The Bugzilla Guide - 4.4.11 Release
The Bugzilla Team
2015-12-22
Abstract
This is the documentation for Bugzilla, a bug-tracking system from
mozilla.org. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that
tracks millions of bugs and issues for hundreds of organizations around
the world.
The most current version of this document can always be found on the
Bugzilla Documentation Page.
__________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
2. Installing Bugzilla
2.1. Installation
2.1.1. Perl
2.1.2. Database Engine
2.1.3. Web Server
2.1.4. Bugzilla
2.1.5. Perl Modules
2.1.6. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
2.1.7. Installing Bugzilla on mod_perl
2.2. Configuration
2.2.1. localconfig
2.2.2. Database Server
2.2.3. checksetup.pl
2.2.4. Web server
2.2.5. Bugzilla
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
2.3.1. Bug Graphs
2.3.2. The Whining Cron
2.3.3. Whining
2.3.4. Serving Alternate Formats with the right MIME type
2.4. Multiple Bugzilla databases with a single installation
2.5. OS-Specific Installation Notes
2.5.1. Microsoft Windows
2.5.2. Mac OS Xâ¢
2.5.3. Linux/BSD Distributions
2.6. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
2.6.1. Introduction
2.6.2. MySQL
2.6.3. Perl
2.6.4. Perl Modules
2.6.5. HTTP Server
2.6.6. Bugzilla
2.7. Upgrading to New Releases
2.7.1. Before You Upgrade
2.7.2. Getting The New Bugzilla
2.7.3. Completing Your Upgrade
2.7.4. Automatic Notifications of New Releases
3. Administering Bugzilla
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
3.1.1. Required Settings
3.1.2. Administrative Policies
3.1.3. User Authentication
3.1.4. Attachments
3.1.5. Bug Change Policies
3.1.6. Bug Fields
3.1.7. Bug Moving
3.1.8. Dependency Graphs
3.1.9. Group Security
3.1.10. LDAP Authentication
3.1.11. RADIUS Authentication
3.1.12. Email
3.1.13. Patch Viewer
3.1.14. Query Defaults
3.1.15. Shadow Database
3.1.16. User Matching
3.2. User Administration
3.2.1. Creating the Default User
3.2.2. Managing Other Users
3.3. Classifications
3.4. Products
3.4.1. Creating New Products
3.4.2. Editing Products
3.4.3. Adding or Editing Components, Versions and Target
Milestones
3.4.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
3.5. Components
3.6. Versions
3.7. Milestones
3.8. Flags
3.8.1. A Simple Example
3.8.2. About Flags
3.8.3. Using flag requests
3.8.4. Two Types of Flags
3.8.5. Administering Flags
3.9. Keywords
3.10. Custom Fields
3.10.1. Adding Custom Fields
3.10.2. Editing Custom Fields
3.10.3. Deleting Custom Fields
3.11. Legal Values
3.11.1. Viewing/Editing legal values
3.11.2. Deleting legal values
3.12. Bug Status Workflow
3.13. Voting
3.14. Quips
3.15. Groups and Group Security
3.15.1. Creating Groups
3.15.2. Editing Groups and Assigning Group Permissions
3.15.3. Assigning Users to Groups
3.15.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
3.16. Checking and Maintaining Database Integrity
4. Bugzilla Security
4.1. Operating System
4.1.1. TCP/IP Ports
4.1.2. System User Accounts
4.1.3. The chroot Jail
4.2. Web server
4.2.1. Disabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration
Files
4.3. Bugzilla
4.3.1. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript
5. Using Bugzilla
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
5.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
5.5. Searching for Bugs
5.5.1. Boolean Charts
5.5.2. Quicksearch
5.5.3. Case Sensitivity in Searches
5.5.4. Bug Lists
5.5.5. Adding/removing tags to/from bugs
5.6. Filing Bugs
5.6.1. Reporting a New Bug
5.6.2. Clone an Existing Bug
5.7. Attachments
5.7.1. Patch Viewer
5.8. Hints and Tips
5.8.1. Autolinkification
5.8.2. Comments
5.8.3. Server-Side Comment Wrapping
5.8.4. Dependency Tree
5.9. Time Tracking Information
5.10. User Preferences
5.10.1. General Preferences
5.10.2. Email Preferences
5.10.3. Saved Searches
5.10.4. Name and Password
5.10.5. Permissions
5.11. Reports and Charts
5.11.1. Reports
5.11.2. Charts
5.12. Flags
5.13. Whining
5.13.1. The Event
5.13.2. Whining Schedule
5.13.3. Whining Searches
5.13.4. Saving Your Changes
6. Customizing Bugzilla
6.1. Bugzilla Extensions
6.2. Custom Skins
6.3. Template Customization
6.3.1. Template Directory Structure
6.3.2. Choosing a Customization Method
6.3.3. How To Edit Templates
6.3.4. Template Formats and Types
6.3.5. Particular Templates
6.3.6. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language
6.4. Customizing Who Can Change What
6.5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
A. Troubleshooting
A.1. General Advice
A.2. The Apache web server is not serving Bugzilla pages
A.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not
installed!
A.4. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
A.5. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
A.6. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
A.7. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
A.8. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication
protocol requested by server..."
B. Contrib
B.1. Command-line Search Interface
B.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool
C. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
C.1. Instructions
C.2. Download Locations
C.3. Optional Modules
D. GNU Free Documentation License
D.0. Preamble
D.1. Applicability and Definition
D.2. Verbatim Copying
D.3. Copying in Quantity
D.4. Modifications
D.5. Combining Documents
D.6. Collections of Documents
D.7. Aggregation with Independent Works
D.8. Translation
D.9. Termination
D.10. Future Revisions of this License
D.. How to use this License for your documents
Glossary
List of Figures
5.1. Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug
List of Examples
A.1. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies
A.2. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login cookie
Chapter 1. About This Guide
Table of Contents
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
1.1. Copyright Information
This document is copyright (c) 2000-2015 by the various Bugzilla
contributors who wrote it.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and
with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in
Appendix D, GNU Free Documentation License.
If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or
publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact the
Bugzilla Team.
1.2. Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Follow
the instructions herein at your own risk. This document may contain
errors and inaccuracies that may damage your system, cause your partner
to leave you, your boss to fire you, your cats to pee on your furniture
and clothing, and global thermonuclear war. Proceed with caution.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". We
wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux; it is an extremely
versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an ideal
operating environment for Bugzilla.
Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure
that all exploitable bugs have been fixed, security holes surely exist
in any piece of code. Great care should be taken both in the
installation and usage of this software. The Bugzilla development team
members assume no liability for your use of Bugzilla. You have the
source code, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to ensure
your security needs are met.
1.3. New Versions
This is the 4.4.11 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to
match the current version of Bugzilla.
The latest version of this guide can always be found at
http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/. However, you should read the version
which came with the Bugzilla release you are using.
In addition, there are Bugzilla template localization projects in
several languages. They may have translated documentation available. If
you would like to volunteer to translate the Guide into additional
languages, please visit the Bugzilla L10n team page.
1.4. Credits
The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the
creation of this Guide, through their writing, dedicated hacking
efforts, numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall
excellent contribution to the Bugzilla community:
Matthew P. Barnson <mbarnson@sisna.com>
for the Herculean task of pulling together the Bugzilla Guide
and shepherding it to 2.14.
Terry Weissman <terry@mozilla.org>
for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README upon
which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
Tara Hernandez <tara@tequilarists.org>
for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry left
mozilla.org and for running landfill.
Dave Lawrence <dkl@redhat.com>
for providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's
customized Bugzilla.
Dawn Endico <endico@mozilla.org>
for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with Matthew's
incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in
#mozwebtools
Jacob Steenhagen <jake@bugzilla.org>
for taking over documentation during the 2.17 development
period.
Dave Miller <justdave@bugzilla.org>
for taking over as project lead when Tara stepped down and
continually pushing for the documentation to be the best it can
be.
Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions to
this documentation: Kevin Brannen, Vlad Dascalu, Ben FrantzDale, Eric
Hanson, Zach Lipton, Gervase Markham, Andrew Pearson, Joe Robins,
Spencer Smith, Ron Teitelbaum, Shane Travis, Martin Wulffeld.
Also, thanks are due to the members of the mozilla.support.bugzilla
newsgroup (and its predecessor, netscape.public.mozilla.webtools).
Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this could
never have happened.
1.5. Document Conventions
This document uses the following conventions:
[Caution]
This is a caution. Make sure to read this to not be in trouble!
[Tip]
This is a hint or tip, especially about some configuration tweaks.
[Note]
This is just a note, for your information.
[Warning]
This is a warning, something you should take care of.
A filename or a path to a filename is displayed like this:
/path/to/filename.ext
A command to type in the shell is displayed like this: command
--arguments
bash$ represents a normal user's prompt under bash shell
bash# represents a root user's prompt under bash shell
A word which is in the glossary will appear like this: Bugzilla
A sample of code is illustrated like this:
First Line of Code
Second Line of Code
...
This documentation is maintained in DocBook 4.2 XML format. Changes are
best submitted as plain text or XML diffs, attached to a bug filed in
the Bugzilla Documentation component.
Chapter 2. Installing Bugzilla
Table of Contents
2.1. Installation
2.1.1. Perl
2.1.2. Database Engine
2.1.3. Web Server
2.1.4. Bugzilla
2.1.5. Perl Modules
2.1.6. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
2.1.7. Installing Bugzilla on mod_perl
2.2. Configuration
2.2.1. localconfig
2.2.2. Database Server
2.2.3. checksetup.pl
2.2.4. Web server
2.2.5. Bugzilla
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
2.3.1. Bug Graphs
2.3.2. The Whining Cron
2.3.3. Whining
2.3.4. Serving Alternate Formats with the right MIME type
2.4. Multiple Bugzilla databases with a single installation
2.5. OS-Specific Installation Notes
2.5.1. Microsoft Windows
2.5.2. Mac OS Xâ¢
2.5.3. Linux/BSD Distributions
2.6. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
2.6.1. Introduction
2.6.2. MySQL
2.6.3. Perl
2.6.4. Perl Modules
2.6.5. HTTP Server
2.6.6. Bugzilla
2.7. Upgrading to New Releases
2.7.1. Before You Upgrade
2.7.2. Getting The New Bugzilla
2.7.3. Completing Your Upgrade
2.7.4. Automatic Notifications of New Releases
2.1. Installation
[Note]
If you just want to use Bugzilla, you do not need to install it. None
of this chapter is relevant to you. Ask your Bugzilla administrator for
the URL to access it from your web browser.
The Bugzilla server software is usually installed on Linux or Solaris.
If you are installing on another OS, check Section 2.5, âOS-Specific
Installation Notesâ before you start your installation to see if there
are any special instructions.
This guide assumes that you have administrative access to the Bugzilla
machine. It not possible to install and run Bugzilla itself without
administrative access except in the very unlikely event that every
single prerequisite is already installed.
[Warning]
The installation process may make your machine insecure for short
periods of time. Make sure there is a firewall between you and the
Internet.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
installing Bugzilla (and at regular intervals thereafter :-).
In outline, the installation proceeds as follows:
1. Install Perl (5.8.1 or above)
2. Install a Database Engine
3. Install a Webserver
4. Install Bugzilla
5. Install Perl modules
6. Install a Mail Transfer Agent (Sendmail 8.7 or above, or an MTA
that is Sendmail-compatible with at least this version)
7. Configure all of the above.
2.1.1. Perl
Installed Version Test:
perl -v
Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. If
you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit
http://www.perl.org. Although Bugzilla runs with Perl 5.8.1, it's a
good idea to be using the latest stable version.
2.1.2. Database Engine
Bugzilla supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle as database servers. You
only require one of these systems to make use of Bugzilla.
2.1.2.1. MySQL
Installed Version Test:
mysql -V
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://www.mysql.com. You need MySQL version 5.0.15 or higher.
[Note]
Many of the binary versions of MySQL store their data files in /var. On
some Unix systems, this is part of a smaller root partition, and may
not have room for your bug database. To change the data directory, you
have to build MySQL from source yourself, and set it as an option to
configure.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation
system, such as .rpm (RPM Package Manager), .deb (Debian Package), .exe
(Windows Executable), or .msi (Windows Installer), make sure the MySQL
server is started when the machine boots.
2.1.2.2. PostgreSQL
Installed Version Test:
psql -V
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://www.postgresql.org/. You need PostgreSQL version 8.03.0000
or higher.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation
system, such as .rpm (RPM Package Manager), .deb (Debian Package), .exe
(Windows Executable), or .msi (Windows Installer), make sure the
PostgreSQL server is started when the machine boots.
2.1.2.3. Oracle
Installed Version Test:
select * from v$version
(you first have to log in into your DB)
If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://www.oracle.com/. You need Oracle version 10.02.0 or
higher.
If you install from something other than a packaging/installation
system, such as .rpm (RPM Package Manager), .deb (Debian Package), .exe
(Windows Executable), or .msi (Windows Installer), make sure the Oracle
server is started when the machine boots.
2.1.3. Web Server
Installed Version Test: view the default welcome page at
http://<your-machine>/
You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is
capable of running CGI scripts will work. However, we strongly
recommend using the Apache web server (either 1.3.x or 2.x), and the
installation instructions usually assume you are using it. If you have
got Bugzilla working using another web server, please share your
experiences with us by filing a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.
If you don't have Apache and your OS doesn't provide official packages,
visit http://httpd.apache.org/.
2.1.4. Bugzilla
Download a Bugzilla tarball (or check it out from Bzr) and place it in
a suitable directory, accessible by the default web server user
(probably âapacheâ or âwwwâ). Good locations are either directly in the
web server's document directories or in /usr/local with a symbolic link
to the web server's document directories or an alias in the web
server's configuration.
[Caution]
The default Bugzilla distribution is NOT designed to be placed in a
cgi-bin directory. This includes any directory which is configured
using the ScriptAlias directive of Apache.
Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that
directory writable by your web server's user. This is a temporary step
until you run the checksetup.pl script, which locks down your
installation.
2.1.5. Perl Modules
Bugzilla's installation process is based on a script called
checksetup.pl. The first thing it checks is whether you have
appropriate versions of all the required Perl modules. The aim of this
section is to pass this check. When it passes, proceed to Section 2.2,
âConfigurationâ.
At this point, you need to su to root. You should remain as root until
the end of the install. To check you have the required modules, run:
bash# ./checksetup.pl --check-modules
checksetup.pl will print out a list of the required and optional Perl
modules, together with the versions (if any) installed on your machine.
The list of required modules is reasonably long; however, you may
already have several of them installed.
The preferred way to install missing Perl modules is to use the package
manager provided by your operating system (e.g ârpmâ or âyumâ on Linux
distros, or âppmâ on Windows if using ActivePerl, see Section 2.5.1.2,
âPerl Modules on Win32â). If some Perl modules are still missing or are
too old, then we recommend using the install-module.pl script (doesn't
work with ActivePerl on Windows). If for some reason you really need to
install the Perl modules manually, see Appendix C, Manual Installation
of Perl Modules. For instance, on Unix, you invoke install-module.pl as
follows:
bash# perl install-module.pl <modulename>
[Tip]
Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most
times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in
â@INCâ. Virtually every time, this error is due to permissions being
set too restrictively for you to compile Perl modules or not having the
necessary Perl development libraries installed on your system. Consult
your local UNIX systems administrator for help solving these
permissions issues; if you are the local UNIX sysadmin, please consult
the newsgroup/mailing list for further assistance or hire someone to
help you out.
[Note]
If you are using a package-based system, and attempting to install the
Perl modules from CPAN, you may need to install the "development"
packages for MySQL and GD before attempting to install the related Perl
modules. The names of these packages will vary depending on the
specific distribution you are using, but are often called
<packagename>-devel.
Here is a complete list of modules and their minimum versions. Some
modules have special installation notes, which follow.
Required Perl modules:
1. CGI (3.51)
2. Date::Format (2.23)
3. DateTime (0.28)
4. DateTime::TimeZone (0.71)
5. DBI (1.614)
6. DBD::mysql (4.001) if using MySQL
7. DBD::Pg (2.7.0) if using PostgreSQL
8. DBD::Oracle (1.19) if using Oracle
9. Digest::SHA (any)
10. Email::Send (2.04)
11. Email::MIME (1.904)
12. Template (2.22)
13. URI (1.37)
Optional Perl modules:
1. GD (1.20) for bug charting
2. Template::Plugin::GD::Image (any) for Graphical Reports
3. Chart::Lines (2.1.0) for bug charting
4. GD::Graph (any) for bug charting
5. GD::Text (any) for bug charting
6. XML::Twig (any) for bug import/export
7. MIME::Parser (5.406) for bug import/export
8. LWP::UserAgent (any) for Automatic Update Notifications
9. PatchReader (0.9.6) for pretty HTML view of patches
10. Net::LDAP (any) for LDAP Authentication
11. Authen::SASL (any) for SASL Authentication
12. Authen::Radius (any) for RADIUS Authentication
13. SOAP::Lite (0.712) for the web service interface
14. JSON::RPC (any) for the JSON-RPC interface
15. Test::Taint (any) for the web service interface
16. HTML::Parser (3.67) for More HTML in Product/Group Descriptions
17. HTML::Scrubber (any) for More HTML in Product/Group Descriptions
18. Email::Reply (any) for Inbound Email
19. TheSchwartz (1.07) for Mail Queueing
20. Daemon::Generic (any) for Mail Queueing
21. mod_perl2 (1.999022) for mod_perl
2.1.6. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
Bugzilla is dependent on the availability of an e-mail system for its
user authentication and for other tasks.
[Note]
This is not entirely true. It is possible to completely disable email
sending, or to have Bugzilla store email messages in a file instead of
sending them. However, this is mainly intended for testing, as
disabling or diverting email on a production machine would mean that
users could miss important events (such as bug changes or the creation
of new accounts).
For more information, see the âmail_delivery_methodâ parameter in
Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ.
On Linux, any Sendmail-compatible MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) will
suffice. Sendmail, Postfix, qmail and Exim are examples of common MTAs.
Sendmail is the original Unix MTA, but the others are easier to
configure, and therefore many people replace Sendmail with Postfix or
Exim. They are drop-in replacements, so Bugzilla will not distinguish
between them.
If you are using Sendmail, version 8.7 or higher is required. If you
are using a Sendmail-compatible MTA, it must be congruent with at least
version 8.7 of Sendmail.
Consult the manual for the specific MTA you choose for detailed
installation instructions. Each of these programs will have their own
configuration files where you must configure certain parameters to
ensure that the mail is delivered properly. They are implemented as
services, and you should ensure that the MTA is in the auto-start list
of services for the machine.
If a simple mail sent with the command-line 'mail' program succeeds,
then Bugzilla should also be fine.
2.1.7. Installing Bugzilla on mod_perl
It is now possible to run the Bugzilla software under mod_perl on
Apache. mod_perl has some additional requirements to that of running
Bugzilla under mod_cgi (the standard and previous way).
Bugzilla requires mod_perl to be installed, which can be obtained from
http://perl.apache.org - Bugzilla requires version 1.999022 (AKA
2.0.0-RC5) to be installed.
2.2. Configuration
[Warning]
Poorly-configured MySQL and Bugzilla installations have given attackers
full access to systems in the past. Please take the security parts of
these guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden away
behind your firewall. Be certain to read Chapter 4, Bugzilla Security
for some important security tips.
2.2.1. localconfig
You should now run checksetup.pl again, this time without the
--check-modules switch.
bash# ./checksetup.pl
This time, checksetup.pl should tell you that all the correct modules
are installed and will display a message about, and write out a file
called, localconfig. This file contains the default settings for a
number of Bugzilla parameters.
Load this file in your editor. The only two values you need to change
are $db_driver and $db_pass, respectively the type of the database and
the password for the user you will create for your database. Pick a
strong password (for simplicity, it should not contain single quote
characters) and put it here. $db_driver can be either 'mysql', 'Pg',
'Oracle' or 'Sqlite'.
[Note]
In Oracle, $db_name should actually be the SID name of your database
(e.g. "XE" if you are using Oracle XE).
You may need to change the value of webservergroup if your web server
does not run in the "apache" group. On Debian, for example, Apache runs
in the "www-data" group. If you are going to run Bugzilla on a machine
where you do not have root access (such as on a shared web hosting
account), you will need to leave webservergroup empty, ignoring the
warnings that checksetup.pl will subsequently display every time it is
run.
[Caution]
If you are using suexec, you should use your own primary group for
webservergroup rather than leaving it empty, and see the additional
directions in the suexec section Section 2.6.6.1, âsuexec or shared
hostingâ.
The other options in the localconfig file are documented by their
accompanying comments. If you have a slightly non-standard database
setup, you may wish to change one or more of the other "$db_*"
parameters.
2.2.2. Database Server
This section deals with configuring your database server for use with
Bugzilla. Currently, MySQL (Section 2.2.2.2, âMySQLâ), PostgreSQL
(Section 2.2.2.3, âPostgreSQLâ), Oracle (Section 2.2.2.4, âOracleâ) and
SQLite (Section 2.2.2.5, âSQLiteâ) are available.
2.2.2.1. Bugzilla Database Schema
The Bugzilla database schema is available at Ravenbrook. This very
valuable tool can generate a written description of the Bugzilla
database schema for any version of Bugzilla. It can also generate a
diff between two versions to help someone see what has changed.
2.2.2.2. MySQL
[Caution]
MySQL's default configuration is insecure. We highly recommend to run
mysql_secure_installation on Linux or the MySQL installer on Windows,
and follow the instructions. Important points to note are:
1. Be sure that the root account has a secure password set.
2. Do not create an anonymous account, and if it exists, say "yes" to
remove it.
3. If your web server and MySQL server are on the same machine, you
should disable the network access.
2.2.2.2.1. Allow large attachments and many comments
By default, MySQL will only allow you to insert things into the
database that are smaller than 1MB. Attachments may be larger than
this. Also, Bugzilla combines all comments on a single bug into one
field for full-text searching, and the combination of all comments on a
single bug could in some cases be larger than 1MB.
To change MySQL's default, you need to edit your MySQL configuration
file, which is usually /etc/my.cnf on Linux. We recommend that you
allow at least 4MB packets by adding the "max_allowed_packet" parameter
to your MySQL configuration in the "[mysqld]" section, like this:
[mysqld]
# Allow packets up to 4MB
max_allowed_packet=4M
2.2.2.2.2. Allow small words in full-text indexes
By default, words must be at least four characters in length in order
to be indexed by MySQL's full-text indexes. This causes a lot of
Bugzilla specific words to be missed, including "cc", "ftp" and "uri".
MySQL can be configured to index those words by setting the
ft_min_word_len param to the minimum size of the words to index. This
can be done by modifying the /etc/my.cnf according to the example
below:
[mysqld]
# Allow small words in full-text indexes
ft_min_word_len=2
Rebuilding the indexes can be done based on documentation found at
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Fine-tuning.html.
