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The Bugzilla Guide - 2.20.1 Release
The Bugzilla Team
2006-02-20
This is the documentation for Bugzilla, a bug-tracking system from
mozilla.org. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that tracks
millions of bugs and issues for hundreds of organizations around the world.
The most current version of this document can always be found on the
Bugzilla Documentation Page.
_________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
2. Installing Bugzilla
2.1. Installation
2.2. Configuration
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
2.4. OS-Specific Installation Notes
2.5. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
3. Administering Bugzilla
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
3.2. User Administration
3.3. Products
3.4. Components
3.5. Versions
3.6. Milestones
3.7. Flags
3.8. Voting
3.9. Quips
3.10. Groups and Group Security
3.11. Upgrading to New Releases
4. Bugzilla Security
4.1. Operating System
4.2. MySQL
4.3. Webserver
4.4. Bugzilla
5. Customising Bugzilla
5.1. Template Customization
5.2. Template Hooks
5.3. Customizing Who Can Change What
5.4. Modifying Your Running System
5.5. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
5.6. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
6. Using Bugzilla
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
6.3. Anatomy of a Bug
6.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
6.5. Searching for Bugs
6.6. Bug Lists
6.7. Filing Bugs
6.8. Patch Viewer
6.9. Hints and Tips
6.10. User Preferences
6.11. Reports and Charts
6.12. Flags
6.13. Whining
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. Troubleshooting
B.1. General Advice
B.2. The Apache webserver is not serving Bugzilla pages
B.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not
installed!
B.4. Bundle::Bugzilla makes me upgrade to Perl 5.6.1
B.5. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
B.6. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
B.7. Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT
B.8. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
B.9. Some users are constantly being forced to relogin
B.10. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
B.11. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication
protocol requested by server..."
C. Contrib
C.1. Command-line Search Interface
C.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool
D. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
D.1. Instructions
D.2. Download Locations
D.3. Optional Modules
E. GNU Free Documentation License
0. Preamble
1. Applicability and Definition
2. Verbatim Copying
3. Copying in Quantity
4. Modifications
5. Combining Documents
6. Collections of Documents
7. Aggregation with Independent Works
8. Translation
9. Termination
10. Future Revisions of this License
How to use this License for your documents
Glossary
List of Figures
6-1. Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug
List of Examples
4-1. Assigning the MySQL "root" User a Password
4-2. Disabling the MySQL "anonymous" User
4-3. Disabling Networking in MySQL
4-4. Forcing Bugzilla to output a charset
B-1. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies
B-2. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login cookie
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
This document is copyright (c) 2000-2006 by the various Bugzilla
contributors who wrote it.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any
later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of
the license is included in Appendix E.
If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or
publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact the Bugzilla
Team.
_________________________________________________________________
1.2. Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Follow the
instructions herein at your own risk. This document may contain errors and
inaccuracies that may damage your system, cause your partner to leave you,
your boss to fire you, your cats to pee on your furniture and clothing, and
global thermonuclear war. Proceed with caution.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements,
with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". We wholeheartedly endorse the
use of GNU/Linux; it is an extremely versatile, stable, and robust operating
system that offers an ideal operating environment for Bugzilla.
Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure that
all exploitable bugs have been fixed, security holes surely exist in any
piece of code. Great care should be taken both in the installation and usage
of this software. The Bugzilla development team members assume no liability
for your use of Bugzilla. You have the source code, and are responsible for
auditing it yourself to ensure your security needs are met.
_________________________________________________________________
1.3. New Versions
This is the 2.20.1 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to match
the current version of Bugzilla.
The latest version of this guide can always be found at
http://www.bugzilla.org, or checked out via CVS by following the Mozilla CVS
instructions and check out the mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ subtree.
However, you should read the version which came with the Bugzilla release
you are using.
The Bugzilla Guide, or a section of it, is also available in the following
languages: German.
In addition, there are Bugzilla template localisation projects in the
following languages. They may have translated documentation available:
Belarusian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, French, German, Korean, Russian
and Spanish.
If you would like to volunteer to translate the Guide into additional
languages, please contact Dave Miller.
_________________________________________________________________
1.4. Credits
The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the creation of
this Guide, through their writing, dedicated hacking efforts, numerous
e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall excellent contribution to the
Bugzilla community:
Matthew P. Barnson <mbarnson@sisna.com>
for the Herculaean task of pulling together the Bugzilla Guide and
shepherding it to 2.14.
Terry Weissman <terry@mozilla.org>
for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README upon which the
UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
Tara Hernandez <tara@tequilarists.org>
for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry left
mozilla.org and for running landfill.
Dave Lawrence <dkl@redhat.com>
for providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's
customized Bugzilla.
Dawn Endico <endico@mozilla.org>
for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with Matthew's
incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools
Jacob Steenhagen <jake@bugzilla.org>
for taking over documentation during the 2.17 development period.
Dave Miller <justdave@bugzilla.org>
for taking over as project lead when Tara stepped down and
continually pushing for the documentation to be the best it can be.
Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions to this
documentation: Kevin Brannen, Vlad Dascalu, Ben FrantzDale, Eric Hanson,
Zach Lipton, Gervase Markham, Andrew Pearson, Joe Robins, Spencer Smith, Ron
Teitelbaum, Shane Travis, Martin Wulffeld.
Also, thanks are due to the members of the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools
newsgroup. Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this
could never have happened.
_________________________________________________________________
1.5. Document Conventions
This document uses the following conventions:
Descriptions Appearance
Warning Caution Don't run with scissors!
Hint
Tip Would you like a breath mint?
Note
Note Dear John...
Information requiring special attention
Warning Read this or the cat gets it.
File or directory name filename
Command to be typed command
Application name application
Normal user's prompt under bash shell bash$
Root user's prompt under bash shell bash#
Normal user's prompt under tcsh shell tcsh$
Environment variables VARIABLE
Term found in the glossary Bugzilla
Code example
<para>
Beginning and end of paragraph
</para>
This documentation is maintained in DocBook 4.1.2 XML format. Changes are
best submitted as plain text or XML diffs, attached to a bug filed in the
Bugzilla Documentation component.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 2. Installing Bugzilla
2.1. Installation
Note If you just want to use Bugzilla, you do not need to install it. None
of this chapter is relevant to you. Ask your Bugzilla administrator for the
URL to access it over the web.
The Bugzilla server software is usually installed on Linux or Solaris. If
you are installing on another OS, check Section 2.4 before you start your
installation to see if there are any special instructions.
As an alternative to following these instructions, you may wish to try Arne
Schirmacher's unofficial and unsupported Bugzilla Installer, which installs
Bugzilla and all its prerequisites on Linux or Solaris systems.
This guide assumes that you have administrative access to the Bugzilla
machine. It not possible to install and run Bugzilla itself without
administrative access except in the very unlikely event that every single
prerequisite is already installed.
Warning The installation process may make your machine insecure for short
periods of time. Make sure there is a firewall between you and the Internet.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
installing Bugzilla (and at regular intervals thereafter :-).
In outline, the installation proceeds as follows:
1. Install Perl (5.6.1 or above for non-Windows platforms; 5.8.1 for
Windows)
2. Install a Database Engine
3. Install a Webserver
4. Install Bugzilla
5. Install Perl modules
6. Install a Mail Transfer Agent (Sendmail 8.7 or above, or an MTA that is
Sendmail-compatible with at least this version)
7. Configure all of the above.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.1. Perl
Installed Version Test: perl -v
Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. If you
don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit
http://www.perl.com. Although Bugzilla runs with Perl 5.6.1, it's a good
idea to be using the latest stable version.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.2. Database Engine
From Bugzilla 2.20, support is included for using both the MySQL and
PostgreSQL database servers. You only require one of these systems to make
use of Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.2.1. MySQL
Installed Version Test: mysql -V
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit
http://www.mysql.com. You need MySQL version 3.23.41 or higher.
Note Many of the binary versions of MySQL store their data files in /var. On
some Unix systems, this is part of a smaller root partition, and may not
have room for your bug database. To change the data directory, you have to
build MySQL from source yourself, and set it as an option to configure.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation system,
such as .rpm (Redhat Package), .deb (Debian Package), .exe (Windows
Executable), or .msi (Microsoft Installer), make sure the MySQL server is
started when the machine boots.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.2.2. PostgreSQL
Installed Version Test: psql -V
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit
http://www.postgresql.org/. You need PostgreSQL version 7.3.x or higher.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation system,
such as .rpm (Redhat Package), .deb (Debian Package), .exe (Windows
Executable), or .msi (Microsoft Installer), make sure the PostgreSQL server
is started when the machine boots.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.3. Web Server
Installed Version Test: view the default welcome page at
http://<your-machine>/
You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is capable
of running CGI scripts will work. However, we strongly recommend using the
Apache web server (either 1.3.x or 2.x), and the installation instructions
usually assume you are using it. If you have got Bugzilla working using
another webserver, please share your experiences with us by filing a bug in
Bugzilla Documentation.
If you don't have Apache and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://httpd.apache.org/.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.4. Bugzilla
Download a Bugzilla tarball (or check it out from CVS) and place it in a
suitable directory, accessible by the default web server user (probably
"apache" or "www"). Good locations are either directly in the main web space
for your web server or perhaps in /usr/local with a symbolic link from the
web space.
Caution The default Bugzilla distribution is NOT designed to be placed in a
cgi-bin directory. This includes any directory which is configured using the
ScriptAlias directive of Apache.
Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that directory
writable by your webserver's user. This is a temporary step until you run
the checksetup.pl script, which locks down your installation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5. Perl Modules
Bugzilla's installation process is based on a script called checksetup.pl.
The first thing it checks is whether you have appropriate versions of all
the required Perl modules. The aim of this section is to pass this check.
When it passes, proceed to Section 2.2.
At this point, you need to su to root. You should remain as root until the
end of the install. To check you have the required modules, run:
bash# ./checksetup.pl --check-modules
checksetup.pl will print out a list of the required and optional Perl
modules, together with the versions (if any) installed on your machine. The
list of required modules is reasonably long; however, you may already have
several of them installed.
There is a meta-module called Bundle::Bugzilla, which installs all the other
modules with a single command. You should use this if you are running Perl
5.6.1 or above.
The preferred way of installing Perl modules is via CPAN on Unix, or PPM on
Windows (see Section 2.4.1.2). These instructions assume you are using CPAN;
if for some reason you need to install the Perl modules manually, see
Appendix D.
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "<modulename>"'
If you using Bundle::Bugzilla, invoke the magic CPAN command on it.
Otherwise, you need to work down the list of modules that checksetup.pl says
are required, in the order given, invoking the command on each.
Tip Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most
times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in "@INC".
Virtually every time, this error is due to permissions being set too
restrictively for you to compile Perl modules or not having the necessary
Perl development libraries installed on your system. Consult your local UNIX
systems administrator for help solving these permissions issues; if you are
the local UNIX sysadmin, please consult the newsgroup/mailing list for
further assistance or hire someone to help you out.
Note If you are using a package-based system, and attempting to install the
Perl modules from CPAN, you may need to install the "development" packages
for MySQL and GD before attempting to install the related Perl modules. The
names of these packages will vary depending on the specific distribution you
are using, but are often called <packagename>-devel.
Here is a complete list of modules and their minimum versions. Some modules
have special installation notes, which follow.
Required Perl modules:
1. AppConfig (1.52)
2. CGI (2.93)
3. Data::Dumper (any)
4. Date::Format (2.21)
5. DBI (1.38)
6. DBD::mysql (2.9003) if using MySQL
7. DBD::Pg (1.31) if using PostgreSQL
8. File::Spec (0.84)
9. File::Temp (any)
10. Template (2.08)
11. Text::Wrap (2001.0131)
12. Mail::Mailer (1.65)
13. Storable (any)
Optional Perl modules:
1. GD (1.20) for bug charting
2. Chart::Base (1.0) for bug charting
3. GD::Graph (any) for bug charting
4. GD::Text::Align (any) for bug charting
5. XML::Parser (any) for the XML interface
6. PatchReader (0.9.4) for pretty HTML view of patches
7. MIME::Parser (any) for the optional email interface
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.1. DBD::mysql
The installation process will ask you a few questions about the desired
compilation target and your MySQL installation. For most of the questions
the provided default will be adequate, but when asked if your desired target
is the MySQL or mSQL packages, you should select the MySQL-related ones.
Later you will be asked if you wish to provide backwards compatibility with
the older MySQL packages; you should answer YES to this question. The
default is NO.
A host of 'localhost' should be fine. A testing user of 'test', with a null
password, should have sufficient access to run tests on the 'test' database
which MySQL creates upon installation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.2. Template Toolkit (2.08)
When you install Template Toolkit, you'll get asked various questions about
features to enable. The defaults are fine, except that it is recommended you
use the high speed XS Stash of the Template Toolkit, in order to achieve
best performance.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.3. GD (1.20)
The GD module is only required if you want graphical reports.
Note The Perl GD module requires some other libraries that may or may not be
installed on your system, including libpng and libgd. The full requirements
are listed in the Perl GD module README. If compiling GD fails, it's
probably because you're missing a required library.
Tip The version of the GD module you need is very closely tied to the libgd
version installed on your system. If you have a version 1.x of libgd the 2.x
versions of the GD module won't work for you.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.4. Chart::Base (1.0)
The Chart::Base module is only required if you want graphical reports. Note
that earlier versions that 0.99c used GIFs, which are no longer supported by
the latest versions of GD.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.5. GD::Graph (any)
The GD::Graph module is only required if you want graphical reports.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.6. GD::Text::Align (any)
The GD::Text::Align module is only required if you want graphical reports.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.7. XML::Parser (any)
The XML::Parser module is only required if you want to import XML bugs using
the importxml.pl script. This is required to use Bugzilla's "move bugs"
feature; you may also want to use it for migrating from another bug
database. XML::Parser requires that the expat library is already installed
on your machine.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.8. MIME::Parser (any)
The MIME::Parser module is only required if you want to use the email
interface located in the contrib directory.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.5.9. PatchReader (0.9.4)
The PatchReader module is only required if you want to use Patch Viewer, a
Bugzilla feature to show code patches in your web browser in a more readable
form.
_________________________________________________________________
2.1.6. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
Bugzilla is dependent on the availability of an e-mail system for its user
authentication and for other tasks.
Note This is not entirely true. It is possible to completely disable email
sending, or to have Bugzilla store email messages in a file instead of
sending them. However, this is mainly intended for testing, as disabling or
diverting email on a production machine would mean that users could miss
important events (such as bug changes or the creation of new accouts).
For more information, see the "maildeliverymethod" parameter in Section 3.1.
On Linux, any Sendmail-compatible MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) will suffice.
Sendmail, Postfix, qmail and Exim are examples of common MTAs. Sendmail is
the original Unix MTA, but the others are easier to configure, and therefore
many people replace Sendmail with Postfix or Exim. They are drop-in
replacements, so Bugzilla will not distinguish between them.
If you are using Sendmail, version 8.7 or higher is required. If you are
using a Sendmail-compatible MTA, it must be congruent with at least version
8.7 of Sendmail.
Consult the manual for the specific MTA you choose for detailed installation
instructions. Each of these programs will have their own configuration files
where you must configure certain parameters to ensure that the mail is
delivered properly. They are implemented as services, and you should ensure
that the MTA is in the auto-start list of services for the machine.
If a simple mail sent with the command-line 'mail' program succeeds, then
Bugzilla should also be fine.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2. Configuration
Warning Poorly-configured MySQL and Bugzilla installations have given
attackers full access to systems in the past. Please take the security parts
of these guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden away behind
your firewall. Be certain to read Chapter 4 for some important security
tips.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.1. localconfig
You should now run checksetup.pl again, this time without the
--check-modules switch.
bash# ./checksetup.pl
This time, checksetup.pl should tell you that all the correct modules are
installed and will display a message about, and write out a file called,
localconfig. This file contains the default settings for a number of
Bugzilla parameters.
Load this file in your editor. The only value you need to change is
$db_pass, the password for the user you will create for your database. Pick
a strong password (for simplicity, it should not contain single quote
characters) and put it here.
You may need to change the value of webservergroup if your web server does
not run in the "apache" group. On Debian, for example, Apache runs in the
"www-data" group. If you are going to run Bugzilla on a machine where you do
not have root access (such as on a shared web hosting account), you will
need to leave webservergroup empty, ignoring the warnings that checksetup.pl
will subsequently display every time it in run.
The other options in the localconfig file are documented by their
accompanying comments. If you have a slightly non-standard MySQL setup, you
may wish to change one or more of the other "$db_*" parameters.
You may also wish to change the names of the priorities, severities,
operating systems and platforms for your installation. However, you can
always change these after installation has finished; if you then re-run
checksetup.pl, the changes will get picked up.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2. Database Server
This section deals with configuring your database server for use with
Bugzilla. Currently Section 2.2.2.1 and Section 2.2.2.2 are available.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.1. MySQL
Caution MySQL's default configuration is very insecure. Section 4.2 has some
good information for improving your installation's security.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.1.1. Allow large attachments
By default, MySQL will only accept packets up to 64Kb in size. If you want
to have attachments larger than this, you will need to modify your
/etc/my.cnf as below.
If you are using MySQL 4.0 or newer, enter:
[mysqld]
# Allow packets up to 1M
max_allowed_packet=1M
If you are using an older version of MySQL, enter:
[mysqld]
# Allow packets up to 1M
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=1M
There is also a parameter in Bugzilla called 'maxattachmentsize' (default =
1000 Kb) that controls the maximum allowable attachment size. Attachments
larger than either the 'max_allowed_packet' or 'maxattachmentsize' value
will not be accepted by Bugzilla.
Note This does not affect Big Files, attachments that are stored directly on
disk instead of in the database. Their maximum size is controlled using the
'maxlocalattachment' parameter.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.1.2. Allow small words in full-text indexes
By default, words must be at least four characters in length in order to be
indexed by MySQL's full-text indexes. This causes a lot of Bugzilla specific
words to be missed, including "cc", "ftp" and "uri".
MySQL can be configured to index those words by setting the ft_min_word_len
param to the minimum size of the words to index. This can be done by
modifying the /etc/my.cnf according to the example below:
[mysqld]
# Allow small words in full-text indexes
ft_min_word_len=2
Rebuilding the indexes can be done based on documentation found at
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Fine-tuning.html.
Note The ft_min_word_len parameter is only suported in MySQL v4 or higher.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.1.3. Permit attachments table to grow beyond 4GB
By default, MySQL will limit the size of a table to 4GB. This limit is
present even if the underlying filesystem has no such limit. To set a higher
limit, follow these instructions.
Run the MySQL command-line client and enter:
mysql> ALTER TABLE attachments
AVG_ROW_LENGTH=1000000, MAX_ROWS=20000;
The above command will change the limit to 20GB. Mysql will have to make a
temporary copy of your entire table to do this. Ideally, you should do this
when your attachments table is still small.
Note This does not affect Big Files, attachments that are stored directly on
disk instead of in the database.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.1.4. Add a user to MySQL
You need to add a new MySQL user for Bugzilla to use. (It's not safe to have
Bugzilla use the MySQL root account.) The following instructions assume the
defaults in localconfig; if you changed those, you need to modify the SQL
command appropriately. You will need the $db_pass password you set in
localconfig in Section 2.2.1.
We use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs" user. This also restricts the
"bugs"user to operations within a database called "bugs", and only allows
the account to connect from "localhost". Modify it to reflect your setup if
you will be connecting from another machine or as a different user.
Run the mysql command-line client.
If you are using MySQL 4.0 or newer, enter:
mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE, LOCK TABLES,
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DROP, REFERENCES ON bugs.*
TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '$db_pass';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
If you are using an older version of MySQL,the LOCK TABLES and CREATE
TEMPORARY TABLES permissions will be unavailable and should be removed from
the permissions list. In this case, the following command line can be used:
mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE, DROP,
REFERENCES ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY
'$db_pass';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.2. PostgreSQL
Note Note if you are using PostgreSQL 8.0.1 or higher, then you will require
to use a version of DBD::Pg which is equal to or greater than version 1.41
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.2.1. Add a User to PostgreSQL
You need to add a new user to PostgreSQL for the Bugzilla application to use
when accessing the database. The following instructions assume the defaults
in localconfig; if you changed those, you need to modify the commands
appropriately. You will need the $db_pass password you set in localconfig in
Section 2.2.1.
On most systems, to create the user in PostgreSQL, you will need to login as
the root user, and then
bash# su - postgres
As the postgres user, you then need to create a new user:
bash$ createuser -U postgres -dAP bugs
When asked for a password, provide the password which will be set as
$db_pass in localconfig. The created user will have the ability to create
databases and will not be able to create new users.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.2.2.2. Configure PostgreSQL
Now, you will need to edit pg_hba.conf which is usually located in
/var/lib/pgsql/data/. In this file, you will need to add a new line to it as
follows:
host all bugs 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 md5
This means that for TCP/IP (host) connections, allow connections from
'127.0.0.1' to 'all' databases on this server from the 'bugs' user, and use
password authentication (md5) for that user.
If you are using versions of PostgreSQL before version 8, you may also need
to edit postgresql.conf , also usually found in the /var/lib/pgsql/data/
folder. You will need to make a single line change, changing
# tcpip_socket = false
to
tcpip_socket = true
Now, you will need to restart PostgreSQL, but you will need to fully stop
and start the server rather than just restarting due to the possibility of a
change to postgresql.conf. After the server has restarted, you will need to
edit localconfig, finding the $db_driver variable and setting it to Pg and
changing the password in $db_pass to the one you picked previously, while
setting up the account.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.3. checksetup.pl
Next, rerun checksetup.pl. It reconfirms that all the modules are present,
and notices the altered localconfig file, which it assumes you have edited
to your satisfaction. It compiles the UI templates, connects to the database
using the 'bugs' user you created and the password you defined, and creates
the 'bugs' database and the tables therein.
After that, it asks for details of an administrator account. Bugzilla can
have multiple administrators - you can create more later - but it needs one
to start off with. Enter the email address of an administrator, his or her
full name, and a suitable Bugzilla password.
checksetup.pl will then finish. You may rerun checksetup.pl at any time if
you wish.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4. Web server
Configure your web server according to the instructions in the appropriate
section. (If it makes a difference in your choice, the Bugzilla Team
recommends Apache.) Regardless of which webserver you are using, however,
ensure that sensitive information is not remotely available by properly
applying the access controls in Section 4.3.1.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.1. Apache httpd
To configure your Apache web server to work with Bugzilla, do the following:
1. Load httpd.conf in your editor. In Fedora and Red Hat Linux, this file
is found in /etc/httpd/conf.
2. Apache uses <Directory> directives to permit fine-grained permission
setting. Add the following lines to a directive that applies to the
location of your Bugzilla installation. (If such a section does not
exist, you'll want to add one.) In this example, Bugzilla has been
installed at /var/www/html/bugzilla.
<Directory /var/www/html/bugzilla>
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +Indexes +ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex index.cgi
AllowOverride Limit
</Directory>
These instructions: allow apache to run .cgi files found within the
bugzilla directory; instructs the server to look for a file called
index.cgi if someone only types the directory name into the browser; and
allows Bugzilla's .htaccess files to override global permissions.
Note It is possible to make these changes globally, or to the directive
controlling Bugzilla's parent directory (e.g. <Directory /var/www/html/>).
Such changes would also apply to the Bugzilla directory... but they would
also apply to many other places where they may or may not be appropriate. In
most cases, including this one, it is better to be as restrictive as
possible when granting extra access.
3. checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and
directories if it knows what group the webserver runs as. Find the Group
line in httpd.conf, place the value found there in the $webservergroup
variable in localconfig, then rerun checksetup.pl.
