installed Cerberus Helpdesk on a Windows Server 2003 box. I had some issues that the Cerberus install docs didn’t help with. Couldn’t find one source for a how-to, so maybe this will help you.

Please note that this is not a COMPLETE how-to. You must use the Cerberus installation docs to get through. This just explains how to do certain things on a Windows box.

Install PHP 5

• First download binaries at www.php.net (do not use Installer)
• Install PHP using the excellent instructions at www.peterguy.com/php/install_iis6.html
• Set upload_tmp_dir in php.ini - (e.g., “C:\temp”)
• Set session.auto_start in php.ini to 1
• Be sure and follow the test and verify instructions on peterguy’s site to make sure your php installation is running fine.

Install MySQL

• Download binaries here (use Installer)
• Install MySQL. I didn’t take notes here, so I think that means use the default numbers. Keep track of your admin password, of course.
• Open MySQL Command Line Client for Cerberus preparation.
• Create the Cerberus database - e.g.,
  create database wgm_cerberus;
• Create the Cerberus database user - e.g.,
  grant all privileges on wgm_cerberus to cerberus@localhost identified by ‘password’;

Install the Cerberus GUI

• Download the Cerberus Helpdesk (Agent GUI) here.
• Install to server (e.g., c:\inetpub\wwwroot\)
• Open IIS Manager, go to Properties of [server]/Web Sites/Default Web Site. On the Home Directory tab, check Read permission.
• Open Explorer and go to the cerberus-gui directory that the Helpdesk was extracted to, right-click, select Sharing and Security. On the Security tab, ensure that the Internet Guest Account (IUSER_[servername]) has Read permissions.
• Go to the cerberus-gui\templates_c directory and give the Internet Guest Account Write and Modify permissions.
• Repeat last step for the cerberus-gui\tempdir directory.

Now we need to make some edits to the Cerberus install script located at cerberus-gui\includes\db_scripts\cerb_270_clean_install.php.

The edit is to change field definitions to include default values. References below, line numbers in parenthesis.

• run_date (489)
  change DATETIME NOT NULL ,”. to DATETIME default ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00′ NOT NULL ,”.
• group_template_id (630)
  change NOT NULL,”. to NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘0′,”.
  Repeat for the following entries.
• login_plugin_id (1193)
• catchall_to_qid (1438)
• catchall_order (1439)
• user_id (2739)
• user_id (4324)
• workspace_id (4325)
• pref_id (4326)

Install the Cerberus Parser

• Download the Parser here.
• Install to c:\cerberus
• Edit config.xml
• Set tmp_dir to “c:/temp/” (I know is says to use backslashes, but didn’t work for me)
• Set libcurl to “C:/cerberus”
• Create a Windows user for the parser scheduled event. (e.g., eventCerberus)
• Give eventCerberus full file permissions to c:\cerberus and c:\temp

One other issue I ran into was that search results were not appearing in the Agent under certain conditions. I applied the solution here and was working just fine.

Although it took a little time to get everything up, I’m very happy with the Cerberus product.

My helpdesk is at support.exclamake.net .