2.2.2.2.3. Add a user to MySQL
You need to add a new MySQL user for Bugzilla to use. (It's not safe to
have Bugzilla use the MySQL root account.) The following instructions
assume the defaults in localconfig; if you changed those, you need to
modify the SQL command appropriately. You will need the $db_pass
password you set in localconfig in Section 2.2.1, âlocalconfigâ.
We use an SQL GRANT command to create a âbugsâ user. This also
restricts the âbugsâuser to operations within a database called âbugsâ,
and only allows the account to connect from âlocalhostâ. Modify it to
reflect your setup if you will be connecting from another machine or as
a different user.
Run the mysql command-line client and enter:
mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE, LOCK TABLES,
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DROP, REFERENCES ON bugs.*
TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '$db_pass';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
2.2.2.2.4. Permit attachments table to grow beyond 4GB
By default, MySQL will limit the size of a table to 4GB. This limit is
present even if the underlying filesystem has no such limit. To set a
higher limit, follow these instructions.
After you have completed the rest of the installation (or at least the
database setup parts), you should run the MySQL command-line client and
enter the following, replacing $bugs_db with your Bugzilla database
name (bugs by default):
mysql> use $bugs_db
mysql> ALTER TABLE attachments
AVG_ROW_LENGTH=1000000, MAX_ROWS=20000;
The above command will change the limit to 20GB. Mysql will have to
make a temporary copy of your entire table to do this. Ideally, you
should do this when your attachments table is still small.
[Note]
This does not affect Big Files, attachments that are stored directly on
disk instead of in the database.
2.2.2.3. PostgreSQL
2.2.2.3.1. Add a User to PostgreSQL
You need to add a new user to PostgreSQL for the Bugzilla application
to use when accessing the database. The following instructions assume
the defaults in localconfig; if you changed those, you need to modify
the commands appropriately. You will need the $db_pass password you set
in localconfig in Section 2.2.1, âlocalconfigâ.
On most systems, to create the user in PostgreSQL, you will need to
login as the root user, and then
bash# su - postgres
As the postgres user, you then need to create a new user:
bash$ createuser -U postgres -dRSP bugs
When asked for a password, provide the password which will be set as
$db_pass in localconfig. The created user will not be a superuser (-S)
and will not be able to create new users (-R). He will only have the
ability to create databases (-d).
2.2.2.3.2. Configure PostgreSQL
Now, you will need to edit pg_hba.conf which is usually located in
/var/lib/pgsql/data/. In this file, you will need to add a new line to
it as follows:
host all bugs 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 md5
This means that for TCP/IP (host) connections, allow connections from
'127.0.0.1' to 'all' databases on this server from the 'bugs' user, and
use password authentication (md5) for that user.
Now, you will need to restart PostgreSQL, but you will need to fully
stop and start the server rather than just restarting due to the
possibility of a change to postgresql.conf. After the server has
restarted, you will need to edit localconfig, finding the $db_driver
variable and setting it to Pg and changing the password in $db_pass to
the one you picked previously, while setting up the account.
2.2.2.4. Oracle
2.2.2.4.1. Create a New Tablespace
You can use the existing tablespace or create a new one for Bugzilla.
To create a new tablespace, run the following command:
CREATE TABLESPACE bugs
DATAFILE '$path_to_datafile' SIZE 500M
AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 30M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED
Here, the name of the tablespace is 'bugs', but you can choose another
name. $path_to_datafile is the path to the file containing your
database, for instance /u01/oradata/bugzilla.dbf. The initial size of
the database file is set in this example to 500 Mb, with an increment
of 30 Mb everytime we reach the size limit of the file.
2.2.2.4.2. Add a User to Oracle
The user name and password must match what you set in localconfig
($db_user and $db_pass, respectively). Here, we assume that the user
name is 'bugs' and the tablespace name is the same as above.
CREATE USER bugs
IDENTIFIED BY "$db_pass"
DEFAULT TABLESPACE bugs
TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP
PROFILE DEFAULT;
-- GRANT/REVOKE ROLE PRIVILEGES
GRANT CONNECT TO bugs;
GRANT RESOURCE TO bugs;
-- GRANT/REVOKE SYSTEM PRIVILEGES
GRANT UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO bugs;
GRANT EXECUTE ON CTXSYS.CTX_DDL TO bugs;
2.2.2.4.3. Configure the Web Server
If you use Apache, append these lines to httpd.conf to set ORACLE_HOME
and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. For instance:
SetEnv ORACLE_HOME /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/
SetEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/lib/
When this is done, restart your web server.
2.2.2.5. SQLite
[Caution]
Due to SQLite's concurrency limitations we recommend SQLite only for
small and development Bugzilla installations.
No special configuration is required to run Bugzilla on SQLite. The
database will be stored in data/db/$db_name, where $db_name is the
database name defined in localconfig.
2.2.3. checksetup.pl
Next, rerun checksetup.pl. It reconfirms that all the modules are
present, and notices the altered localconfig file, which it assumes you
have edited to your satisfaction. It compiles the UI templates,
connects to the database using the 'bugs' user you created and the
password you defined, and creates the 'bugs' database and the tables
therein.
After that, it asks for details of an administrator account. Bugzilla
can have multiple administrators - you can create more later - but it
needs one to start off with. Enter the email address of an
administrator, his or her full name, and a suitable Bugzilla password.
checksetup.pl will then finish. You may rerun checksetup.pl at any time
if you wish.
2.2.4. Web server
Configure your web server according to the instructions in the
appropriate section. (If it makes a difference in your choice, the
Bugzilla Team recommends Apache.) To check whether your web server is
correctly configured, try to access testagent.cgi from your web server.
If "OK" is displayed, then your configuration is successful. Regardless
of which web server you are using, however, ensure that sensitive
information is not remotely available by properly applying the access
controls in Section 4.2.1, âDisabling Remote Access to Bugzilla
Configuration Filesâ. You can run testserver.pl to check if your web
server serves Bugzilla files as expected.
2.2.4.1. Bugzilla using Apache
You have two options for running Bugzilla under Apache - mod_cgi (the
default) and mod_perl (new in Bugzilla 2.23)
2.2.4.1.1. Apache httpd⢠with mod_cgi
To configure your Apache web server to work with Bugzilla while using
mod_cgi, do the following:
1. Load httpd.conf in your editor. In Fedora and Red Hat Linux, this
file is found in /etc/httpd/conf.
2. Apache uses <Directory> directives to permit fine-grained
permission setting. Add the following lines to a directive that
applies to the location of your Bugzilla installation. (If such a
section does not exist, you'll want to add one.) In this example,
Bugzilla has been installed at /var/www/html/bugzilla.
<Directory /var/www/html/bugzilla>
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.html
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
These instructions: allow apache to run .cgi files found within the
bugzilla directory; instructs the server to look for a file called
index.cgi or, if not found, index.html if someone only types the
directory name into the browser; and allows Bugzilla's .htaccess
files to override some global permissions.
[Note]
It is possible to make these changes globally, or to the directive
controlling Bugzilla's parent directory (e.g. <Directory
/var/www/html/>). Such changes would also apply to the Bugzilla
directory... but they would also apply to many other places where they
may or may not be appropriate. In most cases, including this one, it is
better to be as restrictive as possible when granting extra access.
[Note]
On Windows, you may have to also add the ScriptInterpreterSource
Registry-Strict line, see Windows specific notes.
3. checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and
directories if it knows what group the web server runs as. Find the
Group line in httpd.conf, place the value found there in the
$webservergroup variable in localconfig, then rerun checksetup.pl.
4. Optional: If Bugzilla does not actually reside in the webspace
directory, but instead has been symbolically linked there, you will
need to add the following to the Options line of the Bugzilla
<Directory> directive (the same one as in the step above):
+FollowSymLinks
Without this directive, Apache will not follow symbolic links to
places outside its own directory structure, and you will be unable
to run Bugzilla.
2.2.4.1.2. Apache httpd⢠with mod_perl
Some configuration is required to make Bugzilla work with Apache and
mod_perl
1. Load httpd.conf in your editor. In Fedora and Red Hat Linux, this
file is found in /etc/httpd/conf.
2. Add the following information to your httpd.conf file, substituting
where appropriate with your own local paths.
[Note]
This should be used instead of the <Directory> block shown above. This
should also be above any other mod_perl directives within the
httpd.conf and must be specified in the order as below.
[Warning]
You should also ensure that you have disabled KeepAlive support in your
Apache install when utilizing Bugzilla under mod_perl
PerlSwitches -w -T
PerlConfigRequire /var/www/html/bugzilla/mod_perl.pl
3. checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and
directories if it knows what group the web server runs as. Find the
Group line in httpd.conf, place the value found there in the
$webservergroup variable in localconfig, then rerun checksetup.pl.
On restarting Apache, Bugzilla should now be running within the
mod_perl environment. Please ensure you have run checksetup.pl to set
permissions before you restart Apache.
[Note]
Please bear the following points in mind when looking at using Bugzilla
under mod_perl:
* mod_perl support in Bugzilla can take up a HUGE amount of RAM. You
could be looking at 30MB per httpd child, easily. Basically, you
just need a lot of RAM. The more RAM you can get, the better.
mod_perl is basically trading RAM for speed. At least 2GB total
system RAM is recommended for running Bugzilla under mod_perl.
* Under mod_perl, you have to restart Apache if you make any manual
change to any Bugzilla file. You can't just reload--you have to
actually restart the server (as in make sure it stops and starts
again). You can change localconfig and the params file manually, if
you want, because those are re-read every time you load a page.
* You must run in Apache's Prefork MPM (this is the default). The
Worker MPM may not work--we haven't tested Bugzilla's mod_perl
support under threads. (And, in fact, we're fairly sure it won't
work.)
* Bugzilla generally expects to be the only mod_perl application
running on your entire server. It may or may not work if there are
other applications also running under mod_perl. It does try its
best to play nice with other mod_perl applications, but it still
may have conflicts.
* It is recommended that you have one Bugzilla instance running under
mod_perl on your server. Bugzilla has not been tested with more
than one instance running.
2.2.4.2. Microsoft Internet Information Servicesâ¢
If you are running Bugzilla on Windows and choose to use Microsoft's
Internet Information Services⢠or Personal Web Server⢠you will need to
perform a number of other configuration steps as explained below. You
may also want to refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base
articles: 245225 âHOW TO: Configure and Test a PERL Script with IIS
4.0, 5.0, and 5.1â (for Internet Information Servicesâ¢) and 231998 âHOW
TO: FP2000: How to Use Perl with Microsoft Personal Web Server on
Windows 95/98â (for Personal Web Serverâ¢).
You will need to create a virtual directory for the Bugzilla install.
Put the Bugzilla files in a directory that is named something other
than what you want your end-users accessing. That is, if you want your
users to access your Bugzilla installation through
âhttp://<yourdomainname>/Bugzillaâ, then do not put your Bugzilla files
in a directory named âBugzillaâ. Instead, place them in a different
location, and then use the IIS Administration tool to create a Virtual
Directory named "Bugzilla" that acts as an alias for the actual
location of the files. When creating that virtual directory, make sure
you add the âExecute (such as ISAPI applications or CGI)â access
permission.
You will also need to tell IIS how to handle Bugzilla's .cgi files.
Using the IIS Administration tool again, open up the properties for the
new virtual directory and select the Configuration option to access the
Script Mappings. Create an entry mapping .cgi to:
<full path to perl.exe >\perl.exe -x<full path to Bugzilla> -wT "%s" %s
For example:
c:\perl\bin\perl.exe -xc:\bugzilla -wT "%s" %s
[Note]
The ActiveState install may have already created an entry for .pl files
that is limited to âGET,HEAD,POSTâ. If so, this mapping should be
removed as Bugzilla's .pl files are not designed to be run via a web
server.
IIS will also need to know that the index.cgi should be treated as a
default document. On the Documents tab page of the virtual directory
properties, you need to add index.cgi as a default document type. If
you wish, you may remove the other default document types for this
particular virtual directory, since Bugzilla doesn't use any of them.
Also, and this can't be stressed enough, make sure that files such as
localconfig and your data directory are secured as described in
Section 4.2.1, âDisabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration
Filesâ.
2.2.5. Bugzilla
Your Bugzilla should now be working. Access
http://<your-bugzilla-server>/ - you should see the Bugzilla front
page. If not, consult the Troubleshooting section, Appendix A,
Troubleshooting.
[Note]
The URL above may be incorrect if you installed Bugzilla into a
subdirectory or used a symbolic link from your web site root to the
Bugzilla directory.
Log in with the administrator account you defined in the last
checksetup.pl run. You should go through the Parameters page and see if
there are any you wish to change. They key parameters are documented in
Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ; you should certainly alter
maintainer and urlbase; you may also want to alter cookiepath or
requirelogin.
Bugzilla has several optional features which require extra
configuration. You can read about those in Section 2.3, âOptional
Additional Configurationâ.
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
Bugzilla has a number of optional features. This section describes how
to configure or enable them.
2.3.1. Bug Graphs
If you have installed the necessary Perl modules you can start
collecting statistics for the nifty Bugzilla graphs.
bash# crontab -e
This should bring up the crontab file in your editor. Add a cron entry
like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:
5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> && ./collectstats.pl
After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the
Reports page.
[Note]
Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that
can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.
2.3.2. The Whining Cron
What good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make them more so
you can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at
engineers which leave their bugs in the CONFIRMED state without
triaging them.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab
entry, in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This
example runs it at 12.55am.
55 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> && ./whineatnews.pl
[Note]
Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that
can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.
2.3.3. Whining
As of Bugzilla 2.20, users can configure Bugzilla to regularly annoy
them at regular intervals, by having Bugzilla execute saved searches at
certain times and emailing the results to the user. This is known as
"Whining". The process of configuring Whining is described in
Section 5.13, âWhiningâ, but for it to work a Perl script must be
executed at regular intervals.
This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab
entry, in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This
example runs it every 15 minutes.
*/15 * * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> && ./whine.pl
[Note]
Whines can be executed as often as every 15 minutes, so if you specify
longer intervals between executions of whine.pl, some users may not be
whined at as often as they would expect. Depending on the person, this
can either be a very Good Thing or a very Bad Thing.
[Note]
Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler,
which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that
can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.
2.3.4. Serving Alternate Formats with the right MIME type
Some Bugzilla pages have alternate formats, other than just plain HTML.
In particular, a few Bugzilla pages can output their contents as either
XUL (a special Mozilla format, that looks like a program GUI) or RDF (a
type of structured XML that can be read by various programs).
In order for your users to see these pages correctly, Apache must send
them with the right MIME type. To do this, add the following lines to
your Apache configuration, either in the <VirtualHost> section for your
Bugzilla, or in the <Directory> section for your Bugzilla:
AddType application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml .xul
AddType application/rdf+xml .rdf
2.4. Multiple Bugzilla databases with a single installation
The previous instructions referred to a standard installation, with one
unique Bugzilla database. However, you may want to host several
distinct installations, without having several copies of the code. This
is possible by using the PROJECT environment variable. When accessed,
Bugzilla checks for the existence of this variable, and if present,
uses its value to check for an alternative configuration file named
localconfig.<PROJECT> in the same location as the default one
(localconfig). It also checks for customized templates in a directory
named <PROJECT> in the same location as the default one
(template/<langcode>). By default this is template/en/default so
PROJECT's templates would be located at template/en/PROJECT.
To set up an alternate installation, just export PROJECT=foo before
running checksetup.pl for the first time. It will result in a file
called localconfig.foo instead of localconfig. Edit this file as
described above, with reference to a new database, and re-run
checksetup.pl to populate it. That's all.
Now you have to configure the web server to pass this environment
variable when accessed via an alternate URL, such as virtual host for
instance. The following is an example of how you could do it in Apache,
other Webservers may differ.
<VirtualHost 212.85.153.228:80>
ServerName foo.bar.baz
SetEnv PROJECT foo
Alias /bugzilla /var/www/bugzilla
</VirtualHost>
Don't forget to also export this variable before accessing Bugzilla by
other means, such as cron tasks for instance.
2.5. OS-Specific Installation Notes
Many aspects of the Bugzilla installation can be affected by the
operating system you choose to install it on. Sometimes it can be made
easier and others more difficult. This section will attempt to help you
understand both the difficulties of running on specific operating
systems and the utilities available to make it easier.
If you have anything to add or notes for an operating system not
covered, please file a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.
2.5.1. Microsoft Windows
Making Bugzilla work on Windows is more difficult than making it work
on Unix. For that reason, we still recommend doing so on a Unix based
system such as GNU/Linux. That said, if you do want to get Bugzilla
running on Windows, you will need to make the following adjustments. A
detailed step-by-step installation guide for Windows is also available
if you need more help with your installation.
2.5.1.1. Win32 Perl
Perl for Windows can be obtained from ActiveState. You should be able
to find a compiled binary at
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/. The following
instructions assume that you are using version 5.8.1 of ActiveState.
[Note]
These instructions are for 32-bit versions of Windows. If you are using
a 64-bit version of Windows, you will need to install 32-bit Perl in
order to install the 32-bit modules as described below.
2.5.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32
Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in
Section 2.1.5, âPerl Modulesâ. The main difference is that windows uses
PPM instead of CPAN. ActiveState provides a GUI to manage Perl modules.
We highly recommend that you use it. If you prefer to use ppm from the
command-line, type:
C:\perl> ppm install <module name>
[Note]
The PPM repository stores modules in 'packages' that may have a
slightly different name than the module. If retrieving these modules
from there, you will need to pay attention to the information provided
when you run checksetup.pl as it will tell you what package you'll need
to install.
[Tip]
If you are behind a corporate firewall, you will need to let the
ActiveState PPM utility know how to get through it to access the
repositories by setting the HTTP_proxy system environmental variable.
For more information on setting that variable, see the ActiveState
documentation.
2.5.1.3. Serving the web pages
As is the case on Unix based systems, any web server should be able to
handle Bugzilla; however, the Bugzilla Team still recommends Apache
whenever asked. No matter what web server you choose, be sure to pay
attention to the security notes in Section 4.2.1, âDisabling Remote
Access to Bugzilla Configuration Filesâ. More information on
configuring specific web servers can be found in Section 2.2.4, âWeb
serverâ.
[Note]
The web server looks at /usr/bin/perl to call Perl. If you are using
Apache on windows, you can set the ScriptInterpreterSource directive in
your Apache config file to make it look at the right place: insert the
line
ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-Strict
into your httpd.conf file, and create the key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cgi\Shell\ExecCGI\Command
with C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe -T as value (adapt to your path if needed) in
the registry. When this is done, restart Apache.
2.5.1.4. Sending Email
To enable Bugzilla to send email on Windows, the server running the
Bugzilla code must be able to connect to, or act as, an SMTP server.
2.5.2. Mac OS Xâ¢
Making Bugzilla work on Mac OS X requires the following adjustments.
2.5.2.1. Sendmail
In Mac OS X 10.3 and later, Postfix is used as the built-in email
server. Postfix provides an executable that mimics sendmail enough to
fool Bugzilla, as long as Bugzilla can find it. Bugzilla is able to
find the fake sendmail executable without any assistance.
2.5.2.2. Libraries & Perl Modules on Mac OS X
Apple does not include the GD library with Mac OS X. Bugzilla needs
this for bug graphs.
You can use MacPorts (http://www.macports.org/) or Fink
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/), both of which are similar in
nature to the CPAN installer, but install common unix programs.
Follow the instructions for setting up MacPorts or Fink. Once you have
one installed, you'll want to use it to install the gd2 package.
Fink will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit
enter to install all of the dependencies and then watch it work. You
will then be able to use CPAN to install the GD Perl module.
[Note]
To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by
default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs
most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and
headers will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and
/usr/include. When the Perl module config script asks where your libgd
is, be sure to tell it /sw/lib.
Also available via MacPorts and Fink is expat. After installing the
expat package, you will be able to install XML::Parser using CPAN. If
you use fink, there is one caveat. Unlike recent versions of the GD
module, XML::Parser doesn't prompt for the location of the required
libraries. When using CPAN, you will need to use the following command
sequence:
# perl -MCPAN -e'look XML::Parser'
# perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include
# make; make test; make install
# exit
The look command will download the module and spawn a new shell with
the extracted files as the current working directory.
You should watch the output from these make commands, especially âmake
testâ as errors may prevent XML::Parser from functioning correctly with
Bugzilla.
The exit command will return you to your original shell.
2.5.3. Linux/BSD Distributions
Many Linux/BSD distributions include Bugzilla and its dependencies in
their native package management systems. Installing Bugzilla with root
access on any Linux/BSD system should be as simple as finding the
Bugzilla package in the package management application and installing
it using the normal command syntax. Several distributions also perform
the proper web server configuration automatically on installation.
Please consult the documentation of your Linux/BSD distribution for
instructions on how to install packages, or for specific instructions
on installing Bugzilla with native package management tools. There is
also a Bugzilla Wiki Page for distro-specific installation notes.
2.6. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
2.6.1. Introduction
If you are running a *NIX OS as non-root, either due to lack of access
(web hosts, for example) or for security reasons, this will detail how
to install Bugzilla on such a setup. It is recommended that you read
through the Section 2.1, âInstallationâ first to get an idea on the
installation steps required. (These notes will reference to steps in
that guide.)
2.6.2. MySQL
You may have MySQL installed as root. If you're setting up an account
with a web host, a MySQL account needs to be set up for you. From
there, you can create the bugs account, or use the account given to
you.
[Warning]
You may have problems trying to set up GRANT permissions to the
database. If you're using a web host, chances are that you have a
separate database which is already locked down (or one big database
with limited/no access to the other areas), but you may want to ask
your system administrator what the security settings are set to, and/or
run the GRANT command for you.
Also, you will probably not be able to change the MySQL root user
password (for obvious reasons), so skip that step.
2.6.2.1. Running MySQL as Non-Root
2.6.2.1.1. The Custom Configuration Method
Create a file .my.cnf in your home directory (using /home/foo in this
example) as follows....
[mysqld]
datadir=/home/foo/mymysql
socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock
port=8081
[mysql]
socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock
port=8081
[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib
[safe_mysqld]
err-log=/home/foo/mymysql/the.log
pid-file=/home/foo/mymysql/the.pid
2.6.2.1.2. The Custom Built Method
You can install MySQL as a not-root, if you really need to. Build it
with PREFIX set to /home/foo/mysql, or use pre-installed executables,
specifying that you want to put all of the data files in
/home/foo/mysql/data. If there is another MySQL server running on the
system that you do not own, use the -P option to specify a TCP port
that is not in use.
2.6.2.1.3. Starting the Server
After your mysqld program is built and any .my.cnf file is in place,
you must initialize the databases (ONCE).
bash$ mysql_install_db
Then start the daemon with
bash$ safe_mysql &
After you start mysqld the first time, you then connect to it as "root"
and GRANT permissions to other users. (Again, the MySQL root account
has nothing to do with the *NIX root account.)
[Note]
You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your
system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a
crontab entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart
them if needed.