4. Optional: If Bugzilla does not actually reside in the webspace
directory, but instead has been symbolically linked there, you will need
to add the following to the Options line of the Bugzilla <Directory>
directive (the same one as in the step above):
+FollowSymLinks
Without this directive, Apache will not follow symbolic links to places
outside its own directory structure, and you will be unable to run
Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.4.2. Microsoft Internet Information Services
If you are running Bugzilla on Windows and choose to use Microsoft's
Internet Information Services or Personal Web Server you will need to
perform a number of other configuration steps as explained below. You may
also want to refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:
245225 "HOW TO: Configure and Test a PERL Script with IIS 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1"
(for Internet Information Services) and 231998 "HOW TO: FP2000: How to Use
Perl with Microsoft Personal Web Server on Windows 95/98" (for Personal Web
Server).
You will need to create a virtual directory for the Bugzilla install. Put
the Bugzilla files in a directory that is named something other than what
you want your end-users accessing. That is, if you want your users to access
your Bugzilla installation through "http://<yourdomainname>/Bugzilla", then
do not put your Bugzilla files in a directory named "Bugzilla". Instead,
place them in a different location, and then use the IIS Administration tool
to create a Virtual Directory named "Bugzilla" that acts as an alias for the
actual location of the files. When creating that virtual directory, make
sure you add the "Execute (such as ISAPI applications or CGI)" access
permission.
You will also need to tell IIS how to handle Bugzilla's .cgi files. Using
the IIS Administration tool again, open up the properties for the new
virtual directory and select the Configuration option to access the Script
Mappings. Create an entry mapping .cgi to:
<full path to perl.exe >\perl.exe -x<full path to Bugzilla> -wT "%s" %s
For example:
c:\perl\bin\perl.exe -xc:\bugzilla -wT "%s" %s
Note The ActiveState install may have already created an entry for .pl files
that is limited to "GET,HEAD,POST". If so, this mapping should be removed as
Bugzilla's .pl files are not designed to be run via a webserver.
IIS will also need to know that the index.cgi should be treated as a default
document. On the Documents tab page of the virtual directory properties, you
need to add index.cgi as a default document type. If you wish, you may
remove the other default document types for this particular virtual
directory, since Bugzilla doesn't use any of them.
Also, and this can't be stressed enough, make sure that files such as
localconfig and your data directory are secured as described in Section
4.3.1.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2.5. Bugzilla
Your Bugzilla should now be working. Access http://<your-bugzilla-server>/ -
you should see the Bugzilla front page. If not, consult the Troubleshooting
section, Appendix B.
Note The URL above may be incorrect if you installed Bugzilla into a
subdirectory or used a symbolic link from your web site root to the Bugzilla
directory.
Log in with the administrator account you defined in the last checksetup.pl
run. You should go through the parameters on the Edit Parameters page (see
link in the footer) and see if there are any you wish to change. They key
parameters are documented in Section 3.1; you should certainly alter
maintainer and urlbase; you may also want to alter cookiepath or
requirelogin.
This would also be a good time to revisit the localconfig file and make sure
that the names of the priorities, severities, platforms and operating
systems are those you wish to use when you start creating bugs. Remember to
rerun checksetup.pl if you change it.
Bugzilla has several optional features which require extra configuration.
You can read about those in Section 2.3.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
Bugzilla has a number of optional features. This section describes how to
configure or enable them.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.1. Bug Graphs
If you have installed the necessary Perl modules you can start collecting
statistics for the nifty Bugzilla graphs.
bash# crontab -e
This should bring up the crontab file in your editor. Add a cron entry like
this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:
5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl
After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the
Reports page.
When upgrading Bugzilla, this format may change. To create new status data,
(re)move old data and run the following commands:
bash$
cd <your-bugzilla-directory>
bash$
./collectstats.pl --regenerate
Note Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be
used to implement cron, such as nncron.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.2. Dependency Charts
As well as the text-based dependency trees, Bugzilla also supports a
graphical view of dependency relationships, using a package called 'dot'.
Exactly how this works is controlled by the 'webdotbase' parameter, which
can have one of three values:
1. A complete file path to the command 'dot' (part of GraphViz) will
generate the graphs locally
2. A URL prefix pointing to an installation of the webdot package will
generate the graphs remotely
3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.
The easiest way to get this working is to install GraphViz. If you do that,
you need to enable server-side image maps in Apache. Alternatively, you
could set up a webdot server, or use the AT&T public webdot server. This is
the default for the webdotbase param, but it's often overloaded and slow.
Note that AT&T's server won't work if Bugzilla is only accessible using
HARTS. Editor's note: What the heck is HARTS? Google doesn't know...
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.3. The Whining Cron
What good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make them more so you
can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at engineers
which leave their bugs in the NEW or REOPENED state without triaging them.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry,
in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This example runs it
at 12.55am.
55 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl
Note Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be
used to implement cron, such as nncron.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.4. Whining
As of Bugzilla 2.20, users can configure Bugzilla to regularly annoy them at
regular intervals, by having Bugzilla execute saved searches at certain
times and emailing the results to the user. This is known as "Whining". The
process of configuring Whining is described in Section 6.13, but for it to
work a Perl script must be executed at regular intervals.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry,
in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This example runs it
every 15 minutes.
*/15 * * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whine.pl
Note Whines can be executed as often as every 15 minutes, so if you specify
longer intervals between executions of whine.pl, some users may not be
whined at as often as they would expect. Depending on the person, this can
either be a very Good Thing or a very Bad Thing.
Note Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be
used to implement cron, such as nncron.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.5. Patch Viewer
Patch Viewer is the engine behind Bugzilla's graphical display of code
patches. You can integrate this with copies of the cvs, lxr and bonsai tools
if you have them, by giving the locations of your installation of these
tools in editparams.cgi.
Patch Viewer also optionally will use the cvs, diff and interdiff
command-line utilities if they exist on the system. Interdiff can be
obtained from http://cyberelk.net/tim/patchutils/. If these programs are not
in the system path, you can configure their locations in localconfig.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.6. LDAP Authentication
LDAP authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication
architecture.
The existing authentication scheme for Bugzilla uses email addresses as the
primary user ID, and a password to authenticate that user. All places within
Bugzilla where you need to deal with user ID (e.g assigning a bug) use the
email address. The LDAP authentication builds on top of this scheme, rather
than replacing it. The initial log in is done with a username and password
for the LDAP directory. This then fetches the email address from LDAP and
authenticates seamlessly in the standard Bugzilla authentication scheme
using this email address. If an account for this address already exists in
your Bugzilla system, it will log in to that account. If no account for that
email address exists, one is created at the time of login. (In this case,
Bugzilla will attempt to use the "displayName" or "cn" attribute to
determine the user's full name.) After authentication, all other
user-related tasks are still handled by email address, not LDAP username.
You still assign bugs by email address, query on users by email address,
etc.
Caution Because the Bugzilla account is not created until the first time a
user logs in, a user who has not yet logged is unknown to Bugzilla. This
means they cannot be used as an assignee or QA contact (default or
otherwise), added to any cc list, or any other such operation. One possible
workaround is the bugzilla_ldapsync.rb script in the contrib directory.
Another possible solution is fixing bug 201069.
Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:
loginmethod
This parameter should be set to "LDAP" only if you will be using an
LDAP directory for authentication. If you set this param to "LDAP"
but fail to set up the other parameters listed below you will not be
able to log back in to Bugzilla one you log out. If this happens to
you, you will need to manually edit data/params and set loginmethod
to "DB".
LDAPserver
This parameter should be set to the name (and optionally the port) of
your LDAP server. If no port is specified, it assumes the default
LDAP port of 389.
Ex. "ldap.company.com" or "ldap.company.com:3268"
LDAPbinddn [Optional]
Some LDAP servers will not allow an anonymous bind to search the
directory. If this is the case with your configuration you should set
the LDAPbinddn parameter to the user account Bugzilla should use
instead of the anonymous bind.
Ex. "cn=default,cn=user:password"
LDAPBaseDN
The LDAPBaseDN parameter should be set to the location in your LDAP
tree that you would like to search for email addresses. Your uids
should be unique under the DN specified here.
Ex. "ou=People,o=Company"
LDAPuidattribute
The LDAPuidattribute parameter should be set to the attribute which
contains the unique UID of your users. The value retrieved from this
attribute will be used when attempting to bind as the user to confirm
their password.
Ex. "uid"
LDAPmailattribute
The LDAPmailattribute parameter should be the name of the attribute
which contains the email address your users will enter into the
Bugzilla login boxes.
Ex. "mail"
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.7. Serving Alternate Formats with the right MIME type
Some Bugzilla pages have alternate formats, other than just plain HTML. In
particular, a few Bugzilla pages can output their contents as either XUL (a
special Mozilla format, that looks like a program GUI) or RDF (a type of
structured XML that can be read by various programs).
In order for your users to see these pages correctly, Apache must send them
with the right MIME type. To do this, add the following lines to your Apache
configuration, either in the <VirtualHost> section for your Bugzilla, or in
the <Directory> section for your Bugzilla:
AddType application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml .xul
AddType application/rdf+xml .rdf
_________________________________________________________________
2.4. OS-Specific Installation Notes
Many aspects of the Bugzilla installation can be affected by the the
operating system you choose to install it on. Sometimes it can be made
easier and others more difficult. This section will attempt to help you
understand both the difficulties of running on specific operating systems
and the utilities available to make it easier.
If you have anything to add or notes for an operating system not covered,
please file a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1. Microsoft Windows
Making Bugzilla work on Windows is more difficult than making it work on
Unix. For that reason, we still recommend doing so on a Unix based system
such as GNU/Linux. That said, if you do want to get Bugzilla running on
Windows, you will need to make the following adjustments.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.1. Win32 Perl
Perl for Windows can be obtained from ActiveState. You should be able to
find a compiled binary at
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/. The following
instructions assume that you are using version 5.8.1 of ActiveState.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32
Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in Section 2.1.5.
The main difference is that windows uses PPM instead of CPAN.
C:\perl> ppm install <module name>
The best source for the Windows PPM modules needed for Bugzilla is probably
the the Bugzilla Test Server (aka 'Landfill'), so you should add the
Landfill package repository as follows:
ppm repository add landfill http://www.landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/
Note The PPM repository stores modules in 'packages' that may have a
slightly different name than the module. If retrieving these modules from
there, you will need to pay attention to the information provided when you
run checksetup.pl as it will tell you what package you'll need to install.
Tip If you are behind a corporate firewall, you will need to let the
ActiveState PPM utility know how to get through it to acccess the
repositories by setting the HTTP_proxy system environmental variable. For
more information on setting that variable, see the ActiveState
documentation.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.3. Code changes required to run on Win32
Bugzilla on Win32 is supported out of the box from version 2.20; this means
that no code changes are required to get Bugzilla running.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.4. Serving the web pages
As is the case on Unix based systems, any web server should be able to
handle Bugzilla; however, the Bugzilla Team still recommends Apache whenever
asked. No matter what web server you choose, be sure to pay attention to the
security notes in Section 4.3.1. More information on configuring specific
web servers can be found in Section 2.2.4.
Note If using Apache on windows, you can set the ScriptInterpreterSource
directive in your Apache config to avoid having to modify the first line of
every script to contain your path to perl perl instead of /usr/bin/perl.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1.5. Sending Email
To enable Bugzilla to send email on Windows, the server running the Bugzilla
code must be able to connect to, or act as, an SMTP server.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.2. Mac OS X
Apple did not include the GD library with Mac OS X. Bugzilla needs this for
bug graphs.
You can install it using a program called Fink, which is similar in nature
to the CPAN installer, but installs common GNU utilities. Fink is available
from http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/.
Follow the instructions for setting up Fink. Once it's installed, you'll
want to use it to install the gd2 package.
It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to
install all of the dependencies and then watch it work. You will then be
able to use CPAN to install the GD Perl module.
Note To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by
default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs most
of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and headers will
be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and /usr/include. When the
Perl module config script asks where your libgd is, be sure to tell it
/sw/lib.
Also available via Fink is expat. After using fink to install the expat
package you will be able to install XML::Parser using CPAN. There is one
caveat. Unlike recent versions of the GD module, XML::Parser doesn't prompt
for the location of the required libraries. When using CPAN, you will need
to use the following command sequence:
# perl -MCPAN -e'look XML::Parser' (1)
# perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include
# make; make test; make install (2)
# exit (3)
(1) (3)
The look command will download the module and spawn a new shell with
the extracted files as the current working directory. The exit
command will return you to your original shell.
(2)
You should watch the output from these make commands, especially
"make test" as errors may prevent XML::Parser from functioning
correctly with Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.3. Linux-Mandrake 8.0
Linux-Mandrake 8.0 includes every required and optional library for
Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is by using the urpmi utility. If
you follow these commands, you should have everything you need for Bugzilla,
and ./checksetup.pl should not complain about any missing libraries. You may
already have some of these installed.
bash# urpmi perl-mysql
bash# urpmi perl-chart
bash# urpmi perl-gd
bash# urpmi perl-MailTools (1)
bash# urpmi apache-modules
(1)
for Bugzilla email integration
_________________________________________________________________
2.5. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
2.5.1. Introduction
If you are running a *NIX OS as non-root, either due to lack of access (web
hosts, for example) or for security reasons, this will detail how to install
Bugzilla on such a setup. It is recommended that you read through the
Section 2.1 first to get an idea on the installation steps required. (These
notes will reference to steps in that guide.)
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.2. MySQL
You may have MySQL installed as root. If you're setting up an account with a
web host, a MySQL account needs to be set up for you. From there, you can
create the bugs account, or use the account given to you.
Warning You may have problems trying to set up GRANT permissions to the
database. If you're using a web host, chances are that you have a separate
database which is already locked down (or one big database with limited/no
access to the other areas), but you may want to ask your system adminstrator
what the security settings are set to, and/or run the GRANT command for you.
Also, you will probably not be able to change the MySQL root user password
(for obvious reasons), so skip that step.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.2.1. Running MySQL as Non-Root
2.5.2.1.1. The Custom Configuration Method
Create a file .my.cnf in your home directory (using /home/foo in this
example) as follows....
[mysqld]
datadir=/home/foo/mymysql
socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock
port=8081
[mysql]
socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock
port=8081
[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib
[safe_mysqld]
err-log=/home/foo/mymysql/the.log
pid-file=/home/foo/mymysql/the.pid
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.2.1.2. The Custom Built Method
You can install MySQL as a not-root, if you really need to. Build it with
PREFIX set to /home/foo/mysql, or use pre-installed executables, specifying
that you want to put all of the data files in /home/foo/mysql/data. If there
is another MySQL server running on the system that you do not own, use the
-P option to specify a TCP port that is not in use.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.2.1.3. Starting the Server
After your mysqld program is built and any .my.cnf file is in place, you
must initialize the databases (ONCE).
bash$
mysql_install_db
Then start the daemon with
bash$
safe_mysql &
After you start mysqld the first time, you then connect to it as "root" and
GRANT permissions to other users. (Again, the MySQL root account has nothing
to do with the *NIX root account.)
Note You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your
system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a crontab
entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart them if
needed.
Warning Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first
consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources and
running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any machine on
which you are a user!
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.3. Perl
On the extremely rare chance that you don't have Perl on the machine, you
will have to build the sources yourself. The following commands should get
your system installed with your own personal version of Perl:
bash$
wget http://perl.com/CPAN/src/stable.tar.gz
bash$
tar zvxf stable.tar.gz
bash$
cd perl-5.8.1 (or whatever the version of Perl is called)
bash$
sh Configure -de -Dprefix=/home/foo/perl
bash$
make && make test && make install
Once you have Perl installed into a directory (probably in ~/perl/bin),
you'll have to change the locations on the scripts, which is detailed later
on this page.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.4. Perl Modules
Installing the Perl modules as a non-root user is probably the hardest part
of the process. There are two different methods: a completely independant
Perl with its own modules, or personal modules using the current (root
installed) version of Perl. The independant method takes up quite a bit of
disk space, but is less complex, while the mixed method only uses as much
space as the modules themselves, but takes more work to setup.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.4.1. The Independant Method
The independant method requires that you install your own personal version
of Perl, as detailed in the previous section. Once installed, you can start
the CPAN shell with the following command:
bash$
/home/foo/perl/bin/perl -MCPAN -e 'shell'
And then:
cpan>
install Bundle::Bugzilla
With this method, module installation will usually go a lot smoother, but if
you have any hang-ups, you can consult the next section.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.4.2. The Mixed Method
First, you'll need to configure CPAN to install modules in your home
directory. The CPAN FAQ says the following on this issue:
5) I am not root, how can I install a module in a personal directory?
You will most probably like something like this:
o conf makepl_arg "LIB=~/myperl/lib \
INSTALLMAN1DIR=~/myperl/man/man1 \
INSTALLMAN3DIR=~/myperl/man/man3"
install Sybase::Sybperl
You can make this setting permanent like all "o conf" settings with "o conf
commit".
You will have to add ~/myperl/man to the MANPATH environment variable and a
lso tell your Perl programs to
look into ~/myperl/lib, e.g. by including
use lib "$ENV{HOME}/myperl/lib";
or setting the PERL5LIB environment variable.
Another thing you should bear in mind is that the UNINST parameter should n
ever be set if you are not root.
So, you will need to create a Perl directory in your home directory, as well
as the lib, man, man/man1, and man/man3 directories in that Perl directory.
Set the MANPATH variable and PERL5LIB variable, so that the installation of
the modules goes smoother. (Setting UNINST=0 in your "make install" options,
on the CPAN first-time configuration, is also a good idea.)
After that, go into the CPAN shell:
bash$
perl -MCPAN -e 'shell'
From there, you will need to type in the above "o conf" command and commit
the changes. Then you can run through the installation:
cpan>
install Bundle::Bugzilla
Most of the module installation process should go smoothly. However, you may
have some problems with Template. When you first start, you will want to try
to install Template with the XS Stash options on. If this doesn't work, it
may spit out C compiler error messages and croak back to the CPAN shell
prompt. So, redo the install, and turn it off. (In fact, say no to all of
the Template questions.) It may also start failing on a few of the tests. If
the total tests passed is a reasonable figure (90+%), force the install with
the following command:
cpan>
force install Template
You may also want to install the other optional modules:
cpan>
install GD
cpan>
install Chart::Base
cpan>
install MIME::Parser
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.5. HTTP Server
Ideally, this also needs to be installed as root and run under a special
webserver account. As long as the web server will allow the running of *.cgi
files outside of a cgi-bin, and a way of denying web access to certain files
(such as a .htaccess file), you should be good in this department.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.5.1. Running Apache as Non-Root
You can run Apache as a non-root user, but the port will need to be set to
one above 1024. If you type httpd -V, you will get a list of the variables
that your system copy of httpd uses. One of those, namely HTTPD_ROOT, tells
you where that installation looks for its config information.
From there, you can copy the config files to your own home directory to
start editing. When you edit those and then use the -d option to override
the HTTPD_ROOT compiled into the web server, you get control of your own
customized web server.
Note You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your
system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a crontab
entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart them if
needed.
Warning Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first
consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources and
running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any machine on
which you are a user!
_________________________________________________________________
2.5.6. Bugzilla
If you had to install Perl modules as a non-root user (Section 2.5.4) or to
non-standard directories, you will need to change the scripts, setting the
correct location of the Perl modules:
perl -pi -e
's@use strict\;@use strict\; use lib \"/home/foo/perl/lib\"\;@'
*cgi *pl Bug.pm processmail syncshadowdb
Change /home/foo/perl/lib to your personal Perl library directory. You can
probably skip this step if you are using the independant method of Perl
module installation.
When you run ./checksetup.pl to create the localconfig file, it will list
the Perl modules it finds. If one is missing, go back and double-check the
module installation from the CPAN shell, then delete the localconfig file
and try again.
Warning The one option in localconfig you might have problems with is the
web server group. If you can't successfully browse to the index.cgi (like a
Forbidden error), you may have to relax your permissions, and blank out the
web server group. Of course, this may pose as a security risk. Having a
properly jailed shell and/or limited access to shell accounts may lessen the
security risk, but use at your own risk.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3. Administering Bugzilla
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from the
"Edit parameters" link in the page footer. Here are some of the key
parameters on that page. You should run down this list and set them
appropriately after installing Bugzilla.
maintainer
The maintainer parameter is the email address of the person
responsible for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The address
need not be that of a valid Bugzilla account.
urlbase
This parameter defines the fully qualified domain name and web server
path to your Bugzilla installation.
For example, if your Bugzilla query page is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your "urlbase" to
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.
makeproductgroups
This dictates whether or not to automatically create groups when new
products are created.
useentrygroupdefault
Bugzilla products can have a group associated with them, so that
certain users can only see bugs in certain products. When this
parameter is set to "on", this causes the initial group controls on
newly created products to place all newly-created bugs in the group
having the same name as the product immediately. After a product is
initially created, the group controls can be further adjusted without
interference by this mechanism.
maildeliverymethod
This is used to specify how email is sent, or if it is sent at all.
There are several options included for different MTAs, along with two
additional options that disable email sending. "testfile" does not
send mail, but instead saves it in data/mailer.testfile for later
review. "none" disables email sending entirely.
shadowdb
You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla reaches a high
level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only table-level write
locking. What this means is that if someone needs to make a change to
a bug, they will lock the entire table until the operation is
complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is
complete. Note that more recent versions of mysql support row level
locking using different table types. These types are slower than the
standard type, and Bugzilla does not yet take advantage of features
such as transactions which would justify this speed decrease. The
Bugzilla team are, however, happy to hear about any experiences with
row level locking and Bugzilla.
The "shadowdb" parameter was designed to get around this limitation.
While only a single user is allowed to write to a table at a time,
reads can continue unimpeded on a read-only shadow copy of the
database. Although your database size will double, a shadow database
can cause an enormous performance improvement when implemented on
extremely high-traffic Bugzilla databases.
As a guide, on reasonably old hardware, mozilla.org began needing
"shadowdb" when they reached around 40,000 Bugzilla users with
several hundred Bugzilla bug changes and comments per day.
The value of the parameter defines the name of the shadow bug
database. You will need to set the host and port settings from the
params page, and set up replication in your database server so that
updates reach this readonly mirror. Consult your database
documentation for more detail.
shutdownhtml
If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform administration, enter
some descriptive text (with embedded HTML codes, if you'd like) into
this box. Anyone who tries to use Bugzilla (including admins) will
receive a page displaying this text. Users can neither log in nor log
out while shutdownhtml is enabled.
Note Although regular log-in capability is disabled while 'shutdownhtml' is
enabled, safeguards are in place to protect the unfortunate admin who loses
connection to Bugzilla. Should this happen to you, go directly to the
editparams.cgi (by typing the URL in manually, if necessary). Doing this
will prompt you to log in, and your name/password will be accepted here (but
nowhere else).
passwordmail
Every time a user creates an account, the text of this parameter
(with substitutions) is sent to the new user along with their
password message.
Add any text you wish to the "passwordmail" parameter box. For
instance, many people choose to use this box to give a quick training
blurb about how to use Bugzilla at your site.
movebugs
This option is an undocumented feature to allow moving bugs between
separate Bugzilla installations. You will need to understand the
source code in order to use this feature. Please consult movebugs.pl
in your Bugzilla source tree for further documentation, such as it
is.
useqacontact
This allows you to define an email address for each component, in
addition to that of the default assignee, who will be sent carbon
copies of incoming bugs.
usestatuswhiteboard
This defines whether you wish to have a free-form, overwritable field
associated with each bug. The advantage of the Status Whiteboard is
that it can be deleted or modified with ease, and provides an
easily-searchable field for indexing some bugs that have some trait
in common.
whinedays
Set this to the number of days you want to let bugs go in the NEW or
REOPENED state before notifying people they have untouched new bugs.
