The Bugzilla Guide
Matthew P. Barnson
barnboy@trilobyte.net
Zach Lipton
zach AT zachlipton DOT com
Revision History
Revision v2.11 20 December 2000 Revised by: MPB
Converted the README, FAQ, and DATABASE information into SGML docbook
format.
Revision 2.11.1 06 March 2001 Revised by: MPB
Took way too long to revise this for 2.12 release. Updated FAQ to use
qandaset tags instead of literallayout, cleaned up administration
section, added User Guide section, miscellaneous FAQ updates and
third-party integration information. From this point on all new tags
are lowercase in preparation for the 2.13 release of the Guide in XML
format instead of SGML.
Revision 2.12.0 24 April 2001 Revised by: MPB
Things fixed this release: Elaborated on queryhelp interface, added
FAQ regarding moving bugs from one keyword to another, clarified
possible problems with the Landfill tutorial, fixed a boatload of
typos and unclear sentence structures. Incorporated the README into
the UNIX installation section, and changed the README to indicate the
deprecated status. Things I know need work: Used "simplelist" a lot,
where I should have used "procedure" to tag things. Need to lowercase
all tags to be XML compliant.
Revision 2.14.0 07 August 2001 Revised by: MPB
Attempted to integrate relevant portions of the UNIX and Windows
installation instructions, moved some data from FAQ to Install,
removed references to README from text, added Mac OS X install
instructions, fixed a bunch of tpyos (Mark Harig), linked text that
referenced other parts of the Guide, and nuked the old MySQL
permissions section.
This is the documentation for Bugzilla, the Mozilla bug-tracking
system.
Bugzilla is an enterprise-class set of software utilities that, when
used together, power issue-tracking for hundreds of organizations
around the world, tracking millions of bugs. While it is easy to use
and quite flexible, it is very difficult for a novice to install and
maintain. Although we have provided step-by-step directions, Bugzilla
is not always easy to get working. Please be sure the person
responsible for installing and maintaining this software is a
qualified professional on operating system upon which you install
Bugzilla.
THIS DOCUMENTATION IS MAINTAINED IN DOCBOOK 4.1 SGML FORMAT. IF YOU
WISH TO MAKE CORRECTIONS, PLEASE MAKE THEM IN PLAIN TEXT OR SGML DIFFS
AGAINST THE SOURCE. I CANNOT ACCEPT ADDITIONS TO THE GUIDE WRITTEN IN
HTML!
_________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Purpose and Scope of this Guide
1.2. Copyright Information
1.3. Disclaimer
1.4. New Versions
1.5. Credits
1.6. Contributors
1.7. Feedback
1.8. Translations
1.9. Document Conventions
2. Using Bugzilla
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
2.3. How do I use Bugzilla?
2.3.1. Create a Bugzilla Account
2.3.2. The Bugzilla Query Page
2.3.3. Creating and Managing Bug Reports
2.3.3.1. Writing a Great Bug Report
2.3.3.2. Managing your Bug Reports
2.4. Where can I find my user preferences?
2.4.1. Account Settings
2.4.2. Email Settings
2.4.2.1. Email Notification
2.4.2.2. New Email Technology
2.4.2.3. "Watching" Users
2.4.3. Page Footer
2.4.4. Permissions
2.5. Using Bugzilla-Conclusion
3. Installation
3.1. ERRATA
3.2. Step-by-step Install
3.2.1. Introduction
3.2.2. Installing the Prerequisites
3.2.3. Installing MySQL Database
3.2.4. Perl (5.004 or greater)
3.2.5. DBI Perl Module
3.2.6. Data::Dumper Perl Module
3.2.7. MySQL related Perl Module Collection
3.2.8. TimeDate Perl Module Collection
3.2.9. GD Perl Module (1.8.3)
3.2.10. Chart::Base Perl Module (0.99c)
3.2.11. DB_File Perl Module
3.2.12. HTTP Server
3.2.13. Installing the Bugzilla Files
3.2.14. Setting Up the MySQL Database
3.2.15. Tweaking localconfig
3.2.16. Setting Up Maintainers Manually (Optional)
3.2.17. The Whining Cron (Optional)
3.2.18. Bug Graphs (Optional)
3.2.19. Securing MySQL
3.3. Mac OS X Installation Notes
3.4. BSD Installation Notes
3.5. Installation General Notes
3.5.1. Modifying Your Running System
3.5.2. Upgrading From Previous Versions
3.5.3. .htaccess files and security
3.5.4. mod_throttle and Security
3.5.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing
malicious Javascript code
3.5.6. UNIX Installation Instructions History
3.6. Win32 Installation Notes
3.6.1. Win32 Installation: Step-by-step
3.6.2. Additional Windows Tips
3.6.3. Bugzilla LDAP Integration
4. Administering Bugzilla
4.1. Post-Installation Checklist
4.2. User Administration
4.2.1. Creating the Default User
4.2.2. Managing Other Users
4.2.2.1. Logging In
4.2.2.2. Creating new users
4.2.2.3. Disabling Users
4.2.2.4. Modifying Users
4.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
4.3.1. Products
4.3.2. Components
4.3.3. Versions
4.3.4. Milestones
4.3.5. Voting
4.3.6. Groups and Group Security
4.4. Bugzilla Security
5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
5.1. Bonsai
5.2. CVS
5.3. Perforce SCM
5.4. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2
6. The Future of Bugzilla
7. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
7.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
7.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
7.3. Issuezilla
7.4. Scarab
7.5. Perforce SCM
7.6. SourceForge
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. Software Download Links
C. The Bugzilla Database
C.1. Database Schema Chart
C.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
C.2.1. Bugzilla Database Basics
C.2.1.1. Bugzilla Database Tables
C.3. MySQL Permissions & Grant Tables
D. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
D.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
D.2. The setperl.csh Utility
D.3. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
D.4. The Quicksearch Utility
D.5. Hacking Bugzilla
D.5.1. Things that have caused problems and should be
avoided
D.5.2. Coding Style for Bugzilla
E. GNU Free Documentation License
0. PREAMBLE
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
2. VERBATIM COPYING
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
4. MODIFICATIONS
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8. TRANSLATION
9. TERMINATION
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents
Glossary
List of Examples
2-1. Some Famous Software Versions
2-2. Mozilla's Bugzilla Components
3-1. Setting up bonsaitools symlink
3-2. Running checksetup.pl as the web user
3-3. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft Windows
3-4. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12 or
earlier
4-1. Creating some Components
4-2. Common Use of Versions
4-3. A Different Use of Versions
4-4. Using SortKey with Target Milestone
4-5. When to Use Group Security
4-6. Creating a New Group
4-7. Bugzilla Groups
D-1. Using Setperl to set your perl path
1. A Sample Product
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1. About This Guide
1.1. Purpose and Scope of this Guide
This document was started on September 17, 2000 by Matthew P. Barnson
after a great deal of procrastination updating the Bugzilla FAQ, which
I left untouched for nearly half a year. After numerous complete
rewrites and reformatting, it is the document you see today.
Bugzilla is simply the best piece of bug-tracking software the world
has ever seen. This document is intended to be the comprehensive guide
to the installation, administration, maintenance, and use of the
Bugzilla bug-tracking system.
This release of the Bugzilla Guide is the 2.14 release. It is so named
that it may match the current version of Bugzilla. The numbering
tradition stems from that used for many free software projects, in
which even-numbered point releases (1.2, 1.14, etc.) are considered
"stable releases", intended for public consumption; on the other hand,
odd-numbered point releases (1.3, 2.09, etc.) are considered unstable
development releases intended for advanced users, systems
administrators, developers, and those who enjoy a lot of pain.
Newer revisions of the Bugzilla Guide follow the numbering conventions
of the main-tree Bugzilla releases, available at
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla. Intermediate releases will
have a minor revision number following a period. The current version
of Bugzilla, as of this writing (August 10, 2001) is 2.14; if
something were seriously wrong with that edition of the Guide,
subsequent releases would receive an additional dotted-decimal digit
to indicate the update (2.14.1, 2.14.2, etc.). Got it? Good.
I wrote this in response to the enormous demand for decent Bugzilla
documentation. I have incorporated instructions from the Bugzilla
README, Frequently Asked Questions, Database Schema Document, and
various mailing lists to create it. Chances are, there are glaring
errors in this documentation; please contact <barnboy@trilobyte.net>
to correct them.
_________________________________________________________________
1.2. Copyright Information
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation LIcense".
--Copyright (c) 2000-2001 Matthew P. Barnson
If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or
publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact
Matthew P. Barnson.
_________________________________________________________________
1.3. Disclaimer
No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use
the concepts, examples, and other content at your own risk. As this is
a new edition of this document, there may be errors and inaccuracies
that may damage your system. Use of this document may cause your
girlfriend to leave you, your cats to pee on your furniture and
clothing, your computer to cease functioning, your boss to fire you,
and global thermonuclear war. Proceed with caution.
All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless
specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should
not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service
mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". I
wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux in every situation where
it is appropriate. It is an extremely versatile, stable, and robust
operating system that offers an ideal operating environment for
Bugzilla.
You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before
installing Bugzilla and at regular intervals thereafter. Heaven knows
it's saved my bacon time after time; if you implement any suggestion
in this Guide, implement this one!
Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure
that all easily-exploitable bugs or options are documented or fixed in
the code, security holes surely exist. Great care should be taken both
in the installation and usage of this software. Carefully consider the
implications of installing other network services with Bugzilla. The
Bugzilla development team members, Netscape Communications, America
Online Inc., and any affiliated developers or sponsors assume no
liability for your use of this product. You have the source code to
this product, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to insure
your security needs are met.
_________________________________________________________________
1.4. New Versions
This is the 2.14 version of The Bugzilla Guide. If you are reading
this from any source other than those below, please check one of these
mirrors to make sure you are reading an up-to-date version of the
Guide.
This document can be found in the following places:
* TriloBYTE
* Mozilla.org
* The Linux Documentation Project
The latest version of this document can be checked out via CVS. Please
follow the instructions available at the Mozilla CVS page, and check
out the mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ branch.
_________________________________________________________________
1.5. Credits
The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the
creation of this Guide, through their dedicated hacking efforts,
numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall excellent
contribution to the Bugzilla community:
Terry Weissman for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README
upon which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
Tara Hernandez for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after
Terry left Mozilla.org
Dave Lawrence for providing insight into the key differences between
Red Hat's customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for the
"Red Hat Bugzilla" appendix
Dawn Endico for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with my
incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools
Last but not least, all the members of the
netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup. Without your discussions,
insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.
_________________________________________________________________
1.6. Contributors
Thanks go to these people for significant contributions to this
documentation (in no particular order):
Andrew Pearson, Spencer Smith, Eric Hanson, Kevin Brannen, Ron
Teitelbaum, Jacob Steenhagen, Joe Robins
_________________________________________________________________
1.7. Feedback
I welcome feedback on this document. Without your submissions and
input, this Guide cannot continue to exist. Please mail additions,
comments, criticisms, etc. to <barnboy@trilobyte.net>. Please send
flames to <devnull@localhost>
_________________________________________________________________
1.8. Translations
The Bugzilla Guide needs translators! Please volunteer your
translation into the language of your choice. If you will translate
this Guide, please notify the members of the mozilla-webtools mailing
list at <mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org>, and arrange with Matt Barnson
to check it into CVS.
_________________________________________________________________
1.9. Document Conventions
This document uses the following conventions
Descriptions Appearance
Warnings
Caution
Warnings.
Hint
Tip
Hint.
Notes
Note
Note.
Information requiring special attention
Warning
Warning.
File Names file.extension
Directory Names directory
Commands to be typed command
Applications Names application
Prompt of users command under bash shell bash$
Prompt of root users command under bash shell bash#
Prompt of user command under tcsh shell tcsh$
Environment Variables VARIABLE
Emphasized word word
Code Example
<para>Beginning and end of paragraph</para>
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 2. Using Bugzilla
What, Why, How, & Where?
_________________________________________________________________
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
Bugzilla is one example of a class of programs called "Defect Tracking
Systems", or, more commonly, "Bug-Tracking Systems". Defect Tracking
Systems allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of
outstanding bugs in their product effectively. Bugzilla was originally
written by Terry Weissman in a programming language called "TCL", to
replace a crappy bug-tracking database used internally for Netscape
Communications. Terry later ported Bugzilla to Perl from TCL, and in
Perl it remains to this day. Most commercial defect-tracking software
vendors at the time charged enormous licensing fees, and Bugzilla
quickly became a favorite of the open-source crowd (with its genesis
in the open-source browser project, Mozilla). It is now the de-facto
standard defect-tracking system against which all others are measured.
Bugzilla has matured immensely, and now boasts many advanced features.
These include:
* integrated, product-based granular security schema
* inter-bug dependencies and dependency graphing
* advanced reporting capabilities
* a robust, stable RDBMS back-end
* extensive configurability
* a very well-understood and well-thought-out natural bug resolution
protocol
* email, XML, console, and HTTP APIs
* available integration with automated software configuration
management systems, including Perforce and CVS (through the
Bugzilla email interface and checkin/checkout scripts)
* too many more features to list
Despite its current robustness and popularity, Bugzilla faces some
near-term challenges, such as reliance on a single database, a lack of
abstraction of the user interface and program logic, verbose email bug
notifications, a powerful but daunting query interface, little
reporting configurability, problems with extremely large queries, some
unsupportable bug resolution options, little internationalization
(although non-US character sets are accepted for comments), and
dependence on some nonstandard libraries.
Some recent headway has been made on the query front, however. If you
are using the latest version of Bugzilla, you should see a "simple
search" form on the default front page of your Bugzilla install. Type
in two or three search terms and you should pull up some relevant
information. This is also available as "queryhelp.cgi".
Despite these small problems, Bugzilla is very hard to beat. It is
under very active development to address the current issues, and
continually gains new features.
_________________________________________________________________
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
No, Who's on first...
For many years, defect-tracking software has remained principally the
domain of large software development houses. Even then, most shops
never bothered with bug-tracking software, and instead simply relied
on shared lists and email to monitor the status of defects. This
procedure is error-prone and tends to cause those bugs judged least
significant by developers to be dropped or ignored.
These days, many companies are finding that integrated defect-tracking
systems reduce downtime, increase productivity, and raise customer
satisfaction with their systems. Along with full disclosure, an open
bug-tracker allows manufacturers to keep in touch with their clients
and resellers, to communicate about problems effectively throughout
the data management chain. Many corporations have also discovered that
defect-tracking helps reduce costs by providing IT support
accountability, telephone support knowledge bases, and a common,
well-understood system for accounting for unusual system or software
issues.
But why should you use Bugzilla?
Bugzilla is very adaptable to various situations. Known uses currently
include IT support queues, Systems Administration deployment
management, chip design and development problem tracking (both
pre-and-post fabrication), and software and hardware bug tracking for
luminaries such as Redhat, Loki software, Linux-Mandrake, and VA
Systems. Combined with systems such as CVS, Bonsai, or Perforce SCM,
Bugzilla provides a powerful, easy-to-use solution to configuration
management and replication problems
Bugzilla can dramatically increase the productivity and accountability
of individual employees by providing a documented workflow and
positive feedback for good performance. How many times do you wake up
in the morning, remembering that you were supposed to do something
today, but you just can't quite remember? Put it in Bugzilla, and you
have a record of it from which you can extrapolate milestones, predict
product versions for integration, and by using Bugzilla's e-mail
integration features be able to follow the discussion trail that led
to critical decisions.
Ultimately, Bugzilla puts the power in your hands to improve your
value to your employer or business while providing a usable framework
for your natural attention to detail and knowledge store to flourish.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3. How do I use Bugzilla?
Hey! I'm Woody! Howdy, Howdy, Howdy!
Bugzilla is a large, complex system. Describing how to use it requires
some time. If you are only interested in installing or administering a
Bugzilla installation, please consult the Installing and Administering
Bugzilla portions of this Guide. This section is principally aimed
towards developing end-user mastery of Bugzilla, so you may fully
enjoy the benefits afforded by using this reliable open-source
bug-tracking software.
Throughout this portion of the Guide, we will refer to user account
options available at the Bugzilla test installation,
landfill.tequilarista.org.
Note
Some people have run into difficulties completing this tutorial. If
you run into problems, please check the updated online documentation
available at http://www.trilobyte.net/barnsons. If you're still
stumped, please subscribe to the newsgroup and provide details of
exactly what's stumping you! If enough people complain, I'll have to
fix it in the next version of this Guide. You can subscribe to the
newsgroup at news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.webtools
Although Landfill serves as a great introduction to Bugzilla, it does
not offer all the options you would have as a user on your own
installation of Bugzilla, nor can it do more than serve as a general
introduction to Bugzilla. Additionally, Landfill often runs
cutting-edge versions of Bugzilla for testing, so some things may work
slightly differently than mentioned here.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.1. Create a Bugzilla Account
First things first! 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 the end-user Bugzilla experience, use this URL:
http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/
1. Click the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link.
2. Enter your "E-mail address" and "Real Name" (or whatever name you
want to call yourself) in the spaces provided, then select the
"Create Account" button.
3. Within moments, you should receive an email to the address you
provided above, which contains your login name (generally the same
as the email address), and a password you can use to access your
account. This password is randomly generated, and should be
changed at your nearest opportunity (we'll go into how to do it
later).
4. Click the "Log In" link in the yellow area at the bottom of the
page in your browser, then enter your "E-mail address" and
"Password" you just received into the spaces provided, and select
"Login".
Note
If you ever forget your password, you can come back to this page,
enter your "E-mail address", then select the "E-mail me a password"
button to have your password mailed to you again so that you can
login.
Caution
Many modern browsers include an "Auto-Complete" or "Form Fill" feature
to remember the user names and passwords you type in at many sites.
Unfortunately, sometimes they attempt to guess what you will put in as
your password, and guess wrong. If you notice a text box is already
filled out, please overwrite the contents of the text box so you can
be sure to input the correct information.
Congratulations! If you followed these directions, you now are the
proud owner of a user account on landfill.tequilarista.org (Landfill)
or your local Bugzilla install. You should now see in your browser a
page called the "Bugzilla Query Page". It may look daunting, but with
this Guide to walk you through it, you will master it in no time.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.2. The Bugzilla Query Page
The Bugzilla Query Page is the heart and soul of the Bugzilla user
experience. It is the master interface where you can find any bug
report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. We'll go
into how to create your own bug report later on.
There are efforts underway to simplify query usage. If you have a
local installation of Bugzilla 2.12 or higher, you should have
quicksearch.html available to use and simplify your searches. There is
also a helper for the query interface, called queryhelp.cgi. Landfill
tends to run the latest code, so these two utilities should be
available there for your perusal.
At this point, please visit the main Bugzilla site,
bugzilla.mozilla.org, to see a more fleshed-out query page.
The first thing you need to notice about the Bugzilla Query Page is
that nearly every box you see on your screen has a hyperlink nearby,
explaining what it is or what it does. Near the upper-left-hand corner
of your browser window you should see the word "Status" underlined.
Select it.
Notice the page that popped up? Every underlined word you see on your
screen is a hyperlink that will take you to context-sensitive help.
Click around for a while, and learn what everything here does. To
return to the query interface after pulling up a help page, use the
"Back" button in your browser.
I'm sure that after checking out the online help, you are now an
expert on the Bugzilla Query Page. If, however, you feel you haven't
mastered it yet, let me walk you through making a few successful
queries to find out what there are in the Bugzilla bug-tracking system
itself.
1. Ensure you are back on the "Bugzilla Query Page". Do nothing in
the boxes marked "Status", "Resolution", "Platform", "OpSys",
"Priority", or "Severity". The default query for "Status" is to
find all bugs that are NEW, ASSIGNED, or REOPENED, which is what
we want. If you don't select anything in the other 5 scrollboxes
there, then you are saying that "any of these are OK"; we're not
locking ourselves into only finding bugs on the "DEC" Platform, or
"Windows 95" OpSys (Operating System). You're smart, I think you
have it figured out.
Basically, selecting anything on the query page narrows your
search down. Leaving stuff unselected, or text boxes unfilled,
broadens your search.
2. You see the box immediately below the top six boxes that contains
an "Email" text box, with the words "matching as", a drop-down
selection box, then some checkboxes with "Assigned To" checked by
default? This allows you to filter your search down based upon
email address. Let's put my email address in there, and see what
happens.
Type "barnboy@trilobyte.net" in the top Email text box.
3. Let's narrow the search some more. Scroll down until you find the
box with the word "Program" over the top of it. This is where we
can narrow our search down to only specific products (software
programs or product lines) in our Bugzilla database. Please notice
the box is a scrollbox. Using the down arrow on the scrollbox,
scroll down until you can see an entry called "Bugzilla". Select
this entry.
4. Did you notice that some of the boxes to the right changed when
you selected "Bugzilla"? Every Program (or Product) has different
Versions, Components, and Target Milestones associated with it. A
"Version" is the number of a software program.
Example 2-1. Some Famous Software Versions
Do you remember the hype in 1995 when Microsoft Windows 95(r) was
released? It may have been several years ago, but Microsoft(tm)
spent over $300 Million advertising this new Version of their
software. Three years later, they released Microsoft Windows
98(r), another new version, to great fanfare, and then in 2000
quietly released Microsoft Windows ME(Millenium Edition)(r).
Software "Versions" help a manufacturer differentiate their
current product from their previous products. Most do not identify
their products by the year they were released. Instead, the
"original" version of their software will often be numbered "1.0",
with small bug-fix releases on subsequent tenths of a digit. In
most cases, it's not a decimal number; for instance, often 1.9 is
an older version of the software than 1.11, but is a newer version
than 1.1.1.
In general, a "Version" in Bugzilla should refer to released
products, not products that have not yet been released to the
public. Forthcoming products are what the Target Milestone field
is for.
A "Component" is a piece of a Product. It may be a standalone
program, or some other logical division of a Product or Program.
Normally, a Component has a single Owner, who is responsible for
overseeing efforts to improve that Component.
Example 2-2. Mozilla's Bugzilla Components
Mozilla's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several pieces
(Components):
Administration, Administration of a bugzilla installation, including
editcomponents.cgi, editgroups.cgi, editkeywords.cgi, editparams.cgi,
editproducts.cgi, editusers.cgi, editversions.cgi, and
sanitycheck.cgi.
Bugzilla-General, Anything that doesn't fit in the other components,
or spans multiple components.
Creating/Changing Bugs, Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
enter_bug.cgi, post_bug.cgi, show_bug.cgi and process_bug.cgi.
Documentation, The bugzilla documentation, including anything in the
docs/ directory and The Bugzilla Guide (This document :)
Email, Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla. processmail
Installation, The installation process of Bugzilla. This includes
checksetup.pl and whatever else it evolves into.
Query/Buglist, Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
buglists. query.cgi and buglist.cgi
Reporting/Charting, Getting reports from Bugzilla. reports.cgi and
duplicates.cgi
User Accounts, Anything about managing a user account from the user's
perspective. userprefs.cgi, 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.
A "Milestone", or "Target Milestone" is a often a planned future
"Version" of a product. In many cases, though, Milestones simply
represent significant dates for a developer. Having certain
features in your Product is frequently tied to revenue (money) the
developer will receive if the features work by the time she
reaches the Target Milestone. Target Milestones are a great tool
to organize your time. If someone will pay you $100,000 for
incorporating certain features by a certain date, those features
by that Milestone date become a very high priority. Milestones
tend to be highly malleable creatures, though, that appear to be
in reach but are out of reach by the time the important day
arrives.