[Warning]
Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first
consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources
and running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any
machine on which you are a user!
2.6.3. Perl
On the extremely rare chance that you don't have Perl on the machine,
you will have to build the sources yourself. The following commands
should get your system installed with your own personal version of
Perl:
bash$ wget http://perl.org/CPAN/src/stable.tar.gz
bash$ tar zvxf stable.tar.gz
bash$ cd perl-5.8.1
bash$ sh Configure -de -Dprefix=/home/foo/perl
bash$ make && make test && make install
Once you have Perl installed into a directory (probably in ~/perl/bin),
you will need to install the Perl Modules, described below.
2.6.4. Perl Modules
Installing the Perl modules as a non-root user is accomplished by
running the install-module.pl script. For more details on this script,
see install-module.pl documentation
2.6.5. HTTP Server
Ideally, this also needs to be installed as root and run under a
special web server account. As long as the web server will allow the
running of *.cgi files outside of a cgi-bin, and a way of denying web
access to certain files (such as a .htaccess file), you should be good
in this department.
2.6.5.1. Running Apache as Non-Root
You can run Apache as a non-root user, but the port will need to be set
to one above 1024. If you type httpd -V, you will get a list of the
variables that your system copy of httpd uses. One of those, namely
HTTPD_ROOT, tells you where that installation looks for its config
information.
From there, you can copy the config files to your own home directory to
start editing. When you edit those and then use the -d option to
override the HTTPD_ROOT compiled into the web server, you get control
of your own customized web server.
[Note]
You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your
system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a
crontab entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart
them if needed.
[Warning]
Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first
consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources
and running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any
machine on which you are a user!
2.6.6. Bugzilla
When you run ./checksetup.pl to create the localconfig file, it will
list the Perl modules it finds. If one is missing, go back and
double-check the module installation from Section 2.6.4, âPerl
Modulesâ, then delete the localconfig file and try again.
[Warning]
One option in localconfig you might have problems with is the web
server group. If you can't successfully browse to the index.cgi (like a
Forbidden error), you may have to relax your permissions, and blank out
the web server group. Of course, this may pose as a security risk.
Having a properly jailed shell and/or limited access to shell accounts
may lessen the security risk, but use at your own risk.
2.6.6.1. suexec or shared hosting
If you are running on a system that uses suexec (most shared hosting
environments do this), you will need to set the webservergroup value in
localconfig to match your primary group, rather than the one the web
server runs under. You will need to run the following shell commands
after running ./checksetup.pl, every time you run it (or modify
checksetup.pl to do them for you via the system() command).
for i in docs graphs images js skins; do find $i -type d -exec chmod o+rx {} \;
; done
for i in jpg gif css js png html rdf xul; do find . -name \*.$i -exec chmod o+r
{} \; ; done
find . -name .htaccess -exec chmod o+r {} \;
chmod o+x . data data/webdot
Pay particular attention to the number of semicolons and dots. They are
all important. A future version of Bugzilla will hopefully be able to
do this for you out of the box.
2.7. Upgrading to New Releases
Upgrading to new Bugzilla releases is very simple. There is a script
named checksetup.pl included with Bugzilla that will automatically do
all of the database migration for you.
The following sections explain how to upgrade from one version of
Bugzilla to another. Whether you are upgrading from one bug-fix version
to another (such as 4.2 to 4.2.1) or from one major version to another
(such as from 4.0 to 4.2), the instructions are always the same.
[Note]
Any examples in the following sections are written as though the user
were updating to version 4.2.1, but the procedures are the same no
matter what version you're updating to. Also, in the examples, the
user's Bugzilla installation is found at /var/www/html/bugzilla. If
that is not the same as the location of your Bugzilla installation,
simply substitute the proper paths where appropriate.
2.7.1. Before You Upgrade
Before you start your upgrade, there are a few important steps to take:
1. Read the Release Notes of the version you're upgrading to,
particularly the "Notes for Upgraders" section.
2. View the Sanity Check (Section 3.16, âChecking and Maintaining
Database Integrityâ) page on your installation before upgrading.
Attempt to fix all warnings that the page produces before you go
any further, or you may experience problems during your upgrade.
3. Shut down your Bugzilla installation by putting some HTML or text
in the shutdownhtml parameter (see Section 3.1, âBugzilla
Configurationâ).
4. Make a backup of the Bugzilla database. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If
anything goes wrong during the upgrade, your installation can be
corrupted beyond recovery. Having a backup keeps you safe.
[Warning]
Upgrading is a one-way process. You cannot "downgrade" an upgraded
Bugzilla. If you wish to revert to the old Bugzilla version for any
reason, you will have to restore your database from this backup.
Here are some sample commands you could use to backup your
database, depending on what database system you're using. You may
have to modify these commands for your particular setup.
MySQL:
mysqldump --opt -u bugs -p bugs > bugs.sql
PostgreSQL:
pg_dump --no-privileges --no-owner -h localhost -U bugs >
bugs.sql
2.7.2. Getting The New Bugzilla
There are three ways to get the new version of Bugzilla. We'll list
them here briefly and then explain them more later.
Bzr (Section 2.7.2.2, âUpgrading using Bzrâ)
If you have bzr installed on your machine and you have Internet
access, this is the easiest way to upgrade, particularly if you
have made modifications to the code or templates of Bugzilla.
Download the tarball (Section 2.7.2.3, âUpgrading using the tarballâ)
This is a very simple way to upgrade, and good if you haven't
made many (or any) modifications to the code or templates of
your Bugzilla.
Patches (Section 2.7.2.4, âUpgrading using patchesâ)
If you have made modifications to your Bugzilla, and you don't
have Internet access or you don't want to use bzr, then this is
the best way to upgrade.
You can only do minor upgrades (such as 4.2 to 4.2.1 or 4.2.1 to
4.2.2) with patches.
2.7.2.1. If you have modified your Bugzilla
If you have modified the code or templates of your Bugzilla, then
upgrading requires a bit more thought and effort. A discussion of the
various methods of updating compared with degree and methods of local
customization can be found in Section 6.3.2, âChoosing a Customization
Methodâ.
The larger the jump you are trying to make, the more difficult it is
going to be to upgrade if you have made local customizations. Upgrading
from 4.2 to 4.2.1 should be fairly painless even if you are heavily
customized, but going from 2.18 to 4.2 is going to mean a fair bit of
work re-writing your local changes to use the new files, logic,
templates, etc. If you have done no local changes at all, however, then
upgrading should be approximately the same amount of work regardless of
how long it has been since your version was released.
2.7.2.2. Upgrading using Bzr
This requires that you have bzr installed (most Unix machines do), and
requires that you are able to access bzr.mozilla.org, which may not be
an option if you don't have Internet access.
The following shows the sequence of commands needed to update a
Bugzilla installation via Bzr, and a typical series of results. These
commands assume that you already have Bugzilla installed using Bzr.
[Warning]
If your installation is still using CVS, you must first convert it to
Bzr. A very detailed step by step documentation can be found on
wiki.mozilla.org.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ bzr switch 4.2 (only run this command when not yet running 4.2)
bash$ bzr up -r tag:bugzilla-4.2.1
+N extensions/MoreBugUrl/
+N extensions/MoreBugUrl/Config.pm
+N extensions/MoreBugUrl/Extension.pm
...
M Bugzilla/Attachment.pm
M Bugzilla/Attachment/PatchReader.pm
M Bugzilla/Bug.pm
...
All changes applied successfully.
[Caution]
If a line in the output from bzr up mentions a conflict, then that
represents a file with local changes that Bzr was unable to properly
merge. You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla (or
at least the portion using that file) will be usable.
2.7.2.3. Upgrading using the tarball
If you are unable (or unwilling) to use Bzr, another option that's
always available is to obtain the latest tarball from the Download Page
and create a new Bugzilla installation from that.
This sequence of commands shows how to get the tarball from the
command-line; it is also possible to download it from the site directly
in a web browser. If you go that route, save the file to the
/var/www/html directory (or its equivalent, if you use something else)
and omit the first three lines of the example.
bash$ cd /var/www/html
bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-4.2.1.tar.gz
(Output omitted)
bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-4.2.1.tar.gz
bugzilla-4.2.1/
bugzilla-4.2.1/colchange.cgi
(Output truncated)
bash$ cd bugzilla-4.2.1
bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* .
bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data .
bash$ cd ..
bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old
bash$ mv bugzilla-4.2.1 bugzilla
[Warning]
The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important
detail--it means that the destination directory is the current working
directory.
[Caution]
If you have some extensions installed, you will have to copy them to
the new bugzilla directory too. Extensions are located in
bugzilla/extensions/. Only copy those you installed, not those managed
by the Bugzilla team.
This upgrade method will give you a clean install of Bugzilla. That's
fine if you don't have any local customizations that you want to
maintain. If you do have customizations, then you will need to reapply
them by hand to the appropriate files.
2.7.2.4. Upgrading using patches
A patch is a collection of all the bug fixes that have been made since
the last bug-fix release.
If you are doing a bug-fix upgradeâthat is, one where only the last
number of the revision changes, such as from 4.2 to 4.2.1âthen you have
the option of obtaining and applying a patch file from the Download
Page.
As above, this example starts with obtaining the file via the command
line. If you have already downloaded it, you can omit the first two
commands.
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-4.2-to-4.2.1
.diff.gz
(Output omitted)
bash$ gunzip bugzilla-4.2-to-4.2.1.diff.gz
bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-4.2-to-4.2.1.diff
patching file Bugzilla/Constants.pm
patching file enter_bug.cgi
(etc.)
[Warning]
Be aware that upgrading from a patch file does not change the entries
in your .bzr directory. This could make it more difficult to upgrade
using Bzr (Section 2.7.2.2, âUpgrading using Bzrâ) in the future.
2.7.3. Completing Your Upgrade
Now that you have the new Bugzilla code, there are a few final steps to
complete your upgrade.
1. If your new Bugzilla installation is in a different directory or on
a different machine than your old Bugzilla installation, make sure
that you have copied the data directory and the localconfig file
from your old Bugzilla installation. (If you followed the tarball
instructions above, this has already happened.)
2. If this is a major update, check that the configuration
(Section 2.2, âConfigurationâ) for your new Bugzilla is up-to-date.
Sometimes the configuration requirements change between major
versions.
3. If you didn't do it as part of the above configuration step, now
you need to run checksetup.pl, which will do everything required to
convert your existing database and settings for the new version:
bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla
bash$ ./checksetup.pl
[Warning]
The period at the beginning of the command ./checksetup.pl is important
and cannot be omitted.
[Caution]
If this is a major upgrade (say, 3.6 to 4.2 or similar), running
checksetup.pl on a large installation (75,000 or more bugs) can take a
long time, possibly several hours.
4. Clear any HTML or text that you put into the shutdownhtml
parameter, to re-activate Bugzilla.
5. View the Sanity Check (Section 3.16, âChecking and Maintaining
Database Integrityâ) page in your upgraded Bugzilla.
It is recommended that, if possible, you fix any problems you see,
immediately. Failure to do this may mean that Bugzilla will not
work correctly. Be aware that if the sanity check page contains
more errors after an upgrade, it doesn't necessarily mean there are
more errors in your database than there were before, as additional
tests are added to the sanity check over time, and it is possible
that those errors weren't being checked for in the old version.
2.7.4. Automatic Notifications of New Releases
Bugzilla 3.0 introduced the ability to automatically notify
administrators when new releases are available, based on the
upgrade_notification parameter, see Section 3.1, âBugzilla
Configurationâ. Administrators will see these notifications when they
access the index.cgi page, i.e. generally when logging in. Bugzilla
will check once per day for new releases, unless the parameter is set
to âdisabledâ. If you are behind a proxy, you may have to set the
proxy_url parameter accordingly. If the proxy requires authentication,
use the http://user:pass@proxy_url/ syntax.
Chapter 3. Administering Bugzilla
Table of Contents
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
3.1.1. Required Settings
3.1.2. Administrative Policies
3.1.3. User Authentication
3.1.4. Attachments
3.1.5. Bug Change Policies
3.1.6. Bug Fields
3.1.7. Bug Moving
3.1.8. Dependency Graphs
3.1.9. Group Security
3.1.10. LDAP Authentication
3.1.11. RADIUS Authentication
3.1.12. Email
3.1.13. Patch Viewer
3.1.14. Query Defaults
3.1.15. Shadow Database
3.1.16. User Matching
3.2. User Administration
3.2.1. Creating the Default User
3.2.2. Managing Other Users
3.3. Classifications
3.4. Products
3.4.1. Creating New Products
3.4.2. Editing Products
3.4.3. Adding or Editing Components, Versions and Target
Milestones
3.4.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
3.5. Components
3.6. Versions
3.7. Milestones
3.8. Flags
3.8.1. A Simple Example
3.8.2. About Flags
3.8.3. Using flag requests
3.8.4. Two Types of Flags
3.8.5. Administering Flags
3.9. Keywords
3.10. Custom Fields
3.10.1. Adding Custom Fields
3.10.2. Editing Custom Fields
3.10.3. Deleting Custom Fields
3.11. Legal Values
3.11.1. Viewing/Editing legal values
3.11.2. Deleting legal values
3.12. Bug Status Workflow
3.13. Voting
3.14. Quips
3.15. Groups and Group Security
3.15.1. Creating Groups
3.15.2. Editing Groups and Assigning Group Permissions
3.15.3. Assigning Users to Groups
3.15.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
3.16. Checking and Maintaining Database Integrity
3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from
the "Parameters" link in the Administration page (the Administration
page can be found by clicking the "Administration" link in the footer).
The parameters are divided into several categories, accessed via the
menu on the left. Following is a description of the different
categories and important parameters within those categories.
3.1.1. Required Settings
The core required parameters for any Bugzilla installation are set
here. These parameters must be set before a new Bugzilla installation
can be used. Administrators should review this list before deploying a
new Bugzilla installation.
maintainer
Email address of the person responsible for maintaining this
Bugzilla installation. The address need not be that of a valid
Bugzilla account.
urlbase
Defines the fully qualified domain name and web server path to
this Bugzilla installation.
For example, if the Bugzilla query page is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, the âurlbaseâ should be
set to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.
docs_urlbase
Defines path to the Bugzilla documentation. This can be a fully
qualified domain name, or a path relative to "urlbase".
For example, if the "Bugzilla Configuration" page of the
documentation is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/docs/html/parameters.html, set the
âdocs_urlbaseâ to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/docs/html/.
sslbase
Defines the fully qualified domain name and web server path for
HTTPS (SSL) connections to this Bugzilla installation.
For example, if the Bugzilla main page is
https://www.foo.com/bugzilla/index.cgi, the âsslbaseâ should be
set to https://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.
ssl_redirect
If enabled, Bugzilla will force HTTPS (SSL) connections, by
automatically redirecting any users who try to use a non-SSL
connection.
cookiedomain
Defines the domain for Bugzilla cookies. This is typically left
blank. If there are multiple hostnames that point to the same
webserver, which require the same cookie, then this parameter
can be utilized. For example, If your website is at
https://www.foo.com/, setting this to .foo.com/ will also allow
bar.foo.com/ to access Bugzilla cookies.
cookiepath
Defines a path, relative to the web server root, that Bugzilla
cookies will be restricted to. For example, if the urlbase is
set to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/, the cookiepath should be
set to /bugzilla/. Setting it to "/" will allow all sites served
by this web server or virtual host to read Bugzilla cookies.
utf8
Determines whether to use UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding for all text
in Bugzilla. New installations should set this to true to avoid
character encoding problems. Existing databases should set this
to true only after the data has been converted from existing
legacy character encoding to UTF-8, using the contrib/recode.pl
script.
[Note]
If you turn this parameter from "off" to "on", you must re-run
checksetup.pl immediately afterward.
shutdownhtml
If there is any text in this field, this Bugzilla installation
will be completely disabled and this text will appear instead of
all Bugzilla pages for all users, including Admins. Used in the
event of site maintenance or outage situations.
[Note]
Although regular log-in capability is disabled while shutdownhtml is
enabled, safeguards are in place to protect the unfortunate admin who
loses connection to Bugzilla. Should this happen to you, go directly to
the editparams.cgi (by typing the URL in manually, if necessary). Doing
this will prompt you to log in, and your name/password will be accepted
here (but nowhere else).
announcehtml
Any text in this field will be displayed at the top of every
HTML page in this Bugzilla installation. The text is not wrapped
in any tags. For best results, wrap the text in a â<div>â tag.
Any style attributes from the CSS can be applied. For example,
to make the text green inside of a red box, add âid=messageâ to
the â<div>â tag.
proxy_url
If this Bugzilla installation is behind a proxy, enter the proxy
information here to enable Bugzilla to access the Internet.
Bugzilla requires Internet access to utilize the
upgrade_notification parameter (below). If the proxy requires
authentication, use the syntax: http://user:pass@proxy_url/.
upgrade_notification
Enable or disable a notification on the homepage of this
Bugzilla installation when a newer version of Bugzilla is
available. This notification is only visible to administrators.
Choose "disabled", to turn off the notification. Otherwise,
choose which version of Bugzilla you want to be notified about:
"development_snapshot" is the latest release on the trunk;
"latest_stable_release" is the most recent release available on
the most recent stable branch; "stable_branch_release" the most
recent release on the branch this installation is based on.
3.1.2. Administrative Policies
This page contains parameters for basic administrative functions.
Options include whether to allow the deletion of bugs and users, and
whether to allow users to change their email address.
3.1.3. User Authentication
This page contains the settings that control how this Bugzilla
installation will do its authentication. Choose what authentication
mechanism to use (the Bugzilla database, or an external source such as
LDAP), and set basic behavioral parameters. For example, choose whether
to require users to login to browse bugs, the management of
authentication cookies, and the regular expression used to validate
email addresses. Some parameters are highlighted below.
emailregexp
Defines the regular expression used to validate email addresses
used for login names. The default attempts to match fully
qualified email addresses (i.e. 'user@example.com') in a
slightly more restrictive way than what is allowed in RFC 2822.
Some Bugzilla installations allow only local user names (i.e
'user' instead of 'user@example.com'). In that case, this
parameter should be used to define the email domain.
emailsuffix
This string is appended to login names when actually sending
email to a user. For example, If emailregexp has been set to
allow local usernames, then this parameter would contain the
email domain for all users (i.e. '@example.com').
3.1.4. Attachments
This page allows for setting restrictions and other parameters
regarding attachments to bugs. For example, control size limitations
and whether to allow pointing to external files via a URI.
3.1.5. Bug Change Policies
Set policy on default behavior for bug change events. For example,
choose which status to set a bug to when it is marked as a duplicate,
and choose whether to allow bug reporters to set the priority or target
milestone. Also allows for configuration of what changes should require
the user to make a comment, described below.
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!)
noresolveonopenblockers
This option will prevent users from resolving bugs as FIXED if
they have unresolved dependencies. Only the FIXED resolution is
affected. Users will be still able to resolve bugs to
resolutions other than FIXED if they have unresolved dependent
bugs.
3.1.6. Bug Fields
The parameters in this section determine the default settings of
several Bugzilla fields for new bugs, and also control whether certain
fields are used. For example, choose whether to use the "target
milestone" field or the "status whiteboard" field.
useqacontact
This allows you to define an email address for each component,
in addition to that of the default assignee, who will be sent
carbon copies of incoming bugs.
usestatuswhiteboard
This defines whether you wish to have a free-form, overwritable
field associated with each bug. The advantage of the Status
Whiteboard is that it can be deleted or modified with ease, and
provides an easily-searchable field for indexing some bugs that
have some trait in common.
3.1.7. Bug Moving
This page controls whether this Bugzilla installation allows certain
users to move bugs to an external database. If bug moving is enabled,
there are a number of parameters that control bug moving behaviors. For
example, choose which users are allowed to move bugs, the location of
the external database, and the default product and component that bugs
moved from other bug databases to this Bugzilla installation are
assigned to.
3.1.8. Dependency Graphs
This page has one parameter that sets the location of a Web Dot server,
or of the Web Dot binary on the local system, that is used to generate
dependency graphs. Web Dot is a CGI program that creates images from
.dot graphic description files. If no Web Dot server or binary is
specified, then dependency graphs will be disabled.
3.1.9. Group Security
Bugzilla allows for the creation of different groups, with the ability
to restrict the visibility of bugs in a group to a set of specific
users. Specific products can also be associated with groups, and users
restricted to only see products in their groups. Several parameters are
described in more detail below. Most of the configuration of groups and
their relationship to products is done on the "Groups" and "Product"
pages of the "Administration" area. The options on this page control
global default behavior. For more information on Groups and Group
Security, see Section 3.15, âGroups and Group Securityâ
makeproductgroups
Determines whether or not to automatically create groups when
new products are created. If this is on, the groups will be used
for querying bugs.
usevisibilitygroups
If selected, user visibility will be restricted to members of
groups, as selected in the group configuration settings. Each
user-defined group can be allowed to see members of selected
other groups. For details on configuring groups (including the
visibility restrictions) see Section 3.15.2, âEditing Groups and
Assigning Group Permissionsâ.
querysharegroup
The name of the group of users who are allowed to share saved
searches with one another. For more information on using saved
searches, see Saved Searches.
3.1.10. LDAP Authentication
LDAP authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication
architecture. This page contains all the parameters necessary to
configure Bugzilla for use with LDAP authentication.
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 that require a 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. Bugzilla tries to bind to
LDAP using those credentials and, if successful, tries to map this
account to a Bugzilla account. If an LDAP mail attribute is defined,
the value of this attribute is used, otherwise the "emailsuffix"
parameter is appended to LDAP username to form a full email address. If
an account for this address already exists in the Bugzilla
installation, 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. For example, bugs are still assigned by email address and
users are still queried by email address.
[Caution]
Because the Bugzilla account is not created until the first time a user
logs in, a user who has not yet logged is unknown to Bugzilla. This
means they cannot be used as an assignee or QA contact (default or
otherwise), added to any CC list, or any other such operation. One
possible workaround is the bugzilla_ldapsync.rb script in the contrib
directory. Another possible solution is fixing bug 201069.
Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:
user_verify_class
If you want to list âLDAPâ here, make sure to have set up the
other parameters listed below. Unless you have other (working)
authentication methods listed as well, you may otherwise not be
able to log back in to Bugzilla once you log out. If this
happens to you, you will need to manually edit data/params and
set user_verify_class to âDBâ.
LDAPserver
This parameter should be set to the name (and optionally the
port) of your LDAP server. If no port is specified, it assumes
the default LDAP port of 389.
For example: âldap.company.comâ or âldap.company.com:3268â
You can also specify a LDAP URI, so as to use other protocols,
such as LDAPS or LDAPI. If port was not specified in the URI,
the default is either 389 or 636 for 'LDAP' and 'LDAPS' schemes
respectively.
[Tip]
In order to use SSL with LDAP, specify a URI with "ldaps://". This will
force the use of SSL over port 636.
