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The Bugzilla GuideMatthew P. BarnsonThe Bugzilla Team
This is the documentation for Bugzilla, the mozilla.org bug-tracking
system. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that powers
issue-tracking for hundreds of organizations around the world,
tracking millions of bugs.
This documentation is maintained in DocBook 4.1.2 XML format. Changes
are best submitted as plain text or SGML diffs, attached to a bug
filed in mozilla.org's Bugzilla.
_______________________________________________________________________
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. Introduction
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
3. Using Bugzilla
3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?
3.2. Hints and Tips
3.3. User Preferences
4. Installation
4.1. Step-by-step Install
4.2. Optional Additional Configuration
4.3. Win32 Installation Notes
4.4. Mac OS X Installation Notes
4.5. Troubleshooting
5. Administering Bugzilla
5.1. Bugzilla Configuration
5.2. User Administration
5.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
5.4. Voting
5.5. Groups and Group Security
5.6. Bugzilla Security
5.7. Template Customisation
5.8. Upgrading to New Releases
5.9. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. The Bugzilla Database
B.1. Database Schema Chart
B.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
C. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
C.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
C.2. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
D. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
D.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
D.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
D.3. Issuezilla
D.4. Scarab
D.5. Perforce SCM
D.6. SourceForge
Glossary
List of Examples
4-1. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft Windows
4-2. Installing OpenInteract ppd Modules manually on Microsoft Windows
4-3. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12 or
earlier
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
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 below.
--Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Matthew P. Barnson and The Bugzilla Team
If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or
publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact The
Bugzilla Team.
_________________________________________________________________
1.1.1. 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 DEFINITIONS
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.
_________________________________________________________________
1.2. Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the
concepts, examples, and other content 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.
All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically
noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as
affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
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 in every situation where it is appropriate. It is an
extremely versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an
ideal operating environment for Bugzilla.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
installing Bugzilla and at regular intervals thereafter. If you implement
any suggestion in this Guide, implement this one!
Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure that
all easily-exploitable bugs or options are documented or fixed in the code,
security holes surely exist. Great care should be taken both in the
installation and usage of this software. Carefully consider the implications
of installing other network services with Bugzilla. The Bugzilla development
team members, Netscape Communications, America Online Inc., and any
affiliated developers or sponsors assume no liability for your use of this
product. You have the source code to this product, and are responsible for
auditing it yourself to ensure your security needs are met.
_________________________________________________________________
1.3. New Versions
This is the 2.16 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to match the
current version of Bugzilla. If you are reading this from any source other
than those below, please check one of these mirrors to make sure you are
reading an up-to-date version of the Guide.
This document can be found in the following places:
* bugzilla.org
* The Linux Documentation Project
The latest version of this document can always be checked out via CVS.
Please follow the instructions available at the Mozilla CVS page, and
check out the mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ subtree.
The Bugzilla Guide is currently only available in English. If you
would like to volunteer to translate it, 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 for the Herculaean task of pulling together the Bugzilla
Guide and shepherding it to 2.14.
Terry Weissman for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README upon
which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
Tara Hernandez for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry
left mozilla.org
Dave Lawrence for providing insight into the key differences between Red
Hat's customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for the "Red Hat
Bugzilla" appendix
Dawn Endico for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with my
incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools
Last but not least, all the members of the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools
newsgroup. Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this
could never have happened.
Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions to this
documentation (in no particular order):
Zach Liption, Andrew Pearson, Spencer Smith, Eric Hanson, Kevin Brannen, Ron
Teitelbaum, Jacob Steenhagen, Joe Robins, Gervase Markham.
_________________________________________________________________
1.5. Document Conventions
This document uses the following conventions:
Descriptions Appearance
Warnings
Caution
Don't run with scissors!
Hint
Tip
Would you like a breath mint?
Notes
Note
Dear John...
Information requiring special attention
Warning
Read this or the cat gets it.
File Names filename
Directory Names directory
Commands to be typed command
Applications Names application
Prompt of users command under bash shell bash$
Prompt of root users command under bash shell bash#
Prompt of user command under tcsh shell tcsh$
Environment Variables VARIABLE
Emphasized word word
Code Example
<para>
Beginning and end of paragraph
</para>
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 2. Introduction
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
Bugzilla is a bug- or issue-tracking system. Bug-tracking systems allow
individual or groups of developers effectively to keep track of outstanding
problems with their product. Bugzilla was originally written by Terry
Weissman in a programming language called TCL, to replace a rudimentary
bug-tracking database used internally by Netscape Communications. Terry
later ported Bugzilla to Perl from TCL, and in Perl it remains to this day.
Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors at the time charged
enormous licensing fees, and Bugzilla quickly became a favorite of the
open-source crowd (with its genesis in the open-source browser project,
Mozilla). It is now the de-facto standard defect-tracking system against
which all others are measured.
Bugzilla boasts many advanced features. These include:
* Powerful searching
* User-configurable email notifications of bug changes
* Full change history
* Inter-bug dependency tracking and graphing
* Excellent attachment management
* Integrated, product-based, granular security schema
* Fully security-audited, and runs under Perl's taint mode
* A robust, stable RDBMS back-end
* Web, XML, email and console interfaces
* Completely customisable and/or localisable web user interface
* Extensive configurability
* Smooth upgrade pathway between versions
_________________________________________________________________
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
For many years, defect-tracking software has remained principally the domain
of large software development houses. Even then, most shops never bothered
with bug-tracking software, and instead simply relied on shared lists and
email to monitor the status of defects. This procedure is error-prone and
tends to cause those bugs judged least significant by developers to be
dropped or ignored.
These days, many companies are finding that integrated defect-tracking
systems reduce downtime, increase productivity, and raise customer
satisfaction with their systems. Along with full disclosure, an open
bug-tracker allows manufacturers to keep in touch with their clients and
resellers, to communicate about problems effectively throughout the data
management chain. Many corporations have also discovered that
defect-tracking helps reduce costs by providing IT support accountability,
telephone support knowledge bases, and a common, well-understood system for
accounting for unusual system or software issues.
But why should you use Bugzilla?
Bugzilla is very adaptable to various situations. Known uses currently
include IT support queues, Systems Administration deployment management,
chip design and development problem tracking (both pre-and-post
fabrication), and software and hardware bug tracking for luminaries such as
Redhat, NASA, Linux-Mandrake, and VA Systems. Combined with systems such as
CVS, Bonsai, or Perforce SCM, Bugzilla provides a powerful, easy-to-use
solution to configuration management and replication problems.
Bugzilla can dramatically increase the productivity and accountability of
individual employees by providing a documented workflow and positive
feedback for good performance. How many times do you wake up in the morning,
remembering that you were supposed to do something today, but you just can't
quite remember? Put it in Bugzilla, and you have a record of it from which
you can extrapolate milestones, predict product versions for integration,
and follow the discussion trail that led to critical decisions.
Ultimately, Bugzilla puts the power in your hands to improve your value to
your employer or business while providing a usable framework for your
natural attention to detail and knowledge store to flourish.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3. Using Bugzilla
3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?
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, it does not necessarily have all Bugzilla
features enabled, and often runs cutting-edge versions of Bugzilla for
testing, so some things may work slightly differently than mentioned here.
_________________________________________________________________
3.1.1. 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 above, which contains your login name (generally the same
as the email address), and a password you can use to access your
account. This password is randomly generated, and can be changed
to something more memorable.
3. Click the "Log In" link in the yellow area 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 for authentication so,
unless your IP address changes, you should not have to log in again.
_________________________________________________________________
3.1.2. 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.
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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.1.3. Searching for Bugs
The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find any bug
report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can play
with it here: 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. Once you've defined a search,
you can either run it, or save it as a Remembered Query, which can
optionally appear in the footer of your pages.
Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts, which have their own
context-sensitive help .
_________________________________________________________________
3.1.4. Bug Lists
If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned. The default
search is to return all open bugs on the system - don't try running this
search on a Bugzilla installation with a lot of bugs!
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.
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 owner.
Send mail to bug owners: Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the
list.
Edit this query: 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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.1.5. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2. Hints and Tips
This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have been
developed.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.1. Autolinkification
Bugzilla comments are plain text - so posting HTML will result in literal
HTML tags rather than being interpreted by a browser. 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
http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get linkified in the obvious
manner are:
bug 12345
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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.3. 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,
particularly if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line
ASCII art creations are not.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.4. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.5. Filing Bugs
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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3. 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
four tabs:
_________________________________________________________________
3.3.1. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3.2. Email Settings
On this tab you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you from
Bugzilla, opting in our out depending on your relationship to the bug and
the change that was made to it. (Note that you can also do client-side
filtering using the X-Bugzilla-Reason header which Bugzilla adds to all
bugmail.)