The Bugzilla Project has set up Milestones for future Bugzilla
versions 2.14, 2.16, 2.18, 3.0, etc. However, a Target Milestone
can just as easily be a specific date, code name, or weird
alphanumeric combination, like "M19".
5. OK, now let's select the "Bugzilla" component from its scrollbox.
6. Skip down the page a bit -- do you see the "submit query" button?
Select it, and let's run this query!
7. Congratulations! You've completed your first Query, and have
before you the Bug List of the author of this Guide, Matthew P.
Barnson (barnboy@trilobyte.net). If I'm doing well, you'll have a
cryptic "Zarro Boogs Found" message on your screen. It is just a
happy hacker's way of saying "Zero Bugs Found". However, I am
fairly certain I will always have some bugs assigned to me that
aren't done yet, so you won't often see that message!
I encourage you to click the bug numbers in the left-hand column and
examine my bugs. Also notice that if you click the underlined links
near the top of this page, they do not take you to context-sensitive
help here, but instead sort the columns of bugs on the screen! When
you need to sort your bugs by priority, severity, or the people they
are assigned to, this is a tremendous timesaver.
A couple more interesting things about the Bug List page:
Change Columns: by selecting this link, you can show all kinds of
information in the Bug List
Change several bugs at once: If you have sufficient rights to change
all the bugs shown in the Bug List, you can mass-modify them. This is
a big time-saver.
Send mail to bug owners: If you have many related bugs, you can
request an update from every person who owns the bugs in the Bug List
asking them the status.
Edit this query: If you didn't get exactly the results you were
looking for, you can return to the Query page through this link and
make small revisions to the query you just made so you get more
accurate results.
Note
There are many more options to the Bugzilla Query Page and the Bug
List than I have shown you. But this should be enough for you to learn
to get around. I encourage you to check out the Bugzilla Home Page to
learn about the Anatomy and Life Cycle of a Bug before continuing.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.3. Creating and Managing Bug Reports
And all this time, I thought we were taking bugs out...
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.3.1. Writing a Great Bug Report
Before we plunge into writing your first bug report, I encourage you
to read some bug-writing guidelines. If you are reading this document
as part of a Bugzilla CVS checkout or un-tarred Bugzilla distribution,
you should be able to read them by clicking here. If you are reading
this online, check out the Mozilla.org bug-writing guidelines at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html. 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.
While you are at it, why not learn how to find previously reported
bugs? Mozilla.org has published a great tutorial on finding duplicate
bugs, available at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/beginning-duplicate-finding.html.
I realize this was a lot to read. However, understanding the mentality
of writing great bug reports will help us on the next part!
1. Go back to http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/ in your
browser.
2. Select the Enter a new bug report link.
3. Select a product.
4. Now you should be at the "Enter Bug" form. The "reporter" should
have been automatically filled out for you (or else Bugzilla
prompted you to Log In again -- you did keep the email with your
username and password, didn't you?).
5. Select a Component in the scrollbox.
6. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based upon your
browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If those are
wrong, change them -- if you're on an SGI box running IRIX, we
want to know!
7. Fill in the "Assigned To" box with the email address you provided
earlier. This way you don't end up sending copies of your bug to
lots of other people, since it's just a test bug.
8. Leave the "CC" text box blank. Fill in the "URL" box with
"http://www.mozilla.org".
9. Enter "The Bugzilla Guide" in the Summary text box, and place any
comments you have on this tutorial, or the Guide in general, into
the Description box.
Voila! Select "Commit" and send in your bug report! Next we'll look at
resolving bugs.
_________________________________________________________________
2.3.3.2. Managing your Bug Reports
OK, you should have a link to the bug you just created near the top of
your page. It should say "Bug XXXX posted", with a link to the right
saying "Back to BUG# XXXX". Select this link.
1. Scroll down a bit on the subsequent page, until you see the
"Resolve bug, changing resolution to (dropdown box). Normally, you
would "Accept bug (change status to ASSIGNED)", fix it, and then
resolve. But in this case, we're going to short-circuit the
process because this wasn't a real bug. Change the dropdown next
to "Resolve Bug" to "INVALID", make sure the radio button is
marked next to "Resolve Bug", then click "Commit".
2. Hey! It said it couldn't take the change in a big red box! That's
right, you must specify a Comment in order to make this change.
Select the "Back" button in your browser, add a Comment, then try
Resolving the bug with INVALID status again. This time it should
work.
You have now learned the basics of Bugzilla navigation, entering a
bug, and bug maintenance. I encourage you to explore these features,
and see what you can do with them! We'll spend no more time on
individual Bugs or Queries from this point on, so you are on your own
there.
But I'll give a few last hints!
There is a CLUE on the Query page that will teach you more how to use
the form.
If you click the hyperlink on the Component box of the Query page, you
will be presented a form that will describe what all the components
are.
Possibly the most powerful feature of the Query page is the Boolean
Chart section. It's a bit confusing to use the first time, but can
provide unparalleled flexibility in your queries, allowing you to
build extremely powerful requests.
Finally, you can build some nifty Reports using the "Bug Reports" link
near the bottom of the query page, and also available via the
"Reports" link at the footer of each page.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4. Where can I find my user preferences?
Indiana, it feels like we walking on fortune cookies!
These ain't fortune cookies, kid...
Customized User Preferences offer tremendous versatility to your
individual Bugzilla experience. Let's plunge into what you can do! The
first step is to click the "Edit prefs" link at the footer of each
page once you have logged in to Landfill.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.1. Account Settings
On this page, you can change your basic Account Settings, including
your password and full name. For security reasons, in order to change
anything on this page you must type your current password into the
"Old Password" field. If you wish to change your password, type the
new password you want into the "New Password" field and again into the
"Re-enter new password" field to ensure you typed your new password
correctly. Select the "Submit" button and you are done.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.2. Email Settings
2.4.2.1. Email Notification
Here you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you from
Bugzilla. Although this is referred to as "Advanced Email Filtering
Options", they are, in fact, the standard email filter set. All of
them are self-explanatory, but you can use the filters in interesting
ways. For instance, some people (notably Quality Assurance personnel)
often only care to receive updates regarding a bug when the bug
changes state, so they can track bugs on their flow charts and know
when it is time to pull the bug onto a quality assurance platform for
inspection. Other people set up email gateways to Bonsai, the Mozilla
automated CVS management system or Tinderbox, the Mozilla automated
build management system, and restrict which types of Bugzilla
information are fed to these systems..
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.2.2. New Email Technology
Note
This option may not be available in all Bugzilla installations,
depending upon the preferences of the systems administrator
responsible for the setup of your Bugzilla. However, if you really
want this functionality, ask her to "enable newemailtech in Params"
and "make it the default for all new users", referring her to the
Administration section of this Guide.
Disregard the warnings about "experimental and bleeding edge"; the
code to handle email in a cleaner manner than that historically used
for Bugzilla is quite robust and well-tested now.
I recommend you enable the option, "Click here to sign up (and risk
any bugs)". Your email-box will thank you for it. The fundamental
shift in "newemailtech" is away from standard UNIX "diff" output,
which is quite ugly, to a prettier, better laid-out email.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.2.3. "Watching" Users
Note
This option may not be available in all Bugzilla installations,
depending upon the preferences of the systems administrator
responsible for the setup of your Bugzilla. However, if you really
want this functionality, ask her to "enable watchers in Params".
By entering user email names into the "Users to watch" text entry box,
delineated by commas, you can watch bugs of other users. This powerful
functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change
projects, managers wish to get in touch with the issues faced by their
direct reports, or users go on vacation. If any of these three
situations apply to you, you will undoubtedly find this feature quite
convenient.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.3. Page Footer
Note
By default, this page is quite barren. However, go explore the Query
Page some more; you will find that you can store numerous queries on
the server, so if you regularly run a particular query it is just a
drop-down menu away. On this page of Preferences, if you have many
stored queries you can elect to have them always one-click away!
If you have many stored queries on the server, here you will find
individual drop-downs for each stored query. Each drop-down gives you
the option of that query appearing on the footer of every page in
Bugzilla! This gives you powerful one-click access to any complex
searches you may set up, and is an excellent way to impress your
boss...
Tip
By default, the "My Bugs" link appears at the bottom of each page.
However, this query gives you both the bugs you have reported, as well
as those you are assigned. One of the most common uses for this page
is to remove the "My Bugs" link, replacing it with two other queries,
commonly called "My Bug Reports" and "My Bugs" (but only referencing
bugs assigned to you). This allows you to distinguish those bugs you
have reported from those you are assigned. I commonly set up complex
Boolean queries in the Query page and link them to my footer in this
page. When they are significantly complex, a one-click reference can
save hours of work.
_________________________________________________________________
2.4.4. Permissions
This is a purely informative page which outlines your current
permissions on this installation of Bugzilla. If you have permissions
to grant certain permissions to other users, the "other users" link
appears on this page as well as the footer. For more information
regarding user administration, please consult the Administration
section of this Guide.
_________________________________________________________________
2.5. Using Bugzilla-Conclusion
Thank you for reading through this portion of the Bugzilla Guide. I
anticipate it may not yet meet the needs of all readers. If you have
additional comments or corrections to make, please submit your
contributions to the mozilla-webtools mailing list/newsgroup. The
mailing list is mirrored to the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools
newsgroup, and the newsgroup is mirrored to
mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3. Installation
These installation instructions are presented assuming you are
installing on a UNIX or completely POSIX-compliant system. If you are
installing on Microsoft Windows or another oddball operating system,
please consult the appropriate sections in this installation guide for
notes on how to be successful.
_________________________________________________________________
3.1. ERRATA
Here are some miscellaneous notes about possible issues you main run
into when you begin your Bugzilla installation. Reference platforms
for Bugzilla installation are Redhat Linux 7.2, Linux-Mandrake 8.0,
and Solaris 8.
If you are installing Bugzilla on S.u.S.e. Linux, or some other
distributions with "paranoid" security options, it is possible that
the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error: cannot
chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied This is because your
/var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of "drwx------". Type chmod 755
/var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this problem.
Bugzilla may be installed on Macintosh OS X (10), which is a
unix-based (BSD) operating system. Everything required for Bugzilla on
OS X will install cleanly, but the optional GD perl module which is
used for bug charting requires some additional setup for installation.
Please see the Mac OS X installation section below for details
Release Notes for Bugzilla 2.14 are available at docs/rel_notes.txt in
your Bugzilla source distribution.
The preferred documentation for Bugzilla is available in docs/, with a
variety of document types available. Please refer to these documents
when installing, configuring, and maintaining your Bugzilla
installation.
Warning
Bugzilla is not a package where you can just plop it in a directory,
twiddle a few things, and you're off. Installing Bugzilla assumes you
know your variant of UNIX or Microsoft Windows well, are familiar with
the command line, and are comfortable compiling and installing a
plethora of third-party utilities. To install Bugzilla on Win32
requires fair Perl proficiency, and if you use a webserver other than
Apache you should be intimately familiar with the security mechanisms
and CGI environment thereof.
Warning
Bugzilla has not undergone a complete security review. Security holes
may exist in the code. Great care should be taken both in the
installation and usage of this software. Carefully consider the
implications of installing other network services with Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2. Step-by-step Install
3.2.1. Introduction
Installation of bugzilla is pretty straightforward, particularly if
your machine already has MySQL and the MySQL-related perl packages
installed. If those aren't installed yet, then that's the first order
of business. The other necessary ingredient is a web server set up to
run cgi scripts. While using Apache for your webserver is not
required, it is recommended.
Bugzilla has been successfully installed under Solaris, Linux, and
Win32. The peculiarities of installing on Win32 (Microsoft Windows)
are not included in this section of the Guide; please check out the
Win32 Installation Notes for further advice on getting Bugzilla to
work on Microsoft Windows.
The Bugzilla Guide is contained in the "docs/" folder in your Bugzilla
distribution. It is available in plain text (docs/txt), HTML
(docs/html), or SGML source (docs/sgml).
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.2. Installing the Prerequisites
Note
If you want to skip these manual installation steps for the CPAN
dependencies listed below, and are running the very most recent
version of Perl and MySQL (both the executables and development
libraries) on your system, check out Bundle::Bugzilla in Using
Bundle::Bugzilla instead of manually installing Perl modules
The software packages necessary for the proper running of bugzilla
are:
1. MySQL database server and the mysql client (3.22.5 or greater)
2. Perl (5.004 or greater, 5.6.1 is recommended if you wish to use
Bundle::Bugzilla)
3. DBI Perl module
4. Data::Dumper Perl module
5. Bundle::Mysql Perl module collection
6. TimeDate Perl module collection
7. GD perl module (1.8.3) (optional, for bug charting)
8. Chart::Base Perl module (0.99c) (optional, for bug charting)
9. DB_File Perl module (optional, for bug charting)
10. The web server of your choice. Apache is recommended.
11. MIME::Parser Perl module (optional, for contrib/bug_email.pl
interface)
Warning
It is a good idea, while installing Bugzilla, to ensure it is not
accessible by other machines on the Internet. Your machine may be
vulnerable to attacks while you are installing. In other words, ensure
there is some kind of firewall between you and the rest of the
Internet. Many installation steps require an active Internet
connection to complete, but you must take care to ensure that at no
point is your machine vulnerable to an attack.
Note
Linux-Mandrake 8.0, the author's test system, includes every required
and optional library for Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is
by using the urpmi utility. If you follow these commands, you should
have everything you need for Bugzilla, and checksetup.pl should not
complain about any missing libraries. You may already have some of
these installed.
bash# urpmi perl-mysql
bash# urpmi perl-chart
bash# urpmi perl-gd
bash# urpmi perl-MailTools (for Bugzilla email integration)
bash# urpmi apache-modules
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.3. Installing MySQL Database
Visit MySQL homepage at www.mysql.com and grab the latest stable
release of the server. Many of the binary versions of MySQL store
their data files in /var which is often part of a smaller root
partition. If you decide to build from sources you can easily set the
dataDir as an option to configure.
If you install from source or non-package (RPM, deb, etc.) binaries
you need to add mysqld to your init scripts so the server daemon will
come back up whenever your machine reboots. Further discussion of UNIX
init sequences are beyond the scope of this guide.
Note
You should have your init script start mysqld with the ability to
accept large packets. By default, mysqld only accepts packets up to
64K long. This limits the size of attachments you may put on bugs. If
you add -O max_allowed_packet=1M to the command that starts mysqld (or
safe_mysqld), then you will be able to have attachments up to about 1
megabyte.
Note
If you plan on running Bugzilla and MySQL on the same machine,
consider using the --skip-networking option in the init script. This
enhances security by preventing network access to MySQL.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.4. Perl (5.004 or greater)
Any machine that doesn't have perl on it is a sad machine indeed. Perl
for *nix systems can be gotten in source form from
http://www.perl.com. Although Bugzilla runs with most post-5.004
versions of Perl, it's a good idea to be up to the very latest version
if you can when running Bugzilla. As of this writing, that is perl
version 5.6.1.
Perl is now a far cry from the the single compiler/interpreter binary
it once was. It includes a great many required modules and quite a few
other support files. If you're not up to or not inclined to build perl
from source, you'll want to install it on your machine using some sort
of packaging system (be it RPM, deb, or what have you) to ensure a
sane install. In the subsequent sections you'll be installing quite a
few perl modules; this can be quite ornery if your perl installation
isn't up to snuff.
Warning
Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most
times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in
"@INC". Virtually every time, this 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.
Tip
You can skip the following Perl module installation steps by
installing Bundle::Bugzilla from CPAN, which includes them. All Perl
module installation steps require you have an active Internet
connection. If you wish to use Bundle::Bugzilla, however, you must be
using the latest version of Perl (at this writing, version 5.6.1)
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Bundle::Bugzilla"'
Bundle::Bugzilla doesn't include GD, Chart::Base, or MIME::Parser,
which are not essential to a basic Bugzilla install. If installing
this bundle fails, you should install each module individually to
isolate the problem.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.5. DBI Perl Module
The DBI module is a generic Perl module used by other database related
Perl modules. For our purposes it's required by the MySQL-related
modules. As long as your Perl installation was done correctly the DBI
module should be a breeze. It's a mixed Perl/C module, but Perl's
MakeMaker system simplifies the C compilation greatly.
Like almost all Perl modules DBI can be found on the Comprehensive
Perl Archive Network (CPAN) at http://www.cpan.org. The CPAN servers
have a real tendency to bog down, so please use mirrors. The current
location at the time of this writing can be found in Appendix B.
Quality, general Perl module installation instructions can be found on
the CPAN website, but the easy thing to do is to just use the CPAN
shell which does all the hard work for you.
To use the CPAN shell to install DBI:
bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "DBI"'
Note
Replace "DBI" with the name of whichever module you wish to install,
such as Data::Dumper, TimeDate, GD, etc.
To do it the hard way:
Untar the module tarball -- it should create its own directory
CD to the directory just created, and enter the following commands:
1. bash# perl Makefile.PL
2. bash# make
3. bash# make test
4. bash# make install
If everything went ok that should be all it takes. For the vast
majority of perl modules this is all that's required.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.6. Data::Dumper Perl Module
The Data::Dumper module provides data structure persistence for Perl
(similar to Java's serialization). It comes with later sub-releases of
Perl 5.004, but a re-installation just to be sure it's available won't
hurt anything.
Data::Dumper is used by the MySQL-related Perl modules. It can be
found on CPAN (see Appendix B) and can be installed by following the
same four step make sequence used for the DBI module.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.7. MySQL related Perl Module Collection
The Perl/MySQL interface requires a few mutually-dependent perl
modules. These modules are grouped together into the the
Msql-Mysql-modules package. This package can be found at CPAN. After
the archive file has been downloaded it should be untarred.
The MySQL modules are all built using one make file which is generated
by running: bash# perl Makefile.pl
The MakeMaker process will ask you a few questions about the desired
compilation target and your MySQL installation. For many of the
questions the provided default will be adequate.
When asked if your desired target is the MySQL or mSQL packages,
select the MySQL related ones. Later you will be asked if you wish to
provide backwards compatibility with the older MySQL packages; you
should answer YES to this question. The default is NO.
A host of 'localhost' should be fine and a testing user of 'test' and
a null password should find itself with sufficient access to run tests
on the 'test' database which MySQL created upon installation. If 'make
test' and 'make install' go through without errors you should be ready
to go as far as database connectivity is concerned.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.8. TimeDate Perl Module Collection
Many of the more common date/time/calendar related Perl modules have
been grouped into a bundle similar to the MySQL modules bundle. This
bundle is stored on the CPAN under the name TimeDate (see link:
Appendix B). The component module we're most interested in is the
Date::Format module, but installing all of them is probably a good
idea anyway. The standard Perl module installation instructions should
work perfectly for this simple package.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.9. GD Perl Module (1.8.3)
The GD library was written by Thomas Boutell a long while ago to
programatically generate images in C. Since then it's become the
defacto standard for programatic image construction. The Perl bindings
to it found in the GD library are used on millions of web pages to
generate graphs on the fly. That's what bugzilla will be using it for
so you must install it if you want any of the graphing to work.
Actually bugzilla uses the Graph module which relies on GD itself.
Isn't that always the way with object-oriented programming? At any
rate, you can find the GD library on CPAN in Appendix B.
Note
The Perl GD library requires some other libraries that may or may not
be installed on your system, including libpng and libgd. The full
requirements are listed in the Perl GD library README. Just realize
that if compiling GD fails, it's probably because you're missing a
required library.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.10. Chart::Base Perl Module (0.99c)
The Chart module provides bugzilla with on-the-fly charting abilities.
It can be installed in the usual fashion after it has been fetched
from CPAN where it is found as the Chart-x.x... tarball, linked in
Appendix B. Note that as with the GD perl module, only the version
listed above, or newer, will work. Earlier versions used GIF's, which
are no longer supported by the latest versions of GD.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.11. DB_File Perl Module
DB_File is a module which allows Perl programs to make use of the
facilities provided by Berkeley DB version 1.x. This module is
required by collectstats.pl which is used for bug charting. If you
plan to make use of bug charting, you must install this module.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.12. HTTP Server
You have a freedom of choice here - Apache, Netscape or any other
server on UNIX would do. You can easily run the web server on a
different machine than MySQL, but need to adjust the MySQL "bugs" user
permissions accordingly.
Note
I strongly recommend Apache as the web server to use. The Bugzilla
Guide installation instructions, in general, assume you are using
Apache. As more users use different webservers and send me information
on the peculiarities of installing using their favorite webserver, I
will provide notes for them.
You'll want to make sure that your web server will run any file with
the .cgi extension as a cgi and not just display it. If you're using
apache that means uncommenting the following line in the srm.conf
file:
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
With apache you'll also want to make sure that within the access.conf
file the line:
Options ExecCGI
is in the stanza that covers the directories into which you intend to
put the bugzilla .html and .cgi files.
Note
Users of newer versions of Apache will generally find both of the
above lines will be in the httpd.conf file, rather than srm.conf or
access.conf.
Warning
There are important files and directories that should not be a served
by the HTTP server. These are most files in the "data" and "shadow"
directories and the "localconfig" file. You should configure your HTTP
server to not serve content from these files. Failure to do so will
expose critical passwords and other data. Please see .htaccess files
and security for details on how to do this for Apache. I appreciate
notes on how to get this same functionality using other webservers.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.13. Installing the Bugzilla Files
You should untar the Bugzilla files into a directory that you're
willing to make writable by the default web server user (probably
"nobody"). You may decide to put the files off of the main web space
for your web server or perhaps off of /usr/local with a symbolic link
in the web space that points to the Bugzilla directory. At any rate,
just dump all the files in the same place, and make sure you can
access the files in that directory through your web server.
Tip
If you symlink the bugzilla directory into your Apache's HTML
heirarchy, you may receive Forbidden errors unless you add the
"FollowSymLinks" directive to the <Directory> entry for the HTML root.
Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that
directory writable by your webserver's user. This is a temporary step
until you run the post-install checksetup.pl script, which locks down
your installation.
Lastly, you'll need to set up a symbolic link to
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl for the correct location of your perl
executable (probably /usr/bin/perl). Otherwise you must hack all the
.cgi files to change where they look for perl, or use The setperl.csh
Utility, found in Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla. I suggest
using the symlink approach for future release compatability.
Example 3-1. Setting up bonsaitools symlink
Here's how you set up the Perl symlink on Linux to make Bugzilla work.
Your mileage may vary. For some UNIX operating systems, you probably
need to subsitute "/usr/local/bin/perl" for "/usr/bin/perl" below; if
on certain other UNIX systems, Perl may live in weird places like
"/opt/perl". As root, run these commands:
bash# mkdir /usr/bonsaitools
bash# mkdir /usr/bonsaitools/bin
bash# ln -s /usr/bin/perl /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl
Alternately, you can simply run this perl one-liner to change your
path to perl in all the files in your Bugzilla installation:
perl -pi -e 's@#!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl@#!/usr/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm
Change the second path to perl to match your installation.
Tip
If you don't have root access to set this symlink up, check out the
The setperl.csh Utility, listed in Useful Patches and Utilities for
Bugzilla. It will change the path to perl in all your Bugzilla files
for you.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.14. Setting Up the MySQL Database
After you've gotten all the software installed and working you're
ready to start preparing the database for its life as a the back end
to a high quality bug tracker.