For example, normal LDAP: âldap://ldap.company.comâ, LDAP over
SSL: âldaps://ldap.company.comâ or LDAP over a UNIX domain
socket âldapi://%2fvar%2flib%2fldap_sockâ.
LDAPbinddn [Optional]
Some LDAP servers will not allow an anonymous bind to search the
directory. If this is the case with your configuration you
should set the LDAPbinddn parameter to the user account Bugzilla
should use instead of the anonymous bind.
Ex. âcn=default,cn=user:passwordâ
LDAPBaseDN
The LDAPBaseDN parameter should be set to the location in your
LDAP tree that you would like to search for email addresses.
Your uids should be unique under the DN specified here.
Ex. âou=People,o=Companyâ
LDAPuidattribute
The LDAPuidattribute parameter should be set to the attribute
which contains the unique UID of your users. The value retrieved
from this attribute will be used when attempting to bind as the
user to confirm their password.
Ex. âuidâ
LDAPmailattribute
The LDAPmailattribute parameter should be the name of the
attribute which contains the email address your users will enter
into the Bugzilla login boxes.
Ex. âmailâ
3.1.11. RADIUS Authentication
RADIUS authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication
architecture. This page contains all the parameters necessary for
configuring Bugzilla to use RADIUS authentication.
[Note]
Most caveats that apply to LDAP authentication apply to RADIUS
authentication as well. See Section 3.1.10, âLDAP Authenticationâ for
details.
Parameters required to use RADIUS Authentication:
user_verify_class
If you want to list âRADIUSâ here, make sure to have set up the
other parameters listed below. Unless you have other (working)
authentication methods listed as well, you may otherwise not be
able to log back in to Bugzilla once you log out. If this
happens to you, you will need to manually edit data/params and
set user_verify_class to âDBâ.
RADIUS_server
This parameter should be set to the name (and optionally the
port) of your RADIUS server.
RADIUS_secret
This parameter should be set to the RADIUS server's secret.
RADIUS_email_suffix
Bugzilla needs an e-mail address for each user account.
Therefore, it needs to determine the e-mail address
corresponding to a RADIUS user. Bugzilla offers only a simple
way to do this: it can concatenate a suffix to the RADIUS user
name to convert it into an e-mail address. You can specify this
suffix in the RADIUS_email_suffix parameter.
If this simple solution does not work for you, you'll probably
need to modify Bugzilla/Auth/Verify/RADIUS.pm to match your
requirements.
3.1.12. Email
This page contains all of the parameters for configuring how Bugzilla
deals with the email notifications it sends. See below for a summary of
important options.
mail_delivery_method
This is used to specify how email is sent, or if it is sent at
all. There are several options included for different MTAs,
along with two additional options that disable email sending.
"Test" does not send mail, but instead saves it in
data/mailer.testfile for later review. "None" disables email
sending entirely.
mailfrom
This is the email address that will appear in the "From" field
of all emails sent by this Bugzilla installation. Some email
servers require mail to be from a valid email address, therefore
it is recommended to choose a valid email address here.
smtpserver
This is the SMTP server address, if the âmail_delivery_methodâ
parameter is set to SMTP. Use "localhost" if you have a local
MTA running, otherwise use a remote SMTP server. Append ":" and
the port number, if a non-default port is needed.
smtp_username
Username to use for SASL authentication to the SMTP server.
Leave this parameter empty if your server does not require
authentication.
smtp_password
Password to use for SASL authentication to the SMTP server. This
parameter will be ignored if the âsmtp_usernameâ parameter is
left empty.
smtp_ssl
Enable SSL support for connection to the SMTP server.
smtp_debug
This parameter allows you to enable detailed debugging output.
Log messages are printed the web server's error log.
whinedays
Set this to the number of days you want to let bugs go in the
CONFIRMED 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).
globalwatcher
This allows you to define specific users who will receive
notification each time a new bug in entered, or when an existing
bug changes, according to the normal groupset permissions. It
may be useful for sending notifications to a mailing-list, for
instance.
3.1.13. Patch Viewer
This page contains configuration parameters for the CVS server, Bonsai
server and LXR server that Bugzilla will use to enable the features of
the Patch Viewer. Bonsai is a tool that enables queries to a CVS tree.
LXR is a tool that can cross reference and index source code.
3.1.14. Query Defaults
This page controls the default behavior of Bugzilla in regards to
several aspects of querying bugs. Options include what the default
query options are, what the "My Bugs" page returns, whether users can
freely add bugs to the quip list, and how many duplicate bugs are
needed to add a bug to the "most frequently reported" list.
3.1.15. Shadow Database
This page controls whether a shadow database is used, and all the
parameters associated with the shadow database. Versions of Bugzilla
prior to 3.2 used the MyISAM table type, which supports only
table-level write locking. With MyISAM, any time someone is making a
change to a bug, the entire table is locked until the write operation
is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is
complete.
The âshadowdbâ 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.
[Note]
As of version 3.2, Bugzilla no longer uses the MyISAM table type.
Instead, InnoDB is used, which can do transaction-based locking.
Therefore, the limitations the Shadow Database feature was designed to
workaround no longer exist.
3.1.16. User Matching
The settings on this page control how users are selected and queried
when adding a user to a bug. For example, users need to be selected
when choosing who the bug is assigned to, adding to the CC list or
selecting a QA contact. With the "usemenuforusers" parameter, it is
possible to configure Bugzilla to display a list of users in the fields
instead of an empty text field. This should only be used in Bugzilla
installations with a small number of users. If users are selected via a
text box, this page also contains parameters for how user names can be
queried and matched when entered.
Another setting called 'ajax_user_autocompletion' enables certain user
fields to display a list of matched user names as a drop down after
typing a few characters. Note that it is recommended to use mod_perl
when enabling 'ajax_user_autocompletion'.
3.2. User Administration
3.2.1. Creating the Default User
When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will
prompt you for the administrative username (email address) and password
for this "super user". If for some reason you delete the "super user"
account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you for this
username and password.
[Tip]
If you wish to add more administrative users, add them to the "admin"
group and, optionally, edit the tweakparams, editusers, creategroups,
editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the entire admin group
to those groups (which is the case by default).
3.2.2. Managing Other Users
3.2.2.1. Searching for existing users
If you have âeditusersâ privileges or if you are allowed to grant
privileges for some groups, the âUsersâ link will appear in the
Administration page.
The first screen is a search form to search for existing user accounts.
You can run searches based either on the user ID, real name or login
name (i.e. the email address, or just the first part of the email
address if the "emailsuffix" parameter is set). The search can be
conducted in different ways using the listbox to the right of the text
entry box. You can match by case-insensitive substring (the default),
regular expression, a reverse regular expression match (which finds
every user name which does NOT match the regular expression), or the
exact string if you know exactly who you are looking for. The search
can be restricted to users who are in a specific group. By default, the
restriction is turned off.
The search returns a list of users matching your criteria. User
properties can be edited by clicking the login name. The Account
History of a user can be viewed by clicking the "View" link in the
Account History column. The Account History displays changes that have
been made to the user account, the time of the change and the user who
made the change. For example, the Account History page will display
details of when a user was added or removed from a group.
3.2.2.2. Creating new users
3.2.2.2.1. Self-registration
By default, users can create their own user accounts by clicking the
âNew Accountâ link at the bottom of each page (assuming they aren't
logged in as someone else already). If you want to disable this
self-registration, or if you want to restrict who can create his own
user account, you have to edit the âcreateemailregexpâ parameter in the
âConfigurationâ page, see Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ.
3.2.2.2.2. Accounts created by an administrator
Users with âeditusersâ privileges, such as administrators, can create
user accounts for other users:
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 âNew Accountâ button to create users, as it will
pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her
account name and password.
3.2.2.3. Modifying Users
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 are using the âemailsuffixâ parameter, 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.
* Bugmail Disabled: Mark this checkbox to disable bugmail and
whinemail completely for this account. This checkbox replaces the
data/nomail file which existed in older versions of Bugzilla.
* Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a
space, the user is prevented from logging in, or making any changes
to bugs via the web interface. The HTML you type in this box is
presented to the user when they attempt to perform these actions,
and should explain why the account was disabled.
Users with disabled accounts will continue to receive mail from
Bugzilla; furthermore, they will not be able to log in themselves
to change their own preferences and stop it. If you want an account
(disabled or active) to stop receiving mail, simply check the
âBugmail Disabledâ checkbox above.
[Note]
Even users whose accounts have been disabled can still submit bugs via
the e-mail gateway, if one exists. The e-mail gateway should not be
enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla.
[Warning]
Don't disable all the administrator accounts!
* <groupname>: If you have created some groups, e.g.
"securitysensitive", then checkboxes will appear here to allow you
to add users to, or remove them from, these groups. The first
checkbox gives the user the ability to add and remove other users
as members of this group. The second checkbox adds the user himself
as a member of the group.
* 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. If you turn on the
âmakeproductgroupsâ parameter in the Group Security Panel in the
Parameters page, then Bugzilla creates one group per product (at
the time you create the product), and this group has exactly the
same name as the product itself. Note that for products that
already exist when the parameter is turned on, the corresponding
group will not be created. The user must still have the âeditbugsâ
privilege to edit bugs in these products.
3.2.2.4. Deleting Users
If the âallowuserdeletionâ parameter is turned on, see Section 3.1,
âBugzilla Configurationâ, then you can also delete user accounts. Note
that this is most of the time not the best thing to do. If only a
warning in a yellow box is displayed, then the deletion is safe. If a
warning is also displayed in a red box, then you should NOT try to
delete the user account, else you will get referential integrity
problems in your database, which can lead to unexpected behavior, such
as bugs not appearing in bug lists anymore, or data displaying
incorrectly. You have been warned!
3.2.2.5. Impersonating Users
There may be times when an administrator would like to do something as
another user. The sudo feature may be used to do this.
[Note]
To use the sudo feature, you must be in the bz_sudoers group. By
default, all administrators are in this group.
If you have access to this feature, you may start a session by going to
the Edit Users page, Searching for a user and clicking on their login.
You should see a link below their login name titled "Impersonate this
user". Click on the link. This will take you to a page where you will
see a description of the feature and instructions for using it. After
reading the text, simply enter the login of the user you would like to
impersonate, provide a short message explaining why you are doing this,
and press the button.
As long as you are using this feature, everything you do will be done
as if you were logged in as the user you are impersonating.
[Warning]
The user you are impersonating will not be told about what you are
doing. If you do anything that results in mail being sent, that mail
will appear to be from the user you are impersonating. You should be
extremely careful while using this feature.
3.3. Classifications
Classifications tend to be used in order to group several related
products into one distinct entity.
The classifications layer is disabled by default; it can be turned on
or off using the useclassification parameter, in the Bug Fields section
of the edit parameters screen.
Access to the administration of classifications is controlled using the
editclassifications system group, which defines a privilege for
creating, destroying, and editing classifications.
When activated, classifications will introduce an additional step when
filling bugs (dedicated to classification selection), and they will
also appear in the advanced search form.
3.4. Products
Products typically represent real-world shipping products. Products can
be given Classifications. For example, if a company makes computer
games, they could have a classification of "Games", and a separate
product for each game. This company might also have a âCommonâ product
for units of technology used in multiple games, and perhaps a few
special products that represent items that are not actually shipping
products (for example, "Website", or "Administration").
Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis.
The number of âvotesâ 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 CONFIRMED status.
When creating or editing products the following options are available:
Product
The name of the product
Description
A brief description of the product
Default milestone
Select the default milestone for this product.
Closed for bug entry
Select this box to prevent new bugs from being entered against
this product.
Maximum votes per person
Maximum votes a user is allowed to give for this product
Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug
Maximum votes a user is allowed to give for this product in a
single bug
Confirmation threshold
Number of votes needed to automatically remove any bug against
this product from the UNCONFIRMED state
Version
Specify which version of the product bugs will be entered
against.
Create chart datasets for this product
Select to make chart datasets available for this product.
When editing a product there is also a link to edit Group Access
Controls, see Section 3.4.4, âAssigning Group Controls to Productsâ.
3.4.1. Creating New Products
To create a new product:
1. Select âAdministrationâ from the footer and then choose âProductsâ
from the main administration page.
2. Select the âAddâ link in the bottom right.
3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description
field may contain HTML.
4. When the product is created, Bugzilla will give a message stating
that a component must be created before any bugs can be entered
against the new product. Follow the link to create a new component.
See Components for more information.
3.4.2. Editing Products
To edit an existing product, click the "Products" link from the
"Administration" page. If the 'useclassification' parameter is turned
on, a table of existing classifications is displayed, including an
"Unclassified" category. The table indicates how many products are in
each classification. Click on the classification name to see its
products. If the 'useclassification' parameter is not in use, the table
lists all products directly. The product table summarizes the
information about the product defined when the product was created.
Click on the product name to edit these properties, and to access links
to other product attributes such as the product's components, versions,
milestones, and group access controls.
3.4.3. Adding or Editing Components, Versions and Target Milestones
To edit existing, or add new, Components, Versions or Target Milestones
to a Product, select the "Edit Components", "Edit Versions" or "Edit
Milestones" links from the "Edit Product" page. A table of existing
Components, Versions or Milestones is displayed. Click on a item name
to edit the properties of that item. Below the table is a link to add a
new Component, Version or Milestone.
For more information on components, see Components.
For more information on versions, see Section 3.6, âVersionsâ.
For more information on milestones, see Section 3.7, âMilestonesâ.
3.4.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
On the âEdit Productâ page, there is a link called âEdit Group Access
Controlsâ. The settings on this page control the relationship of the
groups to the product being edited.
Group Access Controls are an important aspect of using groups for
isolating products and restricting access to bugs filed against those
products. For more information on groups, including how to create, edit
add users to, and alter permission of, see Section 3.15, âGroups and
Group Securityâ.
After selecting the "Edit Group Access Controls" link from the "Edit
Product" page, a table containing all user-defined groups for this
Bugzilla installation is displayed. The system groups that are created
when Bugzilla is installed are not applicable to Group Access Controls.
Below is description of what each of these fields means.
Groups may be applicable (e.g bugs in this product can be associated
with this group) , default (e.g. bugs in this product are in this group
by default), and mandatory (e.g. bugs in this product must be
associated with this group) for each product. Groups can also control
access to bugs for a given product, or be used to make bugs for a
product totally read-only unless the group restrictions are met. The
best way to understand these relationships is by example. See
Section 3.4.4.1, âCommon Applications of Group Controlsâ for examples
of product and group relationships.
[Note]
Products and Groups are not limited to a one-to-one relationship.
Multiple groups can be associated with the same product, and groups can
be associated with more than one product.
If any group has Entry selected, then the product will restrict bug
entry to only those users who are members of all the groups with Entry
selected.
If any group has Canedit selected, then the product will be read-only
for any users who are not members of all of the groups with Canedit
selected. Only users who are members of all the Canedit groups will be
able to edit bugs for this product. This is an additional restriction
that enables finer-grained control over products rather than just
all-or-nothing access levels.
The following settings let you choose privileges on a per-product
basis. This is a convenient way to give privileges to some users for
some products only, without having to give them global privileges which
would affect all products.
Any group having editcomponents selected allows users who are in this
group to edit all aspects of this product, including components,
milestones and versions.
Any group having canconfirm selected allows users who are in this group
to confirm bugs in this product.
Any group having editbugs selected allows users who are in this group
to edit all fields of bugs in this product.
The MemberControl and OtherControl are used in tandem to determine
which bugs will be placed in this group. The only allowable
combinations of these two parameters are listed in a table on the "Edit
Group Access Controls" page. Consult this table for details on how
these fields can be used. Examples of different uses are described
below.
3.4.4.1. Common Applications of Group Controls
The use of groups is best explained by providing examples that
illustrate configurations for common use cases. The examples follow a
common syntax: Group: Entry, MemberControl, OtherControl, CanEdit,
EditComponents, CanConfirm, EditBugs. Where "Group" is the name of the
group being edited for this product. The other fields all correspond to
the table on the "Edit Group Access Controls" page. If any of these
options are not listed, it means they are not checked.
Basic Product/Group Restriction
Suppose there is a product called "Bar". The "Bar" product can only
have bugs entered against it by users in the group "Foo". Additionally,
bugs filed against product "Bar" must stay restricted to users to "Foo"
at all times. Furthermore, only members of group "Foo" can edit bugs
filed against product "Bar", even if other users could see the bug.
This arrangement would achieved by the following:
Product Bar:
foo: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY, CANEDIT
Perhaps such strict restrictions are not needed for product "Bar". A
more lenient way to configure product "Bar" and group "Foo" would be:
Product Bar:
foo: ENTRY, SHOWN/SHOWN, EDITCOMPONENTS, CANCONFIRM, EDITBUGS
The above indicates that for product "Bar", members of group "Foo" can
enter bugs. Any one with permission to edit a bug against product "Bar"
can put the bug in group "Foo", even if they themselves are not in
"Foo". Anyone in group "Foo" can edit all aspects of the components of
product "Bar", can confirm bugs against product "Bar", and can edit all
fields of any bug against product "Bar".
General User Access With Security Group
To permit any user to file bugs against "Product A", and to permit any
user to submit those bugs into a group called "Security":
Product A:
security: SHOWN/SHOWN
General User Access With A Security Product
To permit any user to file bugs against product called "Security" while
keeping those bugs from becoming visible to anyone outside the group
"SecurityWorkers" (unless a member of the "SecurityWorkers" group
removes that restriction):
Product Security:
securityworkers: DEFAULT/MANDATORY
Product Isolation With a Common Group
To permit users of "Product A" to access the bugs for "Product A",
users of "Product B" to access the bugs for "Product B", and support
staff, who are members of the "Support Group" to access both, three
groups are needed:
1. Support Group: Contains members of the support staff.
2. AccessA Group: Contains users of product A and the Support group.
3. AccessB Group: Contains users of product B and the Support group.
Once these three groups are defined, the product group controls can be
set to:
Product A:
AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Product B:
AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Perhaps the "Support Group" wants more control. For example, the
"Support Group" could be permitted to make bugs inaccessible to users
of both groups "AccessA" and "AccessB". Then, the "Support Group" could
be permitted to publish bugs relevant to all users in a third product
(let's call it "Product Common") that is read-only to anyone outside
the "Support Group". In this way the "Support Group" could control bugs
that should be seen by both groups. That configuration would be:
Product A:
AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Support: SHOWN/NA
Product B:
AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY
Support: SHOWN/NA
Product Common:
Support: ENTRY, DEFAULT/MANDATORY, CANEDIT
Make a Product Read Only
Sometimes a product is retired and should no longer have new bugs filed
against it (for example, an older version of a software product that is
no longer supported). A product can be made read-only by creating a
group called "readonly" and adding products to the group as needed:
Product A:
ReadOnly: ENTRY, NA/NA, CANEDIT
[Note]
For more information on Groups outside of how they relate to products
see Section 3.15, âGroups and Group Securityâ.
3.5. Components
Components are subsections of a Product. E.g. the computer game you are
designing may have a "UI" component, an "API" component, a "Sound
System" component, and a "Plugins" component, each overseen by a
different programmer. It often makes sense to divide Components in
Bugzilla according to the natural divisions of responsibility within
your Product or company.
Each component has a default assignee and (if you turned it on in the
parameters), a QA Contact. The default assignee should be the primary
person who fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the
person who will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Assignee,
QA Contact, and Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in
this Component and when these bugs change. Default Assignee and Default
QA Contact fields only dictate the default assignments; these can be
changed on bug submission, or at any later point in a bug's life.
To create a new Component:
1. Select the âEdit componentsâ link from the âEdit productâ page
2. Select the âAddâ link in the bottom right.
3. Fill out the âComponentâ field, a short âDescriptionâ, the âDefault
Assigneeâ, âDefault CC Listâ and âDefault QA Contactâ (if enabled).
The âComponent Descriptionâ field may contain a limited subset of
HTML tags. The âDefault Assigneeâ field must be a login name
already existing in the Bugzilla database.
3.6. Versions
Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1",
"Flinders 95", and "Flinders 2000". Version is not a multi-select
field; the usual practice is to select the earliest version known to
have the bug.
To create and edit Versions:
1. From the "Edit product" screen, select "Edit Versions"
2. You will notice that the product already has the default version
"undefined". Click the "Add" link in the bottom right.
3. Enter the name of the Version. This field takes text only. Then
click the "Add" button.
3.7. 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" parameter in the "Bug Fields" tab of the
"Parameters" page.
To create new Milestones, and set Default Milestones:
1. Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page.
2. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner.
3. Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can
optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative
number (-32768 to 32767) that defines where in the list this
particular milestone appears. This is because milestones often do
not occur in alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be
after "Release 1.2". Select "Add".
3.8. Flags
Flags are a way to attach a specific status to a bug or attachment,
either â+â or â-â. The meaning of these symbols depends on the text the
flag itself, but contextually they could mean pass/fail, accept/reject,
approved/denied, or even a simple yes/no. If your site allows
requestable flags, then users may set a flag to â?â as a request to
another user that they look at the bug/attachment, and set the flag to
its correct status.
3.8.1. A Simple Example
A developer might want to ask their manager, âShould we fix this bug
before we release version 2.0?â They might want to do this for a lot of
bugs, so it would be nice to streamline the process...
In Bugzilla, it would work this way:
1. The Bugzilla administrator creates a flag type called âblocking2.0â
that shows up on all bugs in your product.
It shows up on the âShow Bugâ screen as the text âblocking2.0â with
a drop-down box next to it. The drop-down box contains four values:
an empty space, â?â, â-â, and â+â.
2. The developer sets the flag to â?â.
3. The manager sees the blocking2.0 flag with a â?â value.
4. If the manager thinks the feature should go into the product before
version 2.0 can be released, he sets the flag to â+â. Otherwise, he
sets it to â-â.
5. Now, every Bugzilla user who looks at the bug knows whether or not
the bug needs to be fixed before release of version 2.0.
3.8.2. About Flags
3.8.2.1. Values
Flags can have three values:
?
A user is requesting that a status be set. (Think of it as 'A
question is being asked'.)
-
The status has been set negatively. (The question has been
answered ânoâ.)
+
The status has been set positively. (The question has been
answered âyesâ.)
Actually, there's a fourth value a flag can have -- âunsetâ -- which
shows up as a blank space. This just means that nobody has expressed an
opinion (or asked someone else to express an opinion) about this bug or
attachment.
3.8.3. Using flag requests
If a flag has been defined as 'requestable', and a user has enough
privileges to request it (see below), the user can set the flag's
status to â?â. This status indicates that someone (a.k.a. âthe
requesterâ) is asking someone else to set the flag to either â+â or
â-â.
If a flag has been defined as 'specifically requestable', a text box
will appear next to the flag into which the requester may enter a
Bugzilla username. That named person (a.k.a. âthe requesteeâ) will
receive an email notifying them of the request, and pointing them to
the bug/attachment in question.
If a flag has not been defined as 'specifically requestable', then no
such text-box will appear. A request to set this flag cannot be made of
any specific individual, but must be asked âto the windâ. A requester
may âask the windâ on any flag simply by leaving the text-box blank.