By entering user email names, delineated by commas, into the "Users to
watch" text entry box you can receive a copy of all the bugmail of other
users (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 can't see it, ask your administrator.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3.3. Page Footer
On the Search page, you can store queries in Bugzilla, so if you regularly
run a particular query it is just a drop-down menu away. Once you have a
stored query, you can come here to request that it also be displayed in your
page footer.
_________________________________________________________________
3.3.4. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 4. Installation
4.1. Step-by-step Install
4.1.1. Introduction
Bugzilla has been successfully installed under Solaris, Linux, and Win32.
Win32 is not yet officially supported, but many people have got it working
fine. Please see the Win32 Installation Notes for further advice on getting
Bugzilla to work on Microsoft Windows.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.2. Package List
Note
If you are running the very most recent version of Perl and MySQL
(both the executables and development libraries) on your system, you
can skip these manual installation steps for the Perl modules by using
Bundle::Bugzilla; see Using Bundle::Bugzilla instead of manually
installing Perl modules.
The software packages necessary for the proper running of Bugzilla
(with download links) are:
1. MySQL database server (3.22.5 or greater)
2. Perl (5.005 or greater, 5.6.1 is recommended if you wish to use
Bundle::Bugzilla)
3. Perl Modules (minimum version):
a. Template (v2.07)
b. AppConfig (v1.52)
c. Text::Wrap (v2001.0131)
d. File::Spec (v0.8.2)
e. Data::Dumper (any)
f. DBD::mysql (v1.2209)
g. DBI (v1.13)
h. Date::Parse (any)
i. CGI::Carp (any)
and, optionally:
a. GD (v1.19) for bug charting
b. Chart::Base (v0.99c) for bug charting
c. XML::Parser (any) for the XML interface
d. MIME::Parser (any) for the email interface
4. The web server of your choice. Apache is highly recommended.
Warning
It is a good idea, while installing Bugzilla, to ensure that there is
some kind of firewall between you and the rest of the Internet,
because your machine may be insecure for periods during the install.
Many installation steps require an active Internet connection to
complete, but you must take care to ensure that at no point is your
machine vulnerable to an attack.
Note
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 (for Bugzilla email integration)
bash# urpmi apache-modules
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.3. MySQL
Visit the MySQL homepage at www.mysql.com to grab and install the latest
stable release of the server.
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. You can set the data
directory as an option to configure if you build MySQL from source
yourself.
If you install from something other than an RPM or Debian package, you
will need to add mysqld to your init scripts so the server daemon will
come back up whenever your machine reboots. Further discussion of UNIX
init sequences are beyond the scope of this guide.
Change your init script to start mysqld with the ability to accept
large packets. By default, mysqld only accepts packets up to 64K long.
This limits the size of attachments you may put on bugs. If you add -O
max_allowed_packet=1M to the command that starts mysqld (or
safe_mysqld), then you will be able to have attachments up to about 1
megabyte. There is a Bugzilla parameter for maximum attachment size;
you should configure it to match the value you choose here.
If you plan on running Bugzilla and MySQL on the same machine,
consider using the --skip-networking option in the init script. This
enhances security by preventing network access to MySQL.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.4. Perl
Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. Perl can
be got in source form from perl.com for the rare *nix systems which don't
have it. Although Bugzilla runs with all post-5.005 versions of Perl, it's a
good idea to be up to the very latest version if you can when running
Bugzilla. As of this writing, that is Perl version 5.6.1.
Tip
You can skip the following Perl module installation steps by
installing Bundle::Bugzilla from CPAN, which installs all required
modules for you.
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Bundle::Bugzilla"'
Bundle::Bugzilla doesn't include GD, Chart::Base, or MIME::Parser,
which are not essential to a basic Bugzilla install. If installing
this bundle fails, you should install each module individually to
isolate the problem.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5. Perl Modules
All Perl modules can be found on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
(CPAN). The CPAN servers have a real tendency to bog down, so please use
mirrors.
Quality, general Perl module installation instructions can be found on the
CPAN website, but the easy thing to do is to just use the CPAN shell which
does all the hard work for you. To use the CPAN shell to install a module:
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "<modulename>"'
To do it the hard way:
Untar the module tarball -- it should create its own directory
CD to the directory just created, and enter the following commands:
1. bash# perl Makefile.PL
2. bash# make
3. bash# make test
4. bash# make install
Warning
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.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.1. DBI
The DBI module is a generic Perl module used the MySQL-related modules. As
long as your Perl installation was done correctly the DBI module should be a
breeze. It's a mixed Perl/C module, but Perl's MakeMaker system simplifies
the C compilation greatly.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.2. Data::Dumper
The Data::Dumper module provides data structure persistence for Perl
(similar to Java's serialization). It comes with later sub-releases of Perl
5.004, but a re-installation just to be sure it's available won't hurt
anything.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.3. MySQL-related modules
The Perl/MySQL interface requires a few mutually-dependent Perl modules.
These modules are grouped together into the the Msql-Mysql-modules package.
The MakeMaker 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 and a testing user of 'test' with a
null password should find itself with sufficient access to run tests on the
'test' database which MySQL created upon installation.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.4. TimeDate modules
Many of the more common date/time/calendar related Perl modules have been
grouped into a bundle similar to the MySQL modules bundle. This bundle is
stored on the CPAN under the name TimeDate. The component module we're most
interested in is the Date::Format module, but installing all of them is
probably a good idea anyway.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.5. GD (optional)
The GD library was written by Thomas Boutell a long while ago to
programatically generate images in C. Since then it's become the defacto
standard for programatic image construction. The Perl bindings to it found
in the GD library are used on millions of web pages to generate graphs on
the fly. That's what Bugzilla will be using it for so you must install it if
you want any of the graphing to work.
Note
The Perl GD library 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 library README. If compiling GD
fails, it's probably because you're missing a required library.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.6. Chart::Base (optional)
The Chart module provides Bugzilla with on-the-fly charting abilities. It
can be installed in the usual fashion after it has been fetched from CPAN.
Note that earlier versions that 0.99c used GIFs, which are no longer
supported by the latest versions of GD.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.5.7. Template Toolkit
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. However, there are known problems with XS Stash and Perl
5.005_02 and lower. If you wish to use these older versions of Perl, please
use the regular stash.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.6. HTTP Server
You have a freedom of choice here - Apache, Netscape or any other server on
UNIX would do. You can run the web server on a different machine than MySQL,
but need to adjust the MySQL "bugs" user permissions accordingly.
Note
We strongly recommend Apache as the web server to use. The Bugzilla
Guide installation instructions, in general, assume you are using
Apache. If you have got Bugzilla working using another webserver,
please share your experiences with us.
You'll want to make sure that your web server will run any file with
the .cgi extension as a CGI and not just display it. If you're using
Apache that means uncommenting the following line in the httpd.conf
file:
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
With Apache you'll also want to make sure that within the httpd.conf
file the line:
Options ExecCGI AllowOverride Limit
is in the stanza that covers the directories into which you intend to
put the bugzilla .html and .cgi files.
Note
AllowOverride Limit allows the use of a Deny statement in the
.htaccess file generated by checksetup.pl
Users of older versions of Apache may find the above lines in the
srm.conf and access.conf files, respecitvely.
Warning
There are important files and directories that should not be a served
by the HTTP server - most files in the "data" and "shadow" directories
and the "localconfig" file. You should configure your HTTP server to
not serve these files. Failure to do so will expose critical passwords
and other data. Please see .htaccess files and security for details on
how to do this for Apache; the checksetup.pl script should create
appropriate .htaccess files for you.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.7. Bugzilla
You should untar the Bugzilla files into a directory that you're willing to
make writable by the default web server user (probably "nobody"). You may
decide to put the files in the main web space for your web server or perhaps
in /usr/local with a symbolic link in the web space that points to the
Bugzilla directory.
Tip
If you symlink the bugzilla directory into your Apache's HTML
heirarchy, you may receive Forbidden errors unless you add the
"FollowSymLinks" directive to the <Directory> entry for the HTML root
in httpd.conf.
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 post-install checksetup.pl script, which locks down
your installation.
Lastly, you'll need to set up a symbolic link to
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl for the correct location of your Perl
executable (probably /usr/bin/perl). Otherwise you must hack all the
.cgi files to change where they look for Perl. This can be done using
the following Perl one-liner, but I suggest using the symlink approach
to avoid upgrade hassles.
perl -pi -e
's@#\!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl@#\!/usr/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm
processmail syncshadowdb
Change /usr/bin/perl to match the location of Perl on your machine.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.8. Setting Up the MySQL Database
After you've gotten all the software installed and working you're ready to
start preparing the database for its life as the back end to a high quality
bug tracker.