If you do not plan to use this feature, simply do not set up the
whining cron job described in the installation instructions, or set
this value to "0" (never whine).
commenton*
All these fields allow you to dictate what changes can pass without
comment, and which must have a comment from the person who changed
them. Often, administrators will allow users to add themselves to the
CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status Whiteboard without adding
a comment as to their reasons for the change, yet require that most
other changes come with an explanation.
Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a
wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or reopen
bugs at the very least.
Note It is generally far better to require a developer comment when
resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database users
than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment as to what
the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!)
supportwatchers
Turning on this option allows users to ask to receive copies of bug
mail sent to another user. Watching a user with different group
permissions is not a way to 'get around' the system; copied emails
are still subject to the normal groupset permissions of a bug, and
"watchers" will only be copied on emails from bugs they would
normally be allowed to view.
noresolveonopenblockers
This option will prevent users from resolving bugs as FIXED if they
have unresolved dependencies. Only the FIXED resolution is affected.
Users will be still able to resolve bugs to resolutions other than
FIXED if they have unresolved dependent bugs.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2. User Administration
3.2.1. Creating the Default User
When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will prompt
you for the administrative username (email address) and password for this
"super user". If for some reason you delete the "super user" account,
re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you for this username and
password.
Tip If you wish to add more administrative users, add them to the "admin"
group and, optionally, add edit the tweakparams, editusers, creategroups,
editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the entire admin group to
those groups.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2. Managing Other Users
3.2.2.1. Creating new users
Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New Account"
link at the bottom of each page (assuming they aren't logged in as someone
else already.) However, should you desire to create user accounts ahead of
time, here is how you do it.
1. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query
page, and then click "Add a new user".
2. Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When done,
click "Submit".
Note Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their
username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts (watchers
which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email addresses which
are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to log out and use the "New
Account" button to create users, as it will pre-populate all the required
fields and also notify the user of her account name and password.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2.2. Modifying Users
To see a specific user, search for their login name in the box provided on
the "Edit Users" page. To see all users, leave the box blank.
You can search in different ways the listbox to the right of the text entry
box. You can match by case-insensitive substring (the default), regular
expression, or a reverse regular expression match, which finds every user
name which does NOT match the regular expression. (Please see the man regexp
manual page for details on regular expression syntax.)
Once you have found your user, you can change the following fields:
* Login Name: This is generally the user's full email address. However, if
you have are using the emailsuffix Param, this may just be the user's
login name. Note that users can now change their login names themselves
(to any valid email address.)
* Real Name: The user's real name. Note that Bugzilla does not require
this to create an account.
* Password: You can change the user's password here. Users can
automatically request a new password, so you shouldn't need to do this
often. If you want to disable an account, see Disable Text below.
* Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a space,
the user is prevented from logging in, or making any changes to bugs via
the web interface. The HTML you type in this box is presented to the
user when they attempt to perform these actions, and should explain why
the account was disabled.
Users with disabled accounts will continue to receive mail from
Bugzilla; furthermore, they will not be able to log in themselves to
change their own preferences and stop it. If you want an account
(disabled or active) to stop receiving mail, add the account name (one
account per line) to the file data/nomail.
Note Even users whose accounts have been disabled can still submit bugs via
the e-mail gateway, if one exists. The e-mail gateway should not be enabled
for secure installations of Bugzilla.
Warning Don't disable all the administrator accounts!
* <groupname>: If you have created some groups, e.g. "securitysensitive",
then checkboxes will appear here to allow you to add users to, or remove
them from, these groups.
* canconfirm: This field is only used if you have enabled the
"unconfirmed" status. If you enable this for a user, that user can then
move bugs from "Unconfirmed" to a "Confirmed" status (e.g.: "New"
status).
* creategroups: This option will allow a user to create and destroy groups
in Bugzilla.
* editbugs: Unless a user has this bit set, they can only edit those bugs
for which they are the assignee or the reporter. Even if this option is
unchecked, users can still add comments to bugs.
* editcomponents: This flag allows a user to create new products and
components, as well as modify and destroy those that have no bugs
associated with them. If a product or component has bugs associated with
it, those bugs must be moved to a different product or component before
Bugzilla will allow them to be destroyed.
* editkeywords: If you use Bugzilla's keyword functionality, enabling this
feature allows a user to create and destroy keywords. As always, the
keywords for existing bugs containing the keyword the user wishes to
destroy must be changed before Bugzilla will allow it to die.
* editusers: This flag allows a user to do what you're doing right now:
edit other users. This will allow those with the right to do so to
remove administrator privileges from other users or grant them to
themselves. Enable with care.
* tweakparams: This flag allows a user to change Bugzilla's Params (using
editparams.cgi.)
* <productname>: This allows an administrator to specify the products in
which a user can see bugs. The user must still have the "editbugs"
privilege to edit bugs in these products.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3. Products
Products are the broadest category in Bugzilla, and tend to represent
real-world shipping products. E.g. if your company makes computer games, you
should have one product per game, perhaps a "Common" product for units of
technology used in multiple games, and maybe a few special products
(Website, Administration...)
Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis. The
number of "votes" available to users is set per-product, as is the number of
votes required to move a bug automatically from the UNCONFIRMED status to
the NEW status.
To create a new product:
1. Select "products" from the footer
2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right
3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description field
may contain HTML.
Don't worry about the "Closed for bug entry", "Maximum Votes per person",
"Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug", "Number of votes a bug in
this Product needs to automatically get out of the UNCOMFIRMED state", and
"Version" options yet. We'll cover those in a few moments.
_________________________________________________________________
3.4. Components
Components are subsections of a Product. E.g. the computer game you are
designing may have a "UI" component, an "API" component, a "Sound System"
component, and a "Plugins" component, each overseen by a different
programmer. It often makes sense to divide Components in Bugzilla according
to the natural divisions of responsibility within your Product or company.
Each component has a default assignee and (if you turned it on in the
parameters), a QA Contact. The default assignee should be the primary person
who fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the person who
will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Assignee, QA Contact, and
Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in this Component and when
these bugs change. Default Assignee and Default QA Contact fields only
dictate the default assignments; these can be changed on bug submission, or
at any later point in a bug's life.
To create a new Component:
1. Select the "Edit components" link from the "Edit product" page
2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right.
3. Fill out the "Component" field, a short "Description", the "Default
Assignee" and "Default QA Contact" (if enabled.) The Component and
Description fields may contain HTML; the "Default Assignee" field must
be a login name already existing in the database.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5. Versions
Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1", "Flinders
95", and "Flinders 2000". Version is not a multi-select field; the usual
practice is to select the earliest version known to have the bug.
To create and edit Versions:
1. From the "Edit product" screen, select "Edit Versions"
2. You will notice that the product already has the default version
"undefined". Click the "Add" link in the bottom right.
3. Enter the name of the Version. This field takes text only. Then click
the "Add" button.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6. Milestones
Milestones are "targets" that you plan to get a bug fixed by. For example,
you have a bug that you plan to fix for your 3.0 release, it would be
assigned the milestone of 3.0.
Note Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned on the
"usetargetmilestone" Param in the "Edit Parameters" screen.
To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone URL:
1. Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page.
2. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner. text
3. Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can
optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative number
(-32768 to 32767) that defines where in the list this particular
milestone appears. This is because milestones often do not occur in
alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be after "Release 1.2".
Select "Add".
4. From the Edit product screen, you can enter the URL of a page which
gives information about your milestones and what they mean.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7. Flags
Flags are a way to attach a specific status to a bug or attachment, either
"+" or "-". The meaning of these symbols depends on the text the flag
itself, but contextually they could mean pass/fail, accept/reject,
approved/denied, or even a simple yes/no. If your site allows requestable
flags, then users may set a flag to "?" as a request to another user that
they look at the bug/attachment, and set the flag to its correct status.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.1. A Simple Example
A developer might want to ask their manager, "Should we fix this bug before
we release version 2.0?" They might want to do this for a lot of bugs, so it
would be nice to streamline the process...
In Bugzilla, it would work this way:
1. The Bugzilla administrator creates a flag type called "blocking2.0" that
shows up on all bugs in your product.
It shows up on the "Show Bug" screen as the text "blocking2.0" with a
drop-down box next to it. The drop-down box contains four values: an
empty space, "?", "-", and "+".
2. The developer sets the flag to "?".
3. The manager sees the blocking2.0 flag with a "?" value.
4. If the manager thinks the feature should go into the product before
version 2.0 can be released, he sets the flag to "+". Otherwise, he sets
it to "-".
5. Now, every Bugzilla user who looks at the bug knows whether or not the
bug needs to be fixed before release of version 2.0.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.2. About Flags
3.7.2.1. Values
Flags can have three values:
?
A user is requesting that a status be set. (Think of it as 'A
question is being asked'.)
-
The status has been set negatively. (The question has been answered
"no".)
+
The status has been set positively. (The question has been answered
"yes".)
Actually, there's a fourth value a flag can have -- "unset" -- which shows
up as a blank space. This just means that nobody has expressed an opinion
(or asked someone else to express an opinion) about this bug or attachment.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.3. Using flag requests
If a flag has been defined as 'requestable', users are allowed to set the
flag's status to "?". This status indicates that someone (aka "the
requester" is asking for someone else to set the flag to either "+" or "-".
If a flag has been defined as 'specifically requestable', a text box will
appear next to the flag into which the requester may enter a Bugzilla
username. That named person (aka "the requestee") will receive an email
notifying them of the request, and pointing them to the bug/attachment in
question.
If a flag has not been defined as 'specifically requestable', then no such
text-box will appear. A request to set this flag cannot be made of any
specific individual, but must be asked "to the wind". A requester may "ask
the wind" on any flag simply by leaving the text-box blank.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.4. Two Types of Flags
Flags can go in two places: on an attachment, or on a bug.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.4.1. Attachment Flags
Attachment flags are used to ask a question about a specific attachment on a
bug.
Many Bugzilla installations use this to request that one developer "review"
another developer's code before they check it in. They attach the code to a
bug report, and then set a flag on that attachment called "review" to
review?boss@domain.com. boss@domain.com is then notified by email that he
has to check out that attachment and approve it or deny it.
For a Bugzilla user, attachment flags show up in two places:
1. On the list of attachments in the "Show Bug" screen, you can see the
current state of any flags that have been set to ?, +, or -. You can see
who asked about the flag (the requester), and who is being asked (the
requestee).
2. When you "Edit" an attachment, you can see any settable flag, along with
any flags that have already been set. This "Edit Attachment" screen is
where you set flags to ?, -, +, or unset them.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.4.2. Bug Flags
Bug flags are used to set a status on the bug itself. You can see Bug Flags
in the "Show Bug" screen (editbug.cgi).
Only users with the ability to edit the bug may set flags on bugs. This
includes the assignee, reporter, and any user with the editbugs permission.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5. Administering Flags
If you have the "editcomponents" permission, you will have "Edit: ... |
Flags | ..." in your page footer. Clicking on that link will bring you to
the "Administer Flag Types" page. Here, you can select whether you want to
create (or edit) a Bug flag, or an Attachment flag.
No matter which you choose, the interface is the same, so we'll just go over
it once.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1. Creating a Flag
When you click on the "Create a Flag Type for..." link, you will be
presented with a form. Here is what the fields in the form mean:
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.1. Name
This is the name of the flag. This will be displayed to Bugzilla users who
are looking at or setting the flag. The name may consist of any valid
Unicode character.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.2. Description
This describes the flag in more detail. At present, this doesn't show up
anywhere helpful; ideally, it would be nice to have it show up as a tooltip.
This field can be as long as you like, and can contain any character you
want.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.3. Category
Default behaviour for a newly-created flag is to appear on products and all
components, which is why "__Any__:__Any__" is already entered in the
"Inclusions" box. If this is not your desired behaviour, you must either set
some exclusions (for products on which you don't want the flag to appear),
or you must remove "__Any__:__Any__" from the Inclusions box and define
products/components specifically for this flag.
To create an Inclusion, select a Product from the top drop-down box. You may
also select a specific component from the bottom drop-down box. (Setting
"__Any__" for Product translates to, "all the products in this Bugzilla".
Selecting "__Any__" in the Component field means "all components in the
selected product.") Selections made, press "Include", and your
Product/Component pairing will show up in the "Inclusions" box on the right.
To create an Exclusion, the process is the same; select a Product from the
top drop-down box, select a specific component if you want one, and press
"Exclude". The Product/Component pairing will show up in the "Exclusions"
box on the right.
This flag will and can be set for any products/components that appearing in
the "Inclusions" box (or which fall under the appropriate "__Any__"). This
flag will not appear (and therefore cannot be set) on any products appearing
in the "Exclusions" box. IMPORTANT: Exclusions override inclusions.
You may select a Product without selecting a specific Component, but it is
illegal to select a Component without a Product, or to select a Component
that does not belong to the named Product. Doing so as of this writing
(2.18rc3) will raise an error... even if all your products have a component
by that name.
Example: Let's say you have a product called "Jet Plane" that has thousands
of components. You want to be able to ask if a problem should be fixed in
the next model of plane you release. We'll call the flag "fixInNext". But,
there's one component in "Jet Plane," called "Pilot." It doesn't make sense
to release a new pilot, so you don't want to have the flag show up in that
component. So, you include "Jet Plane:__Any__" and you exclude "Jet
Plane:Pilot".
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.4. Sort Key
Flags normally show up in alphabetical order. If you want them to show up in
a different order, you can use this key set the order on each flag. Flags
with a lower sort key will appear before flags with a higher sort key. Flags
that have the same sort key will be sorted alphabetically, but they will
still be after flags with a lower sort key, and before flags with a higher
sort key.
Example: I have AFlag (Sort Key 100), BFlag (Sort Key 10), CFlag (Sort Key
10), and DFlag (Sort Key 1). These show up in the order: DFlag, BFlag,
CFlag, AFlag.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.5. Active
Sometimes, you might want to keep old flag information in the Bugzilla
database, but stop users from setting any new flags of this type. To do
this, uncheck "active". Deactivated flags will still show up in the UI if
they are ?, +, or -, but they may only be cleared (unset), and cannot be
changed to a new value. Once a deactivated flag is cleared, it will
completely disappear from a bug/attachment, and cannot be set again.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.6. Requestable
New flags are, by default, "requestable", meaning that they offer users the
"?" option, as well as "+" and "-". To remove the ? option, uncheck
"requestable".
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.7. CC List
If you want certain users to be notified every time this flag is set to ?,
-, +, or unset, add them here. This is a comma-separated list of email
addresses that need not be restricted to Bugzilla usernames..
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.8. Specifically Requestable
By default this box is checked for new flags, meaning that users may make
flag requests of specific individuals. Unchecking this box will remove the
text box next to a flag; if it is still requestable, then requests may only
be made "to the wind." Removing this after specific requests have been made
will not remove those requests; that data will stay in the database (though
it will no longer appear to the user).
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.1.9. Multiplicable
Any flag with "Multiplicable" set (default for new flags is 'on') may be set
more than once. After being set once, an unset flag of the same type will
appear below it with "addl." (short for "additional") before the name. There
is no limit to the number of times a Multiplicable flags may be set on the
same bug/attachment.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.2. Deleting a Flag
When you are at the "Administer Flag Types" screen, you will be presented
with a list of Bug flags and a list of Attachment Flags.
To delete a flag, click on the "Delete" link next to the flag description.
Warning Once you delete a flag, it is gone from your Bugzilla. All the data
for that flag will be deleted. Everywhere that flag was set, it will
disappear, and you cannot get that data back. If you want to keep flag data,
but don't want anybody to set any new flags or change current flags, unset
"active" in the flag Edit form.
_________________________________________________________________
3.7.5.3. Editing a Flag
To edit a flag's properties, just click on the "Edit" link next to the
flag's description. That will take you to the same form described in the
"Creating a Flag" section.
_________________________________________________________________
3.8. Voting
Voting allows users to be given a pot of votes which they can allocate to
bugs, to indicate that they'd like them fixed. This allows developers to
gauge user need for a particular enhancement or bugfix. By allowing bugs
with a certain number of votes to automatically move from "UNCONFIRMED" to
"NEW", users of the bug system can help high-priority bugs garner attention
so they don't sit for a long time awaiting triage.
To modify Voting settings:
1. Navigate to the "Edit product" screen for the Product you wish to modify
2. Maximum Votes per person: Setting this field to "0" disables voting.
3. Maximum Votes a person can put on a single bug: It should probably be
some number lower than the "Maximum votes per person". Don't set this
field to "0" if "Maximum votes per person" is non-zero; that doesn't
make any sense.
4. Number of votes a bug in this product needs to automatically get out of
the UNCONFIRMED state: Setting this field to "0" disables the automatic
move of bugs from UNCONFIRMED to NEW.
5. Once you have adjusted the values to your preference, click "Update".
_________________________________________________________________
3.9. Quips
Quips are small text messages that can be configured to appear next to
search results. A Bugzilla installation can have its own specific quips.
Whenever a quip needs to be displayed, a random selection is made from the
pool of already existing quips.
Quips are controlled by the enablequips parameter. It has several possible
values: on, approved, frozen or off. In order to enable quips approval you
need to set this parameter to "approved". In this way, users are free to
submit quips for addition but an administrator must explicitly approve them
before they are actually used.
In order to see the user interface for the quips, it is enough to click on a
quip when it is displayed together with the search results. Or it can be
seen directly in the browser by visiting the quips.cgi URL (prefixed with
the usual web location of the Bugzilla installation). Once the quip
interface is displayed, it is enough to click the "view and edit the whole
quip list" in order to see the administration page. A page with all the
quips available in the database will be displayed.
Next to each tip there is a checkbox, under the "Approved" column. Quips who
have this checkbox checked are already approved and will appear next to the
search results. The ones that have it unchecked are still preserved in the
database but they will not appear on search results pages. User submitted
quips have initially the checkbox unchecked.
Also, there is a delete link next to each quip, which can be used in order
to permanently delete a quip.
_________________________________________________________________
3.10. Groups and Group Security
Groups allow the administrator to isolate bugs or products that should only
be seen by certain people. The association between products and groups is
controlled from the product edit page under "Edit Group Controls."
If the makeproductgroups param is on, a new group will be automatically
created for every new product. It is primarily available for backward
compatibility with older sites.
Note that group permissions are such that you need to be a member of all the
groups a bug is in, for whatever reason, to see that bug. Similarly, you
must be a member of all of the entry groups for a product to add bugs to a
product and you must be a member of all of the canedit groups for a product
in order to make any change to bugs in that product.
Note By default, bugs can also be seen by the Assignee, the Reporter, and by
everyone on the CC List, regardless of whether or not the bug would
typically be viewable by them. Visibility to the Reporter and CC List can be
overridden (on a per-bug basis) by bringing up the bug, finding the section
that starts with "Users in the roles selected below..." and un-checking the
box next to either 'Reporter' or 'CC List' (or both).
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.1. Creating Groups
To create Groups:
1. Select the "groups" link in the footer.
2. Take a moment to understand the instructions on the "Edit Groups"
screen, then select the "Add Group" link.
3. Fill out the "Group", "Description", and "User RegExp" fields. "User
RegExp" allows you to automatically place all users who fulfill the
Regular Expression into the new group. When you have finished, click
"Add".
Users whose email addresses match the regular expression will
automatically be members of the group as long as their email addresses
continue to match the regular expression.
Note This is a change from 2.16 where the regular expression resulted in a
user acquiring permanent membership in a group. To remove a user from a
group the user was in due to a regular expression in version 2.16 or
earlier, the user must be explicitly removed from the group. This can easily
be done by pressing buttons named 'Remove Memberships' or 'Remove
Memberships included in regular expression' under the table.
Warning If specifying a domain in the regexp, make sure you end the regexp
with a $. Otherwise, when granting access to "@mycompany\.com", you will
allow access to 'badperson@mycompany.com.cracker.net'. You need to use
'@mycompany\.com$' as the regexp.
4. If you plan to use this group to directly control access to bugs, check
the "use for bugs" box. Groups not used for bugs are still useful
because other groups can include the group as a whole.
5. After you add your new group, edit the new group. On the edit page, you
can specify other groups that should be included in this group and which
groups should be permitted to add and delete users from this group.
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.2. Assigning Users to Groups
Users can become a member of a group in several ways.
1. The user can be explicitly placed in the group by editing the user's own
profile
2. The group can include another group of which the user is a member.
3. The user's email address can match a regular expression that the group
specifies to automatically grant membership to the group.
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.3. Assigning Group Controls to Products
On the product edit page, there is a page to edit the "Group Controls" for a
product. This allows you to configure how a group relates to the product.
Groups may be applicable, default, and mandatory as well as used to control
entry or used to make bugs in the product totally read-only unless the group
restrictions are met.
For each group, it is possible to specify if membership in that group is...
1. required for bug entry,
2. Not applicable to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a member
of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a default
restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in this
product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on bugs in
this product(Mandatory).
3. Not applicable by non-members to this product(NA), a possible
restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in this
product(Shown), a default restriction for a non-member of the group to
place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to
be placed on bugs in this product when entered by a
non-member(Mandatory).
4. required in order to make any change to bugs in this product including
comments.
These controls are often described in this order, so a product that requires
a user to be a member of group "foo" to enter a bug and then requires that
the bug stay restricted to group "foo" at all times and that only members of
group "foo" can edit the bug even if they otherwise could see the bug would
have its controls summarized by...
foo: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY, CANEDIT
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.4. Common Applications of Group Controls
3.10.4.1. General User Access With Security Group
To permit any user to file bugs in each product (A, B, C...) and to permit
any user to submit those bugs into a security group....
Product A...
security: SHOWN/SHOWN
Product B...
security: SHOWN/SHOWN
Product C...
security: SHOWN/SHOWN
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.4.2. General User Access With A Security Product
To permit any user to file bugs in a Security product while keeping those
bugs from becoming visible to anyone outside the securityworkers group
unless a member of the securityworkers group removes that restriction....
Product Security...
securityworkers: DEFAULT/MANDATORY
_________________________________________________________________
3.10.4.3. Product Isolation With Common Group
To permit users of product A to access the bugs for product A, users of
product B to access product B, and support staff to access both, 3 groups
are needed
1. Support: Contains members of the support staff.
2. AccessA: Contains users of product A and the Support group.
3. AccessB: Contains users of product B and the Support group.
Once these 3 groups are defined, the products group controls can be set to..
Product A...
AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Product B...
AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Optionally, the support group could be permitted to make bugs inaccessible
to the users and could be permitted to publish bugs relevant to all users in
a common product that is read-only to anyone outside the support group. That
configuration could be...
Product A...
AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Support: SHOWN/NA
Product B...
AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Support: SHOWN/NA
Product Common...
Support: ENTRY, DEFAULT/MANDATORY, CANEDIT
_________________________________________________________________
3.11. Upgrading to New Releases
Upgrading Bugzilla is something we all want to do from time to time, be it
to get new features or pick up the latest security fix. How easy it is to
update depends on a few factors:
* If the new version is a revision or a new point release
* How many local changes (if any) have been made
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.1. Version Definitions
Bugzilla displays the version you are using at the top of most pages you
load. It will look something like '2.16.7' or '2.18rc3' or '2.19.1+'. The
first number in this series is the Major Version. This does not change very
often (that is to say, almost never); Bugzilla was 1.x.x when it was first
created, and went to 2.x.x when it was re-written in perl in Sept 1998.