First, you'll want to fix MySQL permissions to allow access from
Bugzilla. For the purpose of this Installation section, the Bugzilla
username will be "bugs", and will have minimal permissions.
Warning
Bugzilla has not undergone a thorough security audit. It may be
possible for a system cracker to somehow trick Bugzilla into executing
a command such as DROP DATABASE mysql.
That would be bad.
Give the MySQL root user a password. MySQL passwords are limited to 16
characters.
bash# mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD ('new_password') WHERE
user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
From this point on, if you need to access MySQL as the MySQL root
user, you will need to use mysql -u root -p and enter your
new_password. Remember that MySQL user names have nothing to do with
Unix user names (login names).
Next, we create the "bugs" user, and grant sufficient permissions for
checksetup.pl, which we'll use later, to work its magic. This also
restricts the "bugs" user to operations within a database called
"bugs", and only allows the account to connect from "localhost".
Modify it to reflect your setup if you will be connecting from another
machine or as a different user.
Remember to set bugs_password to some unique password.
mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,
ALTER,CREATE,DROP,REFERENCES ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY
'bugs_password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script. (Many thanks to Holger
Schurig <holgerschurig@nikocity.de> for writing this script!) It will
make sure Bugzilla files and directories have reasonable permissions,
set up the data directory, and create all the MySQL tables.
bash# ./checksetup.pl
The first time you run it, it will create a file called localconfig.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.15. Tweaking localconfig
This file contains a variety of settings you may need to tweak
including how Bugzilla should connect to the MySQL database.
The connection settings include:
1. server's host: just use "localhost" if the MySQL server is local
2. database name: "bugs" if you're following these directions
3. MySQL username: "bugs" if you're following these directions
4. Password for the "bugs" MySQL account above
You should also install .htaccess files that the Apache webserver will
use to restrict access to Bugzilla data files. See .htaccess files and
security.
Once you are happy with the settings, re-run checksetup.pl. On this
second run, it will create the database and an administrator account
for which you will be prompted to provide information.
When logged into an administrator account once Bugzilla is running, if
you go to the query page (off of the Bugzilla main menu), you'll find
an "edit parameters" option that is filled with editable treats.
Should everything work, you will have a nearly empty Bugzilla database
and a newly-created localconfig file in your Bugzilla root directory.
Note
The second time you run checksetup.pl, you should become the user your
web server runs as, and that you ensure that you set the
"webservergroup" parameter in localconfig to match the web server's
group name, if any. I believe, for the next release of Bugzilla, this
will be fixed so that Bugzilla supports a "webserveruser" parameter in
localconfig as well.
Example 3-2. Running checksetup.pl as the web user
Assuming your web server runs as user "apache", and Bugzilla is
installed in "/usr/local/bugzilla", here's one way to run
checksetup.pl as the web server user. As root, for the second run of
checksetup.pl, do this:
bash# chown -R apache:apache /usr/local/bugzilla
bash# su - apache
bash# cd /usr/local/bugzilla
bash# ./checksetup.pl
Note
The checksetup.pl script is designed so that you can run it at any
time without causing harm. You should run it after any upgrade to
Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.16. Setting Up Maintainers Manually (Optional)
If you want to add someone else to every group by hand, you can do it
by typing the appropriate MySQL commands. Run mysql -u root -p bugs
You may need different parameters, depending on your security
settings. Then:
mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7fffffffffffffff where
login_name = 'XXX'; (yes, that's fifteen"f"'s.
replacing XXX with the Bugzilla email address.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.17. The Whining Cron (Optional)
By now you have a fully functional bugzilla, but what good are bugs if
they're not annoying? To help make those bugs more annoying you can
set up bugzilla's automatic whining system. This can be done by adding
the following command as a daily crontab entry (for help on that see
that crontab man page):
cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl
Tip
Depending on your system, crontab may have several manpages. The
following command should lead you to the most useful page for this
purpose:
man 5 crontab
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.18. Bug Graphs (Optional)
As long as you installed the GD and Graph::Base Perl modules you might
as well turn on the nifty bugzilla bug reporting graphs.
Add a cron entry like this to run collectstats daily at 5 after
midnight:
bash# crontab -e
5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl
After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the
Bug Reports page.
_________________________________________________________________
3.2.19. Securing MySQL
If you followed the installation instructions for setting up your
"bugs" and "root" user in MySQL, much of this should not apply to you.
If you are upgrading an existing installation of Bugzilla, you should
pay close attention to this section.
Most MySQL installs have "interesting" default security parameters:
mysqld defaults to running as root
it defaults to allowing external network connections
it has a known port number, and is easy to detect
it defaults to no passwords whatsoever
it defaults to allowing "File_Priv"
This means anyone from anywhere on the internet can not only drop the
database with one SQL command, and they can write as root to the
system.
To see your permissions do:
bash# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> show tables;
mysql> select * from user;
mysql> select * from db;
To fix the gaping holes:
DELETE FROM user WHERE User='';
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password') WHERE user='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
If you're not running "mit-pthreads" you can use:
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@localhost;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
With "mit-pthreads" you'll need to modify the "globals.pl"
Mysql->Connect line to specify a specific host name instead of
"localhost", and accept external connections:
GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@bounce.hop.com;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Use .htaccess files with the Apache webserver to secure your bugzilla
install. See .htaccess files and security
Consider also:
1. Turning off external networking with "--skip-networking", unless
you have "mit-pthreads", in which case you can't. Without
networking, MySQL connects with a Unix domain socket.
2. using the --user= option to mysqld to run it as an unprivileged
user.
3. starting MySQL in a chroot jail
4. running the httpd in a "chrooted" jail
5. making sure the MySQL passwords are different from the OS
passwords (MySQL "root" has nothing to do with system "root").
6. running MySQL on a separate untrusted machine
7. making backups ;-)
_________________________________________________________________
3.3. Mac OS X Installation Notes
There are a lot of common libraries and utilities out there that Apple
did not include with Mac OS X, but which run perfectly well on it. The
GD library, which Bugzilla needs to do bug graphs, is one of these.
The easiest way to get a lot of these is with a program called Fink,
which is similar in nature to the CPAN installer, but installs common
GNU utilities. Fink is available from
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/>.
Follow the instructions for setting up Fink. Once it's installed,
you'll want to run the following as root: fink install gd
It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit
enter to install all of the dependencies. Then watch it work.
To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by
default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs
most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and
headers for libgd will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of
/usr/lib and /usr/local/include. Because of these changed locations
for the libraries, the Perl GD module will not install directly via
CPAN (it looks for the specific paths instead of getting them from
your environment). But there's a way around that :-)
Instead of typing "install GD" at the cpan> prompt, type look GD. This
should go through the motions of downloading the latest version of the
GD module, then it will open a shell and drop you into the build
directory. Apply the following patch to the Makefile.PL file (save the
patch into a file and use the command patch < patchfile:
--- GD-1.33/Makefile.PL Fri Aug 4 16:59:22 2000
+++ GD-1.33-darwin/Makefile.PL Tue Jun 26 01:29:32 2001
@@ -3,8 +3,8 @@
warn "NOTICE: This module requires libgd 1.8.3 or higher (shared library versi
on 4.X).\n";
# =====> PATHS: CHECK AND ADJUST <=====
-my @INC = qw(-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/gd);
-my @LIBPATH = qw(-L/usr/lib/X11 -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/X11/lib -L/usr/local/l
ib );
+my @INC = qw(-I/sw/include -I/sw/include/gd -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/lo
cal/include/gd);
+my @LIBPATH = qw(-L/usr/lib/X11 -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/usr/X11/lib -L/sw/lib -L/u
sr/local/lib);
my @LIBS = qw(-lgd -lpng -lz);
# FEATURE FLAGS
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
push @LIBS,'-lttf' if $TTF;
push @LIBS,'-ljpeg' if $JPEG;
-push @LIBS, '-lm' unless $^O eq 'MSWin32';
+push @LIBS, '-lm' unless ($^O =~ /^MSWin32|darwin$/);
# FreeBSD 3.3 with libgd built from ports croaks if -lXpm is specified
if ($^O ne 'freebsd' && $^O ne 'MSWin32') {
Then, run these commands to finish the installation of the perl
module:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
And don't forget to run exit to get back to cpan.
Happy Hacking!
_________________________________________________________________
3.4. BSD Installation Notes
For instructions on how to set up Bugzilla on FreeBSD, NetBSD,
OpenBSD, BSDi, etc. please consult Section 3.3.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5. Installation General Notes
3.5.1. Modifying Your Running System
Bugzilla optimizes database lookups by storing all relatively static
information in the versioncache file, located in the data/
subdirectory under your installation directory.
If you make a change to the structural data in your database (the
versions table for example), or to the "constants" encoded in
defparams.pl, you will need to remove the cached content from the data
directory (by doing a "rm data/versioncache"), or your changes won't
show up.
That file gets automatically regenerated whenever it's more than an
hour old, so Bugzilla will eventually notice your changes by itself,
but generally you want it to notice right away, so that you can test
things.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5.2. Upgrading From Previous Versions
The developers of Bugzilla are constantly adding new tables, columns
and fields. You'll get SQL errors if you just update the code. The
strategy to update is to simply always run the checksetup.pl script
whenever you upgrade your installation of Bugzilla. If you want to see
what has changed, you can read the comments in that file, starting
from the end.
If you are running Bugzilla version 2.8 or lower, and wish to upgrade
to the latest version, please consult the file, "UPGRADING-pre-2.8" in
the Bugzilla root directory after untarring the archive.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5.3. .htaccess files and security
To enhance the security of your Bugzilla installation, Bugzilla will
generate .htaccess files which the Apache webserver can use to
restrict access to the bugzilla data files. The checksetup script will
generate the .htaccess files.
Note
If you are using an alternate provider of webdot services for graphing
(as described when viewing editparams.cgi in your web browser), you
will need to change the ip address in data/webdot/.htaccess to the ip
address of the webdot server that you are using.
If you are using Internet Information Server or other web server which
does not observe .htaccess conventions, you can disable their creation
by editing localconfig and setting the $create_htaccess variable to 0.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5.4. mod_throttle and Security
It is possible for a user, by mistake or on purpose, to access the
database many times in a row which can result in very slow access
speeds for other users. If your Bugzilla installation is experiencing
this problem , you may install the Apache module mod_throttle which
can limit connections by ip-address. You may download this module at
http://www.snert.com/Software/Throttle/. Follow the instructions to
install into your Apache install. This module only functions with the
Apache web server!. You may use the ThrottleClientIP command provided
by this module to accomplish this goal. See the Module Instructions
for more information.
_________________________________________________________________
3.5.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious
Javascript code
It is possible for a Bugzilla to execute malicious Javascript code.
Due to internationalization concerns, we are unable to incorporate the
code changes necessary to fulfill the CERT advisory requirements
mentioned in
http://www.cet.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_mitigation.html/#3.
Executing the following code snippet from a UNIX command shell will
rectify the problem if your Bugzilla installation is intended for an
English-speaking audience. As always, be sure your Bugzilla
installation has a good backup before making changes, and I recommend
you understand what the script is doing before executing it.
bash# cd $BUGZILLA_HOME; for i in `ls *.cgi`; \
do cat $i | sed 's/Content-type\: text\/html/Content-Type: text\/html
\; charset=ISO-8859-1/' >$i.tmp; \
mv $i.tmp $i; done
All this one-liner command does is search for all instances of
"Content-type: text/html" and replaces it with "Content-Type:
text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1". This specification prevents possible
Javascript attacks on the browser, and is suggested for all
English-speaking sites. For non-english-speaking Bugzilla sites, I
suggest changing "ISO-8859-1", above, to "UTF-8".
_________________________________________________________________
3.5.6. UNIX Installation Instructions History
This document was originally adapted from the Bonsai installation
instructions by Terry Weissman <terry@mozilla.org>.
The February 25, 1999 re-write of this page was done by Ry4an Brase
<ry4an@ry4an.org>, with some edits by Terry Weissman, Bryce Nesbitt,
Martin Pool, & Dan Mosedale (But don't send bug reports to them;
report them using bugzilla, at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Bugzilla ).
This document was heavily modified again Wednesday, March 07 2001 to
reflect changes for Bugzilla 2.12 release by Matthew P. Barnson. The
securing MySQL section should be changed to become standard procedure
for Bugzilla installations.
Finally, the README in its entirety was marked up in SGML and included
into the Guide on April 24, 2001 by Matt Barnson. Since that time,
it's undergone extensive modification as Bugzilla grew.
Comments from people using this Guide for the first time are
particularly welcome.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6. Win32 Installation Notes
This section covers installation on Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT,
and 2000. Bugzilla works fine on Win32 platforms, but please remember
that the Bugzilla team and the author of the Guide neither endorse nor
support installation on Microsoft Windows. Bugzilla installs and runs
best and easiest on UNIX-like operating systems, and that is the way
it will stay for the foreseeable future. The Bugzilla team is
considering supporting Win32 for the 2.16 release and later.
The easiest way to install Bugzilla on Intel-archiecture machines is
to install some variant of GNU/Linux, then follow the UNIX
installation instructions in this Guide. If you have any influence in
the platform choice for running this system, please choose GNU/Linux
instead of Microsoft Windows.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6.1. Win32 Installation: Step-by-step
Note
You should be familiar with, and cross-reference, the rest of the
Bugzilla Installation section while performing your Win32
installation.
Making Bugzilla work on Microsoft Windows is no picnic. Support for
Win32 has improved dramatically in the last few releases, but, if you
choose to proceed, you should be a very skilled Windows Systems
Administrator with strong troubleshooting abilities, a high tolerance
for pain, and moderate perl skills. Bugzilla on NT requires hacking
source code and implementing some advanced utilities. What follows is
the recommended installation procedure for Win32; additional
suggestions are provided in Appendix A.
1. Install Apache Web Server for Windows, and copy the Bugzilla files
somewhere Apache can serve them. Please follow all the
instructions referenced in Bugzilla Installation regarding your
Apache configuration, particularly instructions regarding the
"AddHandler" parameter and "ExecCGI".
Note
You may also use Internet Information Server or Personal Web Server
for this purpose. However, setup is quite different. If ActivePerl
doesn't seem to handle your file associations correctly (for .cgi and
.pl files), please consult Appendix A.
If you are going to use IIS, if on Windows NT you must be updated to
at least Service Pack 4. Windows 2000 ships with a sufficient version
of IIS.
2. Install ActivePerl for Windows. Check
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl for a
current compiled binary.
Please also check the following links to fully understand the
status of ActivePerl on Win32: Perl Porting, and Perl on Win32 FAQ
3. Use ppm from your perl\bin directory to install the following
packs: DBI, DBD-Mysql, TimeDate, Chart, Date-Calc, Date-Manip, and
GD. You may need to extract them from .zip format using Winzip or
other unzip program first. These additional ppm modules can be
downloaded from ActiveState.
Note
You can find a list of modules at
http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/5xx-builds-only/
The syntax for ppm is: C:> ppm <modulename>
Example 3-3. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft
Windows
C:>ppm DBD-Mysql
Watch your capitalization!
You can find ActiveState ppm modules at
http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus
4. Install MySQL for NT.
Note
You can download MySQL for Windows NT from MySQL.com. Some find it
helpful to use the WinMySqlAdmin utility, included with the download,
to set up the database.
5. Setup MySQL
a. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
b. mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='';
c. mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD ('new_password')
WHERE user='root';
"new_password", above, indicates whatever password you wish
to use for your "root" user.
d. mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER,
CREATE, DROP, REFERENCES ON bugs.* to bugs@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY 'bugs_password';
"bugs_password", above, indicates whatever password you wish
to use for your "bugs" user.
e. mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
f. mysql> create database bugs;
g. mysql> exit;
h. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root -p reload
6. Edit checksetup.pl in your Bugzilla directory. Change this line:
my $webservergid = getgrnam($my_webservergroup);
to
my $webservergid = $my_webservergroup;
or the name of the group you wish to own the files explicitly:
my $webservergid = 'Administrators'
7. Run checksetup.pl from the Bugzilla directory.
8. Edit localconfig to suit your requirements. Set $db_pass to your
"bugs_password" from step 5.d, and $webservergroup to "8".
Note
Not sure on the "8" for $webservergroup above. If it's wrong, please
send corrections.
9. Edit defparams.pl to suit your requirements. Particularly, set
DefParam("maintainer") and DefParam("urlbase") to match your
install.
Note
This is yet another step I'm not sure of, since the maintainer of this
documentation does not maintain Bugzilla on NT. If you can confirm or
deny that this step is required, please let me know.
10.
Note
There are several alternatives to Sendmail that will work on Win32.
The one mentioned here is a suggestion, not a requirement. Some other
mail packages that can work include BLAT, Windmail, Mercury Sendmail,
and the CPAN Net::SMTP Perl module (available in .ppm). Every option
requires some hacking of the Perl scripts for Bugzilla to make it
work. The option here simply requires the least.
1. Download NTsendmail, available from www.ntsendmail.com. You
must have a "real" mail server which allows you to relay off
it in your $ENV{"NTsendmail"} (which you should probably
place in globals.pl)
2. Put ntsendmail.pm into your .\perl\lib directory.
3. Add to globals.pl:
# these settings configure the NTsendmail process
use NTsendmail;
$ENV{"NTsendmail"}="your.smtpserver.box";
$ENV{"NTsendmail_debug"}=1;
$ENV{"NTsendmail_max_tries"}=5;
Note
Some mention to also edit $db_pass in globals.pl to be your
"bugs_password". Although this may get you around some problem
authenticating to your database, since globals.pl is not normally
restricted by .htaccess, your database password is exposed to whoever
uses your web server.
4. Find and comment out all occurences of "open(SENDMAIL" in
your Bugzilla directory. Then replace them with:
# new sendmail functionality
my $mail=new NTsendmail;
my $from="bugzilla\@your.machine.name.tld";
my $to=$login;
my $subject=$urlbase;
$mail->send($from,$to,$subject,$msg);
Note
Some have found success using the commercial product, Windmail. You
could try replacing your sendmail calls with:
open SENDMAIL, "|\"C:/General/Web/tools/Windmail 4.0 Beta/windmail\" -t > mail.
log";
or something to that effect.
11. Change all references in all files from processmail to
processmail.pl, and rename processmail to processmail.pl.
Note
Many think this may be a change we want to make for main-tree
Bugzilla. It's painless for the UNIX folks, and will make the Win32
people happier.
Note
Some people have suggested using the Net::SMTP Perl module instead of
NTsendmail or the other options listed here. You can change
processmail.pl to make this work.
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server>'); #connect to SMTP ser
ver
$smtp->mail('<your name>@<you smpt server>');# use the sender's adress here
$smtp->to($tolist); # recipient's address
$smtp->data(); # Start the mail
$smtp->datasend($msg);
$smtp->dataend(); # Finish sending the mail
$smtp->quit; # Close the SMTP connection
$logstr = "$logstr; mail sent to $tolist $cclist";
}
here is a test mail program for Net::SMTP:
use Net::SMTP;
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server', Timeout => 30, Debug
=> 1, ); # connect to SMTP server
$smtp->auth;
$smtp->mail('you@yourcompany.com');# use the sender's adress
here
$smtp->to('someotherAddress@someotherdomain.com'); #
recipient's address
$smtp->data(); # Start the mail
$smtp->datasend('test');
$smtp->dataend(); # Finish sending the mail
$smtp->quit; # Close the SMTP connection
exit;
12.
Note
This step is optional if you are using IIS or another web server which
only decides on an interpreter based upon the file extension (.pl),
rather than the "shebang" line (#/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl)
Modify the path to perl on the first line (#!) of all files to
point to your Perl installation, and add "perl" to the beginning
of all Perl system calls that use a perl script as an argument.
This may take you a while. There is a "setperl.csh" utility to
speed part of this procedure, available in the Useful Patches and
Utilities for Bugzilla section of The Bugzilla Guide. However, it
requires the Cygwin GNU-compatible environment for Win32 be set up
in order to work. See http://www.cygwin.com/ for details on
obtaining Cygwin.
13. Modify the invocation of all system() calls in all perl scripts in
your Bugzilla directory. For instance, change this line in
processmail:
system ("./processmail.pl",@ARGLIST);
to
system ("perl processmail.pl",@ARGLIST);
14. Add binmode() calls so attachments will work (bug 62000).
Because Microsoft Windows based systems handle binary files
different than Unix based systems, you need to add the following
lines to createattachment.cgi and showattachment.cgi before the
require 'CGI.pl'; line.
binmode(STDIN);
binmode(STDOUT);
Note
According to bug 62000, the perl documentation says that you should
always use binmode() when dealing with binary files, but never when
dealing with text files. That seems to suggest that rather than
aribtrarily putting binmode() at the begining of the attachment files,
there should be logic to determine if binmode() is needed or not.
Tip
If you are using IIS or Personal Web Server, you must add cgi
relationships to Properties -> Home directory (tab) -> Application
Settings (section) -> Configuration (button), such as:
.cgi to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s %s
.pl to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s %s
GET,HEAD,POST
Change the path to Perl to match your install, of course.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6.2. Additional Windows Tips
Tip
From Andrew Pearson:
You can make Bugzilla work with Personal Web Server for Windows 98
and higher, as well as for IIS 4.0. Microsoft has information
available at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q231/9/98.ASP
Basically you need to add two String Keys in the registry at the
following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Parameters\ScriptMap
The keys should be called ".pl" and ".cgi", and both should have a
value something like: c:/perl/bin/perl.exe "%s" "%s"
The KB article only talks about .pl, but it goes into more detail
and provides a perl test script.
Tip
If attempting to run Bugzilla 2.12 or older, you will need to remove
encrypt() calls from the Perl source. This is not necessary for
Bugzilla 2.13 and later, which includes the current release, Bugzilla
2.14.
Example 3-4. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12
or earlier
Replace this:
SendSQL("SELECT encrypt(" . SqlQuote($enteredpwd) . ", " . SQLQuote(substr($rea
lcryptpwd, 0, 2)) . ")");
my $enteredcryptpwd = FetchOneColumn();
with this:
my $enteredcryptpwd = $enteredpwd
in cgi.pl.
_________________________________________________________________
3.6.3. Bugzilla LDAP Integration
What follows is some late-breaking information on using the LDAP
authentication options with Bugzilla. The author has not tested these
(nor even formatted this section!) so please contribute feedback to
the newsgroup.
Mozilla::LDAP module
The Mozilla::LDAP module allows you to use LDAP for authentication to
the Bugzilla system. This module is not required if you are not using
LDAP.
Mozilla::LDAP (aka PerLDAP) is available for download from
http://www.mozilla.org/directory.
NOTE: The Mozilla::LDAP module requires Netscape's Directory SDK.
Follow the link for "Directory SDK for C" on that same page to
download the SDK first. After you have installed this SDK, then
install the PerLDAP module.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Post-Installation Checklist
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Set useLDAP to "On" **only** if you will be using an LDAP directory
for authentication. Be very careful when setting up this parameter;
if you set LDAP authentication, but do not have a valid LDAP directory
set up, you will not be able to log back in to Bugzilla once you log
out. (If this happens, you can get back in by manually editing the
data/params file, and setting useLDAP back to 0.)
If using LDAP, you must set the three additional parameters:
Set LDAPserver to the name (and optionally port) of your LDAP server.