3.8.4. Two Types of Flags
Flags can go in two places: on an attachment, or on a bug.
3.8.4.1. Attachment Flags
Attachment flags are used to ask a question about a specific attachment
on a bug.
Many Bugzilla installations use this to request that one developer
âreviewâ another developer's code before they check it in. They attach
the code to a bug report, and then set a flag on that attachment called
âreviewâ to review?boss@domain.com. boss@domain.com is then notified by
email that he has to check out that attachment and approve it or deny
it.
For a Bugzilla user, attachment flags show up in three places:
1. On the list of attachments in the âShow Bugâ screen, you can see
the current state of any flags that have been set to ?, +, or -.
You can see who asked about the flag (the requester), and who is
being asked (the requestee).
2. When you âEditâ an attachment, you can see any settable flag, along
with any flags that have already been set. This âEdit Attachmentâ
screen is where you set flags to ?, -, +, or unset them.
3. Requests are listed in the âRequest Queueâ, which is accessible
from the âMy Requestsâ link (if you are logged in) or âRequestsâ
link (if you are logged out) visible in the footer of all pages.
3.8.4.2. Bug Flags
Bug flags are used to set a status on the bug itself. You can see Bug
Flags in the âShow Bugâ and âRequestsâ screens, as described above.
Only users with enough privileges (see below) may set flags on bugs.
This doesn't necessarily include the assignee, reporter, or users with
the editbugs permission.
3.8.5. Administering Flags
If you have the âeditcomponentsâ permission, you can edit Flag Types
from the main administration page. Clicking the âFlagsâ link will bring
you to the âAdminister Flag Typesâ page. Here, you can select whether
you want to create (or edit) a Bug flag, or an Attachment flag.
No matter which you choose, the interface is the same, so we'll just go
over it once.
3.8.5.1. Editing a Flag
To edit a flag's properties, just click the flag's name. That will take
you to the same form as described below (Section 3.8.5.2, âCreating a
Flagâ).
3.8.5.2. Creating a Flag
When you click on the âCreate a Flag Type for...â link, you will be
presented with a form. Here is what the fields in the form mean:
3.8.5.2.1. Name
This is the name of the flag. This will be displayed to Bugzilla users
who are looking at or setting the flag. The name may contain any valid
Unicode characters except commas and spaces.
3.8.5.2.2. Description
The description describes the flag in more detail. It is visible in a
tooltip when hovering over a flag either in the âShow Bugâ or âEdit
Attachmentâ pages. This field can be as long as you like, and can
contain any character you want.
3.8.5.2.3. Category
Default behaviour for a newly-created flag is to appear on products and
all components, which is why â__Any__:__Any__â is already entered in
the âInclusionsâ box. If this is not your desired behaviour, you must
either set some exclusions (for products on which you don't want the
flag to appear), or you must remove â__Any__:__Any__â from the
Inclusions box and define products/components specifically for this
flag.
To create an Inclusion, select a Product from the top drop-down box.
You may also select a specific component from the bottom drop-down box.
(Setting â__Any__â for Product translates to, âall the products in this
Bugzillaâ. Selecting â__Any__â in the Component field means âall
components in the selected product.â) Selections made, press âIncludeâ,
and your Product/Component pairing will show up in the âInclusionsâ box
on the right.
To create an Exclusion, the process is the same; select a Product from
the top drop-down box, select a specific component if you want one, and
press âExcludeâ. The Product/Component pairing will show up in the
âExclusionsâ box on the right.
This flag will and can be set for any products/components that
appearing in the âInclusionsâ box (or which fall under the appropriate
â__Any__â). This flag will not appear (and therefore cannot be set) on
any products appearing in the âExclusionsâ box. IMPORTANT: Exclusions
override inclusions.
You may select a Product without selecting a specific Component, but
you can't select a Component without a Product, or to select a
Component that does not belong to the named Product. If you do so,
Bugzilla will display an error message, even if all your products have
a component by that name.
Example: Let's say you have a product called âJet Planeâ that has
thousands of components. You want to be able to ask if a problem should
be fixed in the next model of plane you release. We'll call the flag
âfixInNextâ. But, there's one component in âJet Plane,â called âPilot.â
It doesn't make sense to release a new pilot, so you don't want to have
the flag show up in that component. So, you include âJet Plane:__Any__â
and you exclude âJet Plane:Pilotâ.
3.8.5.2.4. Sort Key
Flags normally show up in alphabetical order. If you want them to show
up in a different order, you can use this key set the order on each
flag. Flags with a lower sort key will appear before flags with a
higher sort key. Flags that have the same sort key will be sorted
alphabetically, but they will still be after flags with a lower sort
key, and before flags with a higher sort key.
Example: I have AFlag (Sort Key 100), BFlag (Sort Key 10), CFlag (Sort
Key 10), and DFlag (Sort Key 1). These show up in the order: DFlag,
BFlag, CFlag, AFlag.
3.8.5.2.5. Active
Sometimes, you might want to keep old flag information in the Bugzilla
database, but stop users from setting any new flags of this type. To do
this, uncheck âactiveâ. Deactivated flags will still show up in the UI
if they are ?, +, or -, but they may only be cleared (unset), and
cannot be changed to a new value. Once a deactivated flag is cleared,
it will completely disappear from a bug/attachment, and cannot be set
again.
3.8.5.2.6. Requestable
New flags are, by default, ârequestableâ, meaning that they offer users
the â?â option, as well as â+â and â-â. To remove the ? option, uncheck
ârequestableâ.
3.8.5.2.7. Specifically Requestable
By default this box is checked for new flags, meaning that users may
make flag requests of specific individuals. Unchecking this box will
remove the text box next to a flag; if it is still requestable, then
requests may only be made âto the wind.â Removing this after specific
requests have been made will not remove those requests; that data will
stay in the database (though it will no longer appear to the user).
3.8.5.2.8. Multiplicable
Any flag with âMultiplicableâ set (default for new flags is 'on') may
be set more than once. After being set once, an unset flag of the same
type will appear below it with âaddl.â (short for âadditionalâ) before
the name. There is no limit to the number of times a Multiplicable
flags may be set on the same bug/attachment.
3.8.5.2.9. CC List
If you want certain users to be notified every time this flag is set to
?, -, +, or unset, add them here. This is a comma-separated list of
email addresses that need not be restricted to Bugzilla usernames.
3.8.5.2.10. Grant Group
When this field is set to some given group, only users in the group can
set the flag to â+â and â-â. This field does not affect who can request
or cancel the flag. For that, see the âRequest Groupâ field below. If
this field is left blank, all users can set or delete this flag. This
field is useful for restricting which users can approve or reject
requests.
3.8.5.2.11. Request Group
When this field is set to some given group, only users in the group can
request or cancel this flag. Note that this field has no effect if the
âgrant groupâ field is empty. You can set the value of this field to a
different group, but both fields have to be set to a group for this
field to have an effect.
3.8.5.3. Deleting a Flag
When you are at the âAdminister Flag Typesâ screen, you will be
presented with a list of Bug flags and a list of Attachment Flags.
To delete a flag, click on the âDeleteâ link next to the flag
description.
[Warning]
Once you delete a flag, it is gone from your Bugzilla. All the data for
that flag will be deleted. Everywhere that flag was set, it will
disappear, and you cannot get that data back. If you want to keep flag
data, but don't want anybody to set any new flags or change current
flags, unset âactiveâ in the flag Edit form.
3.9. Keywords
The administrator can define keywords which can be used to tag and
categorise bugs. For example, the keyword "regression" is commonly
used. A company might have a policy stating all regressions must be
fixed by the next release - this keyword can make tracking those bugs
much easier.
Keywords are global, rather than per-product. If the administrator
changes a keyword currently applied to any bugs, the keyword cache must
be rebuilt using the Section 3.16, âChecking and Maintaining Database
Integrityâ script. Currently keywords cannot be marked obsolete to
prevent future usage.
Keywords can be created, edited or deleted by clicking the "Keywords"
link in the admin page. There are two fields for each keyword - the
keyword itself and a brief description. Once created, keywords can be
selected and applied to individual bugs in that bug's "Details"
section.
3.10. Custom Fields
The release of Bugzilla 3.0 added the ability to create Custom Fields.
Custom Fields are treated like any other field - they can be set in
bugs and used for search queries. Administrators should keep in mind
that adding too many fields can make the user interface more
complicated and harder to use. Custom Fields should be added only when
necessary and with careful consideration.
[Tip]
Before adding a Custom Field, make sure that Bugzilla cannot already do
the desired behavior. Many Bugzilla options are not enabled by default,
and many times Administrators find that simply enabling certain options
that already exist is sufficient.
Administrators can manage Custom Fields using the âCustom Fieldsâ link
on the Administration page. The Custom Fields administration page
displays a list of Custom Fields, if any exist, and a link to "Add a
new custom field".
3.10.1. Adding Custom Fields
To add a new Custom Field, click the "Add a new custom field" link.
This page displays several options for the new field, described below.
The following attributes must be set for each new custom field:
* Name: The name of the field in the database, used internally. This
name MUST begin with âcf_â to prevent confusion with standard
fields. If this string is omitted, it will be automatically added
to the name entered.
* Description: A brief string which is used as the label for this
Custom Field. That is the string that users will see, and should be
short and explicit.
* Type: The type of field to create. There are several types
available:
Bug ID:
A field where you can enter the ID of another bug from the
same Bugzilla installation. To point to a bug in a remote
installation, use the See Also field instead.
Large Text Box:
A multiple line box for entering free text.
Free Text:
A single line box for entering free text.
Multiple-Selection Box:
A list box where multiple options can be selected. After
creating this field, it must be edited to add the
selection options. See Section 3.11.1, âViewing/Editing
legal valuesâ for information about editing legal values.
Drop Down:
A list box where only one option can be selected. After
creating this field, it must be edited to add the
selection options. See Section 3.11.1, âViewing/Editing
legal valuesâ for information about editing legal values.
Date/Time:
A date field. This field appears with a calendar widget
for choosing the date.
* Sortkey: Integer that determines in which order Custom Fields are
displayed in the User Interface, especially when viewing a bug.
Fields with lower values are displayed first.
* Reverse Relationship Description: When the custom field is of type
âBug IDâ, you can enter text here which will be used as label in
the referenced bug to list bugs which point to it. This gives you
the ability to have a mutual relationship between two bugs.
* Can be set on bug creation: Boolean that determines whether this
field can be set on bug creation. If not selected, then a bug must
be created before this field can be set. See Section 5.6, âFiling
Bugsâ for information about filing bugs.
* Displayed in bugmail for new bugs: Boolean that determines whether
the value set on this field should appear in bugmail when the bug
is filed. This attribute has no effect if the field cannot be set
on bug creation.
* Is obsolete: Boolean that determines whether this field should be
displayed at all. Obsolete Custom Fields are hidden.
* Is mandatory: Boolean that determines whether this field must be
set. For single and multi-select fields, this means that a
(non-default) value must be selected, and for text and date fields,
some text must be entered.
* Field only appears when: A custom field can be made visible when
some criteria is met. For instance, when the bug belongs to one or
more products, or when the bug is of some given severity. If left
empty, then the custom field will always be visible, in all bugs.
* Field that controls the values that appear in this field: When the
custom field is of type âDrop Downâ or âMultiple-Selection Boxâ,
you can restrict the availability of the values of the custom field
based on the value of another field. This criteria is independent
of the criteria used in the âField only appears whenâ setting. For
instance, you may decide that some given value âvalueYâ is only
available when the bug status is RESOLVED while the value âvalueXâ
should always be listed. Once you have selected the field which
should control the availability of the values of this custom field,
you can edit values of this custom field to set the criteria, see
Section 3.11.1, âViewing/Editing legal valuesâ.
3.10.2. Editing Custom Fields
As soon as a Custom Field is created, its name and type cannot be
changed. If this field is a drop down menu, its legal values can be set
as described in Section 3.11.1, âViewing/Editing legal valuesâ. All
other attributes can be edited as described above.
3.10.3. Deleting Custom Fields
Only custom fields which are marked as obsolete, and which never have
been used, can be deleted completely (else the integrity of the bug
history would be compromised). For custom fields marked as obsolete, a
"Delete" link will appear in the âActionâ column. If the custom field
has been used in the past, the deletion will be rejected. But marking
the field as obsolete is sufficient to hide it from the user interface
entirely.
3.11. Legal Values
Legal values for the operating system, platform, bug priority and
severity, custom fields of type âDrop Downâ and âMultiple-Selection
Boxâ (see Section 3.10, âCustom Fieldsâ), as well as the list of valid
bug statuses and resolutions can be customized from the same interface.
You can add, edit, disable and remove values which can be used with
these fields.
3.11.1. Viewing/Editing legal values
Editing legal values requires âadminâ privileges. Select "Field Values"
from the Administration page. A list of all fields, both system fields
and Custom Fields, for which legal values can be edited appears. Click
a field name to edit its legal values.
There is no limit to how many values a field can have, but each value
must be unique to that field. The sortkey is important to display these
values in the desired order.
When the availability of the values of a custom field is controlled by
another field, you can select from here which value of the other field
must be set for the value of the custom field to appear.
3.11.2. Deleting legal values
Legal values from Custom Fields can be deleted, but only if the
following two conditions are respected:
1. The value is not used by default for the field.
2. No bug is currently using this value.
If any of these conditions is not respected, the value cannot be
deleted. The only way to delete these values is to reassign bugs to
another value and to set another value as default for the field.
3.12. Bug Status Workflow
The bug status workflow is no longer hardcoded but can be freely
customized from the web interface. Only one bug status cannot be
renamed nor deleted, UNCONFIRMED, but the workflow involving it is
free. The configuration page displays all existing bug statuses twice,
first on the left for bug statuses we come from and on the top for bug
statuses we move to. If the checkbox is checked, then the transition
between the two bug statuses is legal, else it's forbidden
independently of your privileges. The bug status used for the
"duplicate_or_move_bug_status" parameter must be part of the workflow
as that is the bug status which will be used when duplicating or moving
a bug, so it must be available from each bug status.
When the workflow is set, the "View Current Triggers" link below the
table lets you set which transitions require a comment from the user.
3.13. Voting
All of the code for voting in Bugzilla has been moved into an
extension, called "Voting", in the extensions/Voting/ directory. To
enable it, you must remove the disabled file from that directory, and
run checksetup.pl.
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 "CONFIRMED", 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 CONFIRMED.
5. Once you have adjusted the values to your preference, click
"Update".
3.14. Quips
Quips are small text messages that can be configured to appear next to
search results. A Bugzilla installation can have its own specific
quips. Whenever a quip needs to be displayed, a random selection is
made from the pool of already existing quips.
Quip submission is controlled by the quip_list_entry_control parameter.
It has several possible values: open, moderated, or closed. In order to
enable quips approval you need to set this parameter to "moderated". In
this way, users are free to submit quips for addition but an
administrator must explicitly approve them before they are actually
used.
In order to see the user interface for the quips, it is enough to click
on a quip when it is displayed together with the search results. Or it
can be seen directly in the browser by visiting the quips.cgi URL
(prefixed with the usual web location of the Bugzilla installation).
Once the quip interface is displayed, it is enough to click the "view
and edit the whole quip list" in order to see the administration page.
A page with all the quips available in the database will be displayed.
Next to each quip there is a checkbox, under the "Approved" column.
Quips who have this checkbox checked are already approved and will
appear next to the search results. The ones that have it unchecked are
still preserved in the database but they will not appear on search
results pages. User submitted quips have initially the checkbox
unchecked.
Also, there is a delete link next to each quip, which can be used in
order to permanently delete a quip.
Display of quips is controlled by the display_quips user preference.
Possible values are "on" and "off".
3.15. Groups and Group Security
Groups allow for separating bugs into logical divisions. Groups are
typically used to isolate bugs that should only be seen by certain
people. For example, a company might create a different group for each
one of its customers or partners. Group permissions could be set so
that each partner or customer would only have access to their own bugs.
Or, groups might be used to create variable access controls for
different departments within an organization. Another common use of
groups is to associate groups with products, creating isolation and
access control on a per-product basis.
Groups and group behaviors are controlled in several places:
1. The group configuration page. To view or edit existing groups, or
to create new groups, access the "Groups" link from the
"Administration" page. This section of the manual deals primarily
with the aspect of group controls accessed on this page.
2. Global configuration parameters. Bugzilla has several parameters
that control the overall default group behavior and restriction
levels. For more information on the parameters that control group
behavior globally, see Section 3.1.9, âGroup Securityâ.
3. Product association with groups. Most of the functionality of
groups and group security is controlled at the product level. Some
aspects of group access controls for products are discussed in this
section, but for more detail see Section 3.4.4, âAssigning Group
Controls to Productsâ.
4. Group access for users. See Section 3.15.3, âAssigning Users to
Groupsâ for details on how users are assigned group access.
Group permissions are such that if a bug belongs to a group, only
members of that group can see the bug. If a bug is in more than one
group, only members of all the groups that the bug is in can see the
bug. For information on granting read-only access to certain people and
full edit access to others, see Section 3.4.4, âAssigning Group
Controls to Productsâ.
[Note]
By default, bugs can also be seen by the Assignee, the Reporter, and by
everyone on the CC List, regardless of whether or not the bug would
typically be viewable by them. Visibility to the Reporter and CC List
can be overridden (on a per-bug basis) by bringing up the bug, finding
the section that starts with âUsers in the roles selected below...â and
un-checking the box next to either 'Reporter' or 'CC List' (or both).
3.15.1. Creating Groups
To create a new group, follow the steps below:
1. Select the âAdministrationâ link in the page footer, and then
select the âGroupsâ link from the Administration page.
2. A table of all the existing groups is displayed. Below the table is
a description of all the fields. To create a new group, select the
âAdd Groupâ link under the table of existing groups.
3. There are five fields to fill out. These fields are documented
below the form. Choose a name and description for the group. Decide
whether this group should be used for bugs (in all likelihood this
should be selected). Optionally, choose a regular expression that
will automatically add any matching users to the group, and choose
an icon that will help identify user comments for the group. The
regular expression can be useful, for example, to automatically put
all users from the same company into one group (if the group is for
a specific customer or partner).
[Note]
If âUser RegExpâ is filled out, users whose email addresses match the
regular expression will automatically be members of the group as long
as their email addresses continue to match the regular expression. If
their email address changes and no longer matches the regular
expression, they will be removed from the group. Versions 2.16 and
older of Bugzilla did not automatically remove users who's email
addresses no longer matched the RegExp.
[Warning]
If specifying a domain in the regular expression, end the regexp with a
"$". Otherwise, when granting access to "@mycompany\.com", access will
also be granted to 'badperson@mycompany.com.cracker.net'. Use the
syntax, '@mycompany\.com$' for the regular expression.
4. After the new group is created, it can be edited for additional
options. The "Edit Group" page allows for specifying other groups
that should be included in this group and which groups should be
permitted to add and delete users from this group. For more
details, see Section 3.15.2, âEditing Groups and Assigning Group
Permissionsâ.
3.15.2. Editing Groups and Assigning Group Permissions
To access the "Edit Groups" page, select the âAdministrationâ link in
the page footer, and then select the âGroupsâ link from the
Administration page. A table of all the existing groups is displayed.
Click on a group name you wish to edit or control permissions for.
The "Edit Groups" page contains the same five fields present when
creating a new group. Below that are two additional sections, "Group
Permissions," and "Mass Remove". The "Mass Remove" option simply
removes all users from the group who match the regular expression
entered. The "Group Permissions" section requires further explanation.
The "Group Permissions" section on the "Edit Groups" page contains four
sets of permissions that control the relationship of this group to
other groups. If the 'usevisibilitygroups' parameter is in use (see
Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ) two additional sets of
permissions are displayed. Each set consists of two select boxes. On
the left, a select box with a list of all existing groups. On the
right, a select box listing all groups currently selected for this
permission setting (this box will be empty for new groups). The way
these controls allow groups to relate to one another is called
inheritance. Each of the six permissions is described below.
Groups That Are a Member of This Group
Members of any groups selected here will automatically have
membership in this group. In other words, members of any
selected group will inherit membership in this group.
Groups That This Group Is a Member Of
Members of this group will inherit membership to any group
selected here. For example, suppose the group being edited is an
Admin group. If there are two products (Product1 and Product2)
and each product has its own group (Group1 and Group2), and the
Admin group should have access to both products, simply select
both Group1 and Group2 here.
Groups That Can Grant Membership in This Group
The members of any group selected here will be able add users to
this group, even if they themselves are not in this group.
Groups That This Group Can Grant Membership In
Members of this group can add users to any group selected here,
even if they themselves are not in the selected groups.
Groups That Can See This Group
Members of any selected group can see the users in this group.
This setting is only visible if the 'usevisibilitygroups'
parameter is enabled on the Bugzilla Configuration page. See
Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ for information on
configuring Bugzilla.
Groups That This Group Can See
Members of this group can see members in any of the selected
groups. This setting is only visible if the
'usevisibilitygroups' parameter is enabled on the the Bugzilla
Configuration page. See Section 3.1, âBugzilla Configurationâ
for information on configuring Bugzilla.
3.15.3. Assigning Users to Groups
A User can become a member of a group in several ways:
1. The user can be explicitly placed in the group by editing the
user's profile. This can be done by accessing the "Users" page from
the "Administration" page. Use the search form to find the user you
want to edit group membership for, and click on their email address
in the search results to edit their profile. The profile page lists
all the groups, and indicates if the user is a member of the group
either directly or indirectly. More information on indirect group
membership is below. For more details on User administration, see
Section 3.2, âUser Administrationâ.
2. The group can include another group of which the user is a member.
This is indicated by square brackets around the checkbox next to
the group name in the user's profile. See Section 3.15.2, âEditing
Groups and Assigning Group Permissionsâ for details on group
inheritance.
3. The user's email address can match the regular expression that has
been specified to automatically grant membership to the group. This
is indicated by "*" around the check box by the group name in the
user's profile. See Section 3.15.1, âCreating Groupsâ for details
on the regular expression option when creating groups.
3.15.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products
The primary functionality of groups is derived from the relationship of
groups to products. The concepts around segregating access to bugs with
product group controls can be confusing. For details and examples on
this topic, see Section 3.4.4, âAssigning Group Controls to Productsâ.
3.16. Checking and Maintaining Database Integrity
Over time it is possible for the Bugzilla database to become corrupt or
to have anomalies. This could happen through normal usage of Bugzilla,
manual database administration outside of the Bugzilla user interface,
or from some other unexpected event. Bugzilla includes a "Sanity Check"
script that can perform several basic database checks, and repair
certain problems or inconsistencies.
To run the "Sanity Check" script, log in as an Administrator and click
the "Sanity Check" link in the admin page. Any problems that are found
will be displayed in red letters. If the script is capable of fixing a
problem, it will present a link to initiate the fix. If the script
cannot fix the problem it will require manual database administration
or recovery.