If/When the major version is changed to 3.x.x, it will signify a significant
structural change and will be accompanied by much fanfare and many
instructions on how to upgrade, including a revision to this page. :)
The second number in the version is called the 'minor number', and a release
that changes the minor number is called a 'point release'. An even number in
this position (2.14, 2.16, 2.18, 2.20, etc.) represents a stable version,
while an odd number (2.17, 2.19, etc.) represents a development version. In
the past, stable point releases were feature-based, coming when certain
enhancements had been completed, or the Bugzilla development team felt that
enough progress had been made overall. As of version 2.18, however, Bugzilla
has moved to a time-based release schedule; current plans are to create a
stable point release every 6 months or so after 2.18 is deployed.
The third number in the Bugzilla version represents a bugfix version. Bugfix
Revisions are normally released only to address security vulnerabilities; in
the future, it is likely that the Bugzilla development team will back-port
bugfixes in a new point release to the old point release for a limited
period. Once enough of these bugfixes have accumulated (or a new security
vulnerability is identified and closed), a bugfix release will be made. As
an example, 2.16.6 was a bugfix release, and improved on 2.16.5.
Note When reading version numbers, everything separated by a point ('.')
should be read as a single number. It is not the same as decimal. 2.14 is
newer than 2.8 because minor version 14 is greater than minor version 8.
2.24.11 would be newer than 2.24.9 (because bugfix 11 is greater than bugfix
9. This is confusing to some people who aren't used to dealing with
software.
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.2. Upgrading - Methods and Procedure
There are three different ways to upgrade your installation.
1. Using CVS (Section 3.11.2.1)
2. Downloading a new tarball (Section 3.11.2.2)
3. Applying the relevant patches (Section 3.11.2.3)
Each of these options has its own pros and cons; the one that's right for
you depends on how long it has been since you last installed, the degree to
which you have customized your installation, and/or your network
configuration. (Some discussion of the various methods of updating compared
with degree and methods of local customization can be found in Section
5.1.2.)
The larger the jump you are trying to make, the more difficult it is going
to be to upgrade if you have made local customizations. Upgrading from 2.18
to 2.18.1 should be fairly painless even if you are heavily customized, but
going from 2.14 to 2.18 is going to mean a fair bit of work re-writing your
local changes to use the new files, logic, templates, etc. If you have done
no local changes at all, however, then upgrading should be approximately the
same amount of work regardless of how long it has been since your version
was released.
Warning Upgrading is a one-way process. You should backup your database and
current Bugzilla directory before attempting the upgrade. If you wish to
revert to the old Bugzilla version for any reason, you will have to restore
from these backups.
The examples in the following sections are written as though the user were
updating to version 2.18.1, but the procedures are the same regardless of
whether one is updating to a new point release or simply trying to obtain a
new bugfix release. Also, in the examples the user's Bugzilla installation
is found at /var/www/html/bugzilla. If that is not the same as the location
of your Bugzilla installation, simply substitute the proper paths where
appropriate.
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.2.1. Upgrading using CVS
Every release of Bugzilla, whether it is a point release or a bugfix, is
tagged in CVS. Also, every tarball that has been distributed since version
2.12 has been created in such a way that it can be used with CVS once it is
unpacked. Doing so, however, requires that you are able to access
cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port 2401, which may not be an option or a
possibility for some users, especially those behind a highly restrictive
firewall.
Tip If you can, updating using CVS is probably the most painless method,
especially if you have a lot of local changes.
The following shows the sequence of commands needed to update a Bugzilla
installation via CVS, and a typical series of results.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ cvs login
Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401/cvsroot
CVS password: ('anonymous', or just leave it blank)
bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_18_1 -dP
P checksetup.pl
P collectstats.pl
P globals.pl
P docs/rel_notes.txt
P template/en/default/list/quips.html.tmpl
(etc.)
Caution If a line in the output from cvs update begins with a C, then that
represents a file with local changes that CVS was unable to properly merge.
You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla (or at least
the portion using that file) will be usable.
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.2.2. Upgrading using the tarball
If you are unable (or unwilling) to use CVS, another option that's always
available is to obtain the latest tarball from the Download Page and create
a new Bugzilla installation from that.
This sequence of commands shows how to get the tarball from the
command-line; it is also possible to download it from the site directly in a
web browser. If you go that route, save the file to the /var/www/html
directory (or its equivalent, if you use something else) and omit the first
three lines of the example.
bash$ cd /var/www/html
bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.g
z
(Output omitted)
bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.gz
bugzilla-2.18.1/
bugzilla-2.18.1/.cvsignore
bugzilla-2.18.1/1x1.gif
(Output truncated)
bash$ cd bugzilla-2.18.1
bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* .
bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data .
bash$ cd ..
bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old
bash$ mv bugzilla-2.18.1 bugzilla
Warning The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important
detail, it tells the shell that the destination directory is the current
working directory.
This upgrade method will give you a clean install of Bugzilla with the same
version as the tarball. That's fine if you don't have any local
customizations that you want to maintain, but if you do then you will need
to reapply them by hand to the appropriate files.
It's worth noting that since 2.12, the Bugzilla tarballs come CVS-ready, so
if you decide at a later date that you'd rather use CVS as an upgrade
method, your code will already be set up for it.
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.2.3. Upgrading using patches
If you are doing a bugfix upgrade -- that is, one where only the last number
of the revision changes, such as from 2.16.6 to 2.16.7 -- then you have the
option of obtaining and applying a patch file from the Download Page. This
file is made available by the Bugzilla Development Team, and is a collection
of all the bug fixes and security patches that have been made since the last
bugfix release. If you are planning to upgrade via patches, it is safer to
grab this developer-made patch file than to read the patch notes and apply
all (or even just some of) the patches oneself, as sometimes patches on bugs
get changed before they get checked in.
As above, this example starts with obtaining the file via the command line.
If you have already downloaded it, you can omit the first two commands.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.
18.1.diff.gz
(Output omitted)
bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff.gz
bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff
patching file checksetup.pl
patching file collectstats.pl
patching file globals.pl
(etc.)
Warning Be aware that upgrading from a patch file does not change the
entries in your CVS directory. This could make it more difficult to upgrade
using CVS (Section 3.11.2.1) in the future.
_________________________________________________________________
3.11.3. Completing Your Upgrade
Regardless of which upgrade method you choose, you will need to run
./checksetup.pl before your Bugzilla upgrade will be complete.
bash$ cd bugzilla
bash$ ./checksetup.pl
Warning The period at the beginning of the command ./checksetup.pl is
important and can not be omitted.
If you have done a lot of local modifications, it wouldn't hurt to run the
Bugzilla Testing suite. This is not a required step, but it isn't going to
hurt anything, and might help point out some areas that could be improved.
(More information on the test suite can be had by following this link to the
appropriate section in the Developers' Guide.)
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 4. Bugzilla Security
While some of the items in this chapter are related to the operating system
Bugzilla is running on or some of the support software required to run
Bugzilla, it is all related to protecting your data. This is not intended to
be a comprehensive guide to securing Linux, Apache, MySQL, or any other
piece of software mentioned. There is no substitute for active
administration and monitoring of a machine. The key to good security is
actually right in the middle of the word: U R It.
While programmers in general always strive to write secure code, accidents
can and do happen. The best approach to security is to always assume that
the program you are working with isn't 100% secure and restrict its access
to other parts of your machine as much as possible.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1. Operating System
4.1.1. TCP/IP Ports
The TCP/IP standard defines more than 65,000 ports for sending and receiving
traffic. Of those, Bugzilla needs exactly one to operate (different
configurations and options may require up to 3). You should audit your
server and make sure that you aren't listening on any ports you don't need
to be. It's also highly recommended that the server Bugzilla resides on,
along with any other machines you administer, be placed behind some kind of
firewall.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.2. System User Accounts
Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd or MySQL's mysqld, run as either "root"
or "nobody". This is even worse on Windows machines where the majority of
services run as "SYSTEM". While running as "root" or "SYSTEM" introduces
obvious security concerns, the problems introduced by running everything as
"nobody" may not be so obvious. Basically, if you run every daemon as
"nobody" and one of them gets comprimised it can comprimise every other
daemon running as "nobody" on your machine. For this reason, it is
recommended that you create a user account for each daemon.
Note You will need to set the webservergroup option in localconfig to the
group your webserver runs as. This will allow ./checksetup.pl to set file
permissions on Unix systems so that nothing is world-writable.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.3. The chroot Jail
If your system supports it, you may wish to consider running Bugzilla inside
of a chroot jail. This option provides unprecedented security by restricting
anything running inside the jail from accessing any information outside of
it. If you wish to use this option, please consult the documentation that
came with your system.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2. MySQL
4.2.1. The MySQL System Account
As mentioned in Section 4.1.2, the MySQL daemon should run as a
non-privleged, unique user. Be sure to consult the MySQL documentation or
the documentation that came with your system for instructions.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2. The MySQL "root" and "anonymous" Users
By default, MySQL comes with a "root" user with a blank password and an
"anonymous" user, also with a blank password. In order to protect your data,
the "root" user should be given a password and the anonymous user should be
disabled.
Example 4-1. Assigning the MySQL "root" User a Password
bash$ mysql mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET password = password('new_password') WHERE user = 'root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Example 4-2. Disabling the MySQL "anonymous" User
bash$ mysql -u root -p mysql (1)
Enter Password: new_password
mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE user = '';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
(1)
This command assumes that you have already completed Example 4-1.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.3. Network Access
If MySQL and your webserver both run on the same machine and you have no
other reason to access MySQL remotely, then you should disable the network
access. This, along with the suggestion in Section 4.1.1, will help protect
your system from any remote vulnerabilites in MySQL.
Example 4-3. Disabling Networking in MySQL
Simply enter the following in /etc/my.conf:
[myslqd]
# Prevent network access to MySQL.
skip-networking
_________________________________________________________________
4.3. Webserver
4.3.1. Disabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration Files
There are many files that are placed in the Bugzilla directory area that
should not be accessable from the web. Because of the way Bugzilla is
currently layed out, the list of what should and should not be accessible is
rather complicated. A new installation method is currently in the works
which should solve this by allowing files that shouldn't be accessible from
the web to be placed in a directory outside the webroot. See bug 44659 for
more information.
Tip Bugzilla ships with the ability to create .htaccess files that enforce
these rules. Instructions for enabling these directives in Apache can be
found in Section 2.2.4.1
* In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:
+ Block: *.pl, *localconfig*
+ But allow: localconfig.js, localconfig.rdf
* In data:
+ Block everything
+ But allow: duplicates.rdf
* In data/webdot:
+ If you use a remote webdot server:
o Block everything
o But allow *.dot only for the remote webdot server
+ Otherwise, if you use a local GraphViz:
o Block everything
o But allow: *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, *.map
+ And if you don't use any dot:
o Block everything
* In Bugzilla:
+ Block everything
* In template:
+ Block everything
Be sure to test that data that should not be accessed remotely is properly
blocked. Of particular intrest is the localconfig file which contains your
database password. Also, be aware that many editors create temporary and
backup files in the working directory and that those should also not be
accessable. For more information, see bug 186383 or Bugtraq ID 6501. To
test, simply point your web browser at the file; for example, to test
mozilla.org's installation, we'd try to access
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig. You should get a "403 Forbidden"
error.
Tip Be sure to check Section 2.2.4 for instructions specific to the
webserver you use.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.2. Using mod_throttle to Prevent a DOS
Note This section only applies to people who have chosen the Apache
webserver. It may be possible to do similar things with other webservers.
Consult the documentation that came with your webserver to find out.
It is possible for a user, by mistake or on purpose, to access the database
many times in a row which can result in very slow access speeds for other
users (effectively, a DOS attack). If your Bugzilla installation is
experiencing this problem, you may install the Apache module mod_throttle
which can limit connections by IP address. You may download this module at
http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/. Follow the instructions to
install into your Apache install. The command you need is ThrottleClientIP.
See the documentation for more information.
_________________________________________________________________
4.4. Bugzilla
4.4.1. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript
It is possible for a Bugzilla user to take advantage of character set
encoding ambiguities to inject HTML into Bugzilla comments. This could
include malicious scripts. Due to internationalization concerns, we are
unable to incorporate by default the code changes suggested by the CERT
advisory on this issue. Making the change in Example 4-4 will prevent this
problem.
Example 4-4. Forcing Bugzilla to output a charset
Locate the following line in Bugzilla/CGI.pm:
$self->charset('');
and change it to:
$self->charset('UTF-8');
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 5. Customising Bugzilla
5.1. Template Customization
Administrators can configure the look and feel of Bugzilla without having to
edit Perl files or face the nightmare of massive merge conflicts when they
upgrade to a newer version in the future.
Templatization also makes localized versions of Bugzilla possible, for the
first time. It's possible to have Bugzilla's UI language determined by the
user's browser. More information is available in Section 5.1.6.
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.1. Template Directory Structure
The template directory structure starts with top level directory named
template, which contains a directory for each installed localization. The
next level defines the language used in the templates. Bugzilla comes with
English templates, so the directory name is en, and we will discuss
template/en throughout the documentation. Below template/en is the default
directory, which contains all the standard templates shipped with Bugzilla.
Warning A directory data/templates also exists; this is where Template
Toolkit puts the compiled versions of the templates from either the default
or custom directories. Do not directly edit the files in this directory, or
all your changes will be lost the next time Template Toolkit recompiles the
templates.
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.2. Choosing a Customization Method
If you want to edit Bugzilla's templates, the first decision you must make
is how you want to go about doing so. There are two choices, and which you
use depends mainly on the scope of your modifications, and the method you
plan to use to upgrade Bugzilla.
The first method of making customizations is to directly edit the templates
found in template/en/default. This is probably the best way to go about it
if you are going to be upgrading Bugzilla through CVS, because if you then
execute a cvs update, any changes you have made will be merged automagically
with the updated versions.
Note If you use this method, and CVS conflicts occur during an update, the
conflicted templates (and possibly other parts of your installation) will
not work until they are resolved.
The second method is to copy the templates to be modified into a mirrored
directory structure under template/en/custom. Templates in this directory
structure automatically override any identically-named and
identically-located templates in the default directory.
Note The custom directory does not exist at first and must be created if you
want to use it.
The second method of customization should be used if you use the overwriting
method of upgrade, because otherwise your changes will be lost. This method
may also be better if you are using the CVS method of upgrading and are
going to make major changes, because it is guaranteed that the contents of
this directory will not be touched during an upgrade, and you can then
decide whether to continue using your own templates, or make the effort to
merge your changes into the new versions by hand.
Using this method, your installation may break if incompatible changes are
made to the template interface. Such changes should be documented in the
release notes, provided you are using a stable release of Bugzilla. If you
use using unstable code, you will need to deal with this one yourself,
although if possible the changes will be mentioned before they occur in the
deprecations section of the previous stable release's release notes.
Note Regardless of which method you choose, it is recommended that you run
./checksetup.pl after creating or editing any templates in the
template/en/default directory, and after editing any templates in the custom
directory.
Warning It is required that you run ./checksetup.pl after creating a new
template in the custom directory. Failure to do so will raise an
incomprehensible error message.
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.3. How To Edit Templates
Note If you are making template changes that you intend on submitting back
for inclusion in standard Bugzilla, you should read the relevant sections of
the Developers' Guide.
The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of this
guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current templates;
or, you can read the manual, available on the Template Toolkit home page.
One thing you should take particular care about is the need to properly HTML
filter data that has been passed into the template. This means that if the
data can possibly contain special HTML characters such as <, and the data
was not intended to be HTML, they need to be converted to entity form, i.e.
&lt;. You use the 'html' filter in the Template Toolkit to do this. If you
forget, you may open up your installation to cross-site scripting attacks.
Also note that Bugzilla adds a few filters of its own, that are not in
standard Template Toolkit. In particular, the 'url_quote' filter can convert
characters that are illegal or have special meaning in URLs, such as &, to
the encoded form, i.e. %26. This actually encodes most characters (but not
the common ones such as letters and numbers and so on), including the
HTML-special characters, so there's never a need to HTML filter afterwards.
Editing templates is a good way of doing a "poor man's custom fields". For
example, if you don't use the Status Whiteboard, but want to have a
free-form text entry box for "Build Identifier", then you can just edit the
templates to change the field labels. It's still be called status_whiteboard
internally, but your users don't need to know that.
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.4. Template Formats and Types
Some CGI's have the ability to use more than one template. For example,
buglist.cgi can output itself as RDF, or as two formats of HTML (complex and
simple). The mechanism that provides this feature is extensible.
Bugzilla can support different types of output, which again can have
multiple formats. In order to request a certain type, you can append the
&ctype=<contenttype> (such as rdf or html) to the <cginame>.cgi URL. If you
would like to retrieve a certain format, you can use the &format=<format>
(such as simple or complex) in the URL.
To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats and types, grep the CGI for
"GetFormat". If it's not present, adding multiple format/type support isn't
too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs, e.g. config.cgi.
To make a new format template for a CGI which supports this, open a current
template for that CGI and take note of the INTERFACE comment (if present.)
This comment defines what variables are passed into this template. If there
isn't one, I'm afraid you'll have to read the template and the code to find
out what information you get.
Write your template in whatever markup or text style is appropriate.
You now need to decide what content type you want your template served as.
The content types are defined in the Bugzilla/Constants.pm file in the
contenttypes constant. If your content type is not there, add it. Remember
the three- or four-letter tag assigned to your content type. This tag will
be part of the template filename.
Note After adding or changing a content type, it's suitable to edit
Bugzilla/Constants.pm in order to reflect the changes. Also, the file should
be kept up to date after an upgrade if content types have been customized in
the past.
Save the template as <stubname>-<formatname>.<contenttypetag>.tmpl. Try out
the template by calling the CGI as
<cginame>.cgi?format=<formatname>&ctype=<type> .
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.5. Particular Templates
There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in customizing
for your installation.
index.html.tmpl: This is the Bugzilla front page.
global/header.html.tmpl: This defines the header that goes on all Bugzilla
pages. The header includes the banner, which is what appears to users and is
probably what you want to edit instead. However the header also includes the
HTML HEAD section, so you could for example add a stylesheet or META tag by
editing the header.
global/banner.html.tmpl: This contains the "banner", the part of the header
that appears at the top of all Bugzilla pages. The default banner is
reasonably barren, so you'll probably want to customize this to give your
installation a distinctive look and feel. It is recommended you preserve the
Bugzilla version number in some form so the version you are running can be
determined, and users know what docs to read.
global/footer.html.tmpl: This defines the footer that goes on all Bugzilla
pages. Editing this is another way to quickly get a distinctive look and
feel for your Bugzilla installation.
global/variables.none.tmpl: This defines a list of terms that may be changed
in order to "brand" the Bugzilla instance In this way, terms like "bugs" can
be replaced with "issues" across the whole Bugzilla installation. The name
"Bugzilla" and other words can be customized as well.
list/table.html.tmpl: This template controls the appearance of the bug lists
created by Bugzilla. Editing this template allows per-column control of the
width and title of a column, the maximum display length of each entry, and
the wrap behaviour of long entries. For long bug lists, Bugzilla inserts a
'break' every 100 bugs by default; this behaviour is also controlled by this
template, and that value can be modified here.
bug/create/user-message.html.tmpl: This is a message that appears near the
top of the bug reporting page. By modifying this, you can tell your users
how they should report bugs.
bug/process/midair.html.tmpl: This is the page used if two people submit
simultaneous changes to the same bug. The second person to submit their
changes will get this page to tell them what the first person did, and ask
if they wish to overwrite those changes or go back and revisit the bug. The
default title and header on this page read "Mid-air collision detected!" If
you work in the aviation industry, or other environment where this might be
found offensive (yes, we have true stories of this happening) you'll want to
change this to something more appropriate for your environment.
bug/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may not
wish to go to the effort of creating custom fields in Bugzilla, yet you want
to make sure that each bug report contains a number of pieces of important
information for which there is not a special field. The bug entry system has
been designed in an extensible fashion to enable you to add arbitrary HTML
widgets, such as drop-down lists or textboxes, to the bug entry page and
have their values appear formatted in the initial comment. A hidden field
that indicates the format should be added inside the form in order to make
the template functional. Its value should be the suffix of the template
filename. For example, if the file is called create-cust.html.tmpl, then
<input type="hidden" name="format" value="cust">
should be used inside the form.
An example of this is the mozilla.org guided bug submission form. The code
for this comes with the Bugzilla distribution as an example for you to copy.
It can be found in the files create-guided.html.tmpl and
comment-guided.html.tmpl.
So to use this feature, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi. The
default template, on which you could base it, is
custom/bug/create/create.html.tmpl. Call it create-<formatname>.html.tmpl,
and in it, add widgets for each piece of information you'd like collected -
such as a build number, or set of steps to reproduce.
Then, create a template like custom/bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl, and call it
comment-<formatname>.txt.tmpl. This template should reference the form
fields you have created using the syntax [% form.<fieldname> %]. When a bug
report is submitted, the initial comment attached to the bug report will be
formatted according to the layout of this template.
For example, if your custom enter_bug template had a field
<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">
and then your comment.txt.tmpl had
BuildID: [% form.buildid %]
then something like
BuildID: 20020303
would appear in the initial comment.
_________________________________________________________________
5.1.6. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language
Bugzilla honours the user's Accept: HTTP header. You can install templates
in other languages, and Bugzilla will pick the most appropriate according to
a priority order defined by you. Many language templates can be obtained
from http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Instructions for
submitting new languages are also available from that location.
After untarring the localizations (or creating your own) in the
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template directory, you must update the languages parameter to
contain any localizations you'd like to permit. You may also wish to set the
defaultlanguage parameter to something other than "en" if you don't want
Engish to be the default language.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. Template Hooks
Warning Template Hooks require Template Toolkit version 2.12 or above, or
the application of a patch. See bug 239112 for details.
Template hooks are a way for extensions to Bugzilla to insert code into the
standard Bugzilla templates without modifying the template files themselves.
The hooks mechanism defines a consistent API for extending the standard
templates in a way that cleanly separates standard code from extension code.
Hooks reduce merge conflicts and make it easier to write extensions that
work across multiple versions of Bugzilla, making upgrading a Bugzilla
installation with installed extensions easier.
A template hook is just a named place in a standard template file where
extension template files for that hook get processed. Each hook has a
corresponding directory in the Bugzilla directory tree. Hooking an extension
template to a hook is as simple as putting the extension file into the
hook's directory. When Bugzilla processes the standard template and reaches
the hook, it will process all extension templates in the hook's directory.
The hooks themselves can be added into any standard template upon request by
extension authors.
To use hooks to extend a Bugzilla template, first make sure there is a hook
at the appropriate place within the template you want to extend. Hooks
appear in the standard Bugzilla templates as a single directive in the
format [% Hook.process("name") %], where name is the unique (within that
template) name of the hook.
If you aren't sure which template you want to extend or just want to browse
the available hooks, either use your favorite multi-file search tool (e.g.
grep) to search the standard templates for occurrences of Hook.process or
browse the directory tree in BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/,
which contains a directory for each hook in the following location:
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/PATH_TO_STANDARD_TEMPLATE/STANDARD_
TEMPLATE_NAME/HOOK_NAME/
If there is no hook at the appropriate place within the Bugzilla template
you want to extend, file a bug requesting one, specifying:
the template for which you are requesting a hook;
where in the template you would like the hook to be placed (line
number/position for latest version of template in CVS or description of
location);
the purpose of the hook;
a link to information about your extension, if any.
The Bugzilla reviewers will promptly review each hook request, name the
hook, add it to the template, check the new version of the template into
CVS, and create the corresponding directory in
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/.
You may optionally attach a patch to the bug which implements the hook and
check it in yourself after receiving approval from a Bugzilla reviewer. The
developers may suggest changes to the location of the hook based on their
analysis of your needs or so the hook can satisfy the needs of multiple
extensions, but the process of getting hooks approved and checked in is not
as stringent as the process for general changes to Bugzilla, and any
extension, whether released or still in development, can have hooks added to
meet their needs.