First, you'll want to fix MySQL permissions to allow access from Bugzilla.
For the purpose of this Installation section, the Bugzilla username will be
"bugs", and will have minimal permissions.
Begin by giving the MySQL root user a password. MySQL passwords are limited
to 16 characters.
bash# mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('<new_password'>) WHERE
user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
From this point on, if you need to access MySQL as the MySQL root
user, you will need to use mysql -u root -p and enter <new_password>.
Remember that MySQL user names have nothing to do with Unix user names
(login names).
Next, we use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs" user, and grant
sufficient permissions for checksetup.pl, which we'll use later, to
work its magic. 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.
Remember to set <bugs_password> to some unique password.
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,
ALTER,CREATE,DROP,REFERENCES ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY
'<bugs_password>';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.9. checksetup.pl
Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script. (Many thanks to Holger Schurig for
writing this script!) This script is designed to make sure your MySQL
database and other configuration options are consistent with the Bugzilla
CGI files. It will make sure Bugzilla files and directories have reasonable
permissions, set up the data directory, and create all the MySQL tables.
bash# ./checksetup.pl
The first time you run it, it will create a file called localconfig.
This file contains a variety of settings you may need to tweak
including how Bugzilla should connect to the MySQL database.
The connection settings include:
1. server's host: just use "localhost" if the MySQL server is local
2. database name: "bugs" if you're following these directions
3. MySQL username: "bugs" if you're following these directions
4. Password for the "bugs" MySQL account; (<bugs_password>) above
Once you are happy with the settings, su to the user your web server
runs as, and re-run checksetup.pl. (Note: on some security-conscious
systems, you may need to change the login shell for the webserver
account before you can do this.) On this second run, it will create
the database and an administrator account for which you will be
prompted to provide information.
Note
The checksetup.pl script is designed so that you can run it at any
time without causing harm. You should run it after any upgrade to
Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.10. Securing MySQL
If you followed the installation instructions for setting up your "bugs" and
"root" user in MySQL, much of this should not apply to you. If you are
upgrading an existing installation of Bugzilla, you should pay close
attention to this section.
Most MySQL installs have "interesting" default security parameters:
mysqld defaults to running as root
it defaults to allowing external network connections
it has a known port number, and is easy to detect
it defaults to no passwords whatsoever
it defaults to allowing "File_Priv"
This means anyone from anywhere on the internet can not only drop the
database with one SQL command, and they can write as root to the
system.
To see your permissions do:
bash# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> show tables;
mysql> select * from user;
mysql> select * from db;
To fix the gaping holes:
DELETE FROM user WHERE User='';
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password') WHERE user='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
If you're not running "mit-pthreads" you can use:
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@localhost;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
With "mit-pthreads" you'll need to modify the "globals.pl"
Mysql->Connect line to specify a specific host name instead of
"localhost", and accept external connections:
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@bounce.hop.com;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Consider also:
1. Turning off external networking with "--skip-networking", unless
you have "mit-pthreads", in which case you can't. Without
networking, MySQL connects with a Unix domain socket.
2. using the --user= option to mysqld to run it as an unprivileged
user.
3. running MySQL in a chroot jail
4. running the httpd in a chroot jail
5. making sure the MySQL passwords are different from the OS
passwords (MySQL "root" has nothing to do with system "root").
6. running MySQL on a separate untrusted machine
7. making backups ;-)
_________________________________________________________________
4.1.11. Configuring Bugzilla
You should run through the parameters on the Edit Parameters page (link in
the footer) and set them all to appropriate values. They key parameters are
documented in Section 5.1.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2. Optional Additional Configuration
4.2.1. Dependency Charts
As well as the text-based dependency graphs, Bugzilla also supports
dependency graphing, 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.
So, to get this working, 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 (the default
for the webdotbase param). Note that AT&T's server won't work if
Bugzilla is only accessible using HTTPS.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2. Bug Graphs
As long as you installed the GD and Graph::Base Perl modules you might as
well turn on the nifty Bugzilla bug reporting graphs.
Add a cron entry like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:
bash# crontab -e
5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl
After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the
Bug Reports page.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.3. The Whining Cron
By now you have a fully functional Bugzilla, but what good are bugs if
they're not annoying? To help make those bugs more annoying you can set up
Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at engineers which leave
their bugs in the NEW state without triaging them.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry
(for help on that see that crontab man page):
cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl
Tip
Depending on your system, crontab may have several manpages. The
following command should lead you to the most useful page for this
purpose:
man 5 crontab
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.4. LDAP Authentication
Warning
This information on using the LDAP authentication options with
Bugzilla is old, and the authors do not know of anyone who has tested
it. Approach with caution.
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.
Using LDAP for Bugzilla authentication requires the Mozilla::LDAP (aka
PerLDAP) Perl module. The Mozilla::LDAP module in turn requires
Netscape's Directory SDK for C. After you have installed the SDK, then
install the PerLDAP module. Mozilla::LDAP and the Directory SDK for C
are both available for download from mozilla.org.
Set the Param 'useLDAP' to "On" **only** if you will be using an LDAP
directory for authentication. Be very careful when setting up this
parameter; if you set LDAP authentication, but do not have a valid
LDAP directory set up, you will not be able to log back in to Bugzilla
once you log out. (If this happens, you can get back in by manually
editing the data/params file, and setting useLDAP back to 0.)
If using LDAP, you must set the three additional parameters: Set
LDAPserver to the name (and optionally port) of your LDAP server. If
no port is specified, it defaults to the default port of 389. (e.g
"ldap.mycompany.com" or "ldap.mycompany.com:1234") Set LDAPBaseDN to
the base DN for searching for users in your LDAP directory. (e.g.
"ou=People,o=MyCompany") uids must be unique under the DN specified
here. Set LDAPmailattribute to the name of the attribute in your LDAP
directory which contains the primary email address. On most directory
servers available, this is "mail", but you may need to change this.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious
Javascript code
It is possible for a Bugzilla to execute malicious Javascript code. Due to
internationalization concerns, we are unable to incorporate the code changes
necessary to fulfill the CERT advisory requirements mentioned in
http://www.cet.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_mitigation.html/#3. Executing
the following code snippet from a UNIX command shell will rectify the
problem if your Bugzilla installation is intended for an English-speaking
audience. As always, be sure your Bugzilla installation has a good backup
before making changes, and I recommend you understand what the script is
doing before executing it.
bash# perl -pi -e "s/Content-Type\: text\/html/Content-Type\: text\/html\; char
set=ISO-8859-1/i" *.cgi *.pl
All this one-liner command does is search for all instances of
"Content-type: text/html" and replaces it with "Content-Type:
text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" . This specification prevents possible
Javascript attacks on the browser, and is suggested for all
English-speaking sites. For non-English-speaking Bugzilla sites, I
suggest changing "ISO-8859-1", above, to "UTF-8".
Note: using <meta> tags to set the charset is not recommended, as
there's a bug in Netscape 4.x which causes pages marked up in this way
to load twice.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.6. .htaccess files and security
To enhance the security of your Bugzilla installation, Bugzilla's
checksetup.pl script will generate .htaccess files which the Apache
webserver can use to restrict access to the bugzilla data files. These
.htaccess files will not work with Apache 1.2.x - but this has security
holes, so you shouldn't be using it anyway.
Note
If you are using an alternate provider of webdot services for graphing
(as described when viewing editparams.cgi in your web browser), you
will need to change the ip address in data/webdot/.htaccess to the ip
address of the webdot server that you are using.
The default .htaccess file may not provide adequate access
restrictions, depending on your web server configuration. Be sure to
check the <Directory> entries for your Bugzilla directory so that the
.htaccess file is allowed to override web server defaults. For
instance, let's assume your installation of Bugzilla is installed to
/usr/local/bugzilla . You should have this <Directory> entry in your
httpd.conf file:
<Directory /usr/local/bugzilla/>
Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes +Includes +ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
The important part above is "AllowOverride All" . Without that, the
.htaccess file created by checksetup.pl will not have sufficient
permissions to protect your Bugzilla installation.
