MantisBT

nginx serves MantisBT on port 80 and passes PHP requests to php8.3-fpm. PHP talks to MariaDB on the loopback interface. Confirm that all three services are running.

sudo systemctl is-active nginx php8.3-fpm mariadb
sudo ss -tlnp | grep ':80 '

On the first boot of your instance, mantisbt-firstboot.service generates a fresh MariaDB password, a fresh $g_crypto_master_salt and a fresh administrator password. All three are unique to this VM. The service writes them to a root-only file. Read it as follows.

sudo systemctl is-active mantisbt-firstboot.service
sudo cat /root/mantisbt-credentials.txt

The web installer imported the full MantisBT schema and created the administrator account before the image was captured. The default administrator / root login has been rotated to a random per-VM password, so no shared credential ships in the image. Inspect the database as follows.

sudo mariadb -N -B bugtracker -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema='bugtracker' AND table_name LIKE 'mantis\_%';"
sudo mariadb -N -B bugtracker -e "SELECT username, access_level, enabled FROM mantis_user_table WHERE access_level=90;"

The health endpoint, the sign-in page and the index all answer on nginx. The MariaDB data directory lives on the dedicated Azure data disk, off the OS disk. Check both as follows.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '/healthz -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '/login_page.php -> %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/login_page.php findmnt -no SOURCE,TARGET,FSTYPE,SIZE /var/lib/mysql

Browse to http://<vm-ip>/ and sign in as administrator with the password from /root/mantisbt-credentials.txt. MantisBT asks for the username first, then the password.

After you sign in, you land on My View. It groups the issues assigned to you, unassigned issues and issues you reported, with a timeline of recent activity.

Choose Report Issue to file a bug or feature request. Pick a category, set the reproducibility, severity and priority, and describe the issue. If you have not created a project yet, create one first from Manage.

View Issues lists every issue in the current project with its priority, severity, status and assignee. From there you can filter, search, sort and export to CSV or Excel.

MantisBT builds absolute links (redirects, email notifications and RSS feeds) from $g_path. First boot sets it to http://<your-vm-ip>/.

If you front MantisBT with a domain name or a reverse proxy, or you enable HTTPS, update $g_path in /var/www/mantisbt/config/config_inc.php to match. Then reload nginx.

sudo sed -i "s#\$g_path = 'http://[^']*';#\$g_path = 'https://tracker.example.com/';#" /var/www/mantisbt/config/config_inc.php
sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm

• Application: MantisBT 2.28.4 from the official release, at /var/www/mantisbt.
• Web server: nginx serving PHP through php8.3-fpm over a Unix socket.
• PHP: 8.3 with mysqli, mbstring, gd, curl, intl, xml, soap, zip, bcmath, apcu and opcache.
• Database: MariaDB, with the bugtracker database and the mantisbt app user, on loopback only.
• Data disk: a dedicated Azure data disk mounted at /var/lib/mysql.
• First boot: mantisbt-firstboot.service rotates the database, configuration secret and administrator passwords.
• Health check: GET /healthz returns HTTP 200 for Azure Load Balancer probes.

• The default administrator / root login is rotated to a random per-instance password on first boot. The shipped image carries a discarded random value, so no known credential ships.
• The MariaDB password, the $g_crypto_master_salt and the administrator password are all unique to each VM.
• MariaDB binds to 127.0.0.1 only. Keep port 3306 closed on the network security group, because nothing outside the VM needs it.
• Issues, notes and attachments are stored in the database ($g_file_upload_method = DATABASE) on the dedicated data disk.
• Public self-registration is disabled by default ($g_allow_signup = OFF). Create users from Manage, Manage Users.
• To enable HTTPS, place a TLS certificate on the instance, or front it with an Azure Application Gateway or Load Balancer. Then update $g_path as in Step 12. SecureAnyCloud support can help.

• Open the product page in AWS Marketplace and choose Continue to Subscribe, then Continue to Configuration.
• Select the software version and your Region, then choose Continue to Launch.
• Under Choose Action, select Launch through EC2.
• Pick an instance type. The recommended type is m5.large. t3.medium is sufficient for small teams.
• Select your VPC, subnet and key pair.
• Attach a security group that allows inbound TCP 22 from your management network and TCP 80 and 443 from your user networks.
• Choose Launch.

You can also launch from the command line. Replace the AMI ID with the one shown on the Marketplace launch page for your Region. Set your own key pair, security group and subnet.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id ami-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name my-keypair \
  --security-group-ids sg-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --subnet-id subnet-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=mantisbt}]'

Wait for the instance to reach the running state and pass its status checks, then note its public IP address.

Connect over SSH as the login user for your OS variant. For the Ubuntu variant, the user is ubuntu.

ssh -i my-keypair.pem ubuntu@<public-ip>

Retrieve the per-instance administrator password that first boot generated.

sudo cat /root/mantisbt-credentials.txt

The file lists the sign-in URL, the administrator username, the generated administrator password and the internal database credentials. These values are unique to this instance.

On the instance, confirm that nginx, PHP-FPM and MariaDB are active.

systemctl is-active nginx php8.3-fpm mariadb

Check that the unauthenticated health endpoint and the sign-in page respond.

curl -s http://127.0.0.1/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'login page: HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/login_page.php

A 200 from the login page confirms the web stack is serving MantisBT.

The MariaDB data directory lives on the dedicated EBS data volume mounted at /data and bind-mounted onto /var/lib/mysql. Confirm that both mounts are present.

mountpoint /data findmnt /var/lib/mysql df -h /data

Because the database is on its own volume, you can grow it independently of the root disk. Use a standard EBS volume resize followed by an ext4 grow.

Open http://<public-ip>/ in your browser. Sign in as the administrator user with the password from /root/mantisbt-credentials.txt.

On first sign-in, MantisBT prompts you to create a project. Give it a name (for example, Web Platform) and choose Add Project. Once a project exists, you can log issues against it.

Choose Report Issue from the menu. Pick a category, set the severity, reproducibility and priority, and enter a summary and description. Then choose Submit Issue.

MantisBT saves the issue and opens it in the issue view. There you can add notes, change the status through the workflow, assign the issue to a user, attach files and relate it to other issues.

The View Issues page lists every issue with its severity, status and priority. It supports saved filters, CSV and Excel export, and printable reports.

MantisBT sends notification email inline. Under Manage > Configuration, set the administrator email and the from address, and choose which events notify which roles.

To relay through an external SMTP server, edit /var/www/mantisbt/config/config_inc.php and set the $g_phpMailer_method, $g_smtp_host, $g_smtp_username and $g_smtp_password options. Then reload PHP-FPM.

sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm

For production use, put MantisBT behind TLS. Point a DNS record at the instance, then install a certificate with Certbot.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.example.com

Certbot obtains and installs the certificate and configures nginx to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. After you enable a domain, set $g_path in config/config_inc.php to your https://your-domain/ URL so MantisBT builds correct absolute links.

Back up the MantisBT database regularly. The bundled MariaDB is reachable on the instance over the local socket as root, so no password is needed.

sudo mariadb-dump --single-transaction bugtracker > mantisbt-backup.sql

Store the resulting dump off the instance, for example in Amazon S3. Because the data directory is on a dedicated EBS volume, you can also take EBS snapshots for point-in-time recovery. Keep the operating system patched with regular apt updates during a maintenance window.