After making sure the hook you need exists (or getting it added if not), add
your extension template to the directory within the Bugzilla directory tree
corresponding to the hook.
That's it! Now, when the standard template containing the hook is processed,
your extension template will be processed at the point where the hook
appears.
For example, let's say you have an extension named Projman that adds project
management capabilities to Bugzilla. Projman has an administration interface
edit-projects.cgi, and you want to add a link to it into the navigation bar
at the bottom of every Bugzilla page for those users who are authorized to
administer projects.
The navigation bar is generated by the template file useful-links.html.tmpl,
which is located in the global/ subdirectory on the standard Bugzilla
template path BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/default/. Looking in
useful-links.html.tmpl, you find the following hook at the end of the list
of standard Bugzilla administration links:
...
[% ', <a href="editkeywords.cgi">keywords</a>'
IF user.groups.editkeywords %]
[% Hook.process("edit") %]
...
The corresponding directory for this hook is
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/global/useful-links.html.tmpl/edit/
.
You put a template named projman-edit-projects.html.tmpl into that directory
with the following content:
...[% ', <a href="edit-projects.cgi">projects</a>' IF user.groups.projman_admin
s %]
Voila! The link now appears after the other administration links in the
navigation bar for users in the projman_admins group.
Notes:
* You may want to prefix your extension template names with the name of
your extension, e.g. projman-foo.html.tmpl, so they do not conflict with
the names of templates installed by other extensions.
* If your extension includes entirely new templates in addition to
extensions of standard templates, it should install those new templates
into an extension-specific subdirectory of the
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/ directory. The extension/
directory, like the default/ and custom/ directories, is part of the
template search path, so putting templates there enables them to be
found by the template processor.
The template processor looks for templates first in the custom/
directory (i.e. templates added by the specific installation), then in
the extension/ directory (i.e. templates added by extensions), and
finally in the default/ directory (i.e. the standard Bugzilla
templates). Thus extension templates can override standard templates,
but installation-specific templates override both.
Note that overriding standard templates with extension templates gives
you great power but also makes upgrading an installation harder. As with
custom templates, we recommend using this functionality sparingly and
only when absolutely necessary.
* Installation customizers can also take advantage of hooks when adding
code to a Bugzilla template. To do so, create directories in
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/custom/hook/ equivalent to the directories in
BUGZILLA_ROOT/template/en/extension/hook/ for the hooks you want to use,
then place your customization templates into those directories.
Obviously this method of customizing Bugzilla only lets you add code to
the standard templates; you cannot change the existing code.
Nevertheless, for those customizations that only add code, this method
can reduce conflicts when merging changes, making upgrading your
customized Bugzilla installation easier.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3. Customizing Who Can Change What
Warning This feature should be considered experimental; the Bugzilla code
you will be changing is not stable, and could change or move between
versions. Be aware that if you make modifications as outlined here, you may
have to re-make them or port them if Bugzilla changes internally between
versions, and you upgrade.
Companies often have rules about which employees, or classes of employees,
are allowed to change certain things in the bug system. For example, only
the bug's designated QA Contact may be allowed to VERIFY the bug. Bugzilla
has been designed to make it easy for you to write your own custom rules to
define who is allowed to make what sorts of value transition.
For maximum flexibility, customizing this means editing Bugzilla's Perl
code. This gives the administrator complete control over exactly who is
allowed to do what. The relevant function is called CheckCanChangeField(),
and is found in process_bug.cgi in your Bugzilla directory. If you open that
file and search for "sub CheckCanChangeField", you'll find it.
This function has been carefully commented to allow you to see exactly how
it works, and give you an idea of how to make changes to it. Certain marked
sections should not be changed - these are the "plumbing" which makes the
rest of the function work. In between those sections, you'll find snippets
of code like:
# Allow the assignee to change anything.
if ($ownerid eq $whoid) {
return 1;
}
It's fairly obvious what this piece of code does.
So, how does one go about changing this function? Well, simple changes can
be made just by removing pieces - for example, if you wanted to prevent any
user adding a comment to a bug, just remove the lines marked "Allow anyone
to change comments." If you don't want the Reporter to have any special
rights on bugs they have filed, just remove the entire section that deals
with the Reporter.
More complex customizations are not much harder. Basically, you add a check
in the right place in the function, i.e. after all the variables you are
using have been set up. So, don't look at $ownerid before $ownerid has been
obtained from the database. You can either add a positive check, which
returns 1 (allow) if certain conditions are true, or a negative check, which
returns 0 (deny.) E.g.:
if ($field eq "qacontact") {
if (Bugzilla->user->groups("quality_assurance")) {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that only users in the group "quality_assurance" can change the QA
Contact field of a bug.
Getting more weird:
if (($field eq "priority") &&
(Bugzilla->user->email =~ /.*\@example\.com$/))
{
if ($oldvalue eq "P1") {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that if the user is trying to change the priority field, and their
email address is @example.com, they can only do so if the old value of the
field was "P1". Not very useful, but illustrative.
Warning If you are modifying process_bug.cgi in any way, do not change the
code that is bounded by DO_NOT_CHANGE blocks. Doing so could compromise
security, or cause your installation to stop working entirely.
For a list of possible field names, look in data/versioncache for the list
called @::log_columns. If you need help writing custom rules for your
organization, ask in the newsgroup.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4. Modifying Your Running System
Bugzilla optimizes database lookups by storing all relatively static
information in the versioncache file, located in the data/ subdirectory
under your installation directory.
If you make a change to the structural data in your database (the versions
table for example), or to the "constants" encoded in defparams.pl, you will
need to remove the cached content from the data directory (by doing a rm
data/versioncache), or your changes won't show up.
versioncache gets regenerated automatically whenever it's more than an hour
old, so Bugzilla will eventually notice your changes by itself, but
generally you want it to notice right away, so that you can test things.
_________________________________________________________________
5.5. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
This information comes straight from my life. I was forced to learn how
Bugzilla organizes database because of nitpicky requests from users for tiny
changes in wording, rather than having people re-educate themselves or
figure out how to work our procedures around the tool. It sucks, but it can
and will happen to you, so learn how the schema works and deal with it when
it comes.
So, here you are with your brand-new installation of Bugzilla. You've got
MySQL set up, Apache working right, Perl DBI and DBD talking to the database
flawlessly. Maybe you've even entered a few test bugs to make sure email's
working; people seem to be notified of new bugs and changes, and you can
enter and edit bugs to your heart's content. Perhaps you've gone through the
trouble of setting up a gateway for people to submit bugs to your database
via email, have had a few people test it, and received rave reviews from
your beta testers.
What's the next thing you do? Outline a training strategy for your
development team, of course, and bring them up to speed on the new tool
you've labored over for hours.
Your first training session starts off very well! You have a captive
audience which seems enraptured by the efficiency embodied in this thing
called "Bugzilla". You are caught up describing the nifty features, how
people can save favorite queries in the database, set them up as headers and
footers on their pages, customize their layouts, generate reports, track
status with greater efficiency than ever before, leap tall buildings with a
single bound and rescue Jane from the clutches of Certain Death!
But Certain Death speaks up -- a tiny voice, from the dark corners of the
conference room. "I have a concern," the voice hisses from the darkness,
"about the use of the word 'verified'."
The room, previously filled with happy chatter, lapses into reverential
silence as Certain Death (better known as the Vice President of Software
Engineering) continues. "You see, for two years we've used the word
'verified' to indicate that a developer or quality assurance engineer has
confirmed that, in fact, a bug is valid. I don't want to lose two years of
training to a new software product. You need to change the bug status of
'verified' to 'approved' as soon as possible. To avoid confusion, of
course."
Oh no! Terror strikes your heart, as you find yourself mumbling "yes, yes, I
don't think that would be a problem," You review the changes with Certain
Death, and continue to jabber on, "no, it's not too big a change. I mean, we
have the source code, right? You know, 'Use the Source, Luke' and all
that... no problem," All the while you quiver inside like a beached
jellyfish bubbling, burbling, and boiling on a hot Jamaican sand dune...
Thus begins your adventure into the heart of Bugzilla. You've been forced to
learn about non-portable enum() fields, varchar columns, and tinyint
definitions. The Adventure Awaits You!
_________________________________________________________________
5.5.1. Bugzilla Database Basics
If you were like me, at this point you're totally clueless about the
internals of MySQL, and if it weren't for this executive order from the Vice
President you couldn't care less about the difference between a "bigint" and
a "tinyint" entry in MySQL. I recommend you refer to the MySQL documentation
. Below are the basics you need to know about the Bugzilla database. Check
the chart above for more details.
1. To connect to your database:
bash# mysql -u root
If this works without asking you for a password, shame on you ! You
should have locked your security down like the installation instructions
told you to. You can find details on locking down your database in the
Bugzilla FAQ in this directory (under "Security"), or more robust
security generalities in the MySQL searchable documentation.
2. You should now be at a prompt that looks like this:
mysql>
At the prompt, if "bugs" is the name you chose in the localconfig file
for your Bugzilla database, type:
mysql use bugs;
_________________________________________________________________
5.5.1.1. Bugzilla Database Tables
Imagine your MySQL database as a series of spreadsheets, and you won't be
too far off. If you use this command:
mysql> show tables from bugs;
you'll be able to see the names of all the "spreadsheets" (tables) in your
database.
From the command issued above, ou should have some output that looks like
this:
+-------------------+
| Tables in bugs |
+-------------------+
| attachments |
| bugs |
| bugs_activity |
| cc |
| components |
| dependencies |
| fielddefs |
| groups |
| keyworddefs |
| keywords |
| logincookies |
| longdescs |
| milestones |
| namedqueries |
| products |
| profiles |
| profiles_activity |
| tokens |
| versions |
| votes |
| watch |
+-------------------+
Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each table hav
e
descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs.
attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to be your
largest table, yet also generally has the fewest entries because file
attachments are so (relatively) large.
bugs: This is the core of your system. The bugs table stores most of the
current information about a bug, with the exception of the info stored in th
e
other tables.
bugs_activity: This stores information regarding what changes are made to b
ugs
when -- a history file.
cc: This tiny table simply stores all the CC information for any bug which
has
any entries in the CC field of the bug. Note that, like most other tables in
Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their uniqu
e
userid, stored as a primary key in the profiles table.
components: This stores the programs and components (or products and
components, in newer Bugzilla parlance) for Bugzilla. Curiously, the "progra
m"
(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some other uniq
ue
identifier, like bug_id and user_id are elsewhere in the database.
dependencies: Stores data about those cool dependency trees.
fielddefs: A nifty table that defines other tables. For instance, when you
submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQL.
groups: defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can uniquel
y
identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allowed to
tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed to ed
it
users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new groups
is
assigned the bitmask of "4". By uniquely combining the group bitmasks (much
like the chmod command in UNIX,) you can identify a user is allowed to tweak
parameters and create groups, but not edit users, by giving him a bitmask of
"5", or a user allowed to edit users and create groups, but not tweak
parameters, by giving him a bitmask of "6" Simple, huh?
If this makes no sense to you, try this at the mysql prompt:
mysql> select * from groups;
You'll see the list, it makes much more sense that way.
keyworddefs: Definitions of keywords to be used
keywords: Unlike what you'd think, this table holds which keywords are
associated with which bug id's.
logincookies: This stores every login cookie ever assigned to you for every
machine you've ever logged into Bugzilla from. Curiously, it never does any
housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months. Howeve
r,
since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it makes
sense.
longdescs: The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments are stor
ed!
You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so speak
sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from the Bibl
e
would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronological, fo
r
comments are played back in the order in which they are received.
milestones: Interesting that milestones are associated with a specific prod
uct
in this table, but Bugzilla does not yet support differing milestones by
product through the standard configuration interfaces.
namedqueries: This is where everybody stores their "custom queries". Very
cool feature; it beats the tar out of having to bookmark each cool query you
construct.
products: What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed for t
he
product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes, etc. I
t
will be nice when the components table supports these same features, so you
could close a particular component for bug entry without having to close an
entire product...
profiles: Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user information w
as
stored? Here it is! With the passwords in plain text for all to see! (but
sshh... don't tell your users!)
profiles_activity: Need to know who did what when to who's profile? This'l
l
tell you, it's a pretty complete history.
versions: Version information for every product
votes: Who voted for what when
watch: Who (according to userid) is watching who's bugs (according to their
userid).
===
THE DETAILS
===
Ahh, so you're wondering just what to do with the information above? At t
he
mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a table with
this command (where "table" is the name of the table you wish to view):
mysql> show columns from table;
You can also view all the data in a table with this command:
mysql> select * from table;
-- note: this is a very bad idea to do on, for instance, the "bugs" table
if
you have 50,000 bugs. You'll be sitting there a while until you ctrl-c or
50,000 bugs play across your screen.
You can limit the display from above a little with the command, where
"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict informatio
n:
mysql> select * from table where (column = "some info");
-- or the reverse of this
mysql> select * from table where (column != "some info");
Let's take our example from the introduction, and assume you need to chang
e
the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know from the
above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "bugs"
table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this database
change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify the
information is stored in the "bugs" table:
mysql> show columns from bugs
(exceedingly long output truncated here)
| bug_status| enum('UNCONFIRMED','NEW','ASSIGNED','REOPENED','RESOLVED','VER
IFIED','CLOSED')||MUL | UNCONFIRMED||
Sorry about that long line. We see from this that the "bug status" column
is
an "enum field", which is a MySQL peculiarity where a string type field can
only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool, it's no
t
standard SQL. Anyway, we need to add the possible enum field entry
'APPROVED' by altering the "bugs" table.
mysql> ALTER table bugs CHANGE bug_status bug_status
-> enum("UNCONFIRMED", "NEW", "ASSIGNED", "REOPENED", "RESOLVED",
-> "VERIFIED", "APPROVED", "CLOSED") not null;
(note we can take three lines or more -- whatever you put in before the
semicolon is evaluated as a single expression)
Now if you do this:
mysql> show columns from bugs;
you'll see that the bug_status field has an extra "APPROVED" enum that's
available! Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query page as
well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the existing
scheme of things?
Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "verifie
d"
in the perl code for Bugzilla -- wherever you find "verified", change it to
"approved" and you're in business (make sure that's a case-insensitive searc
h).
Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a status
of "APPROVED" until you make the perl changes. Note that this change I
mentioned can also be done by editing checksetup.pl, which automates a lot o
f
this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?
_________________________________________________________________
5.6. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
5.6.1. Bonsai
Bonsai is a web-based tool for managing CVS, the Concurrent Versioning
System . Using Bonsai, administrators can control open/closed status of
trees, query a fast relational database back-end for change, branch, and
comment information, and view changes made since the last time the tree was
closed. Bonsai also integrates with Tinderbox, the Mozilla automated build
management system.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6.2. CVS
CVS integration is best accomplished, at this point, using the Bugzilla
Email Gateway.
Follow the instructions in this Guide for enabling Bugzilla e-mail
integration. Ensure that your check-in script sends an email to your
Bugzilla e-mail gateway with the subject of "[Bug XXXX]", and you can have
CVS check-in comments append to your Bugzilla bug. If you want to have the
bug be closed automatically, you'll have to modify the
contrib/bugzilla_email_append.pl script.
There is also a CVSZilla project, based upon somewhat dated Bugzilla code,
to integrate CVS and Bugzilla through CVS' ability to email. Check it out
at: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/~tonyg/.
Another system capable of CVS integration with Bugzilla is Scmbug. This
system provides generic integration of Source code Configuration Management
with Bugtracking. Check it out at: http://freshmeat.net/projects/scmbug/.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6.3. Perforce SCM
You can find the project page for Bugzilla and Teamtrack Perforce
integration (p4dti) at: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/ . "p4dti"
is now an officially supported product from Perforce, and you can find the
"Perforce Public Depot" p4dti page at
http://public.perforce.com/public/perforce/p4dti/index.html .
Integration of Perforce with Bugzilla, once patches are applied, is
seamless. Perforce replication information will appear below the comments of
each bug. Be certain you have a matching set of patches for the Bugzilla
version you are installing. p4dti is designed to support multiple defect
trackers, and maintains its own documentation for it. Please consult the
pages linked above for further information.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6.4. Subversion
Subversion is a free/open-source version control system, designed to
overcome various limitations of CVS. Integration of Subversion with Bugzilla
is possible using Scmbug, a system providing generic integration of Source
Code Configuration Management with Bugtracking. Scmbug is available at
http://freshmeat.net/projects/scmbug/.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6.5. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2
Tinderbox is a continuous-build system which can integrate with Bugzilla -
see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tinderbox for details of Tinderbox, and
http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi to see it in action.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 6. Using Bugzilla
6.1. Introduction
This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There is a
Bugzilla test installation, called Landfill, which you are welcome to play
with (if it's up). However, not all of the Bugzilla installations there will
necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled, and different installations
run different versions, so some things may not quite work as this document
describes.
_________________________________________________________________
6.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account. Consult
with the administrator responsible for your installation of Bugzilla for the
URL you should use to access it. If you're test-driving Bugzilla, use this
URL: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/.
1. Click the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link, enter your email address
and, optionally, your name in the spaces provided, then click "Create
Account" .
2. Within moments, you should receive an email to the address you provided,
which contains your login name (generally the same as the email
address), and a password. This password is randomly generated, but can
be changed to something more memorable.
3. Click the "Log In" link in the footer at the bottom of the page in your
browser, enter your email address and password into the spaces provided,
and click "Login".
You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies to remember you are logged in
so, unless you have cookies disabled or your IP address changes, you should
not have to log in again.
_________________________________________________________________
6.3. Anatomy of a Bug
The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular bug. It's a
good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. Bug 1 on Landfill is a good
example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks; clicking them
will take you to context-sensitive help on that particular field. Fields
marked * may not be present on every installation of Bugzilla.
1. Product and Component: Bugs are divided up by Product and Component,
with a Product having one or more Components in it. For example,
bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several
Components:
Administration: Administration of a Bugzilla installation.
Bugzilla-General: Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or
spans multiple components.
Creating/Changing Bugs: Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
Documentation: The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.
Email: Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.
Installation: The installation process of Bugzilla.
Query/Buglist: Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
buglists.
Reporting/Charting: Getting reports from Bugzilla.
User Accounts: Anything about managing a user account from the user's
perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging
in, etc.
User Interface: General issues having to do with the user interface
cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates,
etc.
2. Status and Resolution: These define exactly what state the bug is in -
from not even being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the
fix confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for
Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the
context-sensitive help for those items.
3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.
4. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.
5. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.
6. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding
short notes and tags to a bug.
7. *Keywords: The administrator can define keywords which you can use to
tag and categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like
crash and regression.
8. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where the bug
was found.
9. Version: The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product
which have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a
Component have the particular problem the bug report is about.
10. Priority: The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her
bugs. It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.
11. Severity: This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker
("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You can
also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement request.
12. *Target: (a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is
to be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future Bugzilla
versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not restricted to
numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such as dates.
13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.
14. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.
15. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs.
If there are any attachments, they are listed in this section.
Attachments are normally stored in the Bugzilla database, unless they
are marked as Big Files, which are stored directly on disk and (unlike
attachments kept in the database) may be deleted at some future time.
16. *Dependencies: If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed
(depends on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their
numbers are recorded here.
17. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.
18. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug discussion
here, if you have something worthwhile to say.
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6.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
The life cycle, also known as work flow, of a bug is currently hardcoded
into Bugzilla. Figure 6-1 contains a graphical repsentation of this life
cycle. If you wish to customize this image for your site, the diagram file
is available in Dia's native XML format.
Figure 6-1. Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug
[bzLifecycle.png]
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6.5. Searching for Bugs
The Bugzilla Search page is the interface where you can find any bug report,
comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can play with it
here: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/query.cgi.
The Search page has controls for selecting different possible values for all
of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some fields, multiple values
can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla returns bugs where the content of
the field matches any one of the selected values. If none is selected, then
the field can take any value.
Once you've run a search, you can save it as a Saved Search, which appears
in the page footer.
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6.5.1. Boolean Charts
Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts.
The boolean charts further restrict the set of results returned by a query.
It is possible to search for bugs based on elaborate combinations of
critera.
The simplest boolean searches have only one term. These searches permit the
selected left field to be compared using a selectable operator to a
specified value. Using the "And," "Or," and "Add Another Boolean Chart"
buttons, additonal terms can be included in the query, further altering the
list of bugs returned by the query.
There are three fields in each row of a boolean search.
* Field: the items being searched
* Operator: the comparison operator
* Value: the value to which the field is being compared
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6.5.1.1. Pronoun Substitution
Sometimes, a query needs to compare a field containing a user's ID (such as
ReportedBy) with a user's ID (such as the user running the query or the user
to whom each bug is assigned). When the operator is either "equals" or
"notequals", the value can be "%reporter%", "%assignee%", "%qacontact%", or
"%user%." The user pronoun referes to the user who is executing the query
or, in the case of whining reports, the user who will be the recipient of
the report. The reporter, assignee, and qacontact pronouns refer to the
corresponding fields in the bug.
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6.5.1.2. Negation
At first glance, negation seems redundant. Rather than searching for
NOT("summary" "contains the string" "foo"),
one could search for
("summary" "does not contain the string" "foo").
However, the search
("CC" "does not contain the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where anyone on the CC list did not contain
"@mozilla.org" while
NOT("CC" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where there was nobody on the CC list who did contain
the string. Similarly, the use of negation also permits complex expressions
to be built using terms OR'd together and then negated. Negation permits
queries such as
NOT(("product" "equals" "update") OR ("component" "equals"
"Documentation"))
to find bugs that are neither in the update product or in the documentation
component or
NOT(("commenter" "equals" "%assignee%") OR ("component" "equals"
"Documentation"))
to find non-documentation bugs on which the assignee has never commented.
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6.5.1.3. Multiple Charts
The terms within a single row of a boolean chart are all constraints on a
single piece of data. If you are looking for a bug that has two different
people cc'd on it, then you need to use two boolean charts. A search for
("cc" "contains the string" "foo@") AND ("cc" "contains the string"
"@mozilla.org")
would return only bugs with "foo@mozilla.org" on the cc list. If you wanted
bugs where there is someone on the cc list containing "foo@" and someone
else containing "@mozilla.org", then you would need two boolean charts.
First chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "foo@")
Second chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
The bugs listed will be only the bugs where ALL the charts are true.
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6.6. Bug Lists
If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.
The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted by
clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed using
the links at the bottom of the list:
Long Format: this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the
fields of each bug.
CSV: get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g. a
spreadsheet.
RSS get the buglist as an RSS 1.0 feed. Copy this link into your favorite
feed reader. If you are using Firefox, you can also save the list as a live
bookmark by clicking the live bookmark icon in the status bar. To limit the
number of bugs in the feed, add a limit=n parameter to the URL.
iCalendar Get the buglist as an iCalendar file. Each bug is represented as a
to-do item in the imported calendar.
Change Columns: change the bug attributes which appear in the list.
Change several bugs at once: If your account is sufficiently empowered, you
can make the same change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing
their assignee.
Send mail to bug assignees: Sends mail to the assignees of all bugs on the
list.
Edit Search: If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you
can return to the Query page through this link and make small revisions to
the query you just made so you get more accurate results.
Remember Search As: You can give a search a name and remember it; a link
will appear in your page footer giving you quick access to run it again
later.
If you would like to access the bug list from another program it is often
useful to have the list returned in something other than HTML. By adding the
ctype=type parameter into the bug list URL you can specify several alternate
formats. The supported formats are: Comma Separated Values (ctype=csv),
iCalendar (ctype=ics), RDF Site Summary (RSS) 1.0 (ctype=rss), ECMAScript,
also known as JavaScript (ctype=js), and finally Resource Description
Framework RDF/XML (ctype=rdf).