If you are using Internet Information Server (IIS) or another web
server which does not observe .htaccess conventions, you can disable
their creation by editing localconfig and setting the $create_htaccess
variable to 0.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.7. mod_throttle and Security
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. 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/Throttle/. Follow the instructions to install
into your Apache install. This module only functions with the Apache web
server! You may use the ThrottleClientIP command provided by this module to
accomplish this goal. See the Module Instructions for more information.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3. Win32 Installation Notes
This section covers installation on Microsoft Windows. Bugzilla has been
made to work on Win32 platforms, but the Bugzilla team wish to emphasise
that The easiest way to install Bugzilla on Intel-archiecture machines is to
install some variant of GNU/Linux, then follow the UNIX installation
instructions in this Guide. If you have any influence in the platform choice
for running this system, please choose GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft
Windows.
Warning
After that warning, here's the situation for 2.16 and Windows. It
doesn't work at all out of the box. You are almost certainly better
off getting the 2.17 version from CVS (after consultation with the
Bugzilla Team to make sure you are pulling on a stable day) because
we'll be doing a load of work to make the Win32 experience more
pleasant than it is now.
If you still want to try this, to have any hope of getting it to work,
you'll need to apply the mail patch from bug 124174. After that,
you'll need to read the (outdated) installation instructions below,
some (probably a lot better) more recent ones kindly provided by Toms
Baugis and Jean-Sebastien Guay, and also check the Bugzilla 2.16 Win32
update page . If we get time, we'll write some better installation
instructions for 2.16 and put them up there. But no promises.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.1. Win32 Installation: Step-by-step
Note
You should be familiar with, and cross-reference, the rest of the
Bugzilla Installation section while performing your Win32
installation.
Making Bugzilla work on Microsoft Windows is no picnic. Support for
Win32 has improved dramatically in the last few releases, but, if you
choose to proceed, you should be a very skilled Windows Systems
Administrator with strong troubleshooting abilities, a high tolerance
for pain, and moderate perl skills. Bugzilla on NT requires hacking
source code and implementing some advanced utilities. What follows is
the recommended installation procedure for Win32; additional
suggestions are provided in Appendix A .
1. Install Apache Web Server for Windows, and copy the Bugzilla files
somewhere Apache can serve them. Please follow all the
instructions referenced in Bugzilla Installation regarding your
Apache configuration, particularly instructions regarding the
"AddHandler" parameter and "ExecCGI" .
Note
You may also use Internet Information Server or Personal Web Server
for this purpose. However, setup is quite different. If ActivePerl
doesn't seem to handle your file associations correctly (for .cgi and
.pl files), please consult Appendix A .
If you are going to use IIS, if on Windows NT you must be updated to
at least Service Pack 4. Windows 2000 ships with a sufficient version
of IIS.
2. Install ActivePerl for Windows. Check
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl for a
current compiled binary.
Please also check the following links to fully understand the
status of ActivePerl on Win32: Perl Porting , and Perl on Win32
FAQ
3. Use ppm from your perl\bin directory to install the following
packs: DBI, DBD-Mysql, TimeDate, Chart, Date-Calc, Date-Manip, GD,
AppConfig, and Template. You may need to extract them from .zip
format using Winzip or other unzip program first. Most of these
additional ppm modules can be downloaded from ActiveState, but
AppConfig and Template should be obtained from OpenInteract using
the instructions on the Template Toolkit web site .
Note
You can find a list of modules at
http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/5xx-builds-only/ or
http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus
The syntax for ppm is: C:> ppm <modulename>
Example 4-1. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft
Windows
C:> ppm DBD-Mysql
Watch your capitalization!
ActiveState's 5.6Plus directory also contains an AppConfig ppm, so
you might see the following error when trying to install the
version at OpenInteract:
Error installing package 'AppConfig': Read a PPD for 'AppConfig',
but it is not intended for this build of Perl
(MSWin32-x86-multi-thread)
If so, download both the tarball and the ppd directly from
OpenInteract, then run ppm from within the same directory to which
you downloaded those files and install the package by referencing
the ppd file explicitly via in the install command, f.e.:
Example 4-2. Installing OpenInteract ppd Modules manually on
Microsoft Windows
install C:\AppConfig.ppd
4. Install MySQL for NT.
Note
You can download MySQL for Windows NT from MySQL.com . Some find it
helpful to use the WinMySqlAdmin utility, included with the download,
to set up the database.
5. Setup MySQL
a. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
b. mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='';
c. mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD ('new_password')
WHERE user='root';
"new_password" , above, indicates whatever password you wish
to use for your "root" user.
d. mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER,
CREATE, DROP, REFERENCES ON bugs.* to bugs@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY 'bugs_password';
"bugs_password" , above, indicates whatever password you wish
to use for your "bugs" user.
e. mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
f. mysql> create database bugs;
g. mysql> exit;
h. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root -p reload
6. Edit checksetup.pl in your Bugzilla directory. Change this line:
my $webservergid =
getgrnam($my_webservergroup);
to
my $webservergid =
$my_webservergroup;
or the name of the group you wish to own the files explicitly:
my $webservergid =
'Administrators'
7. Run checksetup.pl from the Bugzilla directory.
8. Edit localconfig to suit your requirements. Set $db_pass to your
"bugs_password" from step 5.d , and $webservergroup to "8" .
Note
Not sure on the "8" for $webservergroup above. If it's wrong, please
send corrections.
9. Edit defparams.pl to suit your requirements. Particularly, set
DefParam("maintainer") and DefParam("urlbase") to match your
install.
Note
This is yet another step I'm not sure of, since the maintainer of this
documentation does not maintain Bugzilla on NT. If you can confirm or
deny that this step is required, please let me know.
10.
Note
There are several alternatives to Sendmail that will work on Win32.
The one mentioned here is a suggestion , not a requirement. Some other
mail packages that can work include BLAT , Windmail , Mercury Sendmail
, and the CPAN Net::SMTP Perl module (available in .ppm). Every option
requires some hacking of the Perl scripts for Bugzilla to make it
work. The option here simply requires the least.
1. Download NTsendmail, available from www.ntsendmail.com . You
must have a "real" mail server which allows you to relay off
it in your $ENV{"NTsendmail"} (which you should probably
place in globals.pl)
2. Put ntsendmail.pm into your .\perl\lib directory.
3. Add to globals.pl:
# these settings configure the NTsendmail
process use NTsendmail;
$ENV{"NTsendmail"}="your.smtpserver.box";
$ENV{"NTsendmail_debug"}=1;
$ENV{"NTsendmail_max_tries"}=5;
Note
Some mention to also edit $db_pass in globals.pl to be your
"bugs_password" . Although this may get you around some problem
authenticating to your database, since globals.pl is not normally
restricted by .htaccess , your database password is exposed to whoever
uses your web server.
4. Find and comment out all occurences of " open(SENDMAIL " in
your Bugzilla directory. Then replace them with:
# new sendmail functionality my $mail=new
NTsendmail; my $from="bugzilla\@your.machine.name.tld"; my
$to=$login; my $subject=$urlbase;
$mail->send($from,$to,$subject,$msg);
Note
Some have found success using the commercial product, Windmail . You
could try replacing your sendmail calls with:
open SENDMAIL,
"|\"C:/General/Web/tools/Windmail 4.0 Beta/windmail\" -t >
mail.log";
or something to that effect.
11. Change all references in all files from processmail to
processmail.pl , and rename processmail to processmail.pl .
Note
Many think this may be a change we want to make for main-tree
Bugzilla. It's painless for the UNIX folks, and will make the Win32
people happier.
Note
Some people have suggested using the Net::SMTP Perl module instead of
NTsendmail or the other options listed here. You can change
processmail.pl to make this work.
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server>'); #connect to SMTP ser
ver
$smtp->mail('<your name>@<you smpt server>');# use the sender's adress here
$smtp->to($tolist); # recipient's address
$smtp->data(); # Start the mail
$smtp->datasend($msg);
$smtp->dataend(); # Finish sending the mail
$smtp->quit; # Close the SMTP connection
$logstr = "$logstr; mail sent to $tolist $cclist";
}
here is a test mail program for Net::SMTP:
use Net::SMTP;
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server', Timeout => 30, Debug
=> 1, ); # connect to SMTP server
$smtp->auth;
$smtp->mail('you@yourcompany.com');# use the sender's adress
here
$smtp->to('someotherAddress@someotherdomain.com'); #
recipient's address
$smtp->data(); # Start the mail
$smtp->datasend('test');
$smtp->dataend(); # Finish sending the mail
$smtp->quit; # Close the SMTP connection
exit;
12.
Note
This step is optional if you are using IIS or another web server which
only decides on an interpreter based upon the file extension (.pl),
rather than the "shebang" line (#/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl)
Modify the path to perl on the first line (#!) of all files to
point to your Perl installation, and add "perl" to the beginning
of all Perl system calls that use a perl script as an argument.