If no port is specified, it defaults to the default port of 389. (e.g
"ldap.mycompany.com" or "ldap.mycompany.com:1234")
Set LDAPBaseDN to the base DN for searching for users in your LDAP
directory. (e.g. "ou=People,o=MyCompany") uids must be unique under
the DN specified here.
Set LDAPmailattribute to the name of the attribute in your LDAP
directory which contains the primary email address. On most directory
servers available, this is "mail", but you may need to change this.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(Not sure where this bit should go, but it's important that it be in
there somewhere...)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Using LDAP authentication for Bugzilla:
The existing authentication scheme for Bugzilla uses email addresses
as the primary user ID, and a password to authenticate that user. All
places within Bugzilla where you need to deal with user ID (e.g
assigning a bug) use the email address.
The LDAP authentication builds on top of this scheme, rather than
replacing it. The initial log in is done with a username and password
for the LDAP directory. This then fetches the email address from LDAP
and authenticates seamlessly in the standard Bugzilla authentication
scheme using this email address. If an account for this address
already exists in your Bugzilla system, it will log in to that
account. If no account for that email address exists, one is created
at the time of login. (In this case, Bugzilla will attempt to use the
"displayName" or "cn" attribute to determine the user's full name.)
After authentication, all other user-related tasks are still handled
by email address, not LDAP username. You still assign bugs by email
address, query on users by email address, etc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 4. Administering Bugzilla
Or, I just got this cool thing installed. Now what the heck do I do
with it?
So you followed "Bugzilla Installation" to the letter, and logged into
Bugzilla for the very first time with your super-duper god account.
You sit, contentedly staring at the Bugzilla Query Screen, the worst
of the whole mad business of installing this terrific program behind
you. It seems, though, you have nothing yet to query! Your first act
of business should be to setup the operating parameters for Bugzilla
so you can get busy getting data into your bug tracker.
_________________________________________________________________
4.1. Post-Installation Checklist
After installation, follow the checklist below to help ensure that you
have a successful installation. If you do not see a recommended
setting for a parameter, consider leaving it at the default while you
perform your initial tests on your Bugzilla setup.
1. Bring up editparams.cgi in your web browser. This should be
available as the "edit parameters" link from any Bugzilla screen
once you have logged in.
2. The "maintainer" is the email address of the person responsible
for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The maintainer need
not be a valid Bugzilla user. Error pages, error emails, and
administrative mail will be sent with the maintainer as the return
email address.
Set "maintainer" to your email address. This allows Bugzilla's
error messages to display your email address and allow people to
contact you for help.
3. The "urlbase" parameter defines the fully qualified domain name
and web server path to your Bugzilla installation.
For example, if your bugzilla query page is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your "urlbase" is
http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.
4. "usebuggroups" dictates whether or not to implement group-based
security for Bugzilla. If set, Bugzilla bugs can have an
associated groupmask defining which groups of users are allowed to
see and edit the bug.
Set "usebuggroups" to "on" only if you may wish to restrict access
to products. I suggest leaving this parameter off while initially
testing your Bugzilla.
5. "usebuggroupsentry", when set to "on", requires that all bugs have
an associated groupmask when submitted. This parameter is made for
those installations where product isolation is a necessity.
Set "usebuggroupsentry" to "on" if you absolutely need to restrict
access to bugs from the moment they are submitted through
resolution. Once again, if you are simply testing your
installation, I suggest against turning this parameter on; the
strict security checking may stop you from being able to modify
your new entries.
6. You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla reaches a high
level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only table-level
write locking. What this means is that if someone needs to make a
change to a bug, they will lock the entire table until the
operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until
the write is complete. The "shadowdb" parameter was designed to
get around this limitation. While only a single user is allowed to
write to a table at a time, reads can continue unimpeded on a
read-only shadow copy of the database. Although your database size
will double, a shadow database can cause an enormous performance
improvement when implemented on extremely high-traffic Bugzilla
databases.
Set "shadowdb" to "bug_shadowdb" if you will be running a *very*
large installation of Bugzilla. The shadow database enables many
simultaneous users to read and write to the database without
interfering with one another.
Note
Enabling "shadowdb" can adversely affect the stability of your
installation of Bugzilla. You should regularly check that your
database is in sync. It is often advisable to force a shadow database
sync nightly via "cron".
Once again, in testing you should avoid this option -- use it if
or when you need to use it, and have repeatedly run into the
problem it was designed to solve -- very long wait times while
attempting to commit a change to the database. Mozilla.org began
needing "shadowdb" when they reached around 40,000 Bugzilla users
with several hundred Bugzilla bug changes and comments per day.
If you use the "shadowdb" option, it is only natural that you
should turn the "queryagainstshadowdb" option "On" as well.
Otherwise you are replicating data into a shadow database for no
reason!
7. "headerhtml", "footerhtml", "errorhtml", "bannerhtml", and
"blurbhtml" are all templates which control display of headers,
footers, errors, banners, and additional data. We could go into
some detail regarding the usage of these, but it is really best
just to monkey around with them a bit to see what they do. I
strongly recommend you copy your data/params file somewhere safe
before playing with these values, though. If they are changed
dramatically, it may make it impossible for you to display
Bugzilla pages to fix the problem until you have restored your
data/params file.
If you have custom logos or HTML you must put in place to fit
within your site design guidelines, place the code in the
"headerhtml", "footerhtml", "errorhtml", "bannerhtml", or
"blurbhtml" text boxes.
Note
The "headerhtml" text box is the HTML printed out before any other
code on the page, except the CONTENT-TYPE header sent by the Bugzilla
engine. If you have a special banner, put the code for it in
"bannerhtml". You may want to leave these settings at the defaults
initially.
8. "passwordmail" is rather simple. Every time a user creates an
account, the text of this parameter is read as the text to send to
the new user along with their password message.
Add any text you wish to the "passwordmail" parameter box. For
instance, many people choose to use this box to give a quick
training blurb about how to use Bugzilla at your site.
9. "useqacontact" allows you to define an email address for each
component, in addition to that of the default owner, who will be
sent carbon copies of incoming bugs. The critical difference
between a QA Contact and an Owner is that the QA Contact follows
the component. If you reassign a bug from component A to component
B, the QA Contact for that bug will change with the reassignment,
regardless of owner.
"usestatuswhiteboard" 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. Many people
will put "help wanted", "stalled", or "waiting on reply from
somebody" messages into the Status Whiteboard field so those who
peruse the bugs are aware of their status even more than that
which can be indicated by the Resolution fields.
Do you want to use the QA Contact ("useqacontact") and status
whiteboard ("usestatuswhiteboard") fields? These fields are useful
because they allow for more flexibility, particularly when you
have an existing Quality Assurance and/or Release Engineering
team, but they may not be needed for many smaller installations.
10. Set "whinedays" to the amount of days you want to let bugs go in
the "New" or "Reopened" state before notifying people they have
untouched new bugs. If you do not plan to use this feature, simply
do not set up the whining cron job described in the installation
instructions, or set this value to "0" (never whine).
11. "commenton" fields allow you to dictate what changes can pass
without comment, and which must have a comment from the person who
changed them. Often, administrators will allow users to add
themselves to the CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status
Whiteboard without adding a comment as to their reasons for the
change, yet require that most other changes come with an
explanation.
Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a
wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or
reopen bugs at the very least.
Note
It is generally far better to require a developer comment when
resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database
users than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment
as to what the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!)
12. The "supportwatchers" option can be an exceptionally powerful tool
in the hands of a power Bugzilla user. By enabling this option,
you allow users to receive email updates whenever other users
receive email updates. This is, of course, subject to the groupset
restrictions on the bug; if the "watcher" would not normally be
allowed to view a bug, the watcher cannot get around the system by
setting herself up to watch the bugs of someone with bugs outside
her priveleges. She would still only receive email updates for
those bugs she could normally view.
For Bugzilla sites which require strong inter-Product security to
prevent snooping, watchers are not a good idea.
However, for most sites you should set "supportwatchers" to "On".
This feature is helpful for team leads to monitor progress in
their respective areas, and can offer many other benefits, such as
allowing a developer to pick up a former engineer's bugs without
requiring her to change all the information in the bug.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2. User Administration
User administration is one of the easiest parts of Bugzilla. Keeping
it from getting out of hand, however, can become a challenge.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.1. 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 were to delete
the "super user" account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt
you for this username and password.
Tip
If you wish to add more administrative users, you must use the MySQL
interface. Run "mysql" from the command line, and use these commands
("mysql>" denotes the mysql prompt, not something you should type in):
mysql> use bugs; mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7ffffffffffffff
where login_name = "(user's login name)";
Yes, that is fourteen "f"'s. A whole lot of f-ing going on if you want
to create a new administator.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2. Managing Other Users
4.2.2.1. Logging In
1. Open the index.html page for your Bugzilla installation in your
browser window.
2. Click the "Query Existing Bug Reports" link.
3. Click the "Log In" link at the foot of the page.
4. Type your email address, and the password which was emailed to you
when you created your Bugzilla account, into the spaces provided.
Congratulations, you are logged in!
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2.2. Creating new users
Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New
Account" link at the bottom of each page. However, should you desire
to create user accounts ahead of time, here is how you do it.
1. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the
query page.
2. To see a specific user, type a portion of their login name in the
box provided and click "submit". To see all users, simply click
the "submit" button. You must click "submit" here to be able to
add a new user.
Tip
More functionality is available via the list on the right-hand side of
the text entry box. You can match what you type as a case-insensitive
substring (the default) of all users on your system, a case-sensitive
regular expression (please see the man regexp manual page for details
on regular expression syntax), or a reverse regular expression match,
where every user name which does NOT match the regular expression is
selected.
3. Click the "Add New User" link at the bottom of the user list
4. Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When
done, click "submit".
Note
Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their
username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts
(watchers which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email
addresses which are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to
log out and use the "New Account" button to create users, as it will
pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her
account name and password.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2.3. Disabling Users
I bet you noticed that big "Disabled Text" entry box available from
the "Add New User" screen, when you edit an account? By entering any
text in this box and selecting "submit", you have prevented the user
from using Bugzilla via the web interface. Your explanation, written
in this text box, will be presented to the user the next time she
attempts to use the system.
Warning
Don't disable your own administrative account, or you will hate life!
At this time, "Disabled Text" does not prevent a user from using the
email interface. If you have the email interface enabled, they can
still continue to submit bugs and comments that way. We need a patch
to fix this.
_________________________________________________________________
4.2.2.4. Modifying Users
Here I will attempt to describe the function of each option on the
Edit User screen.
* Login Name: This is generally the user's email address. However,
if you have edited your system parameters, this may just be the
user's login name or some other identifier.
Tip
For compatability reasons, you should probably stick with email
addresses as user login names. It will make your life easier.
* Real Name: Duh!
* Password: You can change the user password here. It is normal to
only see asterisks.
* Email Notification: You may choose from one of three options:
1. All qualifying bugs except those which I change: The user
will be notified of any change to any bug for which she is
the reporter, assignee, QA Contact, CC recipient, or
"watcher".
2. Only those bugs which I am listed on the CC line: The user
will not be notified of changes to bugs where she is the
assignee, reporter, or QA Contact, but will receive them if
she is on the CC list.
Note
She will still receive whining cron emails if you set up the
"whinemail" feature.
3. All Qualifying Bugs: This user is a glutton for punishment.
If her name is in the reporter, QA Contact, CC, assignee, or
is a "watcher", she will get email updates regarding the bug.
Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a
space, the user account is disabled from making any changes to
bugs via the web interface, and what you type in this box is
presented as the reason.
Warning
Don't disable the administrator account!
Note
As of this writing, the user can still submit bugs via the e-mail
gateway, if you set it up, despite the disabled text field. The e-mail
gateway should not be enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla.
* CanConfirm: This field is only used if you have enabled
"unconfirmed" status in your parameters screen. If you enable this
for a user, that user can then move bugs from "Unconfirmed" to
"Confirmed" status (e.g.: "New" status). Be judicious about
allowing users to turn this bit on for other users.
* Creategroups: This option will allow a user to create and destroy
groups in Bugzilla. Unless you are using the Bugzilla GroupSentry
security option "usebuggroupsentry" in your parameters, this
setting has no effect.
* Editbugs: Unless a user has this bit set, they can only edit those
bugs for which they are the assignee or the reporter.
Note
Leaving this option unchecked does not prevent users from adding
comments to a bug! They simply cannot change a bug priority, severity,
etc. unless they are the assignee or reporter.
* 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. The name of a product or component can be changed
without affecting the associated bugs, but it tends to annoy the
hell out of your users when these change a lot.
* Editkeywords: If you use Bugzilla's keyword functionality,
enabling this feature allows a user can 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. You must be very careful about creating too
many new keywords if you run a very large Bugzilla installation;
keywords are global variables across products, and you can often
run into a phenomenon called "keyword bloat". This confuses users,
and then the feature goes unused.
* Editusers: This flag allows a user do what you're doing right now:
edit other users. This will allow those with the right to do so to
remove administrator priveleges from other users or grant them to
themselves. Enable with care.
* PRODUCT: PRODUCT bugs access. This allows an administrator, with
product-level granularity, to specify in which products a user can
edit bugs. The user must still have the "editbugs" privelege to
edit bugs in this area; this simply restricts them from even
seeing bugs outside these boundaries if the administrator has
enabled the group sentry parameter "usebuggroupsentry". Unless you
are using bug groups, this option has no effect.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
Dear Lord, we have to get our users to do WHAT?
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.1. Products
Formerly, and in some spots still, called "Programs"
Products are the broadest category in Bugzilla, and you should have
the least of these. If your company makes computer games, you should
have one product per game, and possibly a few special products
(website, meetings...)
A Product (formerly called "Program", and still referred to that way
in some portions of the source code) controls some very important
functions. The number of "votes" available for users to vote for the
most important bugs is set per-product, as is the number of votes
required to move a bug automatically from the UNCONFIRMED status to
the NEW status. One can close a Product for further bug entry and
define various Versions available from the Edit product screen.
To create a new product:
1. Select "components" from the yellow footer
Tip
It may seem counterintuitive to click "components" when you want to
edit the properties associated with Products. This is one of a long
list of things we want in Bugzilla 3.0...
2. Select the "Add" link to the right of "Add a new product".
3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description
field is free-form.
Tip
Don't worry about the "Closed for bug entry", "Maximum Votes per
person", "Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug", "Number of
votes a bug in this Product needs to automatically get out of the
UNCOMFIRMED state", and "Version" options yet. We'll cover those in a
few moments.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.2. Components
Components are subsections of a Product.
Example 4-1. Creating some Components
The computer game you are designing may have a "UI" component, an
"API" component, a "Sound System" component, and a "Plugins"
component, each overseen by a different programmer. It often makes
sense to divide Components in Bugzilla according to the natural
divisions of responsibility within your Product or company.
Each component has a owner and (if you turned it on in the
parameters), a QA Contact. The owner should be the primary person who
fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the person who
will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Owner, QA Contact,
and Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in this
Component and when these bugs change. Default Owner and Default QA
Contact fields only dictate the default assignments; the Owner and QA
Contact fields in a bug are otherwise unrelated to the Component.
To create a new Component:
1. Select the "Edit components" link from the "Edit product" page
2. Select the "Add" link to the right of the "Add a new component"
text on the "Select Component" page.
3. Fill out the "Component" field, a short "Description", and the
"Initial Owner". The Component and Description fields are
free-form; the "Initial Owner" field must be that of a user ID
already existing in the database. If the initial owner does not
exist, Bugzilla will refuse to create the component.
Tip
Is your "Default Owner" a user who is not yet in the database? No
problem.
a. Select the "Log out" link on the footer of the page.
b. Select the "New Account" link on the footer of the "Relogin"
page
c. Type in the email address of the default owner you want to
create in the "E-mail address" field, and her full name in
the "Real name" field, then select the "Submit Query" button.
d. Now select "Log in" again, type in your login information,
and you can modify the product to use the Default Owner
information you require.
4. Either Edit more components or return to the Bugzilla Query Page.
To return to the Product you were editing, you must select the
Components link as before.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.3. Versions
Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1",
"Flinders 95", and "Flinders 2000". Using Versions helps you isolate
code changes and are an aid in reporting.
Example 4-2. Common Use of Versions
A user reports a bug against Version "Beta 2.0" of your product. The
current Version of your software is "Release Candidate 1", and no
longer has the bug. This will help you triage and classify bugs
according to their relevance. It is also possible people may report
bugs against bleeding-edge beta versions that are not evident in older
versions of the software. This can help isolate code changes that
caused the bug
Example 4-3. A Different Use of Versions
This field has been used to good effect by an online service provider
in a slightly different way. They had three versions of the product:
"Production", "QA", and "Dev". Although it may be the same product, a
bug in the development environment is not normally as critical as a
Production bug, nor does it need to be reported publicly. When used in
conjunction with Target Milestones, one can easily specify the
environment where a bug can be reproduced, and the Milestone by which
it will be fixed.
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". If your product doesn't use version numbers, you may
want to leave this as it is or edit it so that it is "---". You
can then go back to the edit versions page and add new versions to
your product.
Otherwise, click the "Add" button to the right of the "Add a new
version" text.
3. Enter the name of the Version. This can be free-form characters up
to the limit of the text box. Then select the "Add" button.
4. At this point you can select "Edit" to edit more Versions, or
return to the "Query" page, from which you can navigate back to
the product through the "components" link at the foot of the Query
page.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.4. Milestones
Milestones are "targets" that you plan to get a bug fixed by. For
example, you have a bug that you plan to fix for your 3.0 release, it
would be assigned the milestone of 3.0. Or, you have a bug that you
plan to fix for 2.8, this would have a milestone of 2.8.
Note
Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned the
"usetargetmilestone" field in the "Edit Parameters" screen "On".
To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone
URL:
1. Select "edit milestones"
2. Select "Add" to the right of the "Add a new milestone" text
3. Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can
optionally set the "Sortkey", which is a positive or negative
number (-255 to 255) that defines where in the list this
particular milestone appears. Select "Add".
Example 4-4. Using SortKey with Target Milestone
Let's say you create a target milestone called "Release 1.0", with
Sortkey set to "0". Later, you realize that you will have a public
beta, called "Beta1". You can create a Milestone called "Beta1",
with a Sortkey of "-1" in order to ensure people will see the
Target Milestone of "Beta1" earlier on the list than "Release 1.0"
4. If you want to add more milestones, select the "Edit" link. If you
don't, well shoot, you have to go back to the "query" page and
select "components" again, and make your way back to the Product
you were editing.
Note
This is another in the list of unusual user interface decisions that
we'd like to get cleaned up. Shouldn't there be a link to the effect
of "edit the Product I was editing when I ended up here"? In any case,
clicking "components" in the footer takes you back to the "Select
product" screen, from which you can begin editing your product again.
5. From the Edit product screen again (once you've made your way
back), enter the URL for a description of what your milestones are
for this product in the "Milestone URL" field. It should be of the
format "http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/product_milestones.html"
Some common uses of this field include product descriptions,
product roadmaps, and of course a simple description of the
meaning of each milestone.
6. If you're using Target Milestones, the "Default Milestone" field
must have some kind of entry. If you really don't care if people
set coherent Target Milestones, simply leave this at the default,
"---". However, controlling and regularly updating the Default
Milestone field is a powerful tool when reporting the status of
projects.
Select the "Update" button when you are done.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.5. Voting
The concept of "voting" is a poorly understood, yet powerful feature
for the management of open-source projects. Each user is assigned so
many Votes per product, which they can freely reassign (or assign
multiple votes to a single bug). This allows developers to gauge user
need for a particular enhancement or bugfix. By allowing bugs with a
certain number of votes to automatically move from "UNCONFIRMED" to
"NEW", users of the bug system can help high-priority bugs garner
attention so they don't sit for a long time awaiting triage.
The daunting challenge of Votes is deciding where you draw the line
for a "vocal majority". If you only have a user base of 100 users,
setting a low threshold for bugs to move from UNCONFIRMED to NEW makes
sense. As the Bugzilla user base expands, however, these thresholds
must be re-evaluated. You should gauge whether this feature is worth
the time and close monitoring involved, and perhaps forego
implementation until you have a critical mass of users who demand it.
To modify Voting settings:
1. Navigate to the "Edit product" screen for the Product you wish to
modify
2. Set "Maximum Votes per person" to your calculated value. Setting
this field to "0" disables voting.
3. Set "Maximum Votes a person can put on a single bug" to your
calculated value. It should probably be some number lower than the
"Maximum votes per person". Setting this field to "0" disables
voting, but leaves the voting options open to the user. This is
confusing.
4. Set "Number of votes a bug in this product needs to automatically
get out of the UNCONFIRMED state" to your calculated number.
Setting this field to "0" disables the automatic move of bugs from
UNCONFIRMED to NEW. Some people advocate leaving this at "0", but
of what use are Votes if your Bugzilla user base is unable to
affect which bugs appear on Development radar?
Tip
You should probably set this number to higher than a small coalition
of Bugzilla users can influence it. Most sites use this as a
"referendum" mechanism -- if users are able to vote a bug out of
UNCONFIRMED, it is a really bad bug!
5. Once you have adjusted the values to your preference, select the
"Update" button.
_________________________________________________________________
4.3.6. Groups and Group Security
Groups can be very useful in bugzilla, because they allow users to
isolate bugs or products that should only be seen by certain people.
Groups can also be a complicated minefield of interdependencies and
weirdness if mismanaged.
Example 4-5. When to Use Group Security
Many Bugzilla sites isolate "Security-related" bugs from all other
bugs. This way, they can have a fix ready before the security
vulnerability is announced to the world. You can create a "Security"
product which, by default, has no members, and only add members to the
group (in their individual User page, as described under User
Administration) who should have priveleged access to "Security" bugs.
Alternately, you may create a Group independently of any Product, and
change the Group mask on individual bugs to restrict access to members
only of certain Groups.
Groups only work if you enable the "usebuggroups" paramater. In
addition, if the "usebuggroupsentry" parameter is "On", one can
restrict access to products by groups, so that only members of a
product group are able to view bugs within that product. Group
security in Bugzilla can be divided into two categories: Generic and
Product-Based.
Note
Groups in Bugzilla are a complicated beast that evolved out of very
simple user permission bitmasks, apparently itself derived from common
concepts in UNIX access controls. A "bitmask" is a fixed-length number
whose value can describe one, and only one, set of states. For
instance, UNIX file permissions are assigned bitmask values: "execute"
has a value of 1, "write" has a value of 2, and "read" has a value of
4. Add them together, and a file can be read, written to, and executed
if it has a bitmask of "7". (This is a simplified example -- anybody
who knows UNIX security knows there is much more to it than this.
Please bear with me for the purpose of this note.) The only way a
bitmask scheme can work is by doubling the bit count for each value.
Thus if UNIX wanted to offer another file permission, the next would
have to be a value of 8, then the next 16, the next 32, etc.
Similarly, Bugzilla offers a bitmask to define group permissions, with
an internal limit of 64. Several are already occupied by built-in
permissions. The way around this limitation is to avoid assigning
groups to products if you have many products, avoid bloating of group
lists, and religiously prune irrelevant groups. In reality, most
installations of Bugzilla support far fewer than 64 groups, so this
limitation has not hit for most sites, but it is on the table to be
revised for Bugzilla 3.0 because it interferes with the security
schemes of some administrators.