The "Sanity Check" script can also be run from the command line via the
perl script sanitycheck.pl. The script can also be run as a cron job.
Results will be delivered by email.
The "Sanity Check" script should be run on a regular basis as a matter
of best practice.
[Warning]
The "Sanity Check" script is no substitute for a competent database
administrator. It is only designed to check and repair basic database
problems.
Chapter 4. Bugzilla Security
Table of Contents
4.1. Operating System
4.1.1. TCP/IP Ports
4.1.2. System User Accounts
4.1.3. The chroot Jail
4.2. Web server
4.2.1. Disabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration Files
4.3. Bugzilla
4.3.1. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript
While some of the items in this chapter are related to the operating
system Bugzilla is running on or some of the support software required
to run Bugzilla, it is all related to protecting your data. This is not
intended to be a comprehensive guide to securing Linux, Apache, MySQL,
or any other piece of software mentioned. There is no substitute for
active administration and monitoring of a machine. The key to good
security is actually right in the middle of the word: U R It.
While programmers in general always strive to write secure code,
accidents can and do happen. The best approach to security is to always
assume that the program you are working with isn't 100% secure and
restrict its access to other parts of your machine as much as possible.
4.1. Operating System
4.1.1. TCP/IP Ports
The TCP/IP standard defines more than 65,000 ports for sending and
receiving traffic. Of those, Bugzilla needs exactly one to operate
(different configurations and options may require up to 3). You should
audit your server and make sure that you aren't listening on any ports
you don't need to be. It's also highly recommended that the server
Bugzilla resides on, along with any other machines you administer, be
placed behind some kind of firewall.
4.1.2. System User Accounts
Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd or MySQL's mysqld, run as either
ârootâ or ânobodyâ. This is even worse on Windows machines where the
majority of services run as âSYSTEMâ. While running as ârootâ or
âSYSTEMâ introduces obvious security concerns, the problems introduced
by running everything as ânobodyâ may not be so obvious. Basically, if
you run every daemon as ânobodyâ and one of them gets compromised it
can compromise every other daemon running as ânobodyâ on your machine.
For this reason, it is recommended that you create a user account for
each daemon.
[Note]
You will need to set the webservergroup option in localconfig to the
group your web server runs as. This will allow ./checksetup.pl to set
file permissions on Unix systems so that nothing is world-writable.
4.1.3. The chroot Jail
If your system supports it, you may wish to consider running Bugzilla
inside of a chroot jail. This option provides unprecedented security by
restricting anything running inside the jail from accessing any
information outside of it. If you wish to use this option, please
consult the documentation that came with your system.
4.2. Web server
4.2.1. Disabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration Files
There are many files that are placed in the Bugzilla directory area
that should not be accessible from the web server. Because of the way
Bugzilla is currently layed out, the list of what should and should not
be accessible is rather complicated. A quick way is to run
testserver.pl to check if your web server serves Bugzilla files as
expected. If not, you may want to follow the few steps below.
[Tip]
Bugzilla ships with the ability to create .htaccess files that enforce
these rules. Instructions for enabling these directives in Apache can
be found in Section 2.2.4.1, âBugzilla using Apacheâ
* In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:
+ Block: *.pl, *localconfig*
* In data:
+ Block everything
* In data/webdot:
+ If you use a remote webdot server:
o Block everything
o But allow *.dot only for the remote webdot server
+ Otherwise, if you use a local GraphViz:
o Block everything
o But allow: *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, *.map
+ And if you don't use any dot:
o Block everything
* In Bugzilla:
+ Block everything
* In template:
+ Block everything
Be sure to test that data that should not be accessed remotely is
properly blocked. Of particular interest is the localconfig file which
contains your database password. Also, be aware that many editors
create temporary and backup files in the working directory and that
those should also not be accessible. For more information, see bug
186383 or Bugtraq ID 6501. To test, simply run testserver.pl, as said
above.
[Tip]
Be sure to check Section 2.2.4, âWeb serverâ for instructions specific
to the web server you use.
4.3. Bugzilla
4.3.1. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript
If you installed Bugzilla version 2.22 or later from scratch, then the
utf8 parameter is switched on by default. This makes Bugzilla
explicitly set the character encoding, following a CERT advisory
recommending exactly this. The following therefore does not apply to
you; just keep utf8 turned on.
If you've upgraded from an older version, then it may be possible for a
Bugzilla user to take advantage of character set encoding ambiguities
to inject HTML into Bugzilla comments. This could include malicious
scripts. This is because due to internationalization concerns, we are
unable to turn the utf8 parameter on by default for upgraded
installations. Turning it on manually will prevent this problem.
Chapter 5. Using Bugzilla
Table of Contents
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
5.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
5.5. Searching for Bugs
5.5.1. Boolean Charts
5.5.2. Quicksearch
5.5.3. Case Sensitivity in Searches
5.5.4. Bug Lists
5.5.5. Adding/removing tags to/from bugs
5.6. Filing Bugs
5.6.1. Reporting a New Bug
5.6.2. Clone an Existing Bug
5.7. Attachments
5.7.1. Patch Viewer
5.8. Hints and Tips
5.8.1. Autolinkification
5.8.2. Comments
5.8.3. Server-Side Comment Wrapping
5.8.4. Dependency Tree
5.9. Time Tracking Information
5.10. User Preferences
5.10.1. General Preferences
5.10.2. Email Preferences
5.10.3. Saved Searches
5.10.4. Name and Password
5.10.5. Permissions
5.11. Reports and Charts
5.11.1. Reports
5.11.2. Charts
5.12. Flags
5.13. Whining
5.13.1. The Event
5.13.2. Whining Schedule
5.13.3. Whining Searches
5.13.4. Saving Your Changes
5.1. Introduction
This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There is a
Bugzilla test installation, called Landfill, which you are welcome to
play with (if it's up). However, not all of the Bugzilla installations
there will necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled, and
different installations run different versions, so some things may not
quite work as this document describes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are available and answered on
wiki.mozilla.org. They may cover some questions you have which are left
unanswered.
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account.
Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of
Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're
test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL:
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.4-branch/.
1. On the home page index.cgi, click the âOpen a new Bugzilla accountâ
link, or the âNew Accountâ link available in the footer of pages.
Now enter your email address, then click the âSendâ button.
[Note]
If none of these links is available, this means that the administrator
of the installation has disabled self-registration. This means that
only an administrator can create accounts for other users. One reason
could be that this installation is private.
[Note]
Also, if only some users are allowed to create an account on the
installation, you may see these links but your registration may fail if
your email address doesn't match the ones accepted by the installation.
This is another way to restrict who can access and edit bugs in this
installation.
2. Within moments, and if your registration is accepted, you should
receive an email to the address you provided, which contains your
login name (generally the same as the email address), and two URLs
with a token (a random string generated by the installation) to
confirm, respectively cancel, your registration. This is a way to
prevent users from abusing the generation of user accounts, for
instance by entering inexistent email addresses, or email addresses
which do not belong to them.
3. By default, you have 3 days to confirm your registration. Past this
timeframe, the token is invalidated and the registration is
automatically canceled. You can also cancel this registration
sooner by using the appropriate URL in the email you got.
4. If you confirm your registration, Bugzilla will ask you your real
name (optional, but recommended) and your password, which must be
between 3 and 16 characters long.
5. Now all you need to do is to click the âLog Inâ link in the footer
at the bottom of the page in your browser, enter your email address
and password you just chose into the login form, and click the âLog
inâ button.
You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies to remember you are logged
in so, unless you have cookies disabled or your IP address changes, you
should not have to log in again during your session.
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular bug.
It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. Bug 1 on Landfill
is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks;
clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that
particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every
installation of Bugzilla.
1. Product and Component: Bugs are divided up by Product and
Component, with a Product having one or more Components in it. For
example, bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of
several Components:
Administration:
Administration of a Bugzilla installation.
Bugzilla-General:
Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or
spans multiple components.
Creating/Changing Bugs:
Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
Documentation:
The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.
Email:
Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.
Installation:
The installation process of Bugzilla.
Query/Buglist:
Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
buglists.
Reporting/Charting:
Getting reports from Bugzilla.
User Accounts:
Anything about managing a user account from the user's
perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing
passwords, logging in, etc.
User Interface:
General issues having to do with the user interface
cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues,
HTML templates, etc.
2. Status and Resolution: These define exactly what state the bug is
in - from not even being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed
and the fix confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible
values for Status and Resolution on your installation should be
documented in the context-sensitive help for those items.
3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.
4. *QA Contact: The person responsible for quality assurance on this
bug.
5. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.
6. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.
7. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for
adding short notes and tags to a bug.
8. *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.
9. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where the
bug was found.
10. 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.
11. Priority: The bug assignee uses this field to prioritize his or her
bugs. It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.
12. 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.
13. *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.
14. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.
15. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.
16. *Time Tracking: This form can be used for time tracking. To use
this feature, you have to be blessed group membership specified by
the âtimetrackinggroupâ parameter.
Orig. Est.:
This field shows the original estimated time.
Current Est.:
This field shows the current estimated time. This number
is calculated from âHours Workedâ and âHours Leftâ.
Hours Worked:
This field shows the number of hours worked.
Hours Left:
This field shows the âCurrent Est.â - âHours Workedâ. This
value + âHours Workedâ will become the new Current Est.
%Complete:
This field shows what percentage of the task is complete.
Gain:
This field shows the number of hours that the bug is ahead
of the âOrig. Est.â.
Deadline:
This field shows the deadline for this bug.
17. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to
bugs. If there are any attachments, they are listed in this
section.
18. *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.
19. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.
20. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug
discussion here, if you have something worthwhile to say.
5.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
The life cycle of a bug, also known as workflow, is customizable to
match the needs of your organization, see Section 3.12, âBug Status
Workflowâ. Figure 5.1, âLifecycle of a Bugzilla Bugâ contains a
graphical representation of the default workflow using the default bug
statuses. If you wish to customize this image for your site, the
diagram file is available in Dia's native XML format.
Figure 5.1. Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug
Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug
5.5. Searching for Bugs
The Bugzilla Search page is the interface where you can find any bug
report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can
play with it here:
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.4-branch/query.cgi.
The Search page has controls for selecting different possible values
for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some fields,
multiple values can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla returns bugs
where the content of the field matches any one of the selected values.
If none is selected, then the field can take any value.
After a search is run, you can save it as a Saved Search, which will
appear in the page footer. If you are in the group defined by the
"querysharegroup" parameter, you may share your queries with other
users, see Saved Searches for more details.
5.5.1. Boolean Charts
Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts.
The boolean charts further restrict the set of results returned by a
query. It is possible to search for bugs based on elaborate
combinations of criteria.
The simplest boolean searches have only one term. These searches permit
the selected left field to be compared using a selectable operator to a
specified value. Using the "And," "Or," and "Add Another Boolean Chart"
buttons, additional terms can be included in the query, further
altering the list of bugs returned by the query.
There are three fields in each row of a boolean search.
* Field: the items being searched
* Operator: the comparison operator
* Value: the value to which the field is being compared
5.5.1.1. Pronoun Substitution
Sometimes, a query needs to compare a user-related field (such as
ReportedBy) with a role-specific user (such as the user running the
query or the user to whom each bug is assigned). When the operator is
either "is equal to" or "is not equal to", the value can be
"%reporter%", "%assignee%", "%qacontact%", or "%user%". The user
pronoun refers to the user who is executing the query or, in the case
of whining reports, the user who will be the recipient of the report.
The reporter, assignee, and qacontact pronouns refer to the
corresponding fields in the bug.
Boolean charts also let you type a group name in any user-related field
if the operator is either "is equal to", "is not equal to" or "contains
the string (exact case)". This will let you query for any member
belonging (or not) to the specified group. The group name must be
entered following the "%group.foo%" syntax, where "foo" is the group
name. So if you are looking for bugs reported by any user being in the
"editbugs" group, then you can type "%group.editbugs%".
5.5.1.2. Negation
At first glance, negation seems redundant. Rather than searching for
NOT("summary" "contains the string" "foo"),
one could search for
("summary" "does not contain the string" "foo").
However, the search
("CC" "does not contain the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where anyone on the CC list did not contain
"@mozilla.org" while
NOT("CC" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
would find every bug where there was nobody on the CC list who did
contain the string. Similarly, the use of negation also permits complex
expressions to be built using terms OR'd together and then negated.
Negation permits queries such as
NOT(("product" "is equal to" "update") OR ("component" "is equal to"
"Documentation"))
to find bugs that are neither in the update product or in the
documentation component or
NOT(("commenter" "is equal to" "%assignee%") OR ("component" "is
equal to" "Documentation"))
to find non-documentation bugs on which the assignee has never
commented.
5.5.1.3. Multiple Charts
The terms within a single row of a boolean chart are all constraints on
a single piece of data. If you are looking for a bug that has two
different people cc'd on it, then you need to use two boolean charts. A
search for
("cc" "contains the string" "foo@") AND ("cc" "contains the string"
"@mozilla.org")
would return only bugs with "foo@mozilla.org" on the cc list. If you
wanted bugs where there is someone on the cc list containing "foo@" and
someone else containing "@mozilla.org", then you would need two boolean
charts.
First chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "foo@")
Second chart: ("cc" "contains the string" "@mozilla.org")
The bugs listed will be only the bugs where ALL the charts are true.
5.5.2. 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 can use it to find a bug by its number or its alias, too.
You'll find the Quicksearch box in Bugzilla's footer area. On
Bugzilla's front page, there is an additional Help link which details
how to use it.
5.5.3. Case Sensitivity in Searches
Bugzilla queries are case-insensitive and accent-insensitive, when used
with either MySQL or Oracle databases. When using Bugzilla with
PostgreSQL, however, some queries are case-sensitive. This is due to
the way PostgreSQL handles case and accent sensitivity.
5.5.4. Bug Lists
If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.
The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted
by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed
using the links at the bottom of the list:
Long Format:
this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the
fields of each bug.
XML:
get the buglist in the XML format.
CSV:
get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g.
a spreadsheet.
Feed:
get the buglist as an Atom feed. Copy this link into your
favorite feed reader. If you are using Firefox, you can also
save the list as a live bookmark by clicking the live bookmark
icon in the status bar. To limit the number of bugs in the feed,
add a limit=n parameter to the URL.
iCalendar:
Get the buglist as an iCalendar file. Each bug is represented as
a to-do item in the imported calendar.
Change Columns:
change the bug attributes which appear in the list.
Change several bugs at once:
If your account is sufficiently empowered, and more than one bug
appear in the bug list, this link is displayed which lets you
make the same change to all the bugs in the list - for example,
changing their assignee.
Send mail to bug assignees:
If more than one bug appear in the bug list and there are at
least two distinct bug assignees, this links is displayed which
lets you easily send a mail to the assignees of all bugs on the
list.
Edit Search:
If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you
can return to the Query page through this link and make small
revisions to the query you just made so you get more accurate
results.
Remember Search As:
You can give a search a name and remember it; a link will appear
in your page footer giving you quick access to run it again
later.
5.5.5. Adding/removing tags to/from bugs
You can add and remove tags from individual bugs, which let you find
and manage bugs more easily. Tags are per-user and so are only visible
and editable by the user who created them. You can then run queries
using tags as a criteria, either by using the Advanced Search form, or
simply by typing "tag:my_tag_name" in the QuickSearch box at the top
(or bottom) of the page. Tags can also be displayed in buglists.
This feature is useful when you want to keep track of several bugs, but
for different reasons. Instead of adding yourself to the CC list of all
these bugs and mixing all these reasons, you can now store these bugs
in separate lists, e.g. âKeep in mindâ, âInteresting bugsâ, or
âTriageâ. One big advantage of this way to manage bugs is that you can
easily add or remove tags from bugs one by one.
5.6. Filing Bugs
5.6.1. Reporting a New Bug
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 bug is as follows:
1. Click the âNewâ link available in the footer of pages, or the
âEnter a new bug reportâ link displayed on the home page of the
Bugzilla installation.
[Note]
If you want to file a test bug to see how Bugzilla works, you can do it
on one of our test installations on Landfill.
2. You first have to select the product in which you found a bug.
3. You now see a form where you can specify the component (part of the
product which is affected by the bug you discovered; if you have no
idea, just select âGeneralâ if such a component exists), the
version of the program you were using, the Operating System and
platform your program is running on and the severity of the bug (if
the bug you found crashes the program, it's probably a major or a
critical bug; if it's a typo somewhere, that's something pretty
minor; if it's something you would like to see implemented, then
that's an enhancement).
4. You now have to give a short but descriptive summary of the bug you
found. âMy program is crashing all the timeâ is a very poor summary
and doesn't help developers at all. Try something more meaningful
or your bug will probably be ignored due to a lack of precision.
The next step is to give a very detailed list of steps to reproduce
the problem you encountered. Try to limit these steps to a minimum
set required to reproduce the problem. This will make the life of
developers easier, and the probability that they consider your bug
in a reasonable timeframe will be much higher.
[Note]
Try to make sure that everything in the summary is also in the first
comment. Summaries are often updated and this will ensure your original
information is easily accessible.
5. As you file the bug, you can also attach a document (testcase,
patch, or screenshot of the problem).
6. Depending on the Bugzilla installation you are using and the
product in which you are filing the bug, you can also request
developers to consider your bug in different ways (such as
requesting review for the patch you just attached, requesting your
bug to block the next release of the product, and many other
product specific requests).
7. Now is a good time to read your bug report again. Remove all
misspellings, otherwise your bug may not be found by developers
running queries for some specific words, and so your bug would not
get any attention. Also make sure you didn't forget any important
information developers should know in order to reproduce the
problem, and make sure your description of the problem is explicit
and clear enough. When you think your bug report is ready to go,
the last step is to click the âCommitâ button to add your report
into the database.
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.
5.6.2. Clone an Existing Bug
Starting with version 2.20, Bugzilla has a feature that allows you to
clone an existing bug. The newly created bug will inherit most settings
from the old bug. This allows you to track more easily similar concerns
in a new bug. To use this, go to the bug that you want to clone, then
click the âClone This Bugâ link on the bug page. This will take you to
the âEnter Bugâ page that is filled with the values that the old bug
has. You can change those values and/or texts if needed.
5.7. Attachments
You should 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.
You should make sure to trim screenshots. There's no need to show the
whole screen if you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.
Bugzilla stores and uses a Content-Type for each attachment (e.g.
text/html). To download an attachment as a different Content-Type (e.g.
application/xhtml+xml), you can override this using a 'content_type'
parameter on the URL, e.g. &content_type=text/plain.
Also, you can enter the URL pointing to the attachment instead of
uploading the attachment itself. For example, this is useful if you
want to point to an external application, a website or a very large
file. Note that there is no guarantee that the source file will always
be available, nor that its content will remain unchanged.
Another way to attach data is to paste text directly in the text field,
and Bugzilla will convert it into an attachment. This is pretty useful
when you do copy and paste, and you don't want to put the text in a
temporary file first.
5.7.1. Patch Viewer
Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to
lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues
that raw patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla
designed to fix that by offering increased context, linking to
sections, and integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.
Patch viewer allows you to:
View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying to
interpret the contents of the patch.
See the difference between two patches.
Get more context in a patch.
Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy reading.
Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or review
Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and cross-references
for the part of the patch you are looking at
Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no matter what
format it came from
5.7.1.1. Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer
The main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the "Diff"
link next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may also do
this within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As Diff"
button in the Edit Attachment screen.
5.7.1.2. Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches
To see the difference between two patches, you must first view the
newer patch in Patch Viewer. Then select the older patch from the
dropdown at the top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and
this patch") and click the "Diff" button. This will show you what is
new or changed in the newer patch.
5.7.1.3. Getting More Context in a Patch
To get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at the
top of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter. This
will give you that many lines of context before and after each change.
Alternatively, you can click on the "File" link there and it will show
each change in the full context of the file. This feature only works
against files that were diffed using "cvs diff".
5.7.1.4. Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch
To view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a patch
is absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a time),
you can click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to expand it
or collapse it). If you want to collapse all files or expand all files,
you can click the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the top of
the page.
5.7.1.5. Linking to a Section of a Patch
To link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be able to
give someone a URL to show them which part you are talking about) you
simply click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The resulting
URL can be copied and used in discussion.
5.7.1.6. Going to Bonsai and LXR
To go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in, you
can click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are
interested in. This works even if the patch is against an old version
of the file, since Bonsai stores all versions of the file.
To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header
(unfortunately, since LXR only does the most recent version, line
numbers are likely to rot).
5.7.1.7. Creating a Unified Diff
If the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it into a
unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top of
the page.
5.8. Hints and Tips
This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have
been developed.
5.8.1. Autolinkification
Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will produce
less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text. However,
Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of
text in comments. For example, the text "http://www.bugzilla.org" will
be turned into a link: http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get
linkified in the obvious manner are:
bug 12345
comment 7
bug 23456, comment 53
attachment 4321
mailto:george@example.com
george@example.com
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
Most other sorts of URL
A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment, you
should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified for the
convenience of others.
5.8.2. Comments
If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if either you
have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it. Otherwise,
you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail. To take an example: a
user can set up their account to filter out messages where someone just
adds themselves to the CC field of a bug (which happens a lot.) If you
come along, add yourself to the CC field, and add a comment saying
"Adding self to CC", then that person gets a pointless piece of mail
they would otherwise have avoided.
Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable,
if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art
creations are not.
5.8.3. Server-Side Comment Wrapping
Bugzilla stores comments unwrapped and wraps them at display time. This
ensures proper wrapping in all browsers. Lines beginning with the ">"
character are assumed to be quotes, and are not wrapped.
5.8.4. Dependency Tree
On the âDependency treeâ page linked from each bug page, you can see
the dependency relationship from the bug as a tree structure.
You can change how much depth to show, and you can hide resolved bugs
from this page. You can also collaps/expand dependencies for each bug
on the tree view, using the [-]/[+] buttons that appear before its
summary. This option is not available for terminal bugs in the tree
(that don't have further dependencies).
5.9. Time Tracking Information
Users who belong to the group specified by the âtimetrackinggroupâ
parameter have access to time-related fields. Developers can see
deadlines and estimated times to fix bugs, and can provide time spent
on these bugs.
At any time, a summary of the time spent by developers on bugs is
accessible either from bug lists when clicking the âTime Summaryâ
button or from individual bugs when clicking the âSummarize timeâ link
in the time tracking table. The summarize_time.cgi page lets you view
this information either per developer or per bug, and can be split on a
month basis to have greater details on how time is spent by developers.
As soon as a bug is marked as RESOLVED, the remaining time expected to
fix the bug is set to zero. This lets QA people set it again for their
own usage, and it will be set to zero again when the bug will be marked
as CLOSED.
5.10. User Preferences
Once logged in, you can customize various aspects of Bugzilla via the
"Preferences" link in the page footer. The preferences are split into
five tabs:
5.10.1. General Preferences
This tab allows you to change several default settings of Bugzilla.
* Bugzilla's general appearance (skin) - select which skin to use.
Bugzilla supports adding custom skins.