This may take you a while. There is a "setperl.csh" utility to
speed part of this procedure, available in the Useful Patches and
Utilities for Bugzilla section of The Bugzilla Guide. However, it
requires the Cygwin GNU-compatible environment for Win32 be set up
in order to work. See http://www.cygwin.com/ for details on
obtaining Cygwin.
13. Modify the invocation of all system() calls in all perl scripts in
your Bugzilla directory. You should specify the full path to perl
for each system() call. For instance, change this line in
processmail:
system ("./processmail",@ARGLIST);
</programlisting> to
<programlisting>
system ("C:\\perl\\bin\\perl", "processmail", @ARGLIST);
14. Add binmode() calls so attachments will work ( bug 62000 ).
Because Microsoft Windows based systems handle binary files
different than Unix based systems, you need to add the following
lines to createattachment.cgi and showattachment.cgi before the
require 'CGI.pl'; line.
binmode(STDIN);
binmode(STDOUT);
Note
According to bug 62000 , the perl documentation says that you should
always use binmode() when dealing with binary files, but never when
dealing with text files. That seems to suggest that rather than
arbitrarily putting binmode() at the beginning of the attachment
files, there should be logic to determine if binmode() is needed or
not.
Tip
If you are using IIS or Personal Web Server, you must add cgi
relationships to Properties -> Home directory (tab) -> Application
Settings (section) -> Configuration (button), such as:
.cgi to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s
%s .pl to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s %s
GET,HEAD,POST
Change the path to Perl to match your install, of course.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.2. Additional Windows Tips
Tip
From Andrew Pearson:
You can make Bugzilla work with Personal Web Server for Windows 98
and higher, as well as for IIS 4.0. Microsoft has information
available at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q231/9/98.ASP
Basically you need to add two String Keys in the registry at the
following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Paramete
rs\ScriptMap
The keys should be called ".pl" and ".cgi", and both should have a
value something like: c:/perl/bin/perl.exe "%s" "%s"
The KB article only talks about .pl, but it goes into more detail
and provides a perl test script.
Tip
If attempting to run Bugzilla 2.12 or older, you will need to remove
encrypt() calls from the Perl source. This is not necessary for
Bugzilla 2.13 and later, which includes the current release, Bugzilla
&bz-ver;.
Example 4-3. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12
or earlier
Replace this:
SendSQL("SELECT encrypt(" . SqlQuote($enteredpwd) .
", " . SQLQuote(substr($realcryptpwd, 0, 2)) . ")"); my
$enteredcryptpwd = FetchOneColumn();
with this:
my $enteredcryptpwd = $enteredpwd
in cgi.pl.
_________________________________________________________________
4.4. Mac OS X Installation Notes
There are a lot of common libraries and utilities out there that Apple did
not include with Mac OS X, but which run perfectly well on it. The GD
library, which Bugzilla needs to do bug graphs, is one of these.
The easiest way to get a lot of these is with 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 run the following as root: fink install gd
It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to
install all of the dependencies. Then watch it work.
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 for
libgd will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and
/usr/local/include. Because of these changed locations for the libraries,
the Perl GD module will not install directly via CPAN, because it looks for
the specific paths instead of getting them from your environment. But
there's a way around that :-)
Instead of typing "install GD" at the cpan> prompt, type look GD. This
should go through the motions of downloading the latest version of the GD
module, then it will open a shell and drop you into the build directory.
Apply this patch to the Makefile.PL file (save the patch into a file and use
the command patch < patchfile.)
Then, run these commands to finish the installation of the GD module:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
And don't forget to run exit to get back to CPAN.
_________________________________________________________________
4.5. Troubleshooting
This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems.
_________________________________________________________________
4.5.1. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
4.5.2. 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}};
by
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};
(note the S added to NAME.)
_________________________________________________________________
4.5.3. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 5. Administering Bugzilla
5.1. 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.
1. 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.
2. 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/.
3. usebuggroups: This dictates whether or not to implement
group-based security for Bugzilla. If set, Bugzilla bugs can have
an associated 'group', defining which users are allowed to see and
edit the bug.
Set "usebuggroups" to "on" only if you may wish to restrict access
to particular bugs to certain groups of users. I suggest leaving
this parameter off while initially testing your Bugzilla.
4. usebuggroupsentry: 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 places all
newly-created bugs in the group for their product immediately.
5. 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. 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, 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. Set "shadowdb" to e.g. "bug_shadowdb" if you will be
running a *very* large installation of Bugzilla.
Note
Enabling "shadowdb" can adversely affect the stability of your
installation of Bugzilla. You should regularly check that your
database is in sync. It is often advisable to force a shadow database
sync nightly via "cron".
If you use the "shadowdb" option, it is only natural that you
should turn the "queryagainstshadowdb" option on as well.
Otherwise you are replicating data into a shadow database for no
reason!
6. shutdownhtml: If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform
administration, enter some descriptive HTML here and anyone who
tries to use Bugzilla will receive a page to that effect.
Obviously, editparams.cgi will still be accessible so you can
remove the HTML and re-enable Bugzilla. :-)
7. 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.
8. useqacontact: This allows you to define an email address for each
component, in addition to that of the default owner, who will be
sent carbon copies of incoming bugs.
9. 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.
10. 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).
11. 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!)
12. supportwatchers: Turning on this option allows users to ask to
receive copies of all a particular other user's bug email. This
is, of course, subject to the groupset restrictions on the bug; if
the "watcher" would not normally be allowed to view a bug, the
watcher cannot get around the system by setting herself up to
watch the bugs of someone with bugs outside her privileges. They
would still only receive email updates for those bugs she could
normally view.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. User Administration
5.2.1. 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, you must use the MySQL
interface. Run "mysql" from the command line, and use these commands:
mysql> use bugs;
mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7ffffffffffffff where login_name
= "(user's login name)";
Yes, that is fourteen "f" 's. A whole lot of f-ing going on if you
want to create a new administator.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2.2. Managing Other Users
5.2.2.1. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.2.2.2. 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.
Warning
Don't disable the administrator account!
Note
The user can still submit bugs via the e-mail gateway, if you set it
up, even if the disabled text field is filled in. The e-mail gateway
should not be enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla.
* <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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
5.3.1. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3.2. 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 owner and (if you turned it on in the parameters), a QA
Contact. The owner 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 Owner, QA Contact, and Reporter will get email
when new bugs are created in this Component and when these bugs change.
Default Owner 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
"Initial Owner" and "Initial QA Contact" (if enabled.) The
Component and Description fields may contain HTML; the "Initial
Owner" field must be a login name already existing in the
database.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3.3. 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 most recent version with 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3.4. 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 (-255 to 255) 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.
Tip
If you want your milestone document to be restricted so that it can
only be viewed by people in a particular Bugzilla group, the best way
is to attach the document to a bug in that group, and make the URL the
URL of that attachment.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4. 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".
_________________________________________________________________
5.5. Groups and Group Security
Groups allow the administrator to isolate bugs or products that should only
be seen by certain people. There are two types of group - Generic Groups,
and Product-Based Groups.
Product-Based Groups are matched with products, and allow you to restrict
access to bugs on a per-product basis. They are enabled using the
usebuggroups Param. Turning on the usebuggroupsentry Param will mean bugs
automatically get added to their product group when filed.
Generic Groups have no special relationship to products; you create them,
and put bugs in them as required. One example of the use of Generic Groups
is Mozilla's "Security" group, into which security-sensitive bugs are placed
until fixed. Only the Mozilla Security Team are members of this group.
To create Generic 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 "New Name", "New Description", and "New User RegExp"
fields. "New User RegExp" allows you to automatically place all
users who fulfill the Regular Expression into the new group. When
you have finished, click "Add".
To use Product-Based Groups:
1. Turn on "usebuggroups" and "usebuggroupsentry" in the "Edit
Parameters" screen.
Warning
XXX is this still true? "usebuggroupsentry" has the capacity to
prevent the administrative user from directly altering bugs because of
conflicting group permissions. If you plan on using
"usebuggroupsentry", you should plan on restricting administrative
account usage to administrative duties only. In other words, manage
bugs with an unpriveleged user account, and manage users, groups,
Products, etc. with the administrative account.
2. In future, when you create a Product, a matching group will be
automatically created. If you need to add a Product Group to a
Product which was created before you turned on usebuggroups, then
simply create a new group, as outlined above, with the same name
as the Product.
Warning
Bugzilla currently has a limit of 64 groups per installation. If you
have more than about 50 products, you should consider running multiple
Bugzillas. Ask in the newsgroup for other suggestions for working
around this restriction.
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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.6. Bugzilla Security
Warning
Poorly-configured MySQL and Bugzilla installations have given
attackers full access to systems in the past. Please take these
guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden away behind
your firewall. 80% of all computer trespassers are insiders, not
anonymous crackers.