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6.7. Filing Bugs
Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your reading pleasure
into the Bug Writing Guidelines. While some of the advice is
Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible, Specific
bugs, isolating the Product you are using, the Version of the Product, the
Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were
using at the time of the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate,
responsible fixes for the bug that bit you.
The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:
1. Go to Landfill in your browser and click Enter a new bug report.
2. Select a product - any one will do.
3. Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based
upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If they
are wrong, change them.
4. Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.
Try to make sure that everything said in the summary is also said in the
first comment. Summaries are often updated and this will ensure your
original information is easily accessible.
You do not need to put "any" or similar strings in the URL field. If there
is no specific URL associated with the bug, leave this field blank.
If you feel a bug you filed was incorrectly marked as a DUPLICATE of
another, please question it in your bug, not the bug it was duped to. Feel
free to CC the person who duped it if they are not already CCed.
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6.8. Patch Viewer
Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to lack of
context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that raw
patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed to fix
that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and integrating
with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.
Patch viewer allows you to:
View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying to
interpret the contents of the patch.
See the difference between two patches.
Get more context in a patch.
Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy reading.
Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or review
Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and cross-references for the
part of the patch you are looking at
Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no matter what format
it came from
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6.8.1. Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer
The main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the "Diff" link
next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may also do this
within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As Diff" button in
the Edit Attachment screen.
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6.8.2. Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches
To see the difference between two patches, you must first view the newer
patch in Patch Viewer. Then select the older patch from the dropdown at the
top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and this patch") and click
the "Diff" button. This will show you what is new or changed in the newer
patch.
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6.8.3. Getting More Context in a Patch
To get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at the top
of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter. This will give
you that many lines of context before and after each change. Alternatively,
you can click on the "File" link there and it will show each change in the
full context of the file. This feature only works against files that were
diffed using "cvs diff".
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6.8.4. Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch
To view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a patch is
absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a time), you can
click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to expand it or collapse
it). If you want to collapse all files or expand all files, you can click
the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the top of the page.
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6.8.5. Linking to a Section of a Patch
To link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be able to give
someone a URL to show them which part you are talking about) you simply
click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The resulting URL can be
copied and used in discussion. (Copy Link Location in Mozilla works as
well.)
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6.8.6. Going to Bonsai and LXR
To go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in, you can
click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are interested in.
This works even if the patch is against an old version of the file, since
Bonsai stores all versions of the file.
To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header (unfortunately,
since LXR only does the most recent version, line numbers are likely to
rot).
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6.8.7. Creating a Unified Diff
If the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it into a
unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top of the
page.
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6.9. Hints and Tips
This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have been
developed.
_________________________________________________________________
6.9.1. Autolinkification
Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will produce less-than, U,
greater-than rather than underlined text. However, Bugzilla will
automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For
example, the text "http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link:
http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get linkified in the obvious
manner are:
bug 12345
comment 7
bug 23456, comment 53
attachment 4321
mailto:george@example.com
george@example.com
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
Most other sorts of URL
A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment, you should
put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified for the convenience
of others.
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6.9.2. Quicksearch
Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses metacharacters to
indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing "foo|bar" into
Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the summary and status
whiteboard of a bug; adding ":BazProduct" would search only in that product.
You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's front page, along with a Help
link which details how to use it.
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6.9.3. Comments
If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if either you have
something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it. Otherwise, you may spam
people unnecessarily with bug mail. To take an example: a user can set up
their account to filter out messages where someone just adds themselves to
the CC field of a bug (which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself
to the CC field, and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that
person gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.
Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable, if you
do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art creations
are not.
_________________________________________________________________
6.9.4. Attachments
Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data, such
as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't bloat
the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to receive fat,
useless mails.
Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if you are
pointing out a single-pixel problem.
Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one CSS file and an
image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in reverse order and edit the
referring file so that they point to the attached files. This way, the test
case works immediately out of the bug.
Bugzilla stores and uses a Content-Type for each attachment (e.g.
text/html). To download an attachment as a different Content-Type (e.g.
application/xhtml+xml), you can override this using a 'content-type'
parameter on the URL, e.g. &content-type=text/plain.
If you have a really large attachment, something that does not need to be
recorded forever (as most attachments are), you can mark your attachment as
a Big File, Assuming the administrator of the installation has enabled this
feature. Big Files are stored directly on disk instead of in the database,
and can be deleted when it is no longer needed. The maximum size of a Big
File is normally larger than the maximum size of a regular attachment.
_________________________________________________________________
6.10. User Preferences
Once you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of Bugzilla via
the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer. The preferences are split into
three tabs:
_________________________________________________________________
6.10.1. Account Settings
On this tab, you can change your basic account information, including your
password, email address and real name. For security reasons, in order to
change anything on this page you must type your current password into the
"Password" field at the top of the page. If you attempt to change your email
address, a confirmation email is sent to both the old and new addresses,
with a link to use to confirm the change. This helps to prevent account
hijacking.
_________________________________________________________________
6.10.2. Email Settings
This tab controls the amount of email Bugzilla sends you.
The first item on this page is marked "Users to watch". When you enter one
or more comma-delineated user accounts (usually email addresses) into the
text entry box, you will receive a copy of all the bugmail those users are
sent (security settings permitting). This powerful functionality enables
seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go on holiday.
Note The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla
installations. If you don't see this feature, and feel that you need it,
speak to your administrator.
In general, users have almost complete control over how much (or how little)
email Bugzilla sends them. If you want to receive the maximum amount of
email possible, click the "Enable All Mail" button. If you don't want to
receive any email from Bugzilla at all, click the "Disable All Mail" button.
Note Your Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving bugmail by
adding the user's name to the data/nomail file. This is a drastic step best
taken only for disabled accounts, as it overrides the the user's individual
mail preferences.
If you'd like to set your bugmail to something besides 'Completely ON' and
'Completely OFF', the "Field/recipient specific options" table allows you to
do just that. The rows of the table define events that can happen to a bug
-- things like attachments being added, new comments being made, the
priority changing, etc. The columns in the table define your relationship
with the bug:
* Reporter - Where you are the person who initially reported the bug. Your
name/account appears in the "Reporter:" field.
* Assignee - Where you are the person who has been designated as the one
responsible for the bug. Your name/account appears in the "Assigned To:"
field of the bug.
* QA Contact - You are one of the designated QA Contacts for the bug. Your
account appears in the "QA Contact:" text-box of the bug.
* CC - You are on the list CC List for the bug. Your account appears in
the "CC:" text box of the bug.
* Voter - You have placed one or more votes for the bug. Your account
appears only if someone clicks on the "Show votes for this bug" link on
the bug.
Note Some columns may not be visible for your installation, depending on
your site's configuration.
To fine-tune your bugmail, decide the events for which you want to receive
bugmail; then decide if you want to receive it all the time (enable the
checkbox for every column), or only when you have a certain relationship
with a bug (enable the checkbox only for those columns). For example: if you
didn't want to receive mail when someone added themselves to the CC list,
you could uncheck all the boxes in the "CC Field Changes" line. As another
example, if you never wanted to receive email on bugs you reported unless
the bug was resolved, you would un-check all boxes in the "Reporter" column
except for the one on the "The bug is resolved or verified" row.
Note Bugzilla adds the "X-Bugzilla-Reason" header to all bugmail it sends,
describing the recipient's relationship (AssignedTo, Reporter, QAContact,
CC, or Voter) to the bug. This header can be used to do further client-side
filtering.
Two items not in the table ("Email me when someone asks me to set a flag"
and "Email me when someone sets a flag I asked for") define how you want to
receive bugmail with regards to flags. Their use is quite straightforward;
enable the checkboxes if you want Bugzilla to send you mail under either of
the above conditions.
By default, Bugzilla sends out email regardless of who made the change...
even if you were the one responsible for generating the email in the first
place. If you don't care to receive bugmail from your own changes, check the
box marked "Only email me reports of changes made by other people".
_________________________________________________________________
6.10.3. Permissions
This is a purely informative page which outlines your current permissions on
this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you are in, and whether
you can edit bugs or perform various administration functions.
_________________________________________________________________
6.11. Reports and Charts
As well as the standard buglist, Bugzilla has two more ways of viewing sets
of bugs. These are the reports (which give different views of the current
state of the database) and charts (which plot the changes in particular sets
of bugs over time.)
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6.11.1. Reports
A report is a view of the current state of the bug database.
You can run either an HTML-table-based report, or a graphical
line/pie/bar-chart-based one. The two have different pages to define them,
but are close cousins - once you've defined and viewed a report, you can
switch between any of the different views of the data at will.
Both report types are based on the idea of defining a set of bugs using the
standard search interface, and then choosing some aspect of that set to plot
on the horizontal and/or vertical axes. You can also get a form of
3-dimensional report by choosing to have multiple images or tables.
So, for example, you could use the search form to choose "all bugs in the
WorldControl product", and then plot their severity against their component
to see which component had had the largest number of bad bugs reported
against it.
Once you've defined your parameters and hit "Generate Report", you can
switch between HTML, CSV, Bar, Line and Pie. (Note: Pie is only available if
you didn't define a vertical axis, as pie charts don't have one.) The other
controls are fairly self-explanatory; you can change the size of the image
if you find text is overwriting other text, or the bars are too thin to see.
_________________________________________________________________
6.11.2. Charts
A chart is a view of the state of the bug database over time.
Bugzilla currently has two charting systems - Old Charts and New Charts. Old
Charts have been part of Bugzilla for a long time; they chart each status
and resolution for each product, and that's all. They are deprecated, and
going away soon - we won't say any more about them. New Charts are the
future - they allow you to chart anything you can define as a search.
Note Both charting forms require the administrator to set up the
data-gathering script. If you can't see any charts, ask them whether they
have done so.
An individual line on a chart is called a data set. All data sets are
organised into categories and subcategories. The data sets that Bugzilla
defines automatically use the Product name as a Category and Component names
as Subcategories, but there is no need for you to follow that naming scheme
with your own charts if you don't want to.
Data sets may be public or private. Everyone sees public data sets in the
list, but only their creator sees private data sets. Only administrators can
make data sets public. No two data sets, even two private ones, can have the
same set of category, subcategory and name. So if you are creating private
data sets, one idea is to have the Category be your username.
_________________________________________________________________
6.11.2.1. Creating Charts
You create a chart by selecting a number of data sets from the list, and
pressing Add To List for each. In the List Of Data Sets To Plot, you can
define the label that data set will have in the chart's legend, and also ask
Bugzilla to Sum a number of data sets (e.g. you could Sum data sets
representing RESOLVED, VERIFIED and CLOSED in a particular product to get a
data set representing all the resolved bugs in that product.)
If you've erroneously added a data set to the list, select it using the
checkbox and click Remove. Once you add more than one data set, a "Grand
Total" line automatically appears at the bottom of the list. If you don't
want this, simply remove it as you would remove any other line.
You may also choose to plot only over a certain date range, and to cumulate
the results - that is, to plot each one using the previous one as a
baseline, so the top line gives a sum of all the data sets. It's easier to
try than to explain :-)
Once a data set is in the list, one can also perform certain actions on it.
For example, one can edit the data set's parameters (name, frequency etc.)
if it's one you created or if you are an administrator.
Once you are happy, click Chart This List to see the chart.
_________________________________________________________________
6.11.2.2. Creating New Data Sets
You may also create new data sets of your own. To do this, click the "create
a new data set" link on the Create Chart page. This takes you to a
search-like interface where you can define the search that Bugzilla will
plot. At the bottom of the page, you choose the category, sub-category and
name of your new data set.
If you have sufficient permissions, you can make the data set public, and
reduce the frequency of data collection to less than the default seven days.
_________________________________________________________________
6.12. Flags
A flag is a kind of status that can be set on bugs or attachments to
indicate that the bugs/attachments are in a certain state. Each installation
can define its own set of flags that can be set on bugs or attachments.
If your installation has defined a flag, you can set or unset that flag, and
if your administrator has enabled requesting of flags, you can submit a
request for another user to set the flag.
To set a flag, select either "+" or "-" from the drop-down menu next to the
name of the flag in the "Flags" list. The meaning of these values are
flag-specific and thus cannot be described in this documentation, but by way
of example, setting a flag named "review" to "+" may indicate that the
bug/attachment has passed review, while setting it to "-" may indicate that
the bug/attachment has failed review.
To unset a flag, click its drop-down menu and select the blank value.
If your administrator has enabled requests for a flag, request a flag by
selecting "?" from the drop-down menu and then entering the username of the
user you want to set the flag in the text field next to the menu.
A set flag appears in bug reports and on "edit attachment" pages with the
abbreviated username of the user who set the flag prepended to the flag
name. For example, if Jack sets a "review" flag to "+", it appears as Jack:
review [ + ]
A requested flag appears with the user who requested the flag prepended to
the flag name and the user who has been requested to set the flag appended
to the flag name within parentheses. For example, if Jack asks Jill for
review, it appears as Jack: review [ ? ] (Jill).
You can browse through open requests made of you and by you by selecting 'My
Requests' from the footer. You can also look at open requests limited by
other requesters, requestees, products, components, and flag names from this
page. Note that you can use '-' for requestee to specify flags with 'no
requestee' set.
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6.13. Whining
Whining is a feature in Bugzilla that can regularly annoy users at specified
times. Using this feature, users can execute saved searches at specific
times (i.e. the 15th of the month at midnight) or at regular intervals (i.e.
every 15 minutes on Sundays). The results of the searches are sent to the
user, either as a single email or as one email per bug, along with some
descriptive text.
Warning Throughout this section it will be assumed that all users are
members of the bz_canusewhines group, membership in which is required in
order to use the Whining system. You can easily make all users members of
the bz_canusewhines group by setting the User RegExp to ".*" (without the
quotes).
Also worth noting is the bz_canusewhineatothers group. Members of this group
can create whines for any user or group in Bugzilla using a extended form of
the whining interface. Features only available to members of the
bz_canusewhineatothers group will be noted in the appropriate places.
Note For whining to work, a special Perl script must be executed at regular
intervals. More information on this is available in Section 2.3.4.
Note This section does not cover the whineatnews.pl script. See Section
2.3.3 for more information on The Whining Cron.
_________________________________________________________________
6.13.1. The Event
The whining system defines an "Event" as one or more queries being executed
at regular intervals, with the results of said queries (if there are any)
being emailed to the user. Events are created by clicking on the "Add new
event" button.
Once a new event is created, the first thing to set is the "Email subject
line". The contents of this field will be used in the subject line of every
email generated by this event. In addition to setting a subject, space is
provided to enter some descriptive text that will be included at the top of
each message (to help you in understanding why you received the email in the
first place).
The next step is to specify when the Event is to be run (the Schedule) and
what searches are to be performed (the Queries).
_________________________________________________________________
6.13.2. Whining Schedule
Each whining event is associated with zero or more schedules. A schedule is
used to specify when the query (specified below) is to be run. A new event
starts out with no schedules (which means it will never run, as it is not
scheduled to run). To add a schedule, press the "Add a new schedule" button.
Each schedule includes an interval, which you use to tell Bugzilla when the
event should be run. An event can be run on certain days of the week,
certain days of the month, during weekdays (defined as Monday through
Friday), or every day.
Warning Be careful if you set your event to run on the 29th, 30th, or 31st
of the month, as your event may not run exactly when expected. If you want
your event to run on the last day of the month, select "Last day of the
month" as the interval.
Once you have specified the day(s) on which the event is to be run, you
should now specify the time at which the event is to be run. You can have
the event run at a certain hour on the specified day(s), or every hour,
half-hour, or quarter-hour on the specified day(s).
If a single schedule does not execute an event as many times as you would
want, you can create another schedule for the same event. For example, if
you want to run an event on days whose numbers are divisible by seven, you
would need to add four schedules to the event, setting the schedules to run
on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th (one day per schedule) at whatever time (or
times) you choose.
Note If you are a member of the bz_canusewhineatothers group, then you will
be presented with another option: "Mail to". Using this you can control who
will receive the emails generated by this event. You can choose to send the
emails to a single user (identified by email address) or a single group
(identified by group name). To send to multiple users or groups, create a
new schedule for each additional user/group.
_________________________________________________________________
6.13.3. Whining Queries
Each whining event is associated with zero or more queries. A query is a
saved search that is executed on the schedule specified (see above). You
start out with zero queries attached to the event (which means that the
event will not run, as there will never be any results to return). To add a
query, press the "Add a new query" button.
The first field to examine in your new query is the Sort field. Queries are
executed, and results returned, in the order specified by the Sort field.
Queries with lower Sort values will run before queries with higher Sort
values.
The next field to examine is the Search field. This is where you choose the
actual search that is to be run. Instead of defining search parameters here,
you are asked to choose from the list of saved searches (the same list that
appears at the bottom of every Bugzilla page). You are only allowed to
choose from searches that you have saved yourself (the default saved search,
"My Bugs", is not a valid choice). If you do not have any saved searches,
you can take this opportunity to create one (see Section 6.6).
Note When running queries, the whining system acts as if you are the user
executing the query. This means that the whining system will ignore bugs
that match your query, but that you can not access.
Once you have chosen the saved search to be executed, give the query a
descriptive title. This title will appear in the email, above the results of
the query. If you choose "One message per bug", the query title will appear
at the top of each email that contains a bug matching your query.
Finally, decide if the results of the query should be sent in a single
email, or if each bug should appear in its own email.
Warning Think carefully before checking the "One message per bug" box. If
you create a query that matches thousands of bugs, you will receive
thousands of emails!
_________________________________________________________________
6.13.4. Saving Your Changes
Once you have defined at least one schedule, and created at least one query,
go ahead and "Update/Commit". This will save your Event and make it
available for immediate execution.
Note If you ever feel like deleting your event, you may do so using the
"Remove Event" button in the upper-right corner of each Event. You can also
modify an existing event, so long as you "Update/Commit" after completing
your modifications.
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix A. The Bugzilla FAQ
This FAQ includes questions not covered elsewhere in the Guide.
1. General Questions
A.1.1. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
A.1.2. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
A.1.3. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla
for bug-tracking?
A.1.4. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A.1.5. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking databases?
A.1.6. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or compatibility
with this other tracking software?
A.1.7. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
PostgreSQL/Sybase/Oracle/Msql/MSSQL.
A.1.8. What is /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl?
A.1.9. My perl is located at /usr/local/bin/perl and not /usr/bin/perl.
Is there an easy to change that in all the files that have this
hard-coded?
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
A.1.11. Does bugzilla run under mod_perl?
2. Managerial Questions
A.2.1. Is Bugzilla web-based, or do you have to have specific software
or a specific operating system on your machine?
A.2.2. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and levels?
Do we have complete freedom to change the labels of fields and
format of them, and the choice of acceptable values?
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics, graphs,
etc? You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see.
:)
A.2.4. Is there email notification? If so, what do you see when you get
an email?
A.2.5. Do users have to have any particular type of email application?
A.2.6. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I had
outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug template,
could that template be imported into "matching" fields? If I
wanted to take the results of a query and export that data to
MS Excel, could I do that?
A.2.7. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used in
other countries? Is it localizable?
A.2.8. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word
format? Excel format?
A.2.9. Are there any backup features provided?
A.2.10. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to
install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of
skills does the person need to have? I need to find out what
types of individuals would we need to hire and how much would
that cost if we were to go with Bugzilla vs. buying an
"out-of-the-box" solution.
A.2.11. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire people
to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this something that
takes hours or days to install and a couple of hours per week
to maintain and customize, or is this a multi-week install
process, plus a full time job for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
A.2.12. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using Bugzilla?
Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as
identified above?
A.2.13. We don't like referring to problems as 'bugs'. Can we change
that?
3. Administrative Questions
A.3.1. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is simultaneous
access to the same bug? Does the second person get a notice
that the bug is in use or how are they notified?
A.3.2. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
A.3.3. How can I update the code and the database using CVS?
A.3.4. How do I make it so that bugs can have an UNCONFIRMED status?
A.3.5. How do I move a Bugzilla installation from one machine to
another?
4. Bugzilla Security
A.4.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving me
problems? (I've followed the instructions in the installation
section of this guide...)
A.4.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
5. Bugzilla Email
A.5.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email from
Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
A.5.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send email
to anyone but me. How do I do it?
A.5.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something other than new and
reopened bugs. How do I do it?
A.5.4. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs via
email?
A.5.5. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's extremely
slow. What gives?
A.5.6. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
6. Bugzilla Database
A.6.1. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
A.6.2. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
A.6.3. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but Bugzilla
still can't connect.
A.6.4. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple different
Bugzilla databases?
7. Bugzilla and Win32
A.7.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32 (Win98+/NT/2K)?
A.7.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
A.7.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid Windows
NT application" error. Why?
A.7.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able
to talk to the database.
8. Bugzilla Usage
A.8.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
A.8.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler way to
query?
A.8.3. I'm confused by the behavior of the "Accept" button in the Show
Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I accept it?
A.8.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
A.8.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are using
it?
A.8.6. Why can't I close bugs from the "Change Several Bugs at Once"
page?
9. Bugzilla Hacking
A.9.1. What kind of style should I use for templatization?
A.9.2. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
A.9.3. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For
instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of "P2"?
A.9.4. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines should I
follow?
1. General Questions
A.1.1. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
Bugzilla is covered by the Mozilla Public License. See details at
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/.
A.1.2. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
http://www.bugzilla.org/support/consulting.html is a list of companies and
individuals who have asked us to list them as consultants for Bugzilla.
There are several experienced Bugzilla hackers on the mailing list/newsgroup
who are willing to make themselves available for generous compensation. Try
sending a message to the mailing list asking for a volunteer.
A.1.3. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla for
bug-tracking?
There are dozens of major companies with public Bugzilla sites to track bugs
in their products. We have a fairly complete list available on our website
at http://bugzilla.org/installation-list/. If you have an installation of
Bugzilla and would like to be added to the list, whether it's a public
install or not, simply e-mail Gerv <gerv@mozilla.org>.
A.1.4. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A core team, led by Dave Miller (justdave@bugzilla.org).
A.1.5. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking databases?
We can't find any head-to-head comparisons of Bugzilla against other
defect-tracking software. If you know of one, please get in touch. In the
experience of Matthew Barnson (the original author of this FAQ), though,
Bugzilla offers superior performance on commodity hardware, better price
(free!), more developer-friendly features (such as stored queries, email
integration, and platform independence), improved scalability, greater
flexibility, and superior ease-of-use when compared to commercial
bug-tracking software.
If you happen to be a vendor for commercial bug-tracking software, and would
like to submit a list of advantages your product has over Bugzilla, simply
send it to <documentation@bugzilla.org> and we'd be happy to include the
comparison in our documentation.
A.1.6. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or compatibility with
this other tracking software?
It may be that the support has not been built yet, or that you have not yet
found it. While Bugzilla makes strides in usability, customizability,
scalability, and user interface with each release, that doesn't mean it
can't still use improvement!
The best way to make an enhancement request is to file a bug at
bugzilla.mozilla.org and set the Severity to 'enhancement'. Your 'request
for enhancement' (RFE) will start out in the UNCONFIRMED state, and will
stay there until someone with the ability to COMFIRM the bug reviews it. If
that person feels it to be a good request that fits in with Bugzilla's
overall direction, the status will be changed to NEW; if not, they will
probably explain why and set the bug to RESOLVED/WONTFIX. If someone else
has made the same (or almost the same) request before, your request will be
marked RESOLVED/DUPLICATE, and a pointer to the previous RFE will be added.
Even if your RFE gets approved, that doesn't mean it's going to make it
right into the next release; there are a limited number of developers, and a
whole lot of RFEs... some of which are quite complex. If you're a
code-hacking sort of person, you can help the project along by making a
patch yourself that supports the functionality you require. If you have
never contributed anything to Bugzilla before, please be sure to read the
Developers' Guide and Contributors' Guide before going ahead.