To enable Generic Group Security ("usebuggroups"):
1. Turn "On" "usebuggroups" in the "Edit Parameters" screen.
2. You will generally have no groups set up. Select the "groups" link
in the footer.
3. Take a moment to understand the instructions on the "Edit Groups"
screen. Once you feel confident you understand what is expected of
you, select the "Add Group" link.
4. Fill out the "New Name" (remember, no spaces!), "New Description",
and "New User RegExp" fields. "New User RegExp" allows you to
automatically place all users who fulfill the Regular Expression
into the new group.
Example 4-6. Creating a New Group
I created a group called DefaultGroup with a description of "This
is simply a group to play with", and a New User RegExp of
".*@mydomain.tld". This new group automatically includes all
Bugzilla users with "@mydomain.tld" at the end of their user id.
When I finished, my new group was assigned bit #128.
When you have finished, select the Add button.
To enable Product-Based Group Security (usebuggroupsentry):
Warning
Don't forget that you only have 64 groups masks available, total, for
your installation of Bugzilla! If you plan on having more than 50
products in your individual Bugzilla installation, and require group
security for your products, you should consider either running
multiple Bugzillas or using Generic Group Security instead of
Product-Based ("usebuggroupsentry") Group Security.
1. Turn "On" "usebuggroups" and "usebuggroupsentry" in the "Edit
Parameters" screen.
Warning
"usebuggroupsentry" has the capacity to prevent the administrative
user from directly altering bugs because of conflicting group
permissions. If you plan on using "usebuggroupsentry", you should plan
on restricting administrative account usage to administrative duties
only. In other words, manage bugs with an unpriveleged user account,
and manage users, groups, Products, etc. with the administrative
account.
2. You will generally have no Groups set up, unless you enabled
"usebuggroupsentry" prior to creating any Products. To create
"Generic Group Security" groups, follow the instructions given
above. To create Product-Based Group security, simply follow the
instructions for creating a new Product. If you need to add users
to these new groups as you create them, you will find the option
to add them to the group available under the "Edit User" screens.
You may find this example illustrative for how bug groups work.
Example 4-7. Bugzilla Groups
Bugzilla Groups example
-----------------------
For this example, let us suppose we have four groups, call them
Group1, Group2, Group3, and Group4.
We have 5 users, User1, User2, User3, User4, User5.
We have 8 bugs, Bug1, ..., Bug8.
Group membership is defined by this chart:
(X denotes that user is in that group.)
(I apologize for the nasty formatting of this table. Try viewing
it in a text-based browser or something for now. -MPB)
G G G G
r r r r
o o o o
u u u u
p p p p
1 2 3 4
+-+-+-+-+
User1|X| | | |
+-+-+-+-+
User2| |X| | |
+-+-+-+-+
User3|X| |X| |
+-+-+-+-+
User4|X|X|X| |
+-+-+-+-+
User5| | | | |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug restrictions are defined by this chart:
(X denotes that bug is restricted to that group.)
G G G G
r r r r
o o o o
u u u u
p p p p
1 2 3 4
+-+-+-+-+
Bug1| | | | |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug2| |X| | |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug3| | |X| |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug4| | | |X|
+-+-+-+-+
Bug5|X|X| | |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug6|X| |X| |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug7|X|X|X| |
+-+-+-+-+
Bug8|X|X|X|X|
+-+-+-+-+
Who can see each bug?
Bug1 has no group restrictions. Therefore, Bug1 can be seen by any
user, whatever their group membership. This is going to be the only
bug that User5 can see, because User5 isn't in any groups.
Bug2 can be seen by anyone in Group2, that is User2 and User4.
Bug3 can be seen by anyone in Group3, that is User3 and User4.
Bug4 can be seen by anyone in Group4. Nobody is in Group4, so none of
these users can see Bug4.
Bug5 can be seen by anyone who is in _both_ Group1 and Group2. This
is only User4. User1 cannot see it because he is not in Group2, and
User2 cannot see it because she is not in Group1.
Bug6 can be seen by anyone who is in both Group1 and Group3. This
would include User3 and User4. Similar to Bug5, User1 cannot see Bug6
because he is not in Group3.
Bug7 can be seen by anyone who is in Group1, Group2, and Group3. This
is only User4. All of the others are missing at least one of those
group priveleges, and thus cannot see the bug.
Bug8 can be seen by anyone who is in Group1, Group2, Group3, and
Group4. There is nobody in all four of these groups, so nobody can
see Bug8. It doesn't matter that User4 is in Group1, Group2, and
Group3, since he isn't in Group4.
_________________________________________________________________
4.4. Bugzilla Security
Putting your money in a wall safe is better protection than depending
on the fact that no one knows that you hide your money in a mayonnaise
jar in your fridge.
Note
Poorly-configured MySQL, Bugzilla, and FTP installations have given
attackers full access to systems in the past. Please take these
guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden away behind
your firewall. 80% of all computer trespassers are insiders, not
anonymous crackers.
Secure your installation.
Note
These instructions must, of necessity, be somewhat vague since
Bugzilla runs on so many different platforms. If you have refinements
of these directions for specific platforms, please submit them to
mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org
1. Ensure you are running at least MysQL version 3.22.32 or newer.
Earlier versions had notable security holes and poorly secured
default configuration choices.
2. There is no substitute for understanding the tools on your system!
Read The MySQL Privilege System until you can recite it from
memory!
At the very least, ensure you password the "mysql -u root" account
and the "bugs" account, establish grant table rights (consult the
Keystone guide in Appendix C: The Bugzilla Database for some
easy-to-use details) that do not allow CREATE, DROP, RELOAD,
SHUTDOWN, and PROCESS for user "bugs". I wrote up the Keystone
advice back when I knew far less about security than I do now : )
3. Lock down /etc/inetd.conf. Heck, disable inet entirely on this
box. It should only listen to port 25 for Sendmail and port 80 for
Apache.
4. Do not run Apache as "nobody". This will require very lax
permissions in your Bugzilla directories. Run it, instead, as a
user with a name, set via your httpd.conf file.
Note
"nobody" is a real user on UNIX systems. Having a process run as user
id "nobody" is absolutely no protection against system crackers versus
using any other user account. As a general security measure, I
recommend you create unique user ID's for each daemon running on your
system and, if possible, use "chroot" to jail that process away from
the rest of your system.
5. Ensure you have adequate access controls for the
$BUGZILLA_HOME/data/ and $BUGZILLA_HOME/shadow/ directories, as
well as the $BUGZILLA_HOME/localconfig and
$BUGZILLA_HOME/globals.pl files. The localconfig file stores your
"bugs" user password, which would be terrible to have in the hands
of a criminal, while the "globals.pl" stores some default
information regarding your installation which could aid a system
cracker. In addition, some files under $BUGZILLA_HOME/data/ store
sensitive information, and $BUGZILLA_HOME/shadow/ stores bug
information for faster retrieval. If you fail to secure these
directories and this file, you will expose bug information to
those who may not be allowed to see it.
Note
Bugzilla provides default .htaccess files to protect the most common
Apache installations. However, you should verify these are adequate
according to the site-wide security policy of your web server, and
ensure that the .htaccess files are allowed to "override" default
permissions set in your Apache configuration files. Covering Apache
security is beyond the scope of this Guide; please consult the Apache
documentation for details.
If you are using a web server that does not support the .htaccess
control method, you are at risk! After installing, check to see if you
can view the file "localconfig" in your web browser (e.g.:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig). If you can read the contents
of this file, your web server has not secured your bugzilla directory
properly and you must fix this problem before deploying Bugzilla. If,
however, it gives you a "Forbidden" error, then it probably respects
the .htaccess conventions and you are good to go.
On Apache, you can use .htaccess files to protect access to these
directories, as outlined in Bug 57161 for the localconfig file,
and Bug 65572 for adequate protection in your data/ and shadow/
directories.
Note the instructions which follow are Apache-specific. If you use
IIS, Netscape, or other non-Apache web servers, please consult
your system documentation for how to secure these files from being
transmitted to curious users.
Place the following text into a file named ".htaccess", readable
by your web server, in your $BUGZILLA_HOME/data directory.
<Files comments> allow
from all </Files> deny from all
Place the following text into a file named ".htaccess", readable
by your web server, in your $BUGZILLA_HOME/ directory.
<Files localconfig> deny
from all </Files> allow from all
Place the following text into a file named ".htaccess", readable
by your web server, in your $BUGZILLA_HOME/shadow directory.
deny from all
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
5.1. Bonsai
Bonsai is a web-based tool for managing CVS, the Concurrent Versioning
System . Using Bonsai, administrators can control open/closed status
of trees, query a fast relational database back-end for change,
branch, and comment information, and view changes made since the last
time the tree was closed. These kinds of changes cause the engineer
responsible to be "on the hook" (include cool URL link here for Hook
policies at mozilla.org). Bonsai also includes gateways to Tinderbox,
the Mozilla automated build management system and Bugzilla
_________________________________________________________________
5.2. CVS
CVS integration is best accomplished, at this point, using the
Bugzilla Email Gateway. There have been some files submitted to allow
greater CVS integration, but we need to make certain that Bugzilla is
not tied into one particular software management package.
Follow the instructions in the FAQ for enabling Bugzilla e-mail
integration. Ensure that your check-in script sends an email to your
Bugzilla e-mail gateway with the subject of "[Bug XXXX]", and you can
have CVS check-in comments append to your Bugzilla bug. If you have
your check-in script include an @resolution field, you can even change
the Bugzilla bug state.
There is also a project, based upon somewhat dated Bugzilla code, to
integrate CVS and Bugzilla through CVS' ability to email. Check it out
at: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/~tonyg/, under the "cvszilla" link.
_________________________________________________________________
5.3. Perforce SCM
You can find the project page for Bugzilla and Teamtrack Perforce
integration (p4dti) at: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti .
"p4dti" is now an officially supported product from Perforce, and you
can find the "Perforce Public Depot" p4dti page at
http://public.perforce.com/public/perforce/p4dti/index.html.
Integration of Perforce with Bugzilla, once patches are applied, is
seamless. Perforce replication information will appear below the
comments of each bug. Be certain you have a matching set of patches
for the Bugzilla version you are installing. p4dti is designed to
support multiple defect trackers, and maintains its own documentation
for it. Please consult the pages linked above for further information.
_________________________________________________________________
5.4. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2
We need Tinderbox integration information.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 6. The Future of Bugzilla
Bugzilla's Future. Much of this is the present, now.
Bugzilla's future is a constantly-changing thing, as various
developers "scratch an itch" when it comes to functionality. Thus this
section is very malleable, subject to change without notice, etc.
You'll probably also notice the lack of formatting. I apologize that
it's not quite as readable as the rest of the Guide.
Bugzilla Blue Sky
Customisability
One of the major stumbling blocks of Bugzilla has been that it is t
oo
rigid and does not adapt itself well enough to the needs of an
organisation. This has led to organisations making changes to the
Bugzilla code that need to be redone each new version of Bugzilla.
Bugzilla should attempt to move away from this to a world where thi
s
doesn't need to occur.
Most of the subsections in this section are currently explicit desi
gn
goals for the "Bugzilla 3" rewrite. This does not necessarily mean
that they will not occur before them in Bugzilla 2, but most are
significant undertakings.
Field Customisation
Many installations wish to customise the fields that appear on bug
reports. Current versions of Bugzilla offer limited
customisability. In particular, some fields can be turned off.
However, many administrators wish to add their own fields, and rena
me
or otherwise modify existing fields. An architecture that supports
this would be extraordinarily useful.
Indeed, many fields work similarly and could be abstracted into "fi
eld
types", so that an administrator need write little or no code to
support the new fields they desire.
Possible field types include text (eg status whiteboard), numbers,
dates (eg report time), accounts (eg reporter, qa, cc), inter-bug
relationships (dependencies, duplicates), option groups (platform,
os,
severity, priority, target milestone, version) etc.
Ideally an administrator could configure their fields through a
Bugzilla interface that requires no code to be added. However, it
is
highly unlikely this ideal will never be met, and in a similar way
that office applications have scripting languages, Bugzilla should
allow new field types to be written.
Similarly, a common desire is for resolutions to be added or remove
d.
Allocations
?
Option Groups
?
Relations
?
Database Integrity
Furthermore, it is desirable for administrators to be able to speci
fy
rules that must or should apply between the fields on a bug report.
For example, you might wish to specify that a bug with status ASSIG
NED
must have a target milestone field that that is not untargetted. O
r
that a bug with a certain number of votes should get ASSIGNED. Or
that the QA contact must be different from the assignee.
"Must" relationships could be implemented by refusing to make chang
es
that violate the relationships, or alternatively, automatically
updating certain fields in order to satisfy the criteria. Which
occurs should be up to the administrator.
"Should" relationships could be implemented by a combination of
emitting warnings on the process bug page, the same on notification
mails, or emitting periodic whine mails about the situation. Again
,
which occurs should be up to the administrator.
It should also be possible for whine mails to be emitted for "must"
relationships, as they might become violated through direct databas
e
access, Bugzilla bugs, or because they were there before the
relationship was enforced.
As well as implementing intra-bug constraints, it would be useful t
o
create inter-bug constraints. For example, a bug that is dependent
on
another bug should not have an earlier milestone or greater priorit
y
than that bug.
Database Adaptability
Often an administrator desires that fields adapt to the values of
other fields. For example, the value of a field might determine th
e
possible values of another field or even whether it appears (whethe
r
it is "applicable").
Limited adaptability is present in Bugzilla 2, and only on the
"Product" field:
* The possible values of the target milestone, version and compon
ent
fields depend on the product.
* UNCONFIRMED can be turned off for specific products.
* Voting can be configured differently or turned off for differen
t
products, and there is a separate user vote limits for each
product.
It would be good if more adaptability was present, both in terms of
all fields relying on the product, as well as the ability to adapt
based on the value of all fields.
Example ???
General adaptability raises the issue of circular references betwee
n
fields causing problems. One possible solution to this is to place
the fields in a total ordering and require a field refer only to th
e
previous fields.
In Bugzilla 2, changing the product of a bug meant a second page wo
uld
appear that allowed you to choose a new milestone, component and
version, as those fields adapted themselves to the new product. Th
is
page could be generalised to support all instances where:
* a field value must or might be changed because the possible val
ues
have changed
* is going to drop off because it it is no longer applicable, and
this should be confirmed
* must be specified because it is suddenly applicable, and the
default value, if one exists, might not be acceptable
Database Independence
Currently Bugzilla only runs on the MySQL database. It would be
desirable for Bugzilla to run on other databases, because:
* Organisations may have existing database products they use and
would prefer to run a homogenous environment.
* Databases each have their own shortcomings, including MySQL. A
n
administrator might choose a database that would work better wi
th
their Bugzilla.
This raises the possibility that we could use features that are onl
y
present in some databases, by appropriately falling back. For
example, in the MySQL world, we live without:
* record-level locking, instead we use table-level locking
* referential and record constraints, instead we checking code
* subselects, instead we use multiple queries and redundant "cach
es"
Multiple Front Ends
Currently Bugzilla is manipulated via the Web, and notifies via
E-Mail. It would be desirable for Bugzilla to easily support vario
us
front ends.
There is no reason that Bugzilla could not be controlled via a whol
e
range of front ends, including Web, E-Mail, IRC, ICQ, etc, and
similarly for how it notifies. It's also possible that we could
introduce a special Bugzilla client that uses its own protocol, for
maximum user productivity.
Indeed a request reply might be returned via a totally different
transport method than was use to submit the request.
Internationalisation
Bugzilla currently supports only English. All of the field names,
user instructions, etc are written in English. It would be desirab
le
to allow "language packs" so Bugzilla can be easily used in
non-English speaking locales.
To a degree field customisation supports this, because administrato
rs
could specify their own fields names anyway. However, there will
always be some basic facilities not covered by this, and it is
desirable that the administrator's interface also is
internationalisable.
Better Searching
General Summary Reports
Sometimes, the normal querying page leaves a lot to be desired. Th
ere
are other facilities already in place or which people have asked fo
r:
Most Doomed Reports - All Bugs or All Bugs In A Product, Categorise
d
On Assignee, Shows and Counts Number of Bugs For Each Assignee
Most Voted For Bugs - All Bugs, Categorised On Product, Shows Top T
en
Bugs Voters Most Want Fixed
Number of Open Bugs For An Assignee - Bug List, Categorised On
Developers, Counts Number of Bugs In Category
The important thing to realise is that people want categorised repo
rts
on all sorts of things - a general summary report.
In a categorised report, you choose the subset of bugs you wish to
operate on (similar to how you would specify a query), and then
categorise them on one or more fields.
For each category you display the count of the number of things in
that category. You can optionally display the bugs themselves, or
leave them out, just showing the counts. And you can optionally li
mit
the number of things (bugs or subcategories) that display in each
category.
Such a mechanism would let you do all of the above and more.
Applications of this mechanism would only be recognised once it was
implemented.
Related Bugs
It would be nice to have a field where you could enter other bugs
related to the current bug. It would be handy for navigation and
possibly even finding duplicates.
Column Specification Support
Currently bug lists use the columns that you last used. This doesn
't
work well for "prepackaged queries", where you followed a link. Yo
u
can probably add a column by specifying a sort column, but this is
difficult and suboptimal.
Furthermore, I find that when I want to add a column to a bug list,
it's usually a one off and I would prefer it to go away for the nex
t
query. Hence, it would be nice to specify the columns that appear
on
the bug list (and general summary report) pages. The default query
mechanism should be able to let you specify your default columns.
Advanced Querying Redesign
?
Keywords
People have a need to apply tags to bugs. In the beginning, people
placed designators in the summary and status whiteboard. However,
these fields were not designed for that, and so there were many fla
ws
with this system:
* They pollute the field with information that was never intended
to
be present.
* Removing them with a bulk change is a difficult problem that ha
s
too many pitfalls to implement.
* You can easily get the capitalisation wrong.
Then dependencies were introduced (when?), and people realised that
they could use them for "tracking bugs". Again, dependencies were
not
designed for that, and so there were more flaws, albeit different
ones, including:
* They aren't really bugs, so it's difficult to distinguish issue
s
from bugs.
* They can pollute bugs counts, and you must somehow exclude them
from queries.
* There is a whole lot of useless information on them. They have
an
assignee but there is nothing to fix, and that person can get
whined at by Bugzilla. They have target milestones which must
be
manually maintained. And so on.
Finally, keywords were introduced (when?) for this purpose to remov
e
the need for these two systems. Unfortunately, the simple keywords
implementation was itself lacking in certain features provided by t
he
two previous systems, and has remained almost unchanged since its
inception. Furthermore, it could not be forseen that in large
installations, the sheer number of keywords could become unwieldly
and
could lead to a movement back to the other systems.
The keywords system was the right idea, however, and it remains so.
Fixing the keywords system is one of the most important Bugzilla
issues.
Bringing Keywords Up To Par
For the most part, keywords are very good at what they do. It is e
asy
to add and remove them (unlike summary/whiteboard designators), we
can
simply see what issues are present on a bug (unlike tracking bugs),
and we do not confuse bugs with issues (unlike tracking bugs).
However, there are still some "regressions" in the keyword system o
ver
previous systems:
* Users wish to view the "dependency forest" of a keyword. While
a
dependency tree is of one bug, a dependency forest is of a bug
list, and consists of a dependency tree for each member of the
bug
list. Users can work around this with tracking bugs by creatin
g a
tracking bug and viewing the dependency tree of that tracking b
ug.
* Users wish to specify the keywords that initially apply to a bu
g,
but instead they must edit the bug once it has already been
submitted. They can work around this with summary designators,
since they specify the summary at reporting time.
* Users wish to store or share a bug list that contains a keyword
s
column. Hence they wish to be able to specify what columns app
ear
in the bug list URL, as mentioned earlier. They can work aroun
d
this using summary designators, since almost all bug lists have
a
summary column.
* Users wish to be able to view keywords on a bug list. However
often they are only interested in a small number of keywords.
Having a bug list with a keywords column means that all keyword
s
will appear on a bug list. This can take a substantial amount
of
space where a bug has a lot of keywords, since the table column
s
in Bugzilla adjust to the largest cell in that column. Hence
users wish to be able to specify which keywords should appear i
n
the bug list. In a very real sense, each keyword is a field un
to
itself. Users can work around this by using summary designator
s,
since they keywords will share the space in the summary column.
* Users wish to know when bugs with a specific issue are resolved
.
Hence they wish to be able to receive notifications on all the
bugs with a specific keyword. The introduction a generic watch
ing
facility (also for things like watching all bugs in a component
)
would achieve this. Users can work around this by using tracki
ng
bugs, as dependencies have an existing way of detecting fixes t
o
bug a bug was blocked by.
Dealing With The Keyword Overload
At the time of writing, the mozilla.org installation has approximat
ely
100 keywords, and many more would be in use if the keywords system
didn't have the problems it does.
Such a large number of keywords introduces logistical problems:
* It must be easy for someone to learn what a keyword means. If
a
keyword is buried within a lot of other keywords, it can be
difficult to find.
* It must be easy to see what keywords are on a bug. If the numb
er
of keywords is large, then this can be difficult.
These lead some people to feel that there are "too many keywords".
These problems are not without solutions however. It is harder to
find a list of designators or tracking bugs than it is a list of
keywords.
The essential problem is it needs to be easy to find the keywords
we're interested in through the mass of keywords.
Keyword Applicability
As has been previously mentioned, it is desirable for fields to be
able to adapt to the values of other fields. This is certainly tru
e
for keywords. Many keywords are simply not relevant because of the
bugs product, component, etc.
Hence, by introducing keyword applicability, and not displaying
keywords that are not relevant to the current bug, or clearly
separating them, we can make the keyword overload problem less
significant.
Currently when you click on "keywords" on a bug, you get a list of
all
bugs. It would be desirable to introduce a list of keywords tailor
ed
to a specific bug, that reports, in order:
* the keywords currently on the bug
* the keywords not currently on the bug, but applicable to the bu
g
* optionally, the keywords not applicable to the bug
This essentially orders the keywords into three groups, where each
group is more important than the previous, and therefore appears
closer to the top.
Keyword Grouping & Ordering
We could further enhance both the global and bug specific keyword l
ist
by grouping keywords. We should always have a "flat" view of
keywords, but other ways of viewing the keywords would be useful to
o.
If keyword applicability was implemented, we could group keywords
based on their "applicability condition". Keywords that apply to a
ll
bugs could be separated from keywords that apply to a specific
product, both on the global keyword list and the keyword list of a
bug
that is in that product.
We could specify groups of our own. For example, many keywords are
in
a mutually exclusive group, essentially like radio buttons in a use
r
interface. This creates a natural grouping, although other groupin
gs
occur (which depends on your keywords).
It is possible that we could use collapsing/expanding operations on
"twisties" to only should the groups we are interested in.
And instead of grouping keywords, we could order them on some metri
c
of usefulness, such as:
* when the keyword was last added to a bug
* how many bugs the keyword is on
* how many open bugs the keyword is on
Opting Out Of Keywords
Not all people are going to care about all keywords. Therefore it
makes sense that you may wish to specify which keywords you are
interested in, either on the bug page, or on notifications.
Other keywords will therefore not bother users who are not interest
ed
in them.