Note
These instructions must, of necessity, be somewhat vague since
Bugzilla runs on so many different platforms. If you have refinements
of these directions for specific platforms, please submit them to
mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org
To secure your installation:
1. Ensure you are running at least MysQL version 3.22.32 or newer.
Earlier versions had notable security holes and (from a security
point of view) poor default configuration choices.
2. There is no substitute for understanding the tools on your system!
Read The MySQL Privilege System until you can recite it from
memory!
3. Lock down /etc/inetd.conf. Heck, disable inet entirely on this
box. It should only listen to port 25 for Sendmail and port 80 for
Apache.
4. Do not run Apache as "nobody" . This will require very lax
permissions in your Bugzilla directories. Run it, instead, as a
user with a name, set via your httpd.conf file.
Note
"nobody" is a real user on UNIX systems. Having a process run as user
id "nobody" is absolutely no protection against system crackers versus
using any other user account. As a general security measure, I
recommend you create unique user ID's for each daemon running on your
system and, if possible, use "chroot" to jail that process away from
the rest of your system.
5. Ensure you have adequate access controls for the
$BUGZILLA_HOME/data/ directory, as well as the
$BUGZILLA_HOME/localconfig file. The localconfig file stores your
"bugs" database account password. In addition, some files under
$BUGZILLA_HOME/data/ store sensitive information.
Bugzilla provides default .htaccess files to protect the most
common Apache installations. However, you should verify these are
adequate according to the site-wide security policy of your web
server, and ensure that the .htaccess files are allowed to
"override" default permissions set in your Apache configuration
files. Covering Apache security is beyond the scope of this Guide;
please consult the Apache documentation for details.
If you are using a web server that does not support the .htaccess
control method, you are at risk! After installing, check to see if
you can view the file "localconfig" in your web browser (e.g.:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig ). If you can read the
contents of this file, your web server has not secured your
bugzilla directory properly and you must fix this problem before
deploying Bugzilla. If, however, it gives you a "Forbidden" error,
then it probably respects the .htaccess conventions and you are
good to go.
When you run checksetup.pl, the script will attempt to modify
various permissions on files which Bugzilla uses. If you do not
have a webservergroup set in the localconfig file, then Bugzilla
will have to make certain files world readable and/or writable.
THIS IS INSECURE! . This means that anyone who can get access to
your system can do whatever they want to your Bugzilla
installation.
Note
This also means that if your webserver runs all cgi scripts as the
same user/group, anyone on the system who can run cgi scripts will be
able to take control of your Bugzilla installation.
On Apache, you can use .htaccess files to protect access to these
directories, as outlined in Bug 57161 for the localconfig file,
and Bug 65572 for adequate protection in your data/ directory.
Note the instructions which follow are Apache-specific. If you use
IIS, Netscape, or other non-Apache web servers, please consult
your system documentation for how to secure these files from being
transmitted to curious users.
Place the following text into a file named ".htaccess", readable
by your web server, in your $BUGZILLA_HOME/data directory.
<Files comments> allow from all </Files>
deny from all
Place the following text into a file named ".htaccess", readable
by your web server, in your $BUGZILLA_HOME/ directory.
<Files localconfig> deny from all </Files>
allow from all
_________________________________________________________________
5.7. Template Customisation
One of the large changes for 2.16 was the templatisation of the entire
user-facing UI, using the Template Toolkit. Administrators can now 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.
Templatisation also makes localised versions of Bugzilla possible, for the
first time. In the future, a Bugzilla installation may have templates
installed for multiple localisations, and select which ones to use based on
the user's browser language setting.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.1. What to Edit
There are two different ways of editing of Bugzilla's templates, and which
you use depends mainly on how you upgrade Bugzilla. The template directory
structure is that there's a top level directory, template, which contains a
directory for each installed localisation. The default English templates are
therefore in en. Underneath that, there is the default directory and
optionally the custom directory. The default directory contains all the
templates shipped with Bugzilla, whereas the custom directory does not exist
at first and must be created if you want to use it.
The first method of making customisations is to directly edit the templates
in template/en/default. This is probably the best method for small changes
if you are going to use the CVS method of upgrading, because if you then
execute a cvs update, any template fixes will get automagically merged into
your modified versions.
If you use this method, your installation will break if CVS conflicts occur.
The other method is to copy the templates into a mirrored directory
structure under template/en/custom. The templates in this directory
automatically override those in default. This is the technique you need to
use if you use the overwriting method of upgrade, because otherwise your
changes will be lost. This method is also 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.
If you use this method, your installation may break if incompatible changes
are made to the template interface. If such changes are made they will 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
Don't directly edit the compiled templates in data/template/* - your
changes will be lost when Template Toolkit recompiles them.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.2. How To Edit Templates
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.
However, you should particularly remember (for security reasons) to always
HTML filter things which come from the database or user input, to prevent
cross-site scripting attacks.
However, 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, ie &lt;. You use the 'html' filter in the Template Toolkit to do this.
If you fail to do this, 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, ie %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.
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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.3. Template Formats
Some CGIs have the ability to use more than one template. For example,
buglist.cgi can output bug lists as RDF or two different forms of HTML
(complex and simple). (Try this out by appending &format=simple to a
buglist.cgi URL on your Bugzilla installation.) This mechanism, called
template 'formats', is extensible.
To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats, grep the CGI for
"ValidateOutputFormat". If it's not present, adding multiple format support
isn't too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs.
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.
Open up the localconfig file and find the $contenttypes variable. If your
content type is not there, add it. Remember the three- or four-letter tag
assigned to you content type. This tag will be part of the template
filename.
Save the template as <stubname>-<formatname>.<contenttypetag>.tmpl. Try out
the template by calling the CGI as <cginame>.cgi?format=<formatname> .
_________________________________________________________________
5.7.4. Particular Templates
There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in customising
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 customise 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.
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/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may wish to
get bug submitters to give certain bits of structured information, each in a
separate input widget, for which there is not a field in the database. The
bug entry system has been designed in an extensible fashion to enable you to
define arbitrary fields and widgets, and have their values appear formatted
in the initial Description, rather than in database fields. An example of
this is the mozilla.org guided bug submission form.
To make this work, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi (the default
template, on which you could base it, is create.html.tmpl), and either call
it create.html.tmpl or use a format and call it
create-<formatname>.html.tmpl. Put it in the custom/bug/create directory. 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, also named
after your format if you are using one, which references the form fields you
have created. 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 enter_bug template had a field
<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">
and then your comment.txt.tmpl had
BuildID: [% form.buildid %]
then
BuildID: 20020303
would appear in the initial checkin comment.
_________________________________________________________________
5.8. Upgrading to New Releases
A plain Bugzilla is fairly easy to upgrade from one version to a newer one.
Always read the release notes to see if there are any issues that you might
need to take note of. It is recommended that you take a backup of your
database and your entire Bugzilla installation before attempting an upgrade.
You can upgrade a 'clean' installation by untarring a new tarball over the
old installation. If you are upgrading from 2.12 or later, and have cvs
installed, you can type cvs -z3 update, and resolve conflicts if there are
any.
However, things get a bit more complicated if you've made changes to
Bugzilla's code. In this case, you may have to re-make or reapply those
changes. One good method is to take a diff of your customised version
against the original, so you can survey all that you've changed. Hopefully,
templatisation will reduce the need for this in the future.
From version 2.8 onwards, Bugzilla databases can be automatically carried
forward during an upgrade. However, because the developers of Bugzilla are
constantly adding new tables, columns and fields, you'll probably get SQL
errors if you just update the code and attempt to use Bugzilla. Always run
the checksetup.pl script whenever you upgrade your installation.
If you are running Bugzilla version 2.8 or lower, and wish to upgrade to the
latest version, please consult the file, "UPGRADING-pre-2.8" in the Bugzilla
root directory after untarring the archive.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
5.9.1. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.2. 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 have your check-in
script include an @resolution field, you can even change the Bugzilla bug
state.
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/.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.3. 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.
_________________________________________________________________
5.9.4. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2
We need Tinderbox integration information.
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix A. The Bugzilla FAQ
This FAQ includes questions not covered elsewhere in the Guide.
1. General Questions
A.1.1. Where can I find information about Bugzilla?
A.1.2. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
A.1.3. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
A.1.4. What major companies or projects are currently using
Bugzilla for bug-tracking?
A.1.5. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A.1.6. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?
A.1.7. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatability with this other tracking software?
A.1.8. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL.
A.1.9. Why do the scripts say "/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl" instead
of "/usr/bin/perl" or something else?