* Quote the associated comment when you click on its reply link -
sets the behavior of the comment "Reply" link. Options include
quoting the full comment, just reference the comment number, or
turn the link off.
* Language used in email - select which language email will be sent
in, from the list of available languages.
* After changing a bug - This controls what page is displayed after
changes to a bug are submitted. The options include to show the bug
just modified, to show the next bug in your list, or to do nothing.
* Zoom textareas large when in use (requires JavaScript) - enable or
disable the automatic expanding of text areas when text is being
entered into them.
* Field separator character for CSV files - Select between a comma
and semi-colon for exported CSV bug lists.
* Automatically add me to the CC list of bugs I change - set default
behavior of CC list. Options include "Always", "Never", and "Only
if I have no role on them".
* When viewing a bug, show comments in this order - controls the
order of comments. Options include "Oldest to Newest", "Newest to
Oldest" and "Newest to Oldest, but keep the bug description at the
top".
* Show a quip at the top of each bug list - controls whether a quip
will be shown on the Bug list page.
5.10.2. Email Preferences
This tab allows you to enable or disable email notification on specific
events.
In general, users have almost complete control over how much (or how
little) email Bugzilla sends them. If you want to receive the maximum
amount of email possible, click the âEnable All Mailâ button. If you
don't want to receive any email from Bugzilla at all, click the
âDisable All Mailâ button.
[Note]
A Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving bugmail by
clicking the âBugmail Disabledâ checkbox when editing the user account.
This is a drastic step best taken only for disabled accounts, as it
overrides the user's individual mail preferences.
There are two global options -- âEmail me when someone asks me to set a
flagâ and âEmail me when someone sets a flag I asked forâ. These define
how you want to receive bugmail with regards to flags. Their use is
quite straightforward; enable the checkboxes if you want Bugzilla to
send you mail under either of the above conditions.
If you'd like to set your bugmail to something besides 'Completely ON'
and 'Completely OFF', the âField/recipient specific optionsâ table
allows you to do just that. The rows of the table define events that
can happen to a bug -- things like attachments being added, new
comments being made, the priority changing, etc. The columns in the
table define your relationship with the bug:
* Reporter - Where you are the person who initially reported the bug.
Your name/account appears in the âReporter:â field.
* Assignee - Where you are the person who has been designated as the
one responsible for the bug. Your name/account appears in the
âAssigned To:â field of the bug.
* QA Contact - You are one of the designated QA Contacts for the bug.
Your account appears in the âQA Contact:â text-box of the bug.
* CC - You are on the list CC List for the bug. Your account appears
in the âCC:â text box of the bug.
* Voter - You have placed one or more votes for the bug. Your account
appears only if someone clicks on the âShow votes for this bugâ
link on the bug.
[Note]
Some columns may not be visible for your installation, depending on
your site's configuration.
To fine-tune your bugmail, decide the events for which you want to
receive bugmail; then decide if you want to receive it all the time
(enable the checkbox for every column), or only when you have a certain
relationship with a bug (enable the checkbox only for those columns).
For example: if you didn't want to receive mail when someone added
themselves to the CC list, you could uncheck all the boxes in the âCC
Field Changesâ line. As another example, if you never wanted to receive
email on bugs you reported unless the bug was resolved, you would
un-check all boxes in the âReporterâ column except for the one on the
âThe bug is resolved or verifiedâ row.
[Note]
Bugzilla adds the âX-Bugzilla-Reasonâ header to all bugmail it sends,
describing the recipient's relationship (AssignedTo, Reporter,
QAContact, CC, or Voter) to the bug. This header can be used to do
further client-side filtering.
Bugzilla has a feature called âUsers Watchingâ. When you enter one or
more comma-delineated user accounts (usually email addresses) into the
text entry box, you will receive a copy of all the bugmail those users
are sent (security settings permitting). This powerful functionality
enables seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go
on holiday.
[Note]
The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla
installations. If you don't see this feature, and feel that you need
it, speak to your administrator.
Each user listed in the âUsers watching youâ field has you listed in
their âUsers to watchâ list and can get bugmail according to your
relationship to the bug and their âField/recipient specific optionsâ
setting.
5.10.3. Saved Searches
On this tab you can view and run any Saved Searches that you have
created, and also any Saved Searches that other members of the group
defined in the "querysharegroup" parameter have shared. Saved Searches
can be added to the page footer from this screen. If somebody is
sharing a Search with a group she or he is allowed to assign users to,
the sharer may opt to have the Search show up in the footer of the
group's direct members by default.
5.10.4. Name and Password
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 âPasswordâ 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.
5.10.5. Permissions
This is a purely informative page which outlines your current
permissions on this installation of Bugzilla.
A complete list of permissions is below. Only users with editusers
privileges can change the permissions of other users.
admin
Indicates user is an Administrator.
bz_canusewhineatothers
Indicates user can configure whine reports for other users.
bz_canusewhines
Indicates user can configure whine reports for self.
bz_quip_moderators
Indicates user can moderate quips.
bz_sudoers
Indicates user can perform actions as other users.
bz_sudo_protect
Indicates user cannot be impersonated by other users.
canconfirm
Indicates user can confirm a bug or mark it a duplicate.
creategroups
Indicates user can create and destroy groups.
editbugs
Indicates user can edit all bug fields.
editclassifications
Indicates user can create, destroy, and edit classifications.
editcomponents
Indicates user can create, destroy, and edit components.
editkeywords
Indicates user can create, destroy, and edit keywords.
editusers
Indicates user can edit or disable users.
tweakparams
Indicates user can change Parameters.
[Note]
For more information on how permissions work in Bugzilla (i.e. who can
change what), see Section 6.4, âCustomizing Who Can Change Whatâ.
5.11. Reports and Charts
As well as the standard buglist, Bugzilla has two more ways of viewing
sets of bugs. These are the reports (which give different views of the
current state of the database) and charts (which plot the changes in
particular sets of bugs over time.)
5.11.1. Reports
A report is a view of the current state of the bug database.
You can run either an HTML-table-based report, or a graphical
line/pie/bar-chart-based one. The two have different pages to define
them, but are close cousins - once you've defined and viewed a report,
you can switch between any of the different views of the data at will.
Both report types are based on the idea of defining a set of bugs using
the standard search interface, and then choosing some aspect of that
set to plot on the horizontal and/or vertical axes. You can also get a
form of 3-dimensional report by choosing to have multiple images or
tables.
So, for example, you could use the search form to choose "all bugs in
the WorldControl product", and then plot their severity against their
component to see which component had had the largest number of bad bugs
reported against it.
Once you've defined your parameters and hit "Generate Report", you can
switch between HTML, CSV, Bar, Line and Pie. (Note: Pie is only
available if you didn't define a vertical axis, as pie charts don't
have one.) The other controls are fairly self-explanatory; you can
change the size of the image if you find text is overwriting other
text, or the bars are too thin to see.
5.11.2. Charts
A chart is a view of the state of the bug database over time.
Bugzilla currently has two charting systems - Old Charts and New
Charts. Old Charts have been part of Bugzilla for a long time; they
chart each status and resolution for each product, and that's all. They
are deprecated, and going away soon - we won't say any more about them.
New Charts are the future - they allow you to chart anything you can
define as a search.
[Note]
Both charting forms require the administrator to set up the
data-gathering script. If you can't see any charts, ask them whether
they have done so.
An individual line on a chart is called a data set. All data sets are
organised into categories and subcategories. The data sets that
Bugzilla defines automatically use the Product name as a Category and
Component names as Subcategories, but there is no need for you to
follow that naming scheme with your own charts if you don't want to.
Data sets may be public or private. Everyone sees public data sets in
the list, but only their creator sees private data sets. Only
administrators can make data sets public. No two data sets, even two
private ones, can have the same set of category, subcategory and name.
So if you are creating private data sets, one idea is to have the
Category be your username.
5.11.2.1. Creating Charts
You create a chart by selecting a number of data sets from the list,
and pressing Add To List for each. In the List Of Data Sets To Plot,
you can define the label that data set will have in the chart's legend,
and also ask Bugzilla to Sum a number of data sets (e.g. you could Sum
data sets representing RESOLVED, VERIFIED and CLOSED in a particular
product to get a data set representing all the resolved bugs in that
product.)
If you've erroneously added a data set to the list, select it using the
checkbox and click Remove. Once you add more than one data set, a
"Grand Total" line automatically appears at the bottom of the list. If
you don't want this, simply remove it as you would remove any other
line.
You may also choose to plot only over a certain date range, and to
cumulate the results - that is, to plot each one using the previous one
as a baseline, so the top line gives a sum of all the data sets. It's
easier to try than to explain :-)
Once a data set is in the list, one can also perform certain actions on
it. For example, one can edit the data set's parameters (name,
frequency etc.) if it's one you created or if you are an administrator.
Once you are happy, click Chart This List to see the chart.
5.11.2.2. Creating New Data Sets
You may also create new data sets of your own. To do this, click the
"create a new data set" link on the Create Chart page. This takes you
to a search-like interface where you can define the search that
Bugzilla will plot. At the bottom of the page, you choose the category,
sub-category and name of your new data set.
If you have sufficient permissions, you can make the data set public,
and reduce the frequency of data collection to less than the default
seven days.
5.12. Flags
A flag is a kind of status that can be set on bugs or attachments to
indicate that the bugs/attachments are in a certain state. Each
installation can define its own set of flags that can be set on bugs or
attachments.
If your installation has defined a flag, you can set or unset that
flag, and if your administrator has enabled requesting of flags, you
can submit a request for another user to set the flag.
To set a flag, select either "+" or "-" from the drop-down menu next to
the name of the flag in the "Flags" list. The meaning of these values
are flag-specific and thus cannot be described in this documentation,
but by way of example, setting a flag named "review" to "+" may
indicate that the bug/attachment has passed review, while setting it to
"-" may indicate that the bug/attachment has failed review.
To unset a flag, click its drop-down menu and select the blank value.
Note that marking an attachment as obsolete automatically cancels all
pending requests for the attachment.
If your administrator has enabled requests for a flag, request a flag
by selecting "?" from the drop-down menu and then entering the username
of the user you want to set the flag in the text field next to the
menu.
A set flag appears in bug reports and on "edit attachment" pages with
the abbreviated username of the user who set the flag prepended to the
flag name. For example, if Jack sets a "review" flag to "+", it appears
as Jack: review [ + ]
A requested flag appears with the user who requested the flag prepended
to the flag name and the user who has been requested to set the flag
appended to the flag name within parentheses. For example, if Jack asks
Jill for review, it appears as Jack: review [ ? ] (Jill).
You can browse through open requests made of you and by you by
selecting 'My Requests' from the footer. You can also look at open
requests limited by other requesters, requestees, products, components,
and flag names from this page. Note that you can use '-' for requestee
to specify flags with 'no requestee' set.
5.13. Whining
Whining is a feature in Bugzilla that can regularly annoy users at
specified times. Using this feature, users can execute saved searches
at specific times (i.e. the 15th of the month at midnight) or at
regular intervals (i.e. every 15 minutes on Sundays). The results of
the searches are sent to the user, either as a single email or as one
email per bug, along with some descriptive text.
[Warning]
Throughout this section it will be assumed that all users are members
of the bz_canusewhines group, membership in which is required in order
to use the Whining system. You can easily make all users members of the
bz_canusewhines group by setting the User RegExp to ".*" (without the
quotes).
Also worth noting is the bz_canusewhineatothers group. Members of this
group can create whines for any user or group in Bugzilla using a
extended form of the whining interface. Features only available to
members of the bz_canusewhineatothers group will be noted in the
appropriate places.
[Note]
For whining to work, a special Perl script must be executed at regular
intervals. More information on this is available in Section 2.3.3,
âWhiningâ.
[Note]
This section does not cover the whineatnews.pl script. See
Section 2.3.2, âThe Whining Cronâ for more information on The Whining
Cron.
5.13.1. The Event
The whining system defines an "Event" as one or more queries being
executed at regular intervals, with the results of said queries (if
there are any) being emailed to the user. Events are created by
clicking on the "Add new event" button.
Once a new event is created, the first thing to set is the "Email
subject line". The contents of this field will be used in the subject
line of every email generated by this event. In addition to setting a
subject, space is provided to enter some descriptive text that will be
included at the top of each message (to help you in understanding why
you received the email in the first place).
The next step is to specify when the Event is to be run (the Schedule)
and what searches are to be performed (the Searches).
5.13.2. Whining Schedule
Each whining event is associated with zero or more schedules. A
schedule is used to specify when the query (specified below) is to be
run. A new event starts out with no schedules (which means it will
never run, as it is not scheduled to run). To add a schedule, press the
"Add a new schedule" button.
Each schedule includes an interval, which you use to tell Bugzilla when
the event should be run. An event can be run on certain days of the
week, certain days of the month, during weekdays (defined as Monday
through Friday), or every day.
[Warning]
Be careful if you set your event to run on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of
the month, as your event may not run exactly when expected. If you want
your event to run on the last day of the month, select "Last day of the
month" as the interval.
Once you have specified the day(s) on which the event is to be run, you
should now specify the time at which the event is to be run. You can
have the event run at a certain hour on the specified day(s), or every
hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour on the specified day(s).
If a single schedule does not execute an event as many times as you
would want, you can create another schedule for the same event. For
example, if you want to run an event on days whose numbers are
divisible by seven, you would need to add four schedules to the event,
setting the schedules to run on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th (one day
per schedule) at whatever time (or times) you choose.
[Note]
If you are a member of the bz_canusewhineatothers group, then you will
be presented with another option: "Mail to". Using this you can control
who will receive the emails generated by this event. You can choose to
send the emails to a single user (identified by email address) or a
single group (identified by group name). To send to multiple users or
groups, create a new schedule for each additional user/group.
5.13.3. Whining Searches
Each whining event is associated with zero or more searches. A search
is any saved search to be run as part of the specified schedule (see
above). You start out without any searches associated with the event
(which means that the event will not run, as there will never be any
results to return). To add a search, press the "Include search" button.
The first field to examine in your newly added search is the Sort
field. Searches are run, and results included, in the order specified
by the Sort field. Searches with smaller Sort values will run before
searches with bigger Sort values.
The next field to examine is the Search field. This is where you choose
the actual search that is to be run. Instead of defining search
parameters here, you are asked to choose from the list of saved
searches (the same list that appears at the bottom of every Bugzilla
page). You are only allowed to choose from searches that you have saved
yourself (the default saved search, "My Bugs", is not a valid choice).
If you do not have any saved searches, you can take this opportunity to
create one (see Section 5.5.4, âBug Listsâ).
[Note]
When running queries, the whining system acts as if you are the user
executing the query. This means that the whining system will ignore
bugs that match your query, but that you cannot access.
Once you have chosen the saved search to be executed, give the query a
descriptive title. This title will appear in the email, above the
results of the query. If you choose "One message per bug", the query
title will appear at the top of each email that contains a bug matching
your query.
Finally, decide if the results of the query should be sent in a single
email, or if each bug should appear in its own email.
[Warning]
Think carefully before checking the "One message per bug" box. If you
create a query that matches thousands of bugs, you will receive
thousands of emails!
5.13.4. Saving Your Changes
Once you have defined at least one schedule, and created at least one
query, go ahead and "Update/Commit". This will save your Event and make
it available for immediate execution.
[Note]
If you ever feel like deleting your event, you may do so using the
"Remove Event" button in the upper-right corner of each Event. You can
also modify an existing event, so long as you "Update/Commit" after
completing your modifications.
Chapter 6. Customizing Bugzilla
Table of Contents
6.1. Bugzilla Extensions
6.2. Custom Skins
6.3. Template Customization
6.3.1. Template Directory Structure
6.3.2. Choosing a Customization Method
6.3.3. How To Edit Templates
6.3.4. Template Formats and Types
6.3.5. Particular Templates
6.3.6. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language
6.4. Customizing Who Can Change What
6.5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
6.1. Bugzilla Extensions
One of the best ways to customize Bugzilla is by writing a Bugzilla
Extension. Bugzilla Extensions let you modify both the code and UI of
Bugzilla in a way that can be distributed to other Bugzilla users and
ported forward to future versions of Bugzilla with minimal effort.
See the Bugzilla Extension documentation for information on how to
write an Extension.
6.2. Custom Skins
Bugzilla allows you to have multiple skins. These are custom CSS and
possibly also custom images for Bugzilla. To create a new custom skin,
you have two choices:
* Make a single CSS file, and put it in the skins/contrib directory.
* Make a directory that contains all the same CSS file names as
skins/standard/, and put your directory in skins/contrib/.
After you put the file or the directory there, make sure to run
checksetup.pl so that it can reset the file permissions correctly.
After you have installed the new skin, it will show up as an option in
the user's General Preferences. If you would like to force a particular
skin on all users, just select it in the Default Preferences and then
uncheck "Enabled" on the preference.
6.3. Template Customization
Administrators can configure the look and feel of Bugzilla without
having to edit Perl files or face the nightmare of massive merge
conflicts when they upgrade to a newer version in the future.
Templatization also makes localized versions of Bugzilla possible, for
the first time. It's possible to have Bugzilla's UI language determined
by the user's browser. More information is available in Section 6.3.6,
âConfiguring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Languageâ.
6.3.1. Template Directory Structure
The template directory structure starts with top level directory named
template, which contains a directory for each installed localization.
The next level defines the language used in the templates. Bugzilla
comes with English templates, so the directory name is en, and we will
discuss template/en throughout the documentation. Below template/en is
the default directory, which contains all the standard templates
shipped with Bugzilla.
[Warning]
A directory data/templates also exists; this is where Template Toolkit
puts the compiled versions of the templates from either the default or
custom directories. Do not directly edit the files in this directory,
or all your changes will be lost the next time Template Toolkit
recompiles the templates.
6.3.2. Choosing a Customization Method
If you want to edit Bugzilla's templates, the first decision you must
make is how you want to go about doing so. There are two choices, and
which you use depends mainly on the scope of your modifications, and
the method you plan to use to upgrade Bugzilla.
The first method of making customizations is to directly edit the
templates found in template/en/default. This is probably the best way
to go about it if you are going to be upgrading Bugzilla through Bzr,
because if you then execute a bzr update, any changes you have made
will be merged automagically with the updated versions.
[Note]
If you use this method, and Bzr conflicts occur during an update, the
conflicted templates (and possibly other parts of your installation)
will not work until they are resolved.
The second method is to copy the templates to be modified into a
mirrored directory structure under template/en/custom. Templates in
this directory structure automatically override any identically-named
and identically-located templates in the default directory.
[Note]
The custom directory does not exist at first and must be created if you
want to use it.
The second method of customization should be used if you use the
overwriting method of upgrade, because otherwise your changes will be
lost. This method may also be better if you are using the Bzr method of
upgrading and are going to make major changes, because it is guaranteed
that the contents of this directory will not be touched during an
upgrade, and you can then decide whether to continue using your own
templates, or make the effort to merge your changes into the new
versions by hand.
Using this method, your installation may break if incompatible changes
are made to the template interface. Such changes should be documented
in the release notes, provided you are using a stable release of
Bugzilla. If you use using unstable code, you will need to deal with
this one yourself, although if possible the changes will be mentioned
before they occur in the deprecations section of the previous stable
release's release notes.
[Note]
Regardless of which method you choose, it is recommended that you run
./checksetup.pl after editing any templates in the template/en/default
directory, and after creating or editing any templates in the custom
directory.
[Warning]
It is required that you run ./checksetup.pl after creating a new
template in the custom directory. Failure to do so will raise an
incomprehensible error message.
6.3.3. How To Edit Templates
[Note]
If you are making template changes that you intend on submitting back
for inclusion in standard Bugzilla, you should read the relevant
sections of the Developers' Guide.
The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of this
guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current
templates; or, you can read the manual, available on the Template
Toolkit home page.
One thing you should take particular care about is the need to properly
HTML filter data that has been passed into the template. This means
that if the data can possibly contain special HTML characters such as
<, and the data was not intended to be HTML, they need to be converted
to entity form, i.e. <. You use the 'html' filter in the Template
Toolkit to do this (or the 'uri' filter to encode special characters in
URLs). If you forget, you may open up your installation to cross-site
scripting attacks.
Editing templates is a good way of doing a âpoor man's custom fieldsâ.
For example, if you don't use the Status Whiteboard, but want to have a
free-form text entry box for âBuild Identifierâ, 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.
6.3.4. Template Formats and Types
Some CGI's have the ability to use more than one template. For example,
buglist.cgi can output itself as RDF, or as two formats of HTML
(complex and simple). The mechanism that provides this feature is
extensible.
Bugzilla can support different types of output, which again can have
multiple formats. In order to request a certain type, you can append
the &ctype=<contenttype> (such as rdf or html) to the <cginame>.cgi
URL. If you would like to retrieve a certain format, you can use the
&format=<format> (such as simple or complex) in the URL.
To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats and types, grep the
CGI for âget_formatâ. If it's not present, adding multiple format/type
support isn't too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs, e.g.
config.cgi.
To make a new format template for a CGI which supports this, open a
current template for that CGI and take note of the INTERFACE comment
(if present.) This comment defines what variables are passed into this
template. If there isn't one, I'm afraid you'll have to read the
template and the code to find out what information you get.
Write your template in whatever markup or text style is appropriate.
You now need to decide what content type you want your template served
as. The content types are defined in the Bugzilla/Constants.pm file in
the contenttypes constant. If your content type is not there, add it.
Remember the three- or four-letter tag assigned to your content type.
This tag will be part of the template filename.
[Note]
After adding or changing a content type, it's suitable to edit
Bugzilla/Constants.pm in order to reflect the changes. Also, the file
should be kept up to date after an upgrade if content types have been
customized in the past.
Save the template as <stubname>-<formatname>.<contenttypetag>.tmpl. Try
out the template by calling the CGI as
<cginame>.cgi?format=<formatname>&ctype=<type> .