A.1.7. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
PostgreSQL/Sybase/Oracle/Msql/MSSQL.
MySQL was originally chosen because it is free, easy to install, and was
available for the hardware Netscape intended to run it on.
There is currently work in progress to make Bugzilla work on PostgreSQL;
track the progress of this initiative in bug 98304.
Sybase support is no longer being worked on. Even if it eventually happens,
it's VERY unlikely to work without the end-user-company having to stick a
few developers on making several manual changes. Sybase is just NOT very
standards-compliant (despite all the hype), and it turned out that way too
much had to be changed to make it work -- like moving half of the
application logic into stored procedures to get any kind of decent
performance out of it. Bug 173130 is the relevant bug.
Red Hat once ran a version of Bugzilla that worked on Oracle, but that was
long, long ago; that version (Bugzilla 2.8) is now obsolete, insecure, and
totally unsupported. Red Hat's current Bugzilla (based on Bugzilla 2.17.1)
uses PostgreSQL, and work is being done to merge those changes into the main
distribution. (See above.) At this time we know of no recent ports of
Bugzilla to Oracle. (In our honest opinion, Bugzilla doesn't need what
Oracle offers.)
Bug 237862 is a good bug to read through if you'd like to see what progress
is being made on general database compatibility.
A.1.8. What is /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl?
Bugzilla used to have the path to perl on the shebang line set to
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl because when Terry first started writing the code
for mozilla.org he needed a version of Perl and other tools that were
completely under his control. This location was abandoned for the 2.18
release in favor of the more sensible /usr/bin/perl. If you installed an
older verion of Bugzilla and created the symlink we suggested, you can
remove it now (provided that you don't have anything else, such as Bonsai,
using it and you don't intend to reinstall an older version of Bugzilla).
A.1.9. My perl is located at /usr/local/bin/perl and not /usr/bin/perl. Is
there an easy to change that in all the files that have this hard-coded?
The easiest way to get around this is to create a link from one to the
other: ln -s /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl. If that's not an option for
you, the following bit of perl magic will change all the shebang lines (that
is to say, the line at the top of each file that starts with '#!' and
contains the path) to something else:
perl -pi -e 's@#\!/usr/bin/perl@#\!/usr/local/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl
Sadly, this command-line won't work on Windows unless you also have Cygwin.
However, MySQL comes with a binary called replace which can do the job:
C:\mysql\bin\replace "#!/usr/bin/perl" "#!C:\perl\bin\perl" -- *.cgi *.pl
Note If your perl path is something else again, just follow the above
examples and replace /usr/local/bin/perl with your own perl path.
Once you've modified all your files, you'll also need to modify the
t/002goodperl.t test, as it tests that all shebang lines are equal to
/usr/bin/perl. (For more information on the test suite, please check out the
appropriate section in the Developers' Guide.) Having done this, run the
test itself:
perl runtests.pl 2 --verbose
to ensure that you've modified all the relevant files.
If using Apache on Windows, you can avoid the whole problem by setting the
ScriptInterpreterSource directive to 'Registry'. (If using Apache 2 or
higher, set it to 'Registry-Strict'.) ScriptInterperterSource requires a
registry entry "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cgi\Shell\ExecCGI\Command" to associate
.cgi files with your perl executable. If one does not already exist, create
it with a default value of "<full path to perl> -T", e.g.
"C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe -T".
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
At present, no.
A.1.11. Does bugzilla run under mod_perl?
At present, no. Work is slowly taking place to remove global variables, use
$cgi, and use DBI. These are all necessary for mod_perl (as well as being
good for other reasons). Visit bug 87406 to view the discussion and
progress.
2. Managerial Questions
A.2.1. Is Bugzilla web-based, or do you have to have specific software or a
specific operating system on your machine?
It is web and e-mail based.
A.2.2. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and levels? Do we
have complete freedom to change the labels of fields and format of them, and
the choice of acceptable values?
Yes. However, modifying some fields, notably those related to bug
progression states, also require adjusting the program logic to compensate
for the change.
There is no GUI for adding fields to Bugzilla at this time. You can follow
development of this feature in bug 91037
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics, graphs, etc?
You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see. :)
Yes. Look at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/report.cgi for samples of what
Bugzilla can do in reporting and graphing. Fuller documentation is provided
in Section 6.11.
If you can not get the reports you want from the included reporting scripts,
it is possible to hook up a professional reporting package such as Crystal
Reports using ODBC. If you choose to do this, beware that giving direct
access to the database does contain some security implications. Even if you
give read-only access to the bugs database it will bypass the secure bugs
features of Bugzilla.
A.2.4. Is there email notification? If so, what do you see when you get an
email?
Email notification is user-configurable. By default, the bug id and summary
of the bug report accompany each email notification, along with a list of
the changes made.
A.2.5. Do users have to have any particular type of email application?
Bugzilla email is sent in plain text, the most compatible mail format on the
planet.
Note If you decide to use the bugzilla_email integration features to allow
Bugzilla to record responses to mail with the associated bug, you may need
to caution your users to set their mailer to "respond to messages in the
format in which they were sent". For security reasons Bugzilla ignores HTML
tags in comments, and if a user sends HTML-based email into Bugzilla the
resulting comment looks downright awful.
A.2.6. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I had
outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug template, could that
template be imported into "matching" fields? If I wanted to take the results
of a query and export that data to MS Excel, could I do that?
Bugzilla can output buglists as HTML (the default), CSV or RDF. The link for
CSV can be found at the bottom of the buglist in HTML format. This CSV
format can easily be imported into MS Excel or other spreadsheet
applications.
To use the RDF format of the buglist it is necessary to append a &ctype=rdf
to the URL. RDF is meant to be machine readable and thus it is assumed that
the URL would be generated programmatically so there is no user visible link
to this format.
Currently the only script included with Bugzilla that can import data is
importxml.pl which is intended to be used for importing the data generated
by the XML ctype of show_bug.cgi in association with bug moving. Any other
use is left as an exercise for the user.
There are also scripts included in the contrib/ directory for using e-mail
to import information into Bugzilla, but these scripts are not currently
supported and included for educational purposes.
A.2.7. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used in other
countries? Is it localizable?
Yes. For more information including available translated templates, see
http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Some admin interfaces
have been templatized (for easy localization) but many of them are still
available in English only. Also, there may be issues with the charset not
being declared. See bug 126226 for more information.
A.2.8. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word format?
Excel format?
Yes. No. Yes (using the CSV format).
A.2.9. Are there any backup features provided?
MySQL, the database back-end for Bugzilla, allows hot-backup of data. You
can find strategies for dealing with backup considerations at
http://www.mysql.com/doc/B/a/Backup.html.
A.2.10. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to install
and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of skills does the person
need to have? I need to find out what types of individuals would we need to
hire and how much would that cost if we were to go with Bugzilla vs. buying
an "out-of-the-box" solution.
If Bugzilla is set up correctly from the start, continuing maintenance needs
are minimal and can be done easily using the web interface.
Commercial Bug-tracking software typically costs somewhere upwards of
$20,000 or more for 5-10 floating licenses. Bugzilla consultation is
available from skilled members of the newsgroup. Simple questions are
answered there and then.
A.2.11. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire people to
install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this something that takes hours or
days to install and a couple of hours per week to maintain and customize, or
is this a multi-week install process, plus a full time job for 1 person, 2
people, etc?
It all depends on your level of commitment. Someone with much Bugzilla
experience can get you up and running in less than a day, and your Bugzilla
install can run untended for years. If your Bugzilla strategy is critical to
your business workflow, hire somebody to who has reasonable Perl skills, and
a familiarity with the operating system on which Bugzilla will be running,
and have them handle your process management, bug-tracking maintenance, and
local customization.
A.2.12. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using Bugzilla? Any
out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as identified above?
No. Bugzilla, Perl, the Template Toolkit, and all other support software
needed to make Bugzilla work can be downloaded for free. MySQL -- the
database used by Bugzilla -- is also open-source, but they ask that if you
find their product valuable, you purchase a support contract from them that
suits your needs.
A.2.13. We don't like referring to problems as 'bugs'. Can we change that?
Yes! As of Bugzilla 2.18, it is a simple matter to change the word 'bug'
into whatever word/phrase is used by your organization. See the
documentation on Customization for more details, specifically Section 5.1.5.
3. Administrative Questions
A.3.1. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is simultaneous
access to the same bug? Does the second person get a notice that the bug is
in use or how are they notified?
Bugzilla does not lock records. It provides mid-air collision detection --
which means that it warns a user when a commit is about to conflict with
commits recently made by another user, and offers the second user a choice
of options to deal with the conflict.
A.3.2. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
Yes, but commits to the database must wait until the tables are unlocked.
Bugzilla databases are typically very small, and backups routinely take less
than a minute. If your database is larger, you may want to look into
alternate backup techniques, such as database replication, or backing up
from a read-only mirror. (Read up on these in the MySQL docs on the MySQL
site.)
A.3.3. How can I update the code and the database using CVS?
1. Make a backup of both your Bugzilla directory and the database. For the
Bugzilla directory this is as easy as doing cp -rp bugzilla
bugzilla.bak. For the database, there's a number of options - see the
MySQL docs and pick the one that fits you best (the easiest is to just
make a physical copy of the database on the disk, but you have to have
the database server shut down to do that without risking dataloss).
2. Make the Bugzilla directory your current directory.
3. Use cvs -q update -AdP if you want to update to the tip or cvs -q update
-dP -rTAGNAME if you want a specific version (in that case you'll have
to replace TAGNAME with a CVS tag name such as BUGZILLA-2_16_5).
If you've made no local changes, this should be very clean. If you have
made local changes, then watch the cvs output for C results. If you get
any lines that start with a C it means there were conflicts between your
local changes and what's in CVS. You'll need to fix those manually
before continuing.
4. After resolving any conflicts that the cvs update operation generated,
running ./checksetup.pl will take care of updating the database for you
as well as any other changes required for the new version to operate.
Warning Once you run checksetup.pl, the only way to go back is to restore
the database backups. You can't "downgrade" the system cleanly under most
circumstances.
See also the instructions in Section 3.11.2.1.
A.3.4. How do I make it so that bugs can have an UNCONFIRMED status?
To use the UNCONFIRMED status, you must have the 'usevotes' parameter set to
"On". You must then visit the editproducts.cgi page and set the " Number of
votes a bug in this product needs to automatically get out of the
UNCONFIRMED state" to be a non-zero number. (You will have to do this for
each product that wants to use the UNCONFIRMED state.) If you do not
actually want users to be able to vote for bugs entered against this
product, leave the "Maximum votes per person" value at '0'.
There is work being done to decouple the UNCONFIRMED state from the
'usevotes' parameter for future versions of Bugzilla. Follow the discussion
and progress at bug 162060.
A.3.5. How do I move a Bugzilla installation from one machine to another?
Use mysqldump to make a backup of the bugs database. For a typical Bugzilla
setup, such a command might look like this:
/usr/bin/mysqldump -u(username) -p(password) --database bugs > bugzilla-backup.
txt
See the mysqldump documentation for more information on using the tool,
including how to restore your copy onto the destination machine.
Warning Depending on the size of your database, and the power of your
machine, the mysqldump command could be running long enough that the
password would be visible to someone using the ps command. If you are on a
multi-user machine, and this is a concern to you, create an entry in the
file ~/.my.cnf that looks like this:
[mysqldump]
user=bugs
password=mypassword
and then leave the 'user' and 'password' params out of the command line.
On your new machine, follow the instructions found in Chapter 2 as far as
setting up the physical environment of the new machine with perl, webserver,
modules, etc. Having done that, you can either: copy your entire Bugzilla
directory from the old machine to a new one (if you want to keep your
existing code and modifications), or download a newer version (if you are
planning to upgrade at the same time). Even if you are upgrading to clean
code, you will still want to bring over the localconfig file, and the data
directory from the old machine, as they contain configuration information
that you probably won't want to re-create.
Note If the location or port number of your SQL server changed as part of
the move, you'll need to update the appropriate variables in localconfig
before taking the next step.
Once you have your code in place, and your database has been restored from
the backup you made in step 1, run checksetup.pl. This will upgrade your
database (if necessary), rebuild your templates, etc.
4. Bugzilla Security
A.4.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving me
problems? (I've followed the instructions in the installation section of
this guide...)
Run MySQL like this: mysqld --skip-grant-tables. Please remember that this
makes MySQL as secure as taping a $100 to the floor of a football stadium
bathroom for safekeeping.
Warning This can't be stressed enough. Doing this is a bad idea. Please
consult Section 4.2 of this guide and the MySQL documentation for better
solutions.
A.4.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
The Bugzilla code has undergone a reasonably complete security audit, and
user-facing CGIs run under Perl's taint mode. However, it is recommended
that you closely examine permissions on your Bugzilla installation, and
follow the recommended security guidelines found in The Bugzilla Guide.
5. Bugzilla Email
A.5.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email from
Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
The user can stop Bugzilla from sending any mail by unchecking all boxes on
the 'Edit prefs' -> 'Email settings' page. (As of 2.18,this is made easier
by the addition of a 'Disable All Mail' button.) Alternately, you can add
their email address to the data/nomail file (one email address per line).
This will override their personal preferences, and they will never be sent
mail again.
A.5.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send email to
anyone but me. How do I do it?
To disable email, set the mail_delivery_method parameter to none (2.20 and
later), or
$enableSendMail
parameter to '0' in either BugMail.pm (2.18 and later) or processmail (up to
2.16.x).
Note Up to 2.16.x, changing
$enableSendMail
will only affect bugmail; email related to password changes, email address
changes, bug imports, flag changes, etc. will still be sent out. As of the
final release of 2.18, however, the above step will disable all mail sent
from Bugzilla for any purpose.
To have bugmail (and only bugmail) redirected to you instead of its intended
recipients, leave
$enableSendMail
alone; instead, edit the "newchangedmail" parameter as follows:
* Replace "To:" with "X-Real-To:"
* Replace "Cc:" with "X-Real-CC:"
* Add a "To: %lt;your_email_address>"
A.5.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something other than new and
reopened bugs. How do I do it?
For older versions of Bugzilla, you may be able to apply Klaas Freitag's
patch for "whineatassigned", which can be found in bug 6679. Note that this
patch was made in 2000, so it may take some work to apply cleanly to any
releases of Bugzilla newer than that, but you can use it as a starting
point.
An updated (and much-expanded) version of this functionality is due to be
released as part of Bugzilla 2.20; see bug 185090 for the discussion, and
for more up-to-date patches if you just can't wait.
A.5.4. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs via email?
You can find an updated README.mailif file in the contrib/ directory of your
Bugzilla distribution that walks you through the setup.
A.5.5. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's extremely slow.
What gives?
If you are using sendmail, try enabling sendmailnow in editparams.cgi. For
earlier versions of sendmail, one could achieve significant performance
improvement in the UI (at the cost of delaying the sending of mail) by
setting this parameter to off. Sites with sendmail version 8.12 (or higher)
should leave this on, as they will not see any performance benefit.
If you are using an alternate MTA, make sure the options given in
Bugzilla/BugMail.pm and any other place where sendmail is called are correct
for your MTA.
A.5.6. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
Double-check that you have not turned off email in your user preferences.
Confirm that Bugzilla is able to send email by visiting the "Log In" link of
your Bugzilla installation and clicking the "Submit Request" button after
entering your email address.
If you never receive mail from Bugzilla, chances are you do not have
sendmail in "/usr/lib/sendmail". Ensure sendmail lives in, or is symlinked
to, "/usr/lib/sendmail".
If you are using an MTA other than sendmail the sendmailnow param must be
set to on or no mail will be sent.
6. Bugzilla Database
A.6.1. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid entries.
What do I do?
Run the "sanity check" utility (sanitycheck.cgi) from your web browser to
see! If it finishes without errors, you're probably OK. If it doesn't come
back OK (i.e. any red letters), there are certain things Bugzilla can
recover from and certain things it can't. If it can't auto-recover, I hope
you're familiar with mysqladmin commands or have installed another way to
manage your database. Sanity Check, although it is a good basic check on
your database integrity, by no means is a substitute for competent database
administration and avoiding deletion of data. It is not exhaustive, and was
created to do a basic check for the most common problems in Bugzilla
databases.
A.6.2. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
There is no facility in Bugzilla itself to do this. It's also generally not
a smart thing to do if you don't know exactly what you're doing. If you
understand SQL, though, you can use the mysql command line utility to
manually insert, delete and modify table information. There are also more
intuitive GUI clients available. Personal favorites of the Bugzilla team are
phpMyAdmin and MySQL Control Center.
Remember, backups are your friend. Everyone makes mistakes, and it's nice to
have a safety net in case you mess something up. Consider using mysqldump to
make a duplicate of your database before altering it manually.
A.6.3. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but Bugzilla still
can't connect.
Try running MySQL from its binary: mysqld --skip-grant-tables. This will
allow you to completely rule out grant tables as the cause of your
frustration. If this Bugzilla is able to connect at this point then you need
to check that you have granted proper permission to the user password combo
defined in localconfig.
Warning Running MySQL with this command line option is very insecure and
should only be done when not connected to the external network as a
troubleshooting step.
A.6.4. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple different
Bugzilla databases?
Well, you can synchronize or you can move bugs. Synchronization will only
work one way -- you can create a read-only copy of the database at one site,
and have it regularly updated at intervals from the main database.
MySQL has some synchronization features built-in to the latest releases. It
would be great if someone looked into the possibilities there and provided a
report to the newsgroup on how to effectively synchronize two Bugzilla
installations.
If you simply need to transfer bugs from one Bugzilla to another, checkout
the "move.pl" script in the Bugzilla distribution.
7. Bugzilla and Win32
A.7.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32 (Win98+/NT/2K)?
Remove Windows. Install Linux. Install Bugzilla. The boss will never know
the difference. B^)
Seriously though, making Bugzilla work easily with Windows was one of the
major goals of the 2.18 milestone. If the necessary components are in place
(perl, a webserver, an MTA, etc.) then installation of Bugzilla on a Windows
box should be no more difficult than on any other platform. As with any
installation, we recommend that you carefully and completely follow the
installation instructions in Section 2.4.1.
While doing so, don't forget to check out the very excellent guide to
Installing Bugzilla on Microsoft Windows written by Byron Jones. Thanks,
Byron!
A.7.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
Not currently. Bundle::Bugzilla enormously simplifies Bugzilla installation
on UNIX systems. If someone can volunteer to create a suitable PPM bundle
for Win32, it would be appreciated.
A.7.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid Windows NT
application" error. Why?
Depending on what Web server you are using, you will have to configure the
Web server to treat *.cgi files as CGI scripts. In IIS, you do this by
adding *.cgi to the App Mappings with the <path>\perl.exe %s %s as the
executable.
Microsoft has some advice on this matter, as well:
"Set application mappings. In the ISM, map the extension for the script
file(s) to the executable for the script interpreter. For example, you
might map the extension .py to Python.exe, the executable for the Python
script interpreter. Note For the ActiveState Perl script interpreter, the
extension '.pl' is associated with PerlIS.dll by default. If you want to
change the association of .pl to perl.exe, you need to change the
application mapping. In the mapping, you must add two percent (%)
characters to the end of the pathname for perl.exe, as shown in this
example: c:\perl\bin\perl.exe %s %s"
A.7.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able to
talk to the database.
Your modules may be outdated or inaccurate. Try:
1. Hitting http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl
2. Download ActivePerl
3. Go to your prompt
4. Type 'ppm'
5. PPM> install DBI DBD-mysql GD
I reckon TimeDate and Data::Dumper come with the activeperl. You can check
the ActiveState site for packages for installation through PPM.
http://www.activestate.com/Packages/.
8. Bugzilla Usage
A.8.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
New in 2.16 - go to the Account section of the Preferences. You will be
emailed at both addresses for confirmation.
A.8.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler way to query?
The interface was simplified by a UI designer for 2.16. Further suggestions
for improvement are welcome, but we won't sacrifice power for simplicity.
As of 2.18, there is also a 'simpler' search available. At the top of the
search page are two links; "Advanced Search" will take you to the familiar
full-power/full-complexity search page. The "Find a Specific Bug" link will
take you to a much-simplified page where you can pick a product and status
(open,closed, or both), then enter words that appear in the bug you want to
find. This search will scour the 'Summary' and 'Comment' fields, and return
a list of bugs sorted so that the bugs with the most hits/matches are nearer
to the top.
Note Matches in the Summary will 'trump' matches in comments, and bugs with
summary-matches will be placed higher in the buglist -- even if a
lower-ranked bug has more matches in the comments section.
Bugzilla uses a cookie to remember which version of the page you visited
last, and brings that page up when you next do a search. The default page
for new users (or after an upgrade) is the 'simple' search.
A.8.3. I'm confused by the behavior of the "Accept" button in the Show Bug
form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I accept it?
The current behavior is acceptable to bugzilla.mozilla.org and most users.
If you want to change this behavior, though, you have your choice of
patches:
Bug 35195 seeks to add an "...and accept the bug" checkbox to the UI. It has
two patches attached to it: attachment 8029 was originally created for
Bugzilla 2.12, while attachment 91372 is an updated version for Bugzilla
2.16
Bug 37613 also provides two patches (against Bugzilla 2.12): one to add a
'Take Bug' option, and the other to automatically reassign the bug on
'Accept'.
These patches are all somewhat dated now, and cannot be applied directly,
but they are simple enough to provide a guide on how Bugzilla can be
customized and updated to suit your needs.
A.8.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create Attachment"
link. What am I doing wrong?
The most likely cause is a very old browser or a browser that is
incompatible with file upload via POST. Download the latest version of your
favourite browser to handle uploads correctly.
A.8.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are using it?
In the Bugzilla administrator UI, edit the keyword and it will let you
replace the old keyword name with a new one. This will cause a problem with
the keyword cache; run sanitycheck.cgi to fix it.
A.8.6. Why can't I close bugs from the "Change Several Bugs at Once" page?
Simple answer; you can.
The logic behind the page checks every bug in the list to determine legal
state changes, and then only shows you controls to do things that could
apply to every bug on the list. The reason for this is that if you try to do
something illegal to a bug, the whole process will grind to a halt, and all
changes after the failed one will also fail. Since that isn't a good
outcome, the page doesn't even present you with the option.
In practical terms, that means that in order to mark multiple bugs as
CLOSED, then every bug on the page has to be either RESOLVED or VERIFIED
already; if this is not the case, then the option to close the bugs will not
appear on the page.
The rationale is that if you pick one of the bugs that's not VERIFIED and
try to CLOSE it, the bug change will fail miserably (thus killing any
changes in the list after it while doing the bulk change) so it doesn't even
give you the choice.
9. Bugzilla Hacking
A.9.1. What kind of style should I use for templatization?
Gerv and Myk suggest a 2-space indent, with embedded code sections on their
own line, in line with outer tags. Like this:
<fred>
[% IF foo %]
<bar>
[% FOREACH x = barney %]
<tr>
<td>
[% x %]
</td>
<tr>
[% END %]
[% END %]
</fred>
Myk also recommends you turn on PRE_CHOMP in the template initialization to
prevent bloating of HTML with unnecessary whitespace.
Please note that many have differing opinions on this subject, and the
existing templates in Bugzilla espouse both this and a 4-space style. Either
is acceptable; the above is preferred.
A.9.2. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
Try this link to view current bugs or requests for enhancement for Bugzilla.
You can view bugs marked for 2.20.2 release here. This list includes bugs
for the 2.20.2 release that have already been fixed and checked into CVS.
Please consult the Bugzilla Project Page for details on how to check current
sources out of CVS so you can have these bug fixes early!