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
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. Can Bugzilla integrate with Perforce (SCM software)?
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?
A.2.4. If I am on many projects, and search for all bugs assigned
to me, will Bugzilla list them for me and allow me to
sort by project, severity etc?
A.2.5. Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots, URLs
etc)? If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?
A.2.6. 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.2.7. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics,
graphs, etc? You know, the type of stuff that management
likes to see. :)
A.2.8. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see
when you get an email?
A.2.9. Can email notification be set up to send to multiple
people, some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?
A.2.10. Do users have to have any particular type of email
application?
A.2.11. 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.2.12. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be
used in other countries? Is it localizable?
A.2.13. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in
Word format? Excel format?
A.2.14. Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word, phrase,
compound search?
A.2.15. 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.2.16. Are there any backup features provided?
A.2.17. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
A.2.18. 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
if we were to go with Bugzilla, what types of individuals
would we need to hire and how much would that cost vs
buying an "Out-of-the-Box" solution.
A.2.19. 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 weeks 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.2.20. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using
Bugzilla? Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies
needed as identified above?
3. Bugzilla Security
A.3.1. 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.3.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
A.3.3. I've implemented the security fixes mentioned in Chris
Yeh's security advisory of 5/10/2000 advising not to run
MySQL as root, and am running into problems with MySQL no
longer working correctly.
4. Bugzilla Email
A.4.1. 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.4.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
A.4.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more, or other
than, only new bugs. How do I do it?
A.4.4. I don't like/want to use Procmail to hand mail off to
bug_email.pl. What alternatives do I have?
A.4.5. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs
via email?
A.4.6. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's
extremely slow. What gives?
A.4.7. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
5. Bugzilla Database
A.5.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
A.5.2. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
A.5.3. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
A.5.4. I try to add myself as a user, but Bugzilla always tells
me my password is wrong.
A.5.5. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but
Bugzilla still can't connect.
A.5.6. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple
different Bugzilla databases?
6. Bugzilla and Win32
A.6.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32
(Win98+/NT/2K)?
A.6.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
A.6.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid
Windows NT application" error. Why?
A.6.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being
able to talk to to the database.
7. Bugzilla Usage
A.7.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
A.7.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler
way to query?
A.7.3. 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.7.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
A.7.5. Email submissions to Bugzilla that have attachments end up
asking me to save it as a "cgi" file.
A.7.6. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are
using it?
8. Bugzilla Hacking
A.8.1. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
A.8.2. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For
instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of
"P2"?
A.8.3. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines
should I follow?
1. General Questions
A.1.1. Where can I find information about Bugzilla?
You can stay up-to-date with the latest Bugzilla information at
http://www.bugzilla.org/
A.1.2. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
Bugzilla is covered by the Mozilla Public License. See details at
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
A.1.3. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
www.collab.net offers Bugzilla as part of their standard offering to
large projects. They do have some minimum fees that are pretty hefty,
and generally aren't interested in small projects.
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.1.4. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla
for bug-tracking?
There are dozens of major comapanies with public Bugzilla sites to
track bugs in their products. A few include:
Netscape/AOL
Mozilla.org
NASA
AtHome Corporation
Red Hat Software
SuSe Corp
The Horde Project
AbiSource
Real Time Enterprises, Inc
Eggheads.org
Strata Software
RockLinux
Creative Labs (makers of SoundBlaster)
The Apache Foundation
The Gnome Foundation
Ximian
Linux-Mandrake
Suffice to say, there are more than enough huge projects using
Bugzilla that we can safely say it's extremely popular.
A.1.5. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A core team, led by Dave Miller (justdave@syndicomm.com).
A.1.6. 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.
However, from the author's personal experience with other
bug-trackers, 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, open source code, greater
flexibility, and superior ease-of-use.
If you happen to be a commercial bug-tracker vendor, please step
forward with a list of advantages your product has over Bugzilla. We'd
be happy to include it in the "Competitors" section.
A.1.7. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatability with this other tracking software?
It may be that the support has not been built yet, or that you have
not yet found it. Bugzilla is making tremendous strides in usability,
customizability, scalability, and user interface. It is widely
considered the most complete and popular open-source bug-tracking
software in existence.
That doesn't mean it can't use improvement! You can help the project
along by either hacking a patch yourself that supports the
functionality you require, or else submitting a "Request for
Enhancement" (RFE) using the bug submission interface at
bugzilla.mozilla.org.
A.1.8. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL.
There is DB-independence work afoot. PostgreSQL support is planned for
2.18, and full DB-independence can't be far further on.
A.1.9. Why do the scripts say "/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl" instead of
"/usr/bin/perl" or something else?
Mozilla.org uses /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl, because originally Terry
wanted a place to put a version of Perl and other tools that was
strictly under his control.
We always recommend that, if possible, you keep the path as
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl, and simply add symlink. This will make
upgrading your Bugzilla much easier in the future.
A.1.10. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
At present, no.
2. Managerial Questions
Note
Questions likely to be asked by managers. :-)
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. You can edit bugs by sending specially
formatted email to a properly configured Bugzilla, or control via the
web.
A.2.2. Can Bugzilla integrate with Perforce (SCM software)?
Yes! You can find more information elsewhere in "The Bugzilla Guide"
in the "Integration with Third-Party Products" section.
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?
Absolutely! You can track any number of Products (although you are
limited to about 55 or so if you are using Product-Based Groups), that
can each be composed of any number of Components.
A.2.4. If I am on many projects, and search for all bugs assigned to
me, will Bugzilla list them for me and allow me to sort by project,
severity etc?
Yes.
A.2.5. Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots, URLs etc)?
If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?
Yes - any sort of attachment is allowed, although administrators can
configure a maximum size. There are many specific MIME-types that are
pre-defined by Bugzilla, but you may specify any arbitrary MIME-type
you need when you upload the file.
A.2.6. 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 at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91037
A.2.7. 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/reports.cgi for basic
reporting and graphing facilities.
For more advanced reporting, I recommend hooking up a professional
reporting package, such as Crystal Reports, and use ODBC to access the
MySQL database. You can do a lot through the Query page of Bugzilla as
well, but right now Advanced Reporting is much better accomplished
through third-party utilities that can interface with the database
directly.
A.2.8. Is there email notification and 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.2.9. Can email notification be set up to send to multiple people,
some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?
Yes.
A.2.10. 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.2.11. 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?
Mozilla allows data export through a custom DTD in XML format. It does
not, however, export to specific formats other than the XML Mozilla
DTD. Importing the data into Excel or any other application is left as
an exercise for the reader.
If you create import filters to other applications from Mozilla's XML,
please submit your modifications for inclusion in future Bugzilla
distributions.
As for data import, any application can send data to Bugzilla through
the HTTP protocol, or through Mozilla's XML API. However, it seems
kind of silly to put another front-end in front of Bugzilla; it makes
more sense to create a simplified bug submission form in HTML. You can
find an excellent example at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helper.html
A.2.12. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used
in other countries? Is it localizable?
To a certain extent, yes. 2.16's templates mean that you can localise
the user-facing UI (and several projects are doing exactly that.)
However, error messages and the admin interface are currently not
localisable. This should be achieved by 2.18.
A.2.13. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word
format? Excel format?
Yes. No. No.
A.2.14. Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word, phrase,
compound search?
You have no idea. Bugzilla's query interface, particularly with the
advanced Boolean operators, is incredibly versatile.
A.2.15. 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, and offers the offending user a choice of options to deal
with the conflict.
A.2.16. 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.2.17. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
Yes. However, 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.
A.2.18. 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 if we were to go with
Bugzilla, what types of individuals would we need to hire and how much
would that cost 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.2.19. 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 weeks 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 with reasonable
UNIX or Perl skills to handle your process management and bug-tracking
maintenance & customization.
A.2.20. 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. MySQL asks, if you find their product valuable, that you purchase
a support contract from them that suits your needs.
3. Bugzilla Security
A.3.1. 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
this makes MySQL as secure as taping a $100 to the floor of a football
stadium bathroom for safekeeping.
A.3.2. 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.
A.3.3. I've implemented the security fixes mentioned in Chris Yeh's
security advisory of 5/10/2000 advising not to run MySQL as root, and
am running into problems with MySQL no longer working correctly.
This is a common problem, related to running out of file descriptors.
Simply add "ulimit -n unlimited" to the script which starts mysqld.
4. Bugzilla Email
A.4.1. 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 should be able to set this in user email preferences (uncheck
all boxes.)
A.4.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
Edit the "changedmail" Param. Replace "To:" with "X-Real-To:", replace
"Cc:" with "X-Real-CC:", and add a "To: <youremailaddress>".