Keyword Security
Currently all keywords are available and editable to all people wit
h
edit bugs access. This situation is clearly suboptimal.
Although relying on good behaviour for people to not do what they
shouldn't works reasonably well on the mozilla.org, it is better to
enforce that behaviour - it can be breached through malice, acciden
t
or ignorance.
And in the situation where it is desirable for the presence or abse
nce
of a keyword not to be revealed, organisations either need to be
content with the divulgence, or not use keywords at all.
In the situation where they choose to divulge, introducing the abil
ity
to restrict who can see the keyword would also reduce keyword
overload.
Personal Keywords
Keywords join together a set of bugs which would otherwise be
unrelated in the bug system.
We allow users to store their own queries. However we don't allow
them to store their own keywords on a bug. This reduces the
usefulness of personal queries, since you cannot join a set of
unrelated bugs together in a way that you wish. Lists of bug numbe
rs
can work, by they can only be used for small lists, and it is
impossible to share a list between multiple queries.
Personal keywords are necessary to replace personal tracking bugs,
as
they would not pollute the keyword space. Indeed, on many
installations this could remove some keywords out of the global
keyword space.
In a similar vein and with similar effects, group keywords could be
introduced that are only available to members of a specific group.
Keyword Restrictions
Keywords are not islands unto themselves. Along with their potenti
al
to be involved in the inter-field relationships mentioned earlier,
keywords can also be related to other keywords.
Essentially, there are two possibilities:
* a set of keywords are mutually exclusive
* the presence of a keyword implies another keyword must be prese
nt
Introduction of the ability to specify these restrictions would hav
e
benefits.
If mutually exclusive keywords were present on a bug, their removal
would fix up the database, as well as reducing the number of keywor
ds
on that bug.
In the situation where a keyword implies another keyword, there are
two possiblities as to how to handle the situation.
The first is automatically add the keyword. This would fix up the
database, but it would increase the number of keywords on a bug.
The second is to automatically remove the keyword, and alter querie
s
so they pick up the first keyword as well as the removed keyword.
This would fix up the database and reduce the number of keywords on
a
bug, but it might confuse users who don't see the keyword.
Alternatively, the implied keywords could be listed separately.
Notifications
Every time a bug gets changed notifications get sent out to people
letting them know about what changes have been made. This is a
significant feature, and all sorts of questions can be raised, but
they mainly boil down to when they should be sent and what they sho
uld
look like.
Changes You're Interested In
As of version 2.12 users can specify what sort of changes they are
interested in receiving notifications for. However, this is still
limited. As yet there is no facility to specify which keywords you
care about, and whether you care about changes to fields such as th
e
QA contact changes.
Furthermore, often an unnecessary comment will go along with a chan
ge,
either because it is required, or the commenter is ignorant of how
the
new system works. While explaining why you did something is useful
,
merely commenting on what you did is not because that information i
s
already accessible view "Bug Activity".
Because of this unnecessary comment, a lot of changes that would
otherwise not generate notifications for certain people do so, beca
use
few people are willing to turn off comments. One way to deal with
this problem is to allow people to specify that their comments are
purely explanatory, and that anyone who is not interested in the
change will not be interested in the comment.
Furthermore, one possible rationale for unnecessary comments is tha
t
the bug activity does not display on the normal page and hence it i
s
difficult to cross reference comments and actions. Hence, it would
be
beneficial to be able to do this.
Bugs You're Watching
Currently to receive a notification about a bug you need to have yo
ur
name on it. This is suboptimal because you need to know about a bu
g
before you can receive notifications on it. Often you are interest
ed
in any bug with a field set to a specific value. For example, you
might be interested in all bugs with a specific product, component
or
keyword.
If someone could automatically receive notifications about these bu
gs,
it would make everyone's lives easier. Currently the default assig
nee
and QA contact for a component will automatically receive
notifications for
Question: This moves half way to a BCC.
Bulk Changes
A very useful feature of Bugzilla is the ability to perform an acti
on
on multiple bugs at once. However, this means that similar
notifications are currently generated for each bug modified.
This can result in a torrent of notifications that can annoy.
Furthermore, since the bugs are all changed close to each other in
time, it is easy for someone to mass delete all the notifications
generated by a bulk change and miss an unrelated notification in th
e
middle.
These factors can lead to a tendency for people to delay bulk chang
es,
or avoid them entirely. This is suboptimal.
It would be better if a bulk change generated only one notification
mail. This would vastly reduce the annoyance factor, and prevent
accidental deletion of notifications.
One problem with this change is that some people separate out
notifications using filtering. This means that they would no longe
r
be match parts of a bulk change under different filtering rules.
One possibility to resolve this is to allow people to specify group
s
of bugs. All bugs within a group would go into the same
notification. The filters could then distinguish the different bug
groups.
In any case, it is likely there would need to be a transition perio
d
to allow people to alter their filters.
Nominations
?
Linking Bugzilla Installations
The first example of linking Bugzilla installations together has is
the introduction of bug moving in version 2.12. However, it would
be
useful to be able to link installations in more ways.
* Dependencies and other relationships between bugs in other
installations. This is difficult because dependencies are
synchronised on both bugs, so the installation that changes
dependencies would need to communicate the new state to the oth
er
installation. It would also mean that relationships and
notifications that refer to other bugs would need to communicat
e
with the other installation.
* References to bugs in other installations. Currently if you ty
pe
"bug XXX" or "bug #XXX" where XXX is a number, you get an
automatic hyperlink to that bug. It would be useful if you cou
ld
say "YYY bug #XXX" where YYY is the name of another installatio
n.
Retirement
?
Whiny Reports
?
Group Redesign
?
Hard Wrapping Comments
Currently Bugzilla "hard wraps" its comments to a specific line siz
e,
similar to E-Mail. This has various problems:
* The way it currently works, wrapping is done in the browser at
submission time using a non-standard HTML extension not support
ed
by some (uncommon) browsers. These browsers generate comments
that scroll off the right side of the screen.
* Because comments are of fixed width, when you expand your brows
er
window, the comments do not expand to fit available space.
It would be much better to move to a world of soft wrapping, where
the
browser wraps the text at display time, similar to a world processo
r.
And as in a word processor, soft wrapping does not preclude the
insertion of newlines.
Hard wrapping is too entrenched into text E-Mail to fix, but we can
fix Bugzilla without causing any problems. The old content will st
ill
be wrapped too early, but at least new content will work.
_________________________________________________________________
Chapter 7. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
I created this section to answer questions about Bugzilla competitors
and variants, then found a wonderful site which covers an awful lot of
what I wanted to discuss. Rather than quote it in its entirety, I'll
simply refer you here: http://linas.org/linux/pm.html
_________________________________________________________________
7.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
Red Hat Bugzilla is probably the most popular Bugzilla variant on the
planet. One of the major benefits of Red Hat Bugzilla is the ability
to work with Oracle, MySQL, and PostGreSQL databases serving as the
back-end, instead of just MySQL. Dave Lawrence has worked very hard to
keep Red Hat Bugzilla up-to-date, and many people prefer the
snappier-looking page layout of Red Hat Bugzilla to the default
Mozilla-standard formatting.
URL: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/
_________________________________________________________________
7.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
Fenris can be found at http://fenris.lokigames.com. It is a fork from
Bugzilla.
_________________________________________________________________
7.3. Issuezilla
Issuezilla is another fork from Bugzilla, and seems nearly as popular
as the Red Hat Bugzilla fork. Some Issuezilla team members are regular
contributors to the Bugzilla mailing list/newsgroup. Issuezilla is not
the primary focus of bug-tracking at tigris.org, however. Their
Java-based bug-tracker, Scarab, a newfangled Java-based issue tracker,
is under heavy development and looks promising!
URL: http://issuezilla.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectHome
_________________________________________________________________
7.4. Scarab
Scarab is a promising new bug-tracking system built using Java Serlet
technology. As of this writing, no source code has been released as a
package, but you can obtain the code from CVS.
URL: http://scarab.tigris.org
_________________________________________________________________
7.5. Perforce SCM
Although Perforce isn't really a bug tracker, it can be used as such
through the "jobs" functionality.
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/technotes/note052.htmlhttp://www.perf
orce.com/perforce/technotes/note052.html
_________________________________________________________________
7.6. SourceForge
SourceForge is more of a way of coordinating geographically
distributed free software and open source projects over the Internet
than strictly a bug tracker, but if you're hunting for bug-tracking
for your open project, it may be just what the software engineer
ordered!
URL: http://www.sourceforge.net
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix A. The Bugzilla FAQ
1. General Questions
A.1.1. Where can I find information about Bugzilla?
A.1.2. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
A.1.3. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
A.1.4. What major companies or projects are currently using
Bugzilla for bug-tracking?
A.1.5. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A.1.6. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?
A.1.7. How do I change my user name in Bugzilla?
A.1.8. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatability with this other tracking software?
A.1.9. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL?
A.1.10. Why do the scripts say "/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl"
instead of "/usr/bin/perl" or something else?
2. Red Hat Bugzilla
A.2.1. What about Red Hat Bugzilla?
A.2.2. What are the primary benefits of Red Hat Bugzilla?
A.2.3. What's the current status of Red Hat Bugzilla?
3. Loki Bugzilla (AKA Fenris)
A.3.1. What is Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)?
4. Pointy-Haired-Boss Questions
A.4.1. Is Bugzilla web-based or do you have to have specific
software or specific operating system on your machine?
A.4.2. Has anyone you know of already done any Bugzilla
integration with Perforce (SCM software)?
A.4.3. Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?
A.4.4. If I am on many projects, and search for all bugs assigned
to me, will Bugzilla list them for me and allow me to
sort by project, severity etc?
A.4.5. Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots, urls
etc)? If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?
A.4.6. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and
levels? Do we have complete freedom to change the labels
of fields and format of them, and the choice of
acceptable values?
A.4.7. The index.html page doesn't show the footer. It's really
annoying to have to go to the querypage just to check my
"my bugs" link. How do I get a footer on static HTML
pages?
A.4.8. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics,
graphs, etc? You know, the type of stuff that management
likes to see. :)
A.4.9. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see
when you get an email? Do you see bug number and title or
is it only the number?
A.4.10. Can email notification be set up to send to multiple
people, some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?
A.4.11. If there is email notification, do users have to have any
particular type of email application?
A.4.12. If I just wanted to track certain bugs, as they go
through life, can I set it up to alert me via email
whenever that bug changes, whether it be owner, status or
description etc.?
A.4.13. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If
I had outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug
template, could that template be imported into "matching"
fields? If I wanted to take the results of a query and
export that data to MS Excel, could I do that?
A.4.14. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be
used in other countries? Is it localizable?
A.4.15. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in
Word format? Excel format?
A.4.16. Can a user re-run a report with a new project, same
query?
A.4.17. Can a user modify an existing report and then save it
into another name?
A.4.18. Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word, phrase,
compound search?
A.4.19. Can the admin person establish separate group and
individual user privileges?
A.4.20. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is
simultaneous access to the same bug? Does the second
person get a notice that the bug is in use or how are
they notified?
A.4.21. Are there any backup features provided?
A.4.22. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
A.4.23. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to
install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of
skills does the person need to have? I need to find out
if we were to go with Bugzilla, what types of individuals
would we need to hire and how much would that cost vs
buying an "Out-of-the-Box" solution.
A.4.24. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire
people to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this
something that takes hours or weeks to install and a
couple of hours per week to maintain and customize or is
this a multi-week install process, plus a full time job
for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
A.4.25. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using
Bugzilla? Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies
needed as identified above?
5. Bugzilla Installation
A.5.1. How do I download and install Bugzilla?
A.5.2. How do I install Bugzilla on Windows NT?
A.5.3. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
6. Bugzilla Security
A.6.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving
me problems (I've followed the instructions in the
installation section of this guide!)?
A.6.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
A.6.3. I've implemented the security fixes mentioned in Chris
Yeh's security advisory of 5/10/2000 advising not to run
MySQL as root, and am running into problems with MySQL no
longer working correctly.
7. Bugzilla Email
A.7.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email
from Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
A.7.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
A.7.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more, or other
than, only new bugs. How do I do it?
A.7.4. I don't like/want to use Procmail to hand mail off to
bug_email.pl. What alternatives do I have?
A.7.5. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs
via email?
A.7.6. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from bugzilla -- it's
extremely slow. What gives?
A.7.7. How come email never reaches me from bugzilla changes?
8. Bugzilla Database
A.8.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
A.8.2. Bugs are missing from queries, but exist in the database
(and I can pull them up by specifying the bug ID). What's
wrong?
A.8.3. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
A.8.4. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
A.8.5. I try to add myself as a user, but Bugzilla always tells
me my password is wrong.
A.8.6. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but
bugzilla still can't connect.
A.8.7. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple
different Bugzilla databases?
A.8.8. Why do I get bizarre errors when trying to submit data,
particularly problems with "groupset"?
A.8.9. How come even after I delete bugs, the long descriptions
show up?
9. Bugzilla and Win32
A.9.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32
(Win98+/NT/2K)?
A.9.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
A.9.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid
Windows NT application" error. Why?
A.9.4. Can I have some general instructions on how to make
Bugzilla on Win32 work?
A.9.5. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being
able to talk to to the database.
10. Bugzilla Usage
A.10.1. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler
way to query?
A.10.2. I'm confused by the behavior of the "accept" button in
the Show Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me
when I accept it?
A.10.3. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
A.10.4. Email submissions to Bugzilla that have attachments end
up asking me to save it as a "cgi" file.
A.10.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are
using it?
11. Bugzilla Hacking
A.11.1. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
A.11.2. How can I change the default priority to a null value?
For instance, have the default priority be "---" instead
of "P2"?
A.11.3. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines
should I follow?
1. General Questions
A.1.1. Where can I find information about Bugzilla?
You can stay up-to-date with the latest Bugzilla information at
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/
A.1.2. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
Bugzilla is covered by the Mozilla Public License. See details at
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
A.1.3. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
www.collab.net offers Bugzilla as part of their standard offering to
large projects. They do have some minimum fees that are pretty hefty,
and generally aren't interested in small projects.
There are several experienced Bugzilla hackers on the mailing
list/newsgroup who are willing to whore themselves out for generous
compensation. Try sending a message to the mailing list asking for a
volunteer.
A.1.4. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla
for bug-tracking?
There are dozens of major comapanies with public Bugzilla sites to
track bugs in their products. A few include:
Netscape/AOL
Mozilla.org
AtHome Corporation
Red Hat Software
Loki Entertainment Software
SuSe Corp
The Horde Project
The Eazel Project
AbiSource
Real Time Enterprises, Inc
Eggheads.org
Strata Software
RockLinux
Creative Labs (makers of SoundBlaster)
The Apache Foundation
The Gnome Foundation
Linux-Mandrake
Suffice to say, there are more than enough huge projects using
Bugzilla that we can safely say it's extremely popular.
A.1.5. Who maintains Bugzilla?
Bugzilla maintenance has been in a state of flux recently. Please
check the Bugzilla Project Page for the latest details.
A.1.6. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?
A year has gone by, and I still can't find any head-to-head
comparisons of Bugzilla against other defect-tracking software.
However, from my personal experience with other bug-trackers, Bugzilla
offers superior performance on commodity hardware, better price
(free!), more developer- friendly features (such as stored queries,
email integration, and platform independence), improved scalability,
open source code, greater flexibility, and superior ease-of-use.
If you happen to be a commercial bug-tracker vendor, please step
forward with a rebuttal so I can include it in the FAQ. We're not in
pursuit of Bugzilla ueber alles; we simply love having a powerful,
open-source tool to get our jobs done.
A.1.7. How do I change my user name in Bugzilla?
You can't. However, the administrative account can, by simply opening
your user account in editusers.cgi and changing the login name.
A.1.8. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or
compatability with this other tracking software?
It may be that the support has not been built yet, or that you have
not yet found it. Bugzilla is making tremendous strides in usability,
customizability, scalability, and user interface. It is widely
considered the most complete and popular open-source bug-tracking
software in existence.
That doesn't mean it can't use improvement! You can help the project
along by either hacking a patch yourself that supports the
functionality you require, or else submitting a "Request for
Enhancement" (RFE) using the bug submission interface at
bugzilla.mozilla.org.
A.1.9. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on
Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL?
Terry Weissman answers,
You're not the only one. But I am not very interested. I'm not a
real SQL or database person. I just wanted to make a useful tool,
and build it on top of free software. So, I picked MySQL, and
learned SQL by staring at the MySQL manual and some code lying
around here, and wrote Bugzilla. I didn't know that Enum's were
non-standard SQL. I'm not sure if I would have cared, but I didn't
even know. So, to me, things are "portable" because it uses MySQL,
and MySQL is portable enough. I fully understand (now) that people
want to be portable to other databases, but that's never been a
real concern of mine.
Things aren't quite that grim these days, however. Terry pretty much
sums up much of the thinking many of us have for Bugzilla, but there
is light on the horizon for database-independence! Here are some
options:
Red Hat Bugzilla: Runs a modified Bugzilla 2.8 atop an Oracle
database.
Interzilla: A project to run Bugzilla on Interbase. No code released
yet, however.
Bugzilla 3.0: One of the primary stated goals is multiple database
support.
A.1.10. Why do the scripts say "/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl" instead of
"/usr/bin/perl" or something else?
Mozilla.org uses /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl. The prime rule in making
submissions is "don't break bugzilla.mozilla.org". If it breaks it,
your patch will be reverted faster than you can do a diff.
Here's Terry Weissman's comment, for some historical context:
[This was] purely my own convention. I wanted a place to put a
version of Perl and other tools that was strictly under my control
for the various webtools, and not subject to anyone else. Edit it
to point to whatever you like.
Note
We always recommend that, if possible, you keep the path as
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl, and simply add a /usr/bonsaitools and
/usr/bonsaitools/bin directory, then symlink your version of perl to
/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl. This will make upgrading your Bugzilla much
easier in the future.
Obviously, if you do not have root access to your Bugzilla box, our
suggestion is irrelevant.
2. Red Hat Bugzilla
Note
This section is no longer up-to-date. Please see the section on "Red
Hat Bugzilla" under "Variants" in The Bugzilla Guide.
A.2.1. What about Red Hat Bugzilla?
Red Hat Bugzilla is arguably more user-friendly, customizable, and
scalable than stock Bugzilla. Check it out at
http://bugzilla.redhat.com and the sources at
ftp://people.redhat.com/dkl/. They've set their Bugzilla up to work
with Oracle out of the box. Note that Redhat Bugzilla is based upon
the 2.8 Bugzilla tree; Bugzilla has made some tremendous advances
since the 2.8 release. Why not download both Bugzillas to check out
the differences for yourself?
Dave Lawrence, the original Red Hat Bugzilla maintainer, mentions:
Somebody needs to take the ball and run with it. I'm the only
maintainer and am very pressed for time.
If you, or someone you know, has the time and expertise to do the
integration work so main-tree Bugzilla 2.12 and higher integrates the
Red Hat Bugzilla Oracle modifications, please donate your time to
supporting the Bugzilla project.
A.2.2. What are the primary benefits of Red Hat Bugzilla?
Dave Lawrence:
For the record, we are not using any template type implementation
for the cosmetic changes maded to Bugzilla. It is just alot of html
changes in the code itself. I admit I may have gotten a little
carried away with it but the corporate types asked for a more
standardized interface to match up with other projects relating to
Red Hat web sites. A lot of other web based internal tools I am
working on also look like Bugzilla.
I do want to land the changes that I have made to Bugzilla but I
may have to back out a good deal and make a different version of
Red Hat's Bugzilla for checking in to CVS. Especially the cosmetic
changes because it seems they may not fit the general public. I
will do that as soon as I can. I also still do my regular QA
responsibilities along with Bugzilla so time is difficult sometimes
to come by.
There are also a good deal of other changes that were requested by
management for things like support contracts and different
permission groups for making bugs private. Here is a short list of
the major changes that have been made:
1. No enum types. All old enum types are now separate smaller tables.
2. No bit wise operations. Not all databases support this so they
were changed to a more generic way of doing this task
3. Bug reports can only be altered by the reporter, assignee, or a
privileged bugzilla user. The rest of the world can see the bug
but in a non-changeable format (unless the bug has been marked
private). They can however add comments, add and remove themselves
from the CC list
4. Different group scheme. Each group has an id number related to it.
There is a user_group table which contains userid to groupid
mappings to determine which groups each user belongs to.
Additionally there is a bug_group table that has bugid to groupid
mappings to show which groups can see a particular bug. If there
are no entries for a bug in this table then the bug is public.
5. Product groups. product_table created to only allow certain
products to be visible for certain groups in both bug entry and
query. This was particulary helpful for support contracts.
6. Of course many (too many) changes to Bugzilla code itself to allow
use with Oracle and still allow operation with Mysql if so
desired. Currently if you use Mysql it is set to use Mysql's old
permission scheme to keep breakage to a minimum. Hopefully one day
this will standardize on one style which may of course be
something completely different.
7. Uses Text::Template perl module for rendering of the dynamic HTML
pages such as enter_bug.cgi, query.cgi, bug_form.pl, and for the
header and footer parts of the page. This allows the html to be
separate from the perl code for customizing the look and feel of
the page to one's preference.
8. There are many other smaller changes. There is also a port to
Oracle that I have been working on as time permits but is not
completely finished but somewhat usable. I will merge it into our
standard code base when it becomes production quality.
Unfortunately there will have to be some conditionals in the code
to make it work with other than Oracle due to some differences
between Oracle and Mysql.
Both the Mysql and Oracle versions of our current code base are
available from ftp://people.redhat.com/dkl. If Terry/Tara wants I
can submit patch files for all of the changes I have made and he
can determine what is suitable for addition to the main bugzilla
cade base. But for me to commit changes to the actual CVS I will
need to back out alot of things that are not suitable for the rest
of the Bugzilla community. I am open to suggestions.
A.2.3. What's the current status of Red Hat Bugzilla?
Note
This information is somewhat dated; I last updated it 7 June 2000.
Please see the "Variants" section of "The Bugzilla Guide" for more
up-to-date information regarding Red Hat Bugzilla.
Dave Lawrence:
I suppose the current thread warrants an update on the status of
Oracle and bugzilla ;) We have now been running Bugzilla 2.8 on
Oracle for the last two days in our production environment. I tried
to do as much testing as possible with it before going live which
is some of the reason for the long delay. I did not get enough
feedback as I would have liked from internal developers to help
weed out any bugs still left so I said "Fine, i will take it live
and then I will get the feedback I want :)" So it is now starting
to stabilize and it running quite well after working feverishly the
last two days fixing problems as soon as they came in from the
outside world. The current branch in cvs is up2date if anyone would
like to grab it and try it out. The oracle _setup.pl is broken
right now due to some last minute changes but I will update that
soon. Therefore you would probably need to create the database
tables the old fashioned way using the supplied sql creation
scripts located in the ./oracle directory. We have heavy
optimizations in the database it self thanks to the in-house DBA
here at Red Hat so it is running quite fast. The database itself is
located on a dual PII450 with 1GB ram and 14 high voltage
differential raided scsi drives. The tables and indexes are
partitioned in 4 chuncks across the raided drive which is nice
because when ever you need to do a full table scan, it is actually
starting in 4 different locations on 4 different drives
simultaneously. And the indexes of course are on separate drives
from the data so that speeds things up tremendously. When I can
find the time I will document all that we have done to get this
thing going to help others that may need it.