A.9.3. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For instance,
have the default priority be "---" instead of "P2"?
This is well-documented in bug 49862. Ultimately, it's as easy as adding the
"---" priority field to your localconfig file in the appropriate area,
re-running checksetup.pl, and then changing the default priority in your
browser using editparams.cgi.
A.9.4. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines should I
follow?
1. Enter a bug into bugzilla.mozilla.org for the "Bugzilla" product.
2. Upload your patch as a unified diff (having used "diff -u" against the
current sources checked out of CVS), or new source file by clicking
"Create a new attachment" link on the bug page you've just created, and
include any descriptions of database changes you may make, into the bug
ID you submitted in step #1. Be sure and click the "Patch" checkbox to
indicate the text you are sending is a patch!
3. Announce your patch and the associated URL
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXXXX) for discussion in
the newsgroup (netscape.public.mozilla.webtools). You'll get a really
good, fairly immediate reaction to the implications of your patch, which
will also give us an idea how well-received the change would be.
4. If it passes muster with minimal modification, the person to whom the
bug is assigned in Bugzilla is responsible for seeing the patch is
checked into CVS.
5. Bask in the glory of the fact that you helped write the most successful
open-source bug-tracking software on the planet :)
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix B. Troubleshooting
This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems. If
none of the section headings seems to match your problem, read the general
advice.
_________________________________________________________________
B.1. General Advice
If you can't get checksetup.pl to run to completion, it normally explains
what's wrong and how to fix it. If you can't work it out, or if it's being
uncommunicative, post the errors in the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools
newsgroup.
If you have made it all the way through Section 2.1 (Installation) and
Section 2.2 (Configuration) but accessing the Bugzilla URL doesn't work, the
first thing to do is to check your webserver error log. For Apache, this is
often located at /etc/logs/httpd/error_log. The error messages you see may
be self-explanatory enough to enable you to diagnose and fix the problem. If
not, see below for some commonly-encountered errors. If that doesn't help,
post the errors to the newsgroup.
Bugzilla can also log all user-based errors (and many code-based errors)
that occur, without polluting the web server error log. To enable Bugzilla
error logging, create a file that Bugzilla can write to, named errorlog, in
the Bugzilla data directory. Errors will be logged as they occur, and will
include the type of the error, the IP address and username (if available) of
the user who triggered the error, and the values of all environment
variables; if a form was being submitted, the data in the form will also be
included. To disable error logging, delete or rename the errorlog file.
_________________________________________________________________
B.2. The Apache webserver is not serving Bugzilla pages
After you have run checksetup.pl twice, run testserver.pl
http://yoursite.yourdomain/yoururl to confirm that your webserver is
configured properly for Bugzilla.
bash$ ./testserver.pl http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip
TEST-OK Webserver is running under group id in $webservergroup.
TEST-OK Got ant picture.
TEST-OK Webserver is executing CGIs.
TEST-OK Webserver is preventing fetch of http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-
tip/localconfig.
_________________________________________________________________
B.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not installed!
This could be caused by one of two things:
1. You have two versions of Perl on your machine. You are installing
modules into one, and Bugzilla is using the other. Rerun the CPAN
commands (or manual compile) using the full path to Perl from the top of
checksetup.pl. This will make sure you are installing the modules in the
right place.
2. The permissions on your library directories are set incorrectly. They
must, at the very least, be readable by the webserver user or group. It
is recommended that they be world readable.
_________________________________________________________________
B.4. Bundle::Bugzilla makes me upgrade to Perl 5.6.1
Try executing perl -MCPAN -e 'install CPAN' and then continuing.
Certain older versions of the CPAN toolset were somewhat naive about how to
upgrade Perl modules. When a couple of modules got rolled into the core Perl
distribution for 5.6.1, CPAN thought that the best way to get those modules
up to date was to haul down the Perl distribution itself and build it.
Needless to say, this has caused headaches for just about everybody.
Upgrading to a newer version of CPAN with the commandline above should fix
things.
_________________________________________________________________
B.5. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql (over
which the Bugzilla team have no control):
DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site
/lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)
To fix this, go to <path-to-perl>/lib/DBD/sponge.pm in your Perl
installation and replace
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};
with
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};
(note the S added to NAME.)
_________________________________________________________________
B.6. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other distributions
with "paranoid" security options, it is possible that the checksetup.pl
script may fail with the error:
cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied
This is because your /var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of drwx------.
Type chmod 755 /var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this problem. This will
allow any process running on your machine the ability to read the
/var/spool/mqueue directory.
_________________________________________________________________
B.7. Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT
This is caused by a bug in the version of File::Temp that is distributed
with perl 5.6.0. Many minor variations of this error have been reported:
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 208.
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_EXLOCK, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 210.
Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_TEMPORARY, used
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 233.
Numerous people have reported that upgrading to version 5.6.1 or higher
solved the problem for them. A less involved fix is to apply the following
patch, which is also available as a patch file.
--- File/Temp.pm.orig Thu Feb 6 16:26:00 2003
+++ File/Temp.pm Thu Feb 6 16:26:23 2003
@@ -205,6 +205,7 @@
# eg CGI::Carp
local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+ local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
$bit = &$func();
1;
};
@@ -226,6 +227,7 @@
# eg CGI::Carp
local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+ local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
$bit = &$func();
1;
};
_________________________________________________________________
B.8. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
The most-likely cause is that the "cookiepath" parameter is not set
correctly in the Bugzilla configuration. You can change this (if you're a
Bugzilla administrator) from the editparams.cgi page via the web.
The value of the cookiepath parameter should be the actual directory
containing your Bugzilla installation, as seen by the end-user's web
browser. Leading and trailing slashes are mandatory. You can also set the
cookiepath to any directory which is a parent of the Bugzilla directory
(such as '/', the root directory). But you can't put something that isn't at
least a partial match or it won't work. What you're actually doing is
restricting the end-user's browser to sending the cookies back only to that
directory.
How do you know if you want your specific Bugzilla directory or the whole
site?
If you have only one Bugzilla running on the server, and you don't mind
having other applications on the same server with it being able to see the
cookies (you might be doing this on purpose if you have other things on your
site that share authentication with Bugzilla), then you'll want to have the
cookiepath set to "/", or to a sufficiently-high enough directory that all
of the involved apps can see the cookies.
Example B-1. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies
urlbase is http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
cookiepath is /
urlbase is http://tools.mysite.tld/bugzilla/
but you have http://tools.mysite.tld/someotherapp/ which s
hares
authentication with your Bugzilla
cookiepath is /
On the other hand, if you have more than one Bugzilla running on the server
(some people do - we do on landfill) then you need to have the cookiepath
restricted enough so that the different Bugzillas don't confuse their
cookies with one another.
Example B-2. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login
cookie
urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/
cookiepath is /bugzilla-tip/
urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-2.16-branch/
cookiepath is /bugzilla-2.16-branch/
If you had cookiepath set to "/" at any point in the past and need to set it
to something more restrictive (i.e. "/bugzilla/"), you can safely do this
without requiring users to delete their Bugzilla-related cookies in their
browser (this is true starting with Bugzilla 2.18 and Bugzilla 2.16.5).
_________________________________________________________________
B.9. Some users are constantly being forced to relogin
First, make sure cookies are enabled in the user's browser.
If that doesn't fix the problem, it may be that the user's ISP implements a
rotating proxy server. This causes the user's effective IP address (the
address which the Bugzilla server perceives him coming from) to change
periodically. Since Bugzilla cookies are tied to a specific IP address, each
time the effective address changes, the user will have to log in again.
If you are using 2.18 (or later), there is a parameter called
"loginnetmask", which you can use to set the number of bits of the user's IP
address to require to be matched when authenticating the cookies. If you set
this to something less than 32, then the user will be given a checkbox for
"Restrict this login to my IP address" on the login screen, which defaults
to checked. If they leave the box checked, Bugzilla will behave the same as
it did before, requiring an exact match on their IP address to remain logged
in. If they uncheck the box, then only the left side of their IP address (up
to the number of bits you specified in the parameter) has to match to remain
logged in.
_________________________________________________________________
B.10. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
You probably need to set up your web server in such a way that it will serve
the index.cgi page as an index page.
If you are using Apache, you can do this by adding index.cgi to the end of
the DirectoryIndex line as mentioned in Section 2.2.4.1.
_________________________________________________________________
B.11. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication protocol
requested by server..."
This error is occurring because you are using the new password encryption
that comes with MySQL 4.1, while your DBD::mysql module was compiled against
an older version of MySQL. If you recompile DBD::mysql against the current
MySQL libraries (or just obtain a newer version of this module) then the
error may go away.
If that does not fix the problem, or if you cannot recompile the existing
module (e.g. you're running Windows) and/or don't want to replace it (e.g.
you want to keep using a packaged version), then a workaround is available
from the MySQL docs: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix C. Contrib
There are a number of unofficial Bugzilla add-ons in the
$BUGZILLA_ROOT/contrib/ directory. This section documents them.
_________________________________________________________________
C.1. Command-line Search Interface
There are a suite of Unix utilities for searching Bugzilla from the command
line. They live in the contrib/cmdline directory. There are three files -
query.conf, buglist and bugs.
Warning These files pre-date the templatisation work done as part of the
2.16 release, and have not been updated.
query.conf contains the mapping from options to field names and comparison
types. Quoted option names are "grepped" for, so it should be easy to edit
this file. Comments (#) have no effect; you must make sure these lines do
not contain any quoted "option".
buglist is a shell script that submits a Bugzilla query and writes the
resulting HTML page to stdout. It supports both short options, (such as
"-Afoo" or "-Rbar") and long options (such as "--assignedto=foo" or
"--reporter=bar"). If the first character of an option is not "-", it is
treated as if it were prefixed with "--default=".
The column list is taken from the COLUMNLIST environment variable. This is
equivalent to the "Change Columns" option that is available when you list
bugs in buglist.cgi. If you have already used Bugzilla, grep for COLUMNLIST
in your cookies file to see your current COLUMNLIST setting.
bugs is a simple shell script which calls buglist and extracts the bug
numbers from the output. Adding the prefix
"http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=" turns the bug list into a
working link if any bugs are found. Counting bugs is easy. Pipe the results
through sed -e 's/,/ /g' | wc | awk '{printf $2 "\n"}'
Akkana Peck says she has good results piping buglist output through w3m -T
text/html -dump
_________________________________________________________________
C.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool
Within the contrib directory exists a utility with the descriptive (if
compact) name of sendunsentbugmail.pl. The purpose of this script is,
simply, to send out any bug-related mail that should have been sent by now,
but for one reason or another has not.
To accomplish this task, sendunsentbugmail.pl uses the same mechanism as the
sanitycheck.cgi script; it it scans through the entire database looking for
bugs with changes that were made more than 30 minutes ago, but where there
is no record of anyone related to that bug having been sent mail. Having
compiled a list, it then uses the standard rules to determine who gets mail,
and sends it out.
As the script runs, it indicates the bug for which it is currently sending
mail; when it has finished, it gives a numerical count of how many mails
were sent and how many people were excluded. (Individual user names are not
recorded or displayed.) If the script produces no output, that means no
unsent mail was detected.
Usage: move the sendunsentbugmail.pl script up into the main directory,
ensure it has execute permission, and run it from the command line (or from
a cron job) with no parameters.
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix D. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
D.1. Instructions
If you need to install Perl modules manually, here's how it's done. Download
the module using the link given in the next section, and then apply this
magic incantation, as root:
bash# tar -xzvf <module>.tar.gz
bash# cd <module>
bash# perl Makefile.PL
bash# make
bash# make test
bash# make install
Note In order to compile source code under Windows you will need to obtain a
'make' utility. The nmake utility provided with Microsoft Visual C++ may be
used. As an alternative, there is a utility called dmake available from CPAN
which is written entirely in Perl. The majority of the links given below,
however, are to pre-compiled versions of the modules, which can be installed
on Windows simply by issuing the following command once you have downloaded
the PPD file (which may be packaged within a ZIP file):
> ppm install <filename.ppd>
_________________________________________________________________
D.2. Download Locations
Note Running Bugzilla on Windows requires the use of ActiveState Perl 5.8.1
or higher. Some modules already exist in the core distribution of
ActiveState Perl so no PPM link is given. (This is noted where it occurs.)
AppConfig:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/src/ABW/AppConfig-1.56/li
b/AppConfig.pm
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/AppConfig.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/~abw/AppConfig-1.56/lib/AppCon
fig.pm
CGI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI.pm/
PPM Download Link: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/CGI.html
Data-Dumper:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/src/ILYAM/Data-Dumper-2.1
21/Dumper.pm
PPM Download Page: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/~ilyam/Data-Dumper-2.121/Dumpe
r.pm
Date::Format (part of TimeDate):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/TimeDate.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/lib/Date/Format.
pm
DBI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBI/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/DBI.ppd
Documentation: http://dbi.perl.org/docs/
DBD::mysql:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/DBD-mysql.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/lib/DBD/mysql.p
m
File::Spec:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-Spec/
PPM Download Page: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/File/Spec.html
File::Temp:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-Temp/
PPM Download Page: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/File/Temp.html
Template-Toolkit:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Template-Toolkit/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/Template-Toolkit
.ppd
Documentation: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs.html
Text::Wrap:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-Tabs+Wrap/
PPM Download Link: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/lib/Text/Wrap.html
GD:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/GD.ppd
Documentation: http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/GD/
_________________________________________________________________
D.3. Optional Modules
Chart::Base:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Chart/
PPM Download Page: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/Chart.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/src/CHARTGRP/Chart-2.3/doc/Doc
umentation.pdf
GD::Graph:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/GDGraph.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/Graph.pm
GD::Text::Align (part of GD::Text::Util):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/
PPM Download Page: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/GDTextUtil.ppd
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/Text/Align.pm
MIME::Parser (part of MIME-tools):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/
PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-b
uilds-only/Windows/MIME-tools-5.411a.zip
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/lib/MIME/Parse
r.pm
XML::Parser:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-Parser/
PPM Download Link: Part of core distribution.
Documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6.1/lib/XML/Parser.html
PatchReader:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/author/JKEISER/PatchReade
r/
PPM Download Link: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/ppm/PatchReader.ppd
Documentation: http://www.johnkeiser.com/mozilla/Patch_Viewer.html
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix E. GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite
330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is
not allowed.
_________________________________________________________________
0. Preamble
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written
document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective
freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either
commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the
author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being
considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of
the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the
GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free
software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program
should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does.
But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any
textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a
printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose
is instruction or reference.
_________________________________________________________________
1. Applicability and Definition
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms
of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work.
Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document
or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or
translated into another language.
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the
Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or
authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related
matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall
subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics,
a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could
be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political
position regarding them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are
designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says
that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as
Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the
Document is released under this License.
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the general
public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available
drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for
automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text
formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup
has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers
is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII
without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using
a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for
human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary
formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors,
SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally
available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors
for output purposes only.
The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such
following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License
requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have
any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent
appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the
text.
_________________________________________________________________
2. Verbatim Copying
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially
or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and
the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are
reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to
those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or
control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.
However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you
distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the
conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you
may publicly display copies.
_________________________________________________________________
3. Copying in Quantity
If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and
the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the
copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts:
Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back
cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the
publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with
all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other
material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the
covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these
conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly,
you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the
actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more
than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along
with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a
publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete
Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general
network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using
public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must
take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies
in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus
accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last
time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or
retailers) of that edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them
a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
_________________________________________________________________
4. Modifications
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the
conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified
Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the
role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the
Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do
these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from
that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should,
if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document).
You may use the same title as a previous version if the original
publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version,
together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document
(all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
Version, as the publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to
the other copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice
giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms
of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and
required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to it an
item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the
Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section
entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year,
authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then
add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous
sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public
access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network
locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on.
These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network
location for a work that was published at least four years before the
Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers
to gives permission.
K. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", preserve
the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and
tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications
given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their
text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not
considered part of the section titles.
M. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be
included in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to conflict in
title with any Invariant Section.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices
that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the
Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as
invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in
the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from
any other section titles.
You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing
but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example,
statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an
organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a
passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of
Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text
and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by)
any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same
cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you
are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the
old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the
old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give
permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply
endorsement of any Modified Version.
_________________________________________________________________
5. Combining Documents
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions,
provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections
of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant
Sections of your combined work in its license notice.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple
identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there
are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents,
make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in
parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if
known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section
titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the
combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the
various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise
combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections entitled
"Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."
_________________________________________________________________
6. Collections of Documents
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this
License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the
collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim
copying of each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License
into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects
regarding verbatim copying of that document.
_________________________________________________________________
7. Aggregation with Independent Works
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the
Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation.
Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply
to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on
account of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative
works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of
the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire
aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround
only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers
around the whole aggregate.
_________________________________________________________________
8. Translation
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing
Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their
copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant
Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections.
You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include
the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement
between the translation and the original English version of this License,
the original English version will prevail.
_________________________________________________________________
9. Termination
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy,
modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who
have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have
their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
_________________________________________________________________
10. Future Revisions of this License
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be
similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or
any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms
and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that
has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose
any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
_________________________________________________________________
How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the
License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices
just after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute
and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the
Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A
copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
Documentation License".
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections"
instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover
Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being
LIST"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend
releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software
license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free
software.
Glossary
0-9, high ascii
.htaccess
Apache web server, and other NCSA-compliant web servers, observe the
convention of using files in directories called .htaccess to restrict
access to certain files. In Bugzilla, they are used to keep secret
files which would otherwise compromise your installation - e.g. the
localconfig file contains the password to your database. curious.
A
Apache
In this context, Apache is the web server most commonly used for
serving up Bugzilla pages. Contrary to popular belief, the apache web
server has nothing to do with the ancient and noble Native American
tribe, but instead derived its name from the fact that it was "a
patchy" version of the original NCSA world-wide-web server.
Useful Directives when configuring Bugzilla
AddHandler
Tell Apache that it's OK to run CGI scripts.
AllowOverride, Options
These directives are used to tell Apache many things about the
directory they apply to. For Bugzilla's purposes, we need them
to allow script execution and .htaccess overrides.
DirectoryIndex
Used to tell Apache what files are indexes. If you can not add
index.cgi to the list of valid files, you'll need to set
$index_html to 1 in localconfig so ./checksetup.pl will create
an index.html that redirects to index.cgi.
ScriptInterpreterSource
Used when running Apache on windows so the shebang line doesn't
have to be changed in every Bugzilla script.
For more information about how to configure Apache for Bugzilla, see
Section 2.2.4.1.
B
Bug
A "bug" in Bugzilla refers to an issue entered into the database
which has an associated number, assignments, comments, etc. Some also
refer to a "tickets" or "issues"; in the context of Bugzilla, they
are synonymous.
Bug Number
Each Bugzilla bug is assigned a number that uniquely identifies that
bug. The bug associated with a bug number can be pulled up via a
query, or easily from the very front page by typing the number in the
"Find" box.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is the world-leading free software bug tracking system.
C
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
CGI is an acronym for Common Gateway Interface. This is a standard
for interfacing an external application with a web server. Bugzilla
is an example of a CGI application.
Component
A Component is a subsection of a Product. It should be a narrow
category, tailored to your organization. All Products must contain at
least one Component (and, as a matter of fact, creating a Product
with no Components will create an error in Bugzilla).
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN)
CPAN stands for the "Comprehensive Perl Archive Network". CPAN
maintains a large number of extremely useful Perl modules -
encapsulated chunks of code for performing a particular task.
contrib
The contrib directory is a location to put scripts that have been
contributed to Bugzilla but are not a part of the official
distribution. These scripts are written by third parties and may be
in languages other than perl. For those that are in perl, there may
be additional modules or other requirements than those of the offical
distribution.
Note Scripts in the contrib directory are not offically supported by the
Bugzilla team and may break in between versions.
D
daemon
A daemon is a computer program which runs in the background. In
general, most daemons are started at boot time via System V init
scripts, or through RC scripts on BSD-based systems. mysqld, the
MySQL server, and apache, a web server, are generally run as daemons.
DOS Attack
A DOS, or Denial of Service attack, is when a user attempts to deny
access to a web server by repeatadly accessing a page or sending
malformed requests to a webserver. This can be effectively prevented
by using mod_throttle as described in Section 4.3.2. A D-DOS, or
Distributed Denial of Service attack, is when these requests come
from multiple sources at the same time. Unfortunately, these are much
more difficult to defend against.
G
Groups
The word "Groups" has a very special meaning to Bugzilla. Bugzilla's
main security mechanism comes by placing users in groups, and
assigning those groups certain privileges to view bugs in particular
Products in the Bugzilla database.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is cool, we should talk about it.
M
Message Transport Agent (MTA)
A Message Transport Agent is used to control the flow of email on a
system. The Mail::Mailer Perl module, which Bugzilla uses to send
email, can be configured to use many different underlying
implementations for actually sending the mail using the
mail_delivery_method parameter. Implementations other than sendmail
require that the sendmailnow param be set to on.
MySQL
MySQL is currently the required RDBMS for Bugzilla. MySQL can be
downloaded from http://www.mysql.com. While you should familiarize
yourself with all of the documentation, some high points are:
Backup
Methods for backing up your Bugzilla database.
Option Files
Information about how to configure MySQL using my.cnf.
Privilege System
Much more detailed information about the suggestions in Section
4.2.
P
Perl Package Manager (PPM)
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/PPM/
Product
A Product is a broad category of types of bugs, normally representing
a single piece of software or entity. In general, there are several
Components to a Product. A Product may define a group (used for
security) for all bugs entered into its Components.
Perl
First written by Larry Wall, Perl is a remarkable program language.
It has the benefits of the flexibility of an interpreted scripting
language (such as shell script), combined with the speed and power of
a compiled language, such as C. Bugzilla is maintained in Perl.
Q
QA
"QA", "Q/A", and "Q.A." are short for "Quality Assurance". In most
large software development organizations, there is a team devoted to
ensuring the product meets minimum standards before shipping. This
team will also generally want to track the progress of bugs over
their life cycle, thus the need for the "QA Contact" field in a bug.
R
Relational DataBase Managment System (RDBMS)
A relational database management system is a database system that
stores information in tables that are related to each other.
Regular Expression (regexp)
A regular expression is an expression used for pattern matching.
Documentation
S
Service
In Windows NT environment, a boot-time background application is
refered to as a service. These are generally managed through the
control pannel while logged in as an account with "Administrator"
level capabilities. For more information, consult your Windows manual
or the MSKB.
SGML
SGML stands for "Standard Generalized Markup Language". Created in
the 1980's to provide an extensible means to maintain documentation
based upon content instead of presentation, SGML has withstood the
test of time as a robust, powerful language. XML is the "baby
brother" of SGML; any valid XML document it, by definition, a valid
SGML document. The document you are reading is written and maintained
in SGML, and is also valid XML if you modify the Document Type
Definition.
T
Target Milestone
Target Milestones are Product goals. They are configurable on a
per-Product basis. Most software development houses have a concept of
"milestones" where the people funding a project expect certain
functionality on certain dates. Bugzilla facilitates meeting these
milestones by giving you the ability to declare by which milestone a
bug will be fixed, or an enhancement will be implemented.
Tool Command Language (TCL)
TCL is an open source scripting language available for Windows,
Macintosh, and Unix based systems. Bugzilla 1.0 was written in TCL
but never released. The first release of Bugzilla was 2.0, which was
when it was ported to perl.
Z
Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found
matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry had
the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this ... way back when, when Netscape released
version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had
been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release.
Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or
to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever
seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said
something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the
T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh.
So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think
of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs matching your
query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
--Terry Weissman