A.4.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more, or other
than, only new bugs. How do I do it?
Try Klaas Freitag's excellent patch for "whineatassigned"
functionality. You can find it at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6679. This patch is
against an older version of Bugzilla, so you must apply the diffs
manually.
A.4.4. I don't like/want to use Procmail to hand mail off to
bug_email.pl. What alternatives do I have?
You can call bug_email.pl directly from your aliases file, with an
entry like this:
bugzilla-daemon: "|/usr/local/bin/bugzilla/contrib/bug_email.pl"
However, this is fairly nasty and subject to problems; you also need
to set up your smrsh (sendmail restricted shell) to allow it. In a
pinch, though, it can work.
A.4.5. 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.4.6. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's extremely
slow. What gives?
If you are using an alternate Mail Transport Agent (MTA other than
sendmail), make sure the options given in the "processmail" and other
scripts for all instances of "sendmail" are correct for your MTA.
If you are using Sendmail, try enabling "sendmailnow" in
editparams.cgi. If you are using Postfix, you will also need to enable
"sendmailnow".
A.4.7. 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
"Email me a password" button after entering your email address.
If you never receive mail from Bugzilla, chances you do not have
sendmail in "/usr/lib/sendmail". Ensure sendmail lives in, or is
symlinked to, "/usr/lib/sendmail".
5. Bugzilla Database
A.5.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
Red Hat Bugzilla works with Oracle. The current version from
Mozilla.org does not have this capability. Unfortunately, though you
will sacrifice a lot of the really great features available in
Bugzilla 2.14 and 2.16 if you go with the 2.8-based Redhat version.
A.5.2. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
Run the "sanity check" utility (./sanitycheck.cgi in the Bugzilla_home
directory) 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.5.3. 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. However, if you understand SQL you can use the
mysqladmin utility to manually insert, delete, and modify table
information. Personally, I use "phpMyAdmin". You have to compile a PHP
module with MySQL support to make it work, but it's very clean and
easy to use.
A.5.4. I try to add myself as a user, but Bugzilla always tells me my
password is wrong.
Certain version of MySQL (notably, 3.23.29 and 3.23.30) accidentally
disabled the "crypt()" function. This prevented MySQL from storing
encrypted passwords. Upgrade to the "3.23 stable" version of MySQL and
you should be good to go.
A.5.5. 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. However, I do not recommend you run it this way on a
regular basis, unless you really want your web site defaced and your
machine cracked.
A.5.6. 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 builtin 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.
6. Bugzilla and Win32
A.6.1. 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.
A.6.2. 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.6.3. 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.6.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able
to talk to 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/
7. Bugzilla Usage
A.7.1. 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.7.2. 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.
A.7.3. 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. You have your choice of patches to change this behavior,
however.
Add a "and accept bug" radio button
"Accept" button automatically assigns to you
Note that these patches are somewhat dated. You will need to apply
them manually.
A.7.4. 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 Netscape,
Microsoft, or Mozilla browser to handle uploads correctly.
A.7.5. Email submissions to Bugzilla that have attachments end up
asking me to save it as a "cgi" file.
Yup. Just rename it once you download it, or save it under a different
filename. This will not be fixed anytime soon, because it would
cripple some other functionality.
A.7.6. 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.
8. Bugzilla Hacking
A.8.1. 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 2.18 release here. This list includes
bugs for the 2.18 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.8.2. 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 here:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=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.8.3. 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. The Bugzilla Database
Note
This document really needs to be updated with more fleshed out
information about primary keys, interrelationships, and maybe some
nifty tables to document dependencies. Any takers?
_________________________________________________________________
B.1. Database Schema Chart
[dbschema.jpg]
Bugzilla database relationships chart
_________________________________________________________________
B.2. 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!
_________________________________________________________________
B.2.1. 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, available at MySQL.com . 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;
_________________________________________________________________
B.2.1.1. 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 |
| shadowlog |
| tokens |
| versions |
| votes |
| watch |
+-------------------+
Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each ta
ble have
descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs
.
attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to b
e 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 the
other tables.
bugs_activity: This stores information regarding what changes are mad
e to bugs
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 ta
bles in
Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their
unique
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
"program"
(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some othe
r unique
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, wh
en you
submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQ
L.
groups: defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can
uniquely
identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allow
ed to
tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed
to edit
users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new g
roups 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 bitm
ask 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 do
es any
housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months.
However,
since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it m
akes
sense.
longdescs: The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments ar
e stored!
You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so s
peak
sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from th
e Bible
would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronologic
al, for
comments are played back in the order in which they are received.
milestones: Interesting that milestones are associated with a specifi
c product
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 que
ry you
construct.
products: What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed
for the
product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes,
etc. It
will be nice when the components table supports these same features, s
o you
could close a particular component for bug entry without having to clo
se an
entire product...
profiles: Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user informa
tion was
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'll
tell you, it's a pretty complete history.
shadowlog: I could be mistaken here, but I believe this table tells y
ou when
your shadow database is updated and what commands were used to update
it. We
don't use a shadow database at our site yet, so it's pretty empty for
us.
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 the
mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a tabl
e 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, wher
e
"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict info
rmation:
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
change
the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know fr
om the
above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "b
ugs"
table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this da
tabase
change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify th
e
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
','VERIFIED','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 fiel
d can
only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool,
it's not
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 befor
e 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 th
at's
available! Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query p
age as
well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the ex
isting
scheme of things?
Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "v
erified"
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
search).
Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a s
tatus
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 of
this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix C. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
Are you looking for a way to put your Bugzilla into overdrive? Catch some of
the niftiest tricks here in this section.
_________________________________________________________________
C.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
Apache's mod_rewrite module lets you do some truly amazing things with URL
rewriting. Here are a couple of examples of what you can do.
1. Make it so if someone types http://www.foo.com/12345 , Bugzilla
spits back http://www.foo.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12345. Try setting
up your VirtualHost section for Bugzilla with a rule like this:
<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/([0-9]+)$ http://foo.bar.com/show_bug.cgi?id=$1 [L,R]
</VirtualHost>
2. There are many, many more things you can do with mod_rewrite.
Please refer to the mod_rewrite documentation at
http://www.apache.org.
_________________________________________________________________
C.2. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
There are a suite of Unix utilities for querying Bugzilla from the command
line. They live in the contrib/cmdline directory. However, they have not yet
been updated to work with 2.16 (post-templatisation.). There are three files
- query.conf, buglist and bugs.
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 which 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 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
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix D. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
I created this section to answer questions about Bugzilla competitors and
variants, then found a wonderful site which covers an awful lot of what I
wanted to discuss. Rather than quote it in its entirety, I'll simply refer
you here: http://linas.org/linux/pm.html
_________________________________________________________________
D.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
Red Hat Bugzilla is a fork of Bugzilla 2.8. One of its major benefits is the
ability to work with Oracle, MySQL, and PostGreSQL databases serving as the
back-end, instead of just MySQL. Dave Lawrence of Red Hat is active in the
Bugzilla community, and we hope to see a reunification of the fork before
too long.
URL: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/
_________________________________________________________________
D.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
Fenris was a fork from Bugzilla made by Loki Games; when Loki went into
receivership, it died. While Loki's other code lives on, its custodians
recommend Bugzilla for future bug-tracker deployments.
_________________________________________________________________
D.3. Issuezilla
Issuezilla was another fork from Bugzilla, made by collab.net and hosted at
tigris.org. It is also dead; the primary focus of bug-tracking at tigris.org
is their Java-based bug-tracker, Scarab.
_________________________________________________________________
D.4. Scarab
Scarab is a new open source bug-tracking system built using Java Serlet
technology. It is currently at version 1.0 beta 8.
URL: http://scarab.tigris.org
_________________________________________________________________
D.5. Perforce SCM
Although Perforce isn't really a bug tracker, it can be used as such through
the "jobs" functionality.
URL: http://www.perforce.com/perforce/technotes/note052.html
_________________________________________________________________
D.6. SourceForge
SourceForge is a way of coordinating geographically distributed free
software and open source projects over the Internet. It has a built-in bug
tracker, but it's not highly thought of.
URL: http://www.sourceforge.net
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
M
mysqld
mysqld is the name of the daemon for the MySQL database. In
general, it is invoked automatically through the use of the
System V init scripts on GNU/Linux and AT&T System V-based
systems, such as Solaris and HP/UX, or through the RC scripts
on BSD-based systems.
P
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.
S
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.
Z
Zarro Boogs Found
This is the cryptic response sent by Bugzilla when a query
returned no results. It is just a goofy way of saying "Zero
Bugs Found".
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