As Matt has mentioned it is still using out-dated code and with a
little help I would like to bring everything up to date for
eventual incorporation with the main cvs tree. Due to other duties
I have with the company any help with this wiould be appreciated.
What we are using now is what I call a best first effort. It
definitely can be improved on and may even need complete rewrites
in a lot of areas. A lot of changes may have to be made in the way
Bugzilla does things currently to make this transition to a more
generic database interface. Fortunately when making the Oracle
changes I made sure I didn't do anything that I would consider
Oracle specific and could not be easily done with other databases.
Alot of the sql statements need to be broken up into smaller
utilities that themselves would need to make decisions on what
database they are using but the majority of the code can be made
database neutral.
3. Loki Bugzilla (AKA Fenris)
A.3.1. What is Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)?
Loki Games has a customized version of Bugzilla available at
http://fenris.lokigames.com. There are some advantages to using
Fenris, chief being separation of comments based upon user privacy
level, data hiding, forced login for any data retrieval, and some
additional fields. Loki has mainted their code, originally a fork from
the Bugzilla 2.8 code base, and it is quite a bit different than stock
Bugzilla at this point. I recommend you stick with official Bugzilla
version 2.14 rather than using a fork, but it's up to you.
4. Pointy-Haired-Boss Questions
Note
The title of this section doesn't mean you're a PHB -- it just means
you probably HAVE a PHB who wants to know this :)
A.4.1. Is Bugzilla web-based or do you have to have specific software
or specific operating system on your machine?
It is web and e-mail based. You can edit bugs by sending specially
formatted email to a properly configured Bugzilla, or control via the
web.
A.4.2. Has anyone you know of already done any Bugzilla integration
with Perforce (SCM software)?
Yes! You can find more information elsewhere in "The Bugzilla Guide"
in the "Integration with Third-Party Products" section.
A.4.3. Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?
Absolutely! You can track up to a "soft-limit" of around 64 individual
"Products", that can each be composed of as many "Components" as you
want. Check the Administration section of the Bugzilla Guide for more
information regarding setting up Products and Components.
A.4.4. If I am on many projects, and search for all bugs assigned to
me, will Bugzilla list them for me and allow me to sort by project,
severity etc?
Yes.
A.4.5. Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots, urls etc)?
If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?
Yes. There are many specific MIME-types that are pre-defined by
Bugzilla, but you may specify any arbitrary MIME-type you need when
you upload the file. Since all attachments are stored in the database,
however, I recommend storing large binary attachments elsewhere in the
web server's file system and providing a hyperlink as a comment, or in
the provided "URL" field in the bug report.
A.4.6. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and levels?
Do we have complete freedom to change the labels of fields and format
of them, and the choice of acceptable values?
Yes. However, modifying some fields, notably those related to bug
progression states, also require adjusting the program logic to
compensate for the change.
There is no GUI for adding fields to Bugzilla at this time. You can
follow development of this feature at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91037
A.4.7. The index.html page doesn't show the footer. It's really
annoying to have to go to the querypage just to check my "my bugs"
link. How do I get a footer on static HTML pages?
It's possible to get the footer on the static index page using Server
Side Includes (SSI). The trick to doing this is making sure that your
web server is set up to allow SSI and specifically, the #exec
directive. You should also rename index.html to index.shtml.
After you've done all that, you can add the following line to
index.shtml:
<!--#exec cmd="/usr/bin/perl -e "require 'CGI.pl'; PutFooter();"" -->
Note
This line will be replaced with the actual HTML for the footer when
the page is requested, so you should put this line where you want the
footer to appear.
Because this method depends on being able to use a #exec directive,
and most ISP's will not allow that, there is an alternative method.
You could have a small script (such as api.cgi) that basically looks
like:
#!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl -w
require 'globals.pl';
if ($::FORM{sub} eq 'PutFooter') {
PutFooter();
} else {
die 'api.cgi was incorrectly called';
}
and then put this line in index.shtml.
<!--#include virtual="api.cgi?sub=PutFooter"-->
Note
This still requires being able to use Server Side Includes, if this
simply will not work for you, see bug 80183 for a third option.
A.4.8. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics, graphs,
etc? You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see. :)
Yes. Look at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/reports.cgi for basic
reporting facilities.
For more advanced reporting, I recommend hooking up a professional
reporting package, such as Crystal Reports, and use ODBC to access the
MySQL database. You can do a lot through the Query page of Bugzilla as
well, but right now Advanced Reporting is much better accomplished
through third-party utilities that can interface with the database
directly.
Advanced Reporting is a Bugzilla 3.X proposed feature.
A.4.9. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see when you
get an email? Do you see bug number and title or is it only the
number?
Email notification is user-configurable. The bug id and Topic of the
bug report accompany each email notification, along with a list of the
changes made.
A.4.10. Can email notification be set up to send to multiple people,
some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?
Yes.
A.4.11. If there is email notification, do users have to have any
particular type of email application?
Bugzilla email is sent in plain text, the most compatible mail format
on the planet.
Note
If you decide to use the bugzilla_email integration features to allow
Bugzilla to record responses to mail with the associated bug, you may
need to caution your users to set their mailer to "respond to messages
in the format in which they were sent". For security reasons Bugzilla
ignores HTML tags in comments, and if a user sends HTML-based email
into Bugzilla the resulting comment looks downright awful.
A.4.12. If I just wanted to track certain bugs, as they go through
life, can I set it up to alert me via email whenever that bug changes,
whether it be owner, status or description etc.?
Yes. Place yourself in the "cc" field of the bug you wish to monitor.
Then change your "Notify me of changes to" field in the Email Settings
tab of the User Preferences screen in Bugzilla to the "Only those bugs
which I am listed on the CC line" option.
A.4.13. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I had
outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug template, could
that template be imported into "matching" fields? If I wanted to take
the results of a query and export that data to MS Excel, could I do
that?
Mozilla allows data export through a custom DTD in XML format. It does
not, however, export to specific formats other than the XML Mozilla
DTD. Importing the data into Excel or any other application is left as
an exercise for the reader.
If you create import filters to other applications from Mozilla's XML,
please submit your modifications for inclusion in future Bugzilla
distributions.
As for data import, any application can send data to Bugzilla through
the HTTP protocol, or through Mozilla's XML API. However, it seems
kind of silly to put another front-end in front of Bugzilla; it makes
more sense to create a simplified bug submission form in HTML. You can
find an excellent example at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bugzilla-helper.html
A.4.14. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used
in other countries? Is it localizable?
Currently, no. Internationalization support for Perl did not exist in
a robust fashion until the recent release of version 5.6.0; Bugzilla
is, and likely will remain (until 3.X) completely non-localized.
A.4.15. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word
format? Excel format?
Yes. No. No.
A.4.16. Can a user re-run a report with a new project, same query?
Yes.
A.4.17. Can a user modify an existing report and then save it into
another name?
You can save an unlimited number of queries in Bugzilla. You are free
to modify them and rename them to your heart's desire.
A.4.18. Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word, phrase,
compound search?
You have no idea. Bugzilla's query interface, particularly with the
advanced Boolean operators, is incredibly versatile.
A.4.19. Can the admin person establish separate group and individual
user privileges?
Yes.
A.4.20. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is
simultaneous access to the same bug? Does the second person get a
notice that the bug is in use or how are they notified?
Bugzilla does not lock records. It provides mid-air collision
detection, and offers the offending user a choice of options to deal
with the conflict.
A.4.21. Are there any backup features provided?
MySQL, the database back-end for Bugzilla, allows hot-backup of data.
You can find strategies for dealing with backup considerations at
http://www.mysql.com/doc/B/a/Backup.html
A.4.22. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
Yes. However, commits to the database must wait until the tables are
unlocked. Bugzilla databases are typically very small, and backups
routinely take less than a minute.
A.4.23. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to
install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of skills does
the person need to have? I need to find out if we were to go with
Bugzilla, what types of individuals would we need to hire and how much
would that cost vs buying an "Out-of-the-Box" solution.
If Bugzilla is set up correctly from the start, continuing maintenance
needs are minimal and can be completed by unskilled labor. Things like
rotate backup tapes and check log files for the word "error".
Commercial Bug-tracking software typically costs somewhere upwards of
$20,000 or more for 5-10 floating licenses. Bugzilla consultation is
available from skilled members of the newsgroup.
As an example, as of this writing I typically charge $115 for the
first hour, and $89 each hour thereafter for consulting work. It takes
me three to five hours to make Bugzilla happy on a Development
installation of Linux-Mandrake.
A.4.24. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire people
to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this something that takes
hours or weeks to install and a couple of hours per week to maintain
and customize or is this a multi-week install process, plus a full
time job for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
It all depends on your level of commitment. Someone with much Bugzilla
experience can get you up and running in less than a day, and your
Bugzilla install can run untended for years. If your Bugzilla strategy
is critical to your business workflow, hire somebody with reasonable
UNIX or Perl skills to handle your process management and bug-tracking
maintenance & customization.
A.4.25. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using Bugzilla?
Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as identified
above?
No. MySQL asks, if you find their product valuable, that you purchase
a support contract from them that suits your needs.
5. Bugzilla Installation
A.5.1. How do I download and install Bugzilla?
Check http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/ for details. Once you
download it, untar it, read the Bugzilla Guide.
A.5.2. How do I install Bugzilla on Windows NT?
Installation on Windows NT has its own section in "The Bugzilla
Guide".
A.5.3. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
At present, no.
6. Bugzilla Security
A.6.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving me
problems (I've followed the instructions in the installation section
of this guide!)?
Run mysql like this: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables". Please remember
this makes mysql as secure as taping a $100 to the floor of a football
stadium bathroom for safekeeping. Please read the Security section of
the Administration chapter of "The Bugzilla Guide" before proceeding.
A.6.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
The Bugzilla code has not undergone a complete security audit. It is
recommended that you closely examine permissions on your Bugzilla
installation, and follow the recommended security guidelines found in
The Bugzilla Guide.
A.6.3. I've implemented the security fixes mentioned in Chris Yeh's
security advisory of 5/10/2000 advising not to run MySQL as root, and
am running into problems with MySQL no longer working correctly.
This is a common problem, related to running out of file descriptors.
Simply add "ulimit -n unlimited" to the script which starts mysqld.
7. Bugzilla Email
A.7.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email from
Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
With the email changes to 2.12, the user should be able to set this in
user email preferences.
A.7.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
Edit the param for the mail text. Replace "To:" with "X-Real-To:",
replace "Cc:" with "X-Real-CC:", and add a "To: (myemailaddress)".
A.7.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more, or other
than, only new bugs. How do I do it?
Try Klaas Freitag's excellent patch for "whineatassigned"
functionality. You can find it at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6679. This patch is
against an older version of Bugzilla, so you must apply the diffs
manually.
A.7.4. I don't like/want to use Procmail to hand mail off to
bug_email.pl. What alternatives do I have?
You can call bug_email.pl directly from your aliases file, with an
entry like this:
bugzilla-daemon: "|/usr/local/bin/bugzilla/contrib/bug_email.pl"
However, this is fairly nasty and subject to problems; you also need
to set up your smrsh (sendmail restricted shell) to allow it. In a
pinch, though, it can work.
A.7.5. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs via
email?
You can find an updated README.mailif file in the contrib/ directory
of your Bugzilla distribution that walks you through the setup.
A.7.6. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from bugzilla -- it's extremely
slow. What gives?
If you are using an alternate Mail Transport Agent (MTA other than
sendmail), make sure the options given in the "processmail" script for
all instances of "sendmail" are correct for your MTA.
If you are using Sendmail, try enabling "sendmailnow" in
editparams.cgi. If you are using Postfix, you will also need to enable
"sendmailnow".
A.7.7. How come email never reaches me from bugzilla changes?
Double-check that you have not turned off email in your user
preferences. Confirm that Bugzilla is able to send email by visiting
the "Log In" link of your Bugzilla installation and clicking the
"Email me a password" button after entering your email address.
If you never receive mail from Bugzilla, chances you do not have
sendmail in "/usr/lib/sendmail". Ensure sendmail lives in, or is
symlinked to, "/usr/lib/sendmail".
8. Bugzilla Database
A.8.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
Red Hat Bugzilla, mentioned above, works with Oracle. The current
version from Mozilla.org does not have this capability. Unfortunately,
though you will sacrifice a lot of the really great features available
in Bugzilla 2.10 and 2.12 if you go with the 2.8-based Redhat version.
A.8.2. Bugs are missing from queries, but exist in the database (and I
can pull them up by specifying the bug ID). What's wrong?
You've almost certainly enabled the "shadow database", but for some
reason it hasn't been updated for all your bugs. This is the database
against which queries are run, so that really complex or slow queries
won't lock up portions of the database for other users. You can turn
off the shadow database in editparams.cgi. If you wish to continue
using the shadow database, then as your "bugs" user run
"./syncshadowdb -syncall" from the command line in the bugzilla
installation directory to recreate your shadow database. After it
finishes, be sure to check the params and make sure that
"queryagainstshadowdb" is still turned on. The syncshadowdb program
turns it off if it was on, and is supposed to turn it back on when
completed; that way, if it crashes in the middle of recreating the
database, it will stay off forever until someone turns it back on by
hand. Apparently, it doesn't always do that yet.
A.8.3. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?
Run the "sanity check" utility (./sanitycheck.cgi in the Bugzilla_home
directory) from your web browser to see! If it finishes without
errors, you're probably OK. If it doesn't come back OK (i.e. any red
letters), there are certain things Bugzilla can recover from and
certain things it can't. If it can't auto-recover, I hope you're
familiar with mysqladmin commands or have installed another way to
manage your database. Sanity Check, although it is a good basic check
on your database integrity, by no means is a substitute for competent
database administration and avoiding deletion of data. It is not
exhaustive, and was created to do a basic check for the most common
problems in Bugzilla databases.
A.8.4. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
There is no facility in Bugzilla itself to do this. It's also
generally not a smart thing to do if you don't know exactly what
you're doing. However, if you understand SQL you can use the
mysqladmin utility to manually insert, delete, and modify table
information. Personally, I use "phpMyAdmin". You have to compile a PHP
module with MySQL support to make it work, but it's very clean and
easy to use.
A.8.5. I try to add myself as a user, but Bugzilla always tells me my
password is wrong.
Certain version of MySQL (notably, 3.23.29 and 3.23.30) accidentally
disabled the "crypt()" function. This prevented MySQL from storing
encrypted passwords. Upgrade to the "3.23 stable" version of MySQL and
you should be good to go.
A.8.6. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but bugzilla
still can't connect.
Try running MySQL from its binary: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables". This
will allow you to completely rule out grant tables as the cause of
your frustration. However, I do not recommend you run it this way on a
regular basis, unless you really want your web site defaced and your
machine cracked.
A.8.7. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple different
Bugzilla databases?
Well, you can synchronize or you can move bugs. Synchronization will
only work one way -- you can create a read-only copy of the database
at one site, and have it regularly updated at intervals from the main
database.
MySQL has some synchronization features builtin to the latest
releases. It would be great if someone looked into the possibilities
there and provided a report to the newsgroup on how to effectively
synchronize two Bugzilla installations.
If you simply need to transfer bugs from one Bugzilla to another,
checkout the "move.pl" script in the Bugzilla distribution.
A.8.8. Why do I get bizarre errors when trying to submit data,
particularly problems with "groupset"?
If you're sure your MySQL parameters are correct, you might want turn
"strictvaluechecks" OFF in editparams.cgi. If you have "usebugsentry"
set "On", you also cannot submit a bug as readable by more than one
group with "strictvaluechecks" ON.
A.8.9. How come even after I delete bugs, the long descriptions show
up?
This should only happen with Bugzilla 2.14 if you are using the
"shadow database" feature, and your shadow database is out of sync.
Try running syncshadowdb -syncall to make sure your shadow database is
in synch with your primary database.
9. Bugzilla and Win32
A.9.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32
(Win98+/NT/2K)?
Remove Windows. Install Linux. Install Bugzilla. The boss will never
know the difference.
A.9.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
Not currently. Bundle::Bugzilla enormously simplifies Bugzilla
installation on UNIX systems. If someone can volunteer to create a
suitable PPM bundle for Win32, it would be appreciated.
A.9.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid Windows
NT application" error. Why?
Depending on what Web server you are using, you will have to configure
the Web server to treat *.cgi files as CGI scripts. In IIS, you do
this by adding *.cgi to the App Mappings with the <path>\perl.exe %s
%s as the executable.
Microsoft has some advice on this matter, as well:
"Set application mappings. In the ISM, map the extension for the
script file(s) to the executable for the script interpreter. For
example, you might map the extension .py to Python.exe, the
executable for the Python script interpreter. Note For the
ActiveState Perl script interpreter, the extension .pl is
associated with PerlIS.dll by default. If you want to change the
association of .pl to perl.exe, you need to change the application
mapping. In the mapping, you must add two percent (%) characters to
the end of the pathname for perl.exe, as shown in this example:
c:\perl\bin\perl.exe %s %s"
A.9.4. Can I have some general instructions on how to make Bugzilla on
Win32 work?
The following couple entries are deprecated in favor of the Windows
installation instructions available in the "Administration" portion of
"The Bugzilla Guide". However, they are provided here for historical
interest and insight.
1. #!C:/perl/bin/perl had to be added to every perl file.
2. Converted to Net::SMTP to handle mail messages instead of
/usr/bin/sendmail.
3. The crypt function isn't available on Windows NT (at least none t
hat I
am aware), so I made encrypted passwords = plaintext passwords.
4. The system call to diff had to be changed to the Cygwin diff.
5. This was just to get a demo running under NT, it seems to be work
ing
good, and I have inserted almost 100 bugs from another bug tracki
ng
system. Since this work was done just to get an in-house demo, I
am NOT
planning on making a patch for submission to Bugzilla. If you wou
ld
like a zip file, let me know.
Q: Hmm, couldn't figure it out from the general instructions above. H
ow
about step-by-step?
A: Sure! Here ya go!
1. Install IIS 4.0 from the NT Option Pack #4.
2. Download and install Active Perl.
3. Install the Windows GNU tools from Cygwin. Make sure to add the b
in
directory to your system path. (Everyone should have these, wheth
er
they decide to use Bugzilla or not. :-) )
4. Download relevant packages from ActiveState at
http://www.activestate.com/packages/zips/. + DBD-Mysql.zip
5. Extract each zip file with WinZip, and install each ppd file usin
g the
notation: ppm install <module>.ppd
6. Install Mysql. *Note: If you move the default install from c:\my
sql,
you must add the appropriate startup parameters to the NT service
. (ex.
-b e:\\programs\\mysql)
7. Download any Mysql client. http://www.mysql.com/download_win.html
8. Setup MySql. (These are the commands that I used.)
I. Cleanup default database settings.
C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='';
mysql> quit
C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin reload
II. Set password for root.
C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password')
WHERE user='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit
C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload
III. Create bugs user.
C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root -p
mysql> insert into user (host,user,password)
values('localhost','bugs','');
mysql> quit
C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload
IV. Create the bugs database.
C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database bugs;
V. Give the bugs user access to the bugs database.
mysql> insert into db
(host,db,user,select_priv,insert_priv,update_priv,delete_pri
v,create_priv,drop_priv)
values('localhost','bugs','bugs','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','N')
mysql> quit
C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload
9. Run the table scripts to setup the bugs database.
10. Change CGI.pm to use the following regular expression because of
differing backslashes in NT versus UNIX.
o $0 =~ m:[^\\]*$:;
11. Had to make the crypt password = plain text password in the datab
ase.
(Thanks to Andrew Lahser" <andrew_lahser@merck.com>" on this one.
) The
files that I changed were:
o globals.pl
o CGI.pl
o alternately, you can try commenting all references to 'crypt
'
string and replace them with similar lines but without encry
pt()
or crypr() functions insida all files.
12. Replaced sendmail with Windmail. Basically, you have to come up w
ith a
sendmail substitute for NT. Someone said that they used a Perl mo
dule
(Net::SMTP), but I was trying to save time and do as little Perl
coding
as possible.
13. Added "perl" to the beginning of all Perl system calls that use a
perl
script as an argument and renamed processmail to processmail.pl.
14. In processmail.pl, I added binmode(HANDLE) before all read() call
s. I'm
not sure about this one, but the read() under NT wasn't counting
the
EOLs without the binary read."
A.9.5. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able
to talk to to the database.
Your modules may be outdated or inaccurate. Try:
1. Hitting http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl
2. Download ActivePerl
3. Go to your prompt
4. Type 'ppm'
5. PPM> install DBI DBD-mysql GD
I reckon TimeDate and Data::Dumper come with the activeperl. You can
check the ActiveState site for packages for installation through PPM.
http://www.activestate.com/Packages/
10. Bugzilla Usage
A.10.1. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler way to
query?
We are developing in that direction. You can follow progress on this
at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16775. Some
functionality is available in Bugzilla 2.12, and is available as
"quicksearch.html"
A.10.2. I'm confused by the behavior of the "accept" button in the
Show Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I accept it?
The current behavior is acceptable to bugzilla.mozilla.org and most
users. I personally don't like it. You have your choice of patches to
change this behavior, however.
Add a "and accept bug" radio button
"Accept" button automatically assigns to you
Note that these patches are somewhat dated. You will need to do the
find and replace manually to apply them. They are very small, though.
It is easy.
A.10.3. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create
Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
The most likely cause is a very old browser or a browser that is
incompatible with file upload via POST. Download the latest Netscape,
Microsoft, or Mozilla browser to handle uploads correctly.
A.10.4. Email submissions to Bugzilla that have attachments end up
asking me to save it as a "cgi" file.
Yup. Just rename it once you download it, or save it under a different
filename. This will not be fixed anytime too soon, because it would
cripple some other functionality.
A.10.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are
using it?
In the Bugzilla administrator UI, edit the keyword and it will let you
replace the old keyword name with a new one. This will cause a problem
with the keyword cache. Run sanitycheck.cgi to fix it.
11. Bugzilla Hacking
A.11.1. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
Try this link to view current bugs or requests for enhancement for
Bugzilla.
You can view bugs marked for 2.16 release here. This list includes
bugs for the 2.16 release that have already been fixed and checked
into CVS. Please consult the Bugzilla Project Page for details on how
to check current sources out of CVS so you can have these bug fixes
early!
A.11.2. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For
instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of "P2"?
This is well-documented here:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49862. Ultimately, it's as
easy as adding the "---" priority field to your localconfig file in
the appropriate area, re-running checksetup.pl, and then changing the
default priority in your browser using "editparams.cgi". Hmm, now that
I think about it, that is kind of a klunky way to handle it, but for
now it's what we have! Although the bug has been closed "resolved
wontfix", there may be a better way to handle this...
A.11.3. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines should
I follow?
1. Enter a bug into bugzilla.mozilla.org for the "Bugzilla" product.
2. Upload your patch as a unified DIFF (having used "diff -u" against
the current sources checked out of CVS), or new source file by
clicking "Create a new attachment" link on the bug page you've
just created, and include any descriptions of database changes you
may make, into the bug ID you submitted in step #1. Be sure and
click the "Patch" radio button to indicate the text you are
sending is a patch!
3. Announce your patch and the associated URL
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXX) for discussion
in the newsgroup (netscape.public.mozilla.webtools). You'll get a
really good, fairly immediate reaction to the implications of your
patch, which will also give us an idea how well-received the
change would be.