6.3.5. Particular Templates
There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in
customizing for your installation.
index.html.tmpl: This is the Bugzilla front page.
global/header.html.tmpl: This defines the header that goes on all
Bugzilla pages. The header includes the banner, which is what appears
to users and is probably what you want to edit instead. However the
header also includes the HTML HEAD section, so you could for example
add a stylesheet or META tag by editing the header.
global/banner.html.tmpl: This contains the âbannerâ, the part of the
header that appears at the top of all Bugzilla pages. The default
banner is reasonably barren, so you'll probably want to customize this
to give your installation a distinctive look and feel. It is
recommended you preserve the Bugzilla version number in some form so
the version you are running can be determined, and users know what docs
to read.
global/footer.html.tmpl: This defines the footer that goes on all
Bugzilla pages. Editing this is another way to quickly get a
distinctive look and feel for your Bugzilla installation.
global/variables.none.tmpl: This defines a list of terms that may be
changed in order to âbrandâ the Bugzilla instance In this way, terms
like âbugsâ can be replaced with âissuesâ across the whole Bugzilla
installation. The name âBugzillaâ and other words can be customized as
well.
list/table.html.tmpl: This template controls the appearance of the bug
lists created by Bugzilla. Editing this template allows per-column
control of the width and title of a column, the maximum display length
of each entry, and the wrap behaviour of long entries. For long bug
lists, Bugzilla inserts a 'break' every 100 bugs by default; this
behaviour is also controlled by this template, and that value can be
modified here.
bug/create/user-message.html.tmpl: This is a message that appears near
the top of the bug reporting page. By modifying this, you can tell your
users how they should report bugs.
bug/process/midair.html.tmpl: This is the page used if two people
submit simultaneous changes to the same bug. The second person to
submit their changes will get this page to tell them what the first
person did, and ask if they wish to overwrite those changes or go back
and revisit the bug. The default title and header on this page read
"Mid-air collision detected!" If you work in the aviation industry, or
other environment where this might be found offensive (yes, we have
true stories of this happening) you'll want to change this to something
more appropriate for your environment.
bug/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may
not wish to go to the effort of creating custom fields in Bugzilla, yet
you want to make sure that each bug report contains a number of pieces
of important information for which there is not a special field. The
bug entry system has been designed in an extensible fashion to enable
you to add arbitrary HTML widgets, such as drop-down lists or
textboxes, to the bug entry page and have their values appear formatted
in the initial comment. A hidden field that indicates the format should
be added inside the form in order to make the template functional. Its
value should be the suffix of the template filename. For example, if
the file is called create-cust.html.tmpl, then
<input type="hidden" name="format" value="cust">
should be used inside the form.
An example of this is the mozilla.org guided bug submission form. The
code for this comes with the Bugzilla distribution as an example for
you to copy. It can be found in the files create-guided.html.tmpl and
comment-guided.html.tmpl.
So to use this feature, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi. The
default template, on which you could base it, is
custom/bug/create/create.html.tmpl. Call it
create-<formatname>.html.tmpl, and in it, add widgets for each piece of
information you'd like collected - such as a build number, or set of
steps to reproduce.
Then, create a template like custom/bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl, and
call it comment-<formatname>.txt.tmpl. This template should reference
the form fields you have created using the syntax [% form.<fieldname>
%]. When a bug report is submitted, the initial comment attached to the
bug report will be formatted according to the layout of this template.
For example, if your custom enter_bug template had a field
<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">
and then your comment.txt.tmpl had
BuildID: [% form.buildid %]
then something like
BuildID: 20020303
would appear in the initial comment.
6.3.6. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language
Bugzilla honours the user's Accept: HTTP header. You can install
templates in other languages, and Bugzilla will pick the most
appropriate according to a priority order defined by you. Many language
templates can be obtained from
http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Instructions for
submitting new languages are also available from that location.
6.4. Customizing Who Can Change What
[Warning]
This feature should be considered experimental; the Bugzilla code you
will be changing is not stable, and could change or move between
versions. Be aware that if you make modifications as outlined here, you
may have to re-make them or port them if Bugzilla changes internally
between versions, and you upgrade.
Companies often have rules about which employees, or classes of
employees, are allowed to change certain things in the bug system. For
example, only the bug's designated QA Contact may be allowed to VERIFY
the bug. Bugzilla has been designed to make it easy for you to write
your own custom rules to define who is allowed to make what sorts of
value transition.
By default, assignees, QA owners and users with editbugs privileges can
edit all fields of bugs, except group restrictions (unless they are
members of the groups they are trying to change). Bug reporters also
have the ability to edit some fields, but in a more restrictive manner.
Other users, without editbugs privileges, cannot edit bugs, except to
comment and add themselves to the CC list.
For maximum flexibility, customizing this means editing Bugzilla's Perl
code. This gives the administrator complete control over exactly who is
allowed to do what. The relevant method is called
check_can_change_field(), and is found in Bug.pm in your Bugzilla/
directory. If you open that file and search for âsub
check_can_change_fieldâ, you'll find it.
This function has been carefully commented to allow you to see exactly
how it works, and give you an idea of how to make changes to it.
Certain marked sections should not be changed - these are the
âplumbingâ which makes the rest of the function work. In between those
sections, you'll find snippets of code like:
# Allow the assignee to change anything.
if ($ownerid eq $whoid) {
return 1;
}
It's fairly obvious what this piece of code does.
So, how does one go about changing this function? Well, simple changes
can be made just by removing pieces - for example, if you wanted to
prevent any user adding a comment to a bug, just remove the lines
marked âAllow anyone to change comments.â If you don't want the
Reporter to have any special rights on bugs they have filed, just
remove the entire section that deals with the Reporter.
More complex customizations are not much harder. Basically, you add a
check in the right place in the function, i.e. after all the variables
you are using have been set up. So, don't look at $ownerid before
$ownerid has been obtained from the database. You can either add a
positive check, which returns 1 (allow) if certain conditions are true,
or a negative check, which returns 0 (deny.) E.g.:
if ($field eq "qacontact") {
if (Bugzilla->user->in_group("quality_assurance")) {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that only users in the group "quality_assurance" can change
the QA Contact field of a bug.
Getting more weird:
if (($field eq "priority") &&
(Bugzilla->user->email =~ /.*\@example\.com$/))
{
if ($oldvalue eq "P1") {
return 1;
}
else {
return 0;
}
}
This says that if the user is trying to change the priority field, and
their email address is @example.com, they can only do so if the old
value of the field was "P1". Not very useful, but illustrative.
[Warning]
If you are modifying process_bug.cgi in any way, do not change the code
that is bounded by DO_NOT_CHANGE blocks. Doing so could compromise
security, or cause your installation to stop working entirely.
For a list of possible field names, look at the bugs table in the
database. If you need help writing custom rules for your organization,
ask in the newsgroup.
6.5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
Many utilities and applications can integrate with Bugzilla, either on
the client- or server-side. None of them are maintained by the Bugzilla
community, nor are they tested during our QA tests, so use them at your
own risk. They are listed at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Addons.
Appendix A. Troubleshooting
Table of Contents
A.1. General Advice
A.2. The Apache web server is not serving Bugzilla pages
A.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not
installed!
A.4. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
A.5. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
A.6. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
A.7. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
A.8. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication
protocol requested by server..."
This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems.
If none of the section headings seems to match your problem, read the
general advice.
A.1. General Advice
If you can't get checksetup.pl to run to completion, it normally
explains what's wrong and how to fix it. If you can't work it out, or
if it's being uncommunicative, post the errors in the
mozilla.support.bugzilla newsgroup.
If you have made it all the way through Section 2.1, âInstallationâ
(Installation) and Section 2.2, âConfigurationâ (Configuration) but
accessing the Bugzilla URL doesn't work, the first thing to do is to
check your web server error log. For Apache, this is often located at
/etc/logs/httpd/error_log. The error messages you see may be
self-explanatory enough to enable you to diagnose and fix the problem.
If not, see below for some commonly-encountered errors. If that doesn't
help, post the errors to the newsgroup.
Bugzilla can also log all user-based errors (and many code-based
errors) that occur, without polluting the web server's error log. To
enable Bugzilla error logging, create a file that Bugzilla can write
to, named errorlog, in the Bugzilla data directory. Errors will be
logged as they occur, and will include the type of the error, the IP
address and username (if available) of the user who triggered the
error, and the values of all environment variables; if a form was being
submitted, the data in the form will also be included. To disable error
logging, delete or rename the errorlog file.
A.2. The Apache web server is not serving Bugzilla pages
After you have run checksetup.pl twice, run testserver.pl
http://yoursite.yourdomain/yoururl to confirm that your web server is
configured properly for Bugzilla.
bash$ ./testserver.pl http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip
TEST-OK Webserver is running under group id in $webservergroup.
TEST-OK Got ant picture.
TEST-OK Webserver is executing CGIs.
TEST-OK Webserver is preventing fetch of http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-t
ip/localconfig.
A.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not installed!
This could be caused by one of two things:
1. You have two versions of Perl on your machine. You are installing
modules into one, and Bugzilla is using the other. Rerun the CPAN
commands (or manual compile) using the full path to Perl from the
top of checksetup.pl. This will make sure you are installing the
modules in the right place.
2. The permissions on your library directories are set incorrectly.
They must, at the very least, be readable by the web server user or
group. It is recommended that they be world readable.
A.4. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql (over
which the Bugzilla team have no control):
DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site/
lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)
To fix this, go to <path-to-perl>/lib/DBD/sponge.pm in your Perl
installation and replace
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};
with
my $numFields;
if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
$numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
} elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
$numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};
(note the S added to NAME.)
A.5. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other
distributions with âparanoidâ security options, it is possible that the
checksetup.pl script may fail with the error:
cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied
This is because your /var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of
drwx------. Type chmod 755 /var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this
problem. This will allow any process running on your machine the
ability to read the /var/spool/mqueue directory.
A.6. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
The most-likely cause is that the âcookiepathâ parameter is not set
correctly in the Bugzilla configuration. You can change this (if you're
a Bugzilla administrator) from the editparams.cgi page via the web
interface.
The value of the cookiepath parameter should be the actual directory
containing your Bugzilla installation, as seen by the end-user's web
browser. Leading and trailing slashes are mandatory. You can also set
the cookiepath to any directory which is a parent of the Bugzilla
directory (such as '/', the root directory). But you can't put
something that isn't at least a partial match or it won't work. What
you're actually doing is restricting the end-user's browser to sending
the cookies back only to that directory.
How do you know if you want your specific Bugzilla directory or the
whole site?
If you have only one Bugzilla running on the server, and you don't mind
having other applications on the same server with it being able to see
the cookies (you might be doing this on purpose if you have other
things on your site that share authentication with Bugzilla), then
you'll want to have the cookiepath set to "/", or to a
sufficiently-high enough directory that all of the involved apps can
see the cookies.
Example A.1. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login
cookies
urlbase is http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
cookiepath is /
urlbase is http://tools.mysite.tld/bugzilla/
but you have http://tools.mysite.tld/someotherapp/ which shares
authentication with your Bugzilla
cookiepath is /
On the other hand, if you have more than one Bugzilla running on the
server (some people do - we do on landfill) then you need to have the
cookiepath restricted enough so that the different Bugzillas don't
confuse their cookies with one another.
Example A.2. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login
cookie
urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/
cookiepath is /bugzilla-tip/
urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.0-branch/
cookiepath is /bugzilla-4.0-branch/
If you had cookiepath set to â/â at any point in the past and need to
set it to something more restrictive (i.e. â/bugzilla/â), you can
safely do this without requiring users to delete their Bugzilla-related
cookies in their browser (this is true starting with Bugzilla 2.18 and
Bugzilla 2.16.5).
A.7. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
You probably need to set up your web server in such a way that it will
serve the index.cgi page as an index page.
If you are using Apache, you can do this by adding index.cgi to the end
of the DirectoryIndex line as mentioned in Section 2.2.4.1, âBugzilla
using Apacheâ.
A.8. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication protocol
requested by server..."
This error is occurring because you are using the new password
encryption that comes with MySQL 4.1, while your DBD::mysql module was
compiled against an older version of MySQL. If you recompile DBD::mysql
against the current MySQL libraries (or just obtain a newer version of
this module) then the error may go away.
If that does not fix the problem, or if you cannot recompile the
existing module (e.g. you're running Windows) and/or don't want to
replace it (e.g. you want to keep using a packaged version), then a
workaround is available from the MySQL docs:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html
Appendix B. Contrib
Table of Contents
B.1. Command-line Search Interface
B.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool
There are a number of unofficial Bugzilla add-ons in the
$BUGZILLA_ROOT/contrib/ directory. This section documents them.
B.1. Command-line Search Interface
There are a suite of Unix utilities for searching Bugzilla from the
command line. They live in the contrib/cmdline directory. There are
three files - query.conf, buglist and bugs.
[Warning]
These files pre-date the templatization work done as part of the 2.16
release, and have not been updated.
query.conf contains the mapping from options to field names and
comparison types. Quoted option names are âgreppedâ 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 âoptionâ.
buglist is a shell script that submits a Bugzilla query and writes the
resulting HTML page to stdout. It supports both short options, (such as
â-Afooâ or â-Rbarâ) and long options (such as â--assignedto=fooâ or
â--reporter=barâ). If the first character of an option is not â-â, it
is treated as if it were prefixed with â--default=â.
The column list is taken from the COLUMNLIST environment variable. This
is equivalent to the âChange Columnsâ option that is available when you
list bugs in buglist.cgi. If you have already used Bugzilla, grep for
COLUMNLIST in your cookies file to see your current COLUMNLIST setting.
bugs is a simple shell script which calls buglist and extracts the bug
numbers from the output. Adding the prefix
âhttp://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=â 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
B.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool
Within the contrib directory exists a utility with the descriptive (if
compact) name of sendunsentbugmail.pl. The purpose of this script is,
simply, to send out any bug-related mail that should have been sent by
now, but for one reason or another has not.
To accomplish this task, sendunsentbugmail.pl uses the same mechanism
as the sanitycheck.cgi script; it scans through the entire database
looking for bugs with changes that were made more than 30 minutes ago,
but where there is no record of anyone related to that bug having been
sent mail. Having compiled a list, it then uses the standard rules to
determine who gets mail, and sends it out.
As the script runs, it indicates the bug for which it is currently
sending mail; when it has finished, it gives a numerical count of how
many mails were sent and how many people were excluded. (Individual
user names are not recorded or displayed.) If the script produces no
output, that means no unsent mail was detected.
Usage: move the sendunsentbugmail.pl script up into the main directory,
ensure it has execute permission, and run it from the command line (or
from a cron job) with no parameters.
Appendix C. Manual Installation of Perl Modules
Table of Contents
C.1. Instructions
C.2. Download Locations
C.3. Optional Modules
C.1. Instructions
If you need to install Perl modules manually, here's how it's done.
Download the module using the link given in the next section, and then
apply this magic incantation, as root:
bash# tar -xzvf <module>.tar.gz
bash# cd <module>
bash# perl Makefile.PL
bash# make
bash# make test
bash# make install
[Note]
In order to compile source code under Windows you will need to obtain a
'make' utility. The nmake utility provided with Microsoft Visual C++
may be used. As an alternative, there is a utility called dmake
available from CPAN which is written entirely in Perl.
As described in Section C.2, âDownload Locationsâ, however, most
packages already exist and are available from ActiveState or theory58S.
We highly recommend that you install them using the ppm GUI available
with ActiveState and to add the theory58S repository to your list of
repositories.
C.2. Download Locations
[Note]
Running Bugzilla on Windows requires the use of ActiveState Perl 5.8.1
or higher. Many modules already exist in the core distribution of
ActiveState Perl. If some modules are missing, upgrade ActiveState Perl
to at least 5.12; it has all the required modules.
CGI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI.pm/
Documentation: http://perldoc.perl.org/CGI.html
Data-Dumper:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Data-Dumper/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Data-Dumper/Dumper.p
m
Date::Format (part of TimeDate):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/TimeDate/lib/Date/Fo
rmat.pm
DBI:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBI/
Documentation: http://dbi.perl.org/docs/
DBD::mysql:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-mysql/lib/DBD/my
sql.pm
DBD::Pg:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/Pg.pm
Template-Toolkit:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Template-Toolki
t/
Documentation: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs.html
GD:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/GD.pm
Template::Plugin::GD:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Template-GD/
Documentation: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs/aqua/Modules
/index.html
MIME::Parser (part of MIME-tools):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MIME-tools/lib/MIME/
Parser.pm
C.3. Optional Modules
Chart::Lines:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Chart/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Chart/Chart.pod
GD::Graph:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDGraph/Graph.pm
GD::Text::Align (part of GD::Text::Util):
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/
Documentation: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GDTextUtil/Text/Alig
n.pm
XML::Twig:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-Twig/
Documentation: http://standards.ieee.org/resources/spasystem/tw
ig/twig_stable.html
PatchReader:
CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/author/JKEISER/Patch
Reader/
Documentation: http://www.johnkeiser.com/mozilla/Patch_Viewer.h
tml
Appendix D. GNU Free Documentation License
Table of Contents
D.0. Preamble
D.1. Applicability and Definition
D.2. Verbatim Copying
D.3. Copying in Quantity
D.4. Modifications
D.5. Combining Documents
D.6. Collections of Documents
D.7. Aggregation with Independent Works
D.8. Translation
D.9. Termination
D.10. Future Revisions of this License
D.. How to use this License for your documents
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin
Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Everyone is permitted
to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but
changing it is not allowed.
D.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.
D.1. Applicability and Definition
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the
terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual
or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as
"you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the
Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with
modifications and/or translated into another language.
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of
the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the
publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject
(or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly
within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a
textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any
mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical
connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal,
commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles
are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice
that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed,
as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that
the Document is released under this License.
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the general
public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available
drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or
for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to
text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format
whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent
modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not
"Transparent" is called "Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII
without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML
using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML
designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript,
PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by
proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or
processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated
HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus
such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this
License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats
which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text
near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the
beginning of the body of the text.
D.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.
D.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.
D.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.
D.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."
D.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.
D.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.
D.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.
D.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.
D.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.
D.. How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of
the License in the document and put the following copyright and license
notices just after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant
Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being
LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation
License".
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections"
instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover
Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being
LIST"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we
recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of
free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to
permit their use in free software.
Glossary
0-9, high ascii
.htaccess
Apache web server, and other NCSA-compliant web servers, observe
the convention of using files in directories called .htaccess to
restrict access to certain files. In Bugzilla, they are used to
keep secret files which would otherwise compromise your
installation - e.g. the localconfig file contains the password
to your database. curious.
A
Apache
In this context, Apache is the web server most commonly used for
serving up Bugzilla pages. Contrary to popular belief, the
apache web server has nothing to do with the ancient and noble
Native American tribe, but instead derived its name from the
fact that it was âa patchyâ version of the original NCSA
world-wide-web server.
Useful Directives when configuring Bugzilla
AddHandler
Tell Apache that it's OK to run CGI scripts.
AllowOverride, Options
These directives are used to tell Apache many things about
the directory they apply to. For Bugzilla's purposes, we
need them to allow script execution and .htaccess
overrides.
DirectoryIndex
Used to tell Apache what files are indexes. If you can not
add index.cgi to the list of valid files, you'll need to
set $index_html to 1 in localconfig so ./checksetup.pl
will create an index.html that redirects to index.cgi.
ScriptInterpreterSource
Used when running Apache on windows so the shebang line
doesn't have to be changed in every Bugzilla script.
For more information about how to configure Apache for Bugzilla,
see Section 2.2.4.1, âBugzilla using Apacheâ.
B
Bug
A âbugâ in Bugzilla refers to an issue entered into the database
which has an associated number, assignments, comments, etc. Some
also refer to a âticketsâ or âissuesâ; in the context of
Bugzilla, they are synonymous.
Bug Number
Each Bugzilla bug is assigned a number that uniquely identifies
that bug. The bug associated with a bug number can be pulled up
via a query, or easily from the very front page by typing the
number in the "Find" box.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is the world-leading free software bug tracking system.
C
Common Gateway Interface
CGI is an acronym for Common Gateway Interface. This is a
standard for interfacing an external application with a web
server. Bugzilla is an example of a CGI application.
Component
A Component is a subsection of a Product. It should be a narrow
category, tailored to your organization. All Products must
contain at least one Component (and, as a matter of fact,
creating a Product with no Components will create an error in
Bugzilla).
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
CPAN stands for the âComprehensive Perl Archive Networkâ. CPAN
maintains a large number of extremely useful Perl modules -
encapsulated chunks of code for performing a particular task.
contrib
The contrib directory is a location to put scripts that have
been contributed to Bugzilla but are not a part of the official
distribution. These scripts are written by third parties and may
be in languages other than perl. For those that are in perl,
there may be additional modules or other requirements than those
of the official distribution.
[Note]
Scripts in the contrib directory are not officially supported by the
Bugzilla team and may break in between versions.
D
daemon
A daemon is a computer program which runs in the background. In
general, most daemons are started at boot time via System V init
scripts, or through RC scripts on BSD-based systems. mysqld, the
MySQL server, and apache, a web server, are generally run as
daemons.
DOS Attack
A DOS, or Denial of Service attack, is when a user attempts to
deny access to a web server by repeatedly accessing a page or
sending malformed requests to a webserver. A D-DOS, or
Distributed Denial of Service attack, is when these requests
come from multiple sources at the same time. Unfortunately,
these are much more difficult to defend against.
G
Groups
The word âGroupsâ has a very special meaning to Bugzilla.
Bugzilla's main security mechanism comes by placing users in
groups, and assigning those groups certain privileges to view
bugs in particular Products in the Bugzilla database.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is cool, we should talk about it.
M
Message Transport Agent
A Message Transport Agent is used to control the flow of email
on a system. The Email::Send Perl module, which Bugzilla uses to
send email, can be configured to use many different underlying
implementations for actually sending the mail using the
mail_delivery_method parameter.
MySQL
MySQL is one of the supported RDBMS for Bugzilla. MySQL can be
downloaded from http://www.mysql.com. While you should
familiarize yourself with all of the documentation, some high
points are:
Backup
Methods for backing up your Bugzilla database.
Option Files
Information about how to configure MySQL using my.cnf.
Privilege System
Information about how to protect your MySQL server.
P
Perl Package Manager
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/PPM/
Product
A Product is a broad category of types of bugs, normally
representing a single piece of software or entity. In general,
there are several Components to a Product. A Product may define
a group (used for security) for all bugs entered into its
Components.
Perl
First written by Larry Wall, Perl is a remarkable program
language. It has the benefits of the flexibility of an
interpreted scripting language (such as shell script), combined
with the speed and power of a compiled language, such as C.
Bugzilla is maintained in Perl.
Q
QA
âQAâ, âQ/Aâ, and âQ.A.â are short for âQuality Assuranceâ. 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
âQA Contactâ field in a bug.
R
Relational DataBase Management System
A relational database management system is a database system
that stores information in tables that are related to each
other.
Regular Expression
A regular expression is an expression used for pattern matching.
Documentation
S
Service
In Windows NT environment, a boot-time background application is
referred to as a service. These are generally managed through
the control panel while logged in as an account with
âAdministratorâ level capabilities. For more information,
consult your Windows manual or the MSKB.
SGML
SGML stands for âStandard Generalized Markup Languageâ. 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 âbaby brotherâ 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 âmilestonesâ where the people funding a project
expect certain functionality on certain dates. Bugzilla
facilitates meeting these milestones by giving you the ability
to declare by which milestone a bug will be fixed, or an
enhancement will be implemented.
Tool Command Language
TCL is an open source scripting language available for Windows,
Macintosh, and Unix based systems. Bugzilla 1.0 was written in
TCL but never released. The first release of Bugzilla was 2.0,
which was when it was ported to perl.
Z
Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found
matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry
had the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this ... way back when, when Netscape
released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally,
there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the
release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique
to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software
project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were
handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just
like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh.
So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can
think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs
matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
--Terry Weissman
