How to Install Redmine Project Management Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Redmine 6 with Docker (Ubuntu 24.04)

Ubuntu 18.04 is end of life. Redmine is a free project management and issue tracking application built on Ruby on Rails. The current versions are Redmine 6.x and 7.0. The simplest way to run a current Redmine is the official Docker image with PostgreSQL.

Install Docker Engine (official repository)

Ubuntu 24.04 / Debian 12:

apt install ca-certificates curl
install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.sources <<EOF
Types: deb
URIs: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")
Components: stable
Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture)
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
EOF
apt update
apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

On Debian, use https://download.docker.com/linux/debian in both the key URL and URIs.

AlmaLinux 9 / Rocky Linux 9:

dnf install dnf-plugins-core
dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/rhel/docker-ce.repo
dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
systemctl enable --now docker

Test with docker run hello-world. Compose is available as docker compose.

Run Redmine

Create /opt/redmine/compose.yaml:

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:17
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: redmine
      POSTGRES_USER: redmine
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: Strong-Password
    volumes: [db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data]
    restart: unless-stopped
  redmine:
    image: redmine:6
    depends_on: [db]
    environment:
      REDMINE_DB_POSTGRES: db
      REDMINE_DB_USERNAME: redmine
      REDMINE_DB_PASSWORD: Strong-Password
      REDMINE_DB_DATABASE: redmine
    volumes: [files:/usr/src/redmine/files]
    ports: ["127.0.0.1:3000:3000"]
    restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
  db-data:
  files:

cd /opt/redmine && docker compose up -d

Put Nginx with HTTPS in front of port 3000, then log in with admin / admin and change the password at once.

Without Docker

Ubuntu 24.04 also has a redmine package (an older 5.x version). For a manual installation of the latest version you need Ruby 3.2 to 3.4, Bundler and a database; the main steps are bundle config set --local without 'development test', bundle install, bundle exec rake generate_secret_token, RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate and RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake redmine:load_default_data.