4. If it passes muster with minimal modification, the person to whom
the bug is assigned in Bugzilla is responsible for seeing the
patch is checked into CVS.
5. Bask in the glory of the fact that you helped write the most
successful open-source bug-tracking software on the planet :)
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix B. Software Download Links
All of these sites are current as of April, 2001. Hopefully they'll
stay current for a while.
Apache Web Server: http://www.apache.org Optional web server for
Bugzilla, but recommended because of broad user base and support.
Bugzilla: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/
MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/
Perl: http://www.perl.org/
CPAN: http://www.cpan.org/
DBI Perl module:
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/DBI/
Data::Dumper module:
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Data/
MySQL related Perl modules:
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Mysql/
TimeDate Perl module collection:
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Date/
GD Perl module: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/GD/
Alternately, you should be able to find the latest version of GD at
http://www.boutell.com/gd/
Chart::Base module:
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Chart/
LinuxDoc Software: http://www.linuxdoc.org/ (for documentation
maintenance)
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix C. The Bugzilla Database
Note
This document really needs to be updated with more fleshed out
information about primary keys, interrelationships, and maybe some
nifty tables to document dependencies. Any takers?
_________________________________________________________________
C.1. Database Schema Chart
Database Relationships
Bugzilla database relationships chart
_________________________________________________________________
C.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
This information comes straight from my life. I was forced to learn
how Bugzilla organizes database because of nitpicky requests from
users for tiny changes in wording, rather than having people
re-educate themselves or figure out how to work our procedures around
the tool. It sucks, but it can and will happen to you, so learn how
the schema works and deal with it when it comes.
So, here you are with your brand-new installation of Bugzilla. You've
got MySQL set up, Apache working right, Perl DBI and DBD talking to
the database flawlessly. Maybe you've even entered a few test bugs to
make sure email's working; people seem to be notified of new bugs and
changes, and you can enter and edit bugs to your heart's content.
Perhaps you've gone through the trouble of setting up a gateway for
people to submit bugs to your database via email, have had a few
people test it, and received rave reviews from your beta testers.
What's the next thing you do? Outline a training strategy for your
development team, of course, and bring them up to speed on the new
tool you've labored over for hours.
Your first training session starts off very well! You have a captive
audience which seems enraptured by the efficiency embodied in this
thing called "Bugzilla". You are caught up describing the nifty
features, how people can save favorite queries in the database, set
them up as headers and footers on their pages, customize their
layouts, generate reports, track status with greater efficiency than
ever before, leap tall buildings with a single bound and rescue Jane
from the clutches of Certain Death!
But Certain Death speaks up -- a tiny voice, from the dark corners of
the conference room. "I have a concern," the voice hisses from the
darkness, "about the use of the word 'verified'.
The room, previously filled with happy chatter, lapses into
reverential silence as Certain Death (better known as the Vice
President of Software Engineering) continues. "You see, for two years
we've used the word 'verified' to indicate that a developer or quality
assurance engineer has confirmed that, in fact, a bug is valid. I
don't want to lose two years of training to a new software product.
You need to change the bug status of 'verified' to 'approved' as soon
as possible. To avoid confusion, of course."
Oh no! Terror strikes your heart, as you find yourself mumbling "yes,
yes, I don't think that would be a problem," You review the changes
with Certain Death, and continue to jabber on, "no, it's not too big a
change. I mean, we have the source code, right? You know, 'Use the
Source, Luke' and all that... no problem," All the while you quiver
inside like a beached jellyfish bubbling, burbling, and boiling on a
hot Jamaican sand dune...
Thus begins your adventure into the heart of Bugzilla. You've been
forced to learn about non-portable enum() fields, varchar columns, and
tinyint definitions. The Adventure Awaits You!
_________________________________________________________________
C.2.1. Bugzilla Database Basics
If you were like me, at this point you're totally clueless about the
internals of MySQL, and if it weren't for this executive order from
the Vice President you couldn't care less about the difference between
a "bigint" and a "tinyint" entry in MySQL. I recommend you refer to
the MySQL documentation, available at MySQL.com. Below are the basics
you need to know about the Bugzilla database. Check the chart above
for more details.
1. To connect to your database:
bash#mysql-u root
If this works without asking you for a password, shame on you! You
should have locked your security down like the installation
instructions told you to. You can find details on locking down
your database in the Bugzilla FAQ in this directory (under
"Security"), or more robust security generalities in the MySQL
searchable documentation at
http://www.mysql.com/php/manual.php3?section=Privilege_system .
2. You should now be at a prompt that looks like this:
mysql>
At the prompt, if "bugs" is the name you chose in thelocalconfig
file for your Bugzilla database, type:
mysqluse bugs;
Note
Don't forget the ";" at the end of each line, or you'll be kicking
yourself later.
_________________________________________________________________
C.2.1.1. Bugzilla Database Tables
Imagine your MySQL database as a series of spreadsheets, and you won't
be too far off. If you use this command:
mysql>show tables from bugs;
you'll be able to see all the "spreadsheets" (tables) in your
database. It is similar to a file system, only faster and more robust
for certain types of operations.
From the command issued above, ou should have some output that looks
like this:
+-------------------+
| Tables in bugs |
+-------------------+
| attachments |
| bugs |
| bugs_activity |
| cc |
| components |
| dependencies |
| fielddefs |
| groups |
| keyworddefs |
| keywords |
| logincookies |
| longdescs |
| milestones |
| namedqueries |
| products |
| profiles |
| profiles_activity |
| shadowlog |
| tokens |
| versions |
| votes |
| watch |
+-------------------+
Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each ta
ble have
descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs
.
attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to b
e your
largest table, yet also generally has the fewest entries because file
attachments are so (relatively) large.
bugs: This is the core of your system. The bugs table stores most of
the
current information about a bug, with the exception of the info stored
in the
other tables.
bugs_activity: This stores information regarding what changes are mad
e to bugs
when -- a history file.
cc: This tiny table simply stores all the CC information for any bug
which has
any entries in the CC field of the bug. Note that, like most other ta
bles in
Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their
unique
userid, stored as a primary key in the profiles table.
components: This stores the programs and components (or products and
components, in newer Bugzilla parlance) for Bugzilla. Curiously, the
"program"
(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some othe
r unique
identifier, like bug_id and user_id are elsewhere in the database.
dependencies: Stores data about those cool dependency trees.
fielddefs: A nifty table that defines other tables. For instance, wh
en you
submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQ
L.
groups: defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can
uniquely
identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allow
ed to
tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed
to edit
users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new g
roups is
assigned the bitmask of "4". By uniquely combining the group bitmasks
(much
like the chmod command in UNIX,) you can identify a user is allowed to
tweak
parameters and create groups, but not edit users, by giving him a bitm
ask of
"5", or a user allowed to edit users and create groups, but not tweak
parameters, by giving him a bitmask of "6" Simple, huh?
If this makes no sense to you, try this at the mysql prompt:
mysql> select * from groups;
You'll see the list, it makes much more sense that way.
keyworddefs: Definitions of keywords to be used
keywords: Unlike what you'd think, this table holds which keywords are
associated with which bug id's.
logincookies: This stores every login cookie ever assigned to you for
every
machine you've ever logged into Bugzilla from. Curiously, it never do
es any
housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months.
However,
since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it m
akes
sense.
longdescs: The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments ar
e stored!
You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so s
peak
sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from th
e Bible
would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronologic
al, for
comments are played back in the order in which they are received.
milestones: Interesting that milestones are associated with a specifi
c product
in this table, but Bugzilla does not yet support differing milestones
by
product through the standard configuration interfaces.
namedqueries: This is where everybody stores their "custom queries".
Very
cool feature; it beats the tar out of having to bookmark each cool que
ry you
construct.
products: What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed
for the
product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes,
etc. It
will be nice when the components table supports these same features, s
o you
could close a particular component for bug entry without having to clo
se an
entire product...
profiles: Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user informa
tion was
stored? Here it is! With the passwords in plain text for all to see!
(but
sshh... don't tell your users!)
profiles_activity: Need to know who did what when to who's profile?
This'll
tell you, it's a pretty complete history.
shadowlog: I could be mistaken here, but I believe this table tells y
ou when
your shadow database is updated and what commands were used to update
it. We
don't use a shadow database at our site yet, so it's pretty empty for
us.
versions: Version information for every product
votes: Who voted for what when
watch: Who (according to userid) is watching who's bugs (according to
their
userid).
===
THE DETAILS
===
Ahh, so you're wondering just what to do with the information above?
At the
mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a tabl
e with
this command (where "table" is the name of the table you wish to view)
:
mysql> show columns from table;
You can also view all the data in a table with this command:
mysql> select * from table;
-- note: this is a very bad idea to do on, for instance, the "bugs"
table if
you have 50,000 bugs. You'll be sitting there a while until you ctrl-
c or
50,000 bugs play across your screen.
You can limit the display from above a little with the command, wher
e
"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict info
rmation:
mysql> select * from table where (column = "some info");
-- or the reverse of this
mysql> select * from table where (column != "some info");
Let's take our example from the introduction, and assume you need to
change
the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know fr
om the
above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "b
ugs"
table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this da
tabase
change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify th
e
information is stored in the "bugs" table:
mysql> show columns from bugs
(exceedingly long output truncated here)
| bug_status| enum('UNCONFIRMED','NEW','ASSIGNED','REOPENED','RESOLVED
','VERIFIED','CLOSED')||MUL | UNCONFIRMED||
Sorry about that long line. We see from this that the "bug status"
column is
an "enum field", which is a MySQL peculiarity where a string type fiel
d can
only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool,
it's not
standard SQL. Anyway, we need to add the possible enum field entry
'APPROVED' by altering the "bugs" table.
mysql> ALTER table bugs CHANGE bug_status bug_status
-> enum("UNCONFIRMED", "NEW", "ASSIGNED", "REOPENED", "RESOLVED",
-> "VERIFIED", "APPROVED", "CLOSED") not null;
(note we can take three lines or more -- whatever you put in befor
e the
semicolon is evaluated as a single expression)
Now if you do this:
mysql> show columns from bugs;
you'll see that the bug_status field has an extra "APPROVED" enum th
at's
available! Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query p
age as
well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the ex
isting
scheme of things?
Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "v
erified"
in the perl code for Bugzilla -- wherever you find "verified", change
it to
"approved" and you're in business (make sure that's a case-insensitive
search).
Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a s
tatus
of "APPROVED" until you make the perl changes. Note that this change
I
mentioned can also be done by editing checksetup.pl, which automates a
lot of
this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?
I hope this database tutorial has been useful for you. If you have
comments
to add, questions, concerns, etc. please direct them to
mbarnson@excitehome.net. Please direct flames to /dev/null :) Have a
nice
day!
===
LINKS
===
Great MySQL tutorial site:
http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/MySQL/
_________________________________________________________________
C.3. MySQL Permissions & Grant Tables
Note
The following portion of documentation comes from my answer to an old
discussion of Keystone, a cool product that does trouble-ticket
tracking for IT departments. I wrote this post to the Keystone support
group regarding MySQL grant table permissions, and how to use them
effectively. It is badly in need of updating, as I believe MySQL has
added a field or two to the grant tables since this time, but it
serves as a decent introduction and troubleshooting document for grant
table issues. I used Keynote to track my troubles until I discovered
Bugzilla, which gave me a whole new set of troubles to work on : )
Although it is of limited use, it still has SOME use, thus it's still
included.
Please note, however, that I was a relatively new user to MySQL at the
time. Some of my suggestions, particularly in how to set up security,
showed a terrible lack of security-related database experience.
From matt_barnson@singletrac.com Wed Jul 7 09:00:07 1999
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 21:37:04 -0700
From: Matthew Barnson matt_barnson@singletrac.com
To: keystone-users@homeport.org
Subject: [keystone-users] Grant Tables FAQ
[The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set]
[Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set]
[Some characters may be displayed incorrectly]
Maybe we can include this rambling message in the Keystone FAQ? It ge
ts
asked a lot, and the only option current listed in the FAQ is
"--skip-grant-tables".
Really, you can't go wrong by reading section 6 of the MySQL manual, a
t
http://www.mysql.com/Manual/manual.html. I am sure their description
is
better than mine.
MySQL runs fine without permissions set up correctly if you run the my
sql
daemon with the "--skip-grant-tables" option. Running this way denies
access to nobody. Unfortunately, unless you've got yourself firewalle
d it
also opens the potential for abuse if someone knows you're running it.
Additionally, the default permissions for MySQL allow anyone at localh
ost
access to the database if the database name begins with "test_" or is
named
"test" (i.e. "test_keystone"). You can change the name of your databa
se in
the keystone.conf file ($sys_dbname). This is the way I am doing it f
or
some of my databases, and it works fine.
The methods described below assume you're running MySQL on the same bo
x as
your webserver, and that you don't mind if your $sys_dbuser for Keysto
ne has
superuser access. See near the bottom of this message for a descripti
on of
what each field does.
Method #1:
1. cd /var/lib
#location where you'll want to run /usr/bin/mysql_install_db shell
script from to get it to work.
2. ln -s mysql data
# soft links the "mysql" directory to "data", which is what
mysql_install_db expects. Alternately, you can edit mysql_install_db
and
change all the "./data" references to "./mysql".
3. Edit /usr/bin/mysql_install_db with your favorite text editor (vi,
emacs, jot, pico, etc.)
A) Copy the "INSERT INTO db VALUES
('%','test\_%','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');" and paste it immediately
after
itself. Chage the 'test\_%' value to 'keystone', or the value of
$sys_dbname in keystone.conf.
B) If you are running your keystone database with any user, you'll ne
ed to
copy the "INSERT INTO user VALUES
('localhost','root','','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y');" line
after
itself and change 'root' to the name of the keystone database user
($sys_dbuser) in keystone.conf.
# adds entries to the script to create grant tables for specific
hosts and users. The user you set up has super-user access ($sys_dbus
er) --
you may or may not want this. The layout of mysql_install_db is reall
y very
uncomplicated.
4. /usr/bin/mysqladmin shutdown
# ya gotta shut it down before you can reinstall the grant tables!
5. rm -i /var/lib/mysql/mysql/*.IS?' and answer 'Y' to the deletion
questions.
# nuke your current grant tables. This WILL NOT delete any other
databases than your grant tables.
6. /usr/bin/mysql_install_db
# run the script you just edited to install your new grant tables.
7. mysqladmin -u root password (new_password)
# change the root MySQL password, or else anyone on localhost can
login to MySQL as root and make changes. You can skip this step if yo
u want
keystone to connect as root with no password.
8. mysqladmin -u (webserver_user_name) password (new_password)
# change the password of the $sys_dbuser. Note that you will need
to change the password in the keystone.conf file as well in $sys_dbpas
swd,
and if your permissions are set up incorrectly anybody can type the UR
L to
your keystone.conf file and get the password. Not that this will help
them
much if your permissions are set to @localhost.
Method #2: easier, but a pain reproducing if you have to delete your
grant
tables. This is the "recommended" method for altering grant tables in
MySQL. I don't use it because I like the other way :)
shell> mysql --user=root keystone
mysql> GRANT
SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,ALTER,CREATE,DROP,RELOAD,SHUTDOWN,PR
OCESS,
FILE,
ON keystone.*
TO <$sys_dbuser name>@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY '(password)'
WITH GRANT OPTION;
OR
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVELEGES
ON keystone.*
TO <$sys_dbuser name>@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY '(password)'
WITH GRANT OPTION;
# this grants the required permissions to the keystone ($sys_dbuser)
account defined in keystone.conf. However, if you are runnning many
different MySQL-based apps, as we are, it's generally better to edit t
he
mysql_install_db script to be able to quickly reproduce your permissio
ns
structure again. Note that the FILE privelege and WITH GRANT OPTION m
ay not
be in your best interest to include.
GRANT TABLE FIELDS EXPLANATION:
Quick syntax summary: "%" in MySQL is a wildcard. I.E., if you are
defining your DB table and in the 'host' field and enter '%', that mea
ns
that any host can access that database. Of course, that host must als
o have
a valid db user in order to do anything useful. 'db'=name of database
. In
our case, it should be "keystone". "user" should be your "$sys_dbuser
"
defined in keystone.conf. Note that you CANNOT add or change a passwo
rd by
using the "INSERT INTO db (X)" command -- you must change it with the
mysql
-u command as defined above. Passwords are stored encrypted in the My
SQL
database, and if you try to enter it directly into the table they will
not
match.
TABLE: USER. Everything after "password" is a privelege granted (Y/N
).
This table controls individual user global access rights.
'host','user','password','select','insert','update','delete','index','
alter'
,'create','drop','grant','reload','shutdown','process','file'
TABLE: DB. This controls access of USERS to databases.
'host','db','user','select','insert','update','delete','index','alter'
,'crea
te','drop','grant'
TABLE: HOST. This controls which HOSTS are allowed what global acces
s
rights. Note that the HOST table, USER table, and DB table are very c
losely
connected -- if an authorized USER attempts an SQL request from an
unauthorized HOST, she's denied. If a request from an authorized HOST
is
not an authorized USER, it is denied. If a globally authorized USER d
oes
not have rights to a certain DB, she's denied. Get the picture?
'host','db','select','insert','update','delete','index','alter','creat
e','dr
op','grant'
You should now have a working knowledge of MySQL grant tables. If the
re is
anything I've left out of this answer that you feel is pertinent, or i
f my
instructions don't work for you, please let me know and I'll re-post t
his
letter again, corrected. I threw it together one night out of exasper
ation
for all the newbies who don't know squat about MySQL yet, so it is alm
ost
guaranteed to have errors.
Once again, you can't go wrong by reading section 6 of the MySQL manua
l. It
is more detailed than I!
http://www.mysql.com/Manual/manual.html.
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix D. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
Are you looking for a way to put your Bugzilla into overdrive? Catch
some of the niftiest tricks here in this section.
_________________________________________________________________
D.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
Apache's mod_rewrite module lets you do some truly amazing things with
URL rewriting. Here are a couple of examples of what you can do.
1. Make it so if someone types http://www.foo.com/12345, Bugzilla
spits back http://www.foo.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12345. Try setting
up your VirtualHost section for Bugzilla with a rule like this:
<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/([0-9]+)$ http://foo.bar.com/show_bug.cgi?id=$1 [L,R]
</VirtualHost>
2. There are many, many more things you can do with mod_rewrite. As
time goes on, I will include many more in the Guide. For now,
though, please refer to the mod_rewrite documentation at
http://www.apache.org
_________________________________________________________________
D.2. The setperl.csh Utility
You can use the "setperl.csh" utility to quickly and easily change the
path to perl on all your Bugzilla files. This is a C-shell script; if
you do not have "csh" or "tcsh" in the search path on your system, it
will not work!
1. Download the "setperl.csh" utility to your Bugzilla directory and
make it executable.
a. bash# cd /your/path/to/bugzilla
b. bash# wget -O setperl.csh
'http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=107
95'
c. bash# chmod u+x setperl.csh
2. Prepare (and fix) Bugzilla file permissions.
a. bash# chmod u+w *
b. bash# chmod u+x duplicates.cgi
c. bash# chmod a-x bug_status.html
3. Run the script:
bash# ./setperl.csh /your/path/to/perl
Example D-1. Using Setperl to set your perl path
bash# ./setperl.csh /usr/bin/perl
_________________________________________________________________
D.3. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
Users can query Bugzilla from the command line using this suite of
utilities.
The query.conf file contains the mapping from options to field names
and comparison types. Quoted option names are "grepped" for, so it
should be easy to edit this file. Comments (#) have no effect; you
must make sure these lines do not contain any quoted "option"
buglist is a shell script which submits a Bugzilla query and writes
the resulting HTML page to stdout. It supports both short options,
(such as "-Afoo" or "-Rbar") and long options (such as
"--assignedto=foo" or "--reporter=bar"). If the first character of an
option is not "-", it is treated as if it were prefixed with
"--default=".
The columlist is taken from the COLUMNLIST environment variable. This
is equivalent to the "Change Columns" option when you list bugs in
buglist.cgi. If you have already used Bugzilla, use grep COLUMLIST
~/.netscape/cookies to see your current COLUMNLIST setting.
bugs is a simple shell script which calls buglist and extracts the bug
numbers from the output. Adding the prefix
"http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=" turns the bug list
into a working link if any bugs are found. Counting bugs is easy. Pipe
the results through sed -e 's/,/ /g' | wc | awk '{printf $2 "\n"}'
Akkana says she has good results piping buglist output through w3m -T
text/html -dump
1. Download three files:
a. bash$ wget -O query.conf
'http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=261
57'
b. bash$ wget -O buglist
'http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=269
44'
c. bash# wget -O bugs
'http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showattachment.cgi?attach_id=262
15'
2. Make your utilities executable: bash$ chmod u+x buglist bugs
_________________________________________________________________
D.4. The Quicksearch Utility
Quicksearch is a new, experimental feature of the 2.12 release. It
consist of two Javascript files, "quicksearch.js" and
"localconfig.js", and two documentation files, "quicksearch.html" and
"quicksearchhack.html"
The index.html page has been updated to include the QuickSearch text
box.
To take full advantage of the query power, the Bugzilla maintainer
must edit "localconfig.js" according to the value sets used in the
local installation.
Currently, keywords must be hard-coded in localconfig.js. If they are
not, keywords are not automatically recognized. This means, if
localconfig.js is left unconfigured, that searching for a bug with the
"foo" keyword will only find bugs with "foo" in the summary, status
whiteboard, product or component name, but not those with the keyword
"foo".
Workarounds for Bugzilla users:
search for '!foo' (this will find only bugs with the keyword "foo"
search 'foo,!foo' (equivalent to 'foo OR keyword:foo')
When this tool is ported from client-side JavaScript to server-side
Perl, the requirement for hard-coding keywords can be fixed. This bug
has details.
_________________________________________________________________
D.5. Hacking Bugzilla
The following is a guide for reviewers when checking code into
Bugzilla's CVS repostory at mozilla.org. If you wish to submit patches
to Bugzilla, you should follow the rules and style conventions below.
Any code that does not adhere to these basic rules will not be added
to Bugzilla's codebase.
_________________________________________________________________
D.5.1. Things that have caused problems and should be avoided
1. Usage of variables in Regular Expressions
It is very important that you don't use a variable in a regular
expression unless that variable is supposed to contain an
expression. This especially applies when using grep. You should
use:
grep ($_ eq $value, @array);
-- NOT THIS --
grep (/$value/, @array);
Note
If you need to use a non-expression variable inside of an expression,
be sure to quote it properly (using \Q..\E).
_________________________________________________________________
D.5.2. Coding Style for Bugzilla
While it's true that not all of the code currently in Bugzilla adheres
to this (or any) styleguide, it is something that is being worked
toward. Therefore, we ask that all new code (submitted patches and new
files) follow this guide as closely as possible (if you're only
changing 1 or 2 lines, you don't have to reformat the entire file :).
The Bugzilla development team has decided to adopt the perl style
guide as published by Larry Wall. This giude can be found in
"Programming Perl" (the camel book) or by typing man perlstyle at your
favorite shell prompt.
What appears below if a brief summary, please refer to the perl style
guide if you don't see your question covered here.
* Whitespace
Bugzilla's prefered indentation is 4 spaces (no tabs, please).
* Curly braces.
The opening brace of a block should be on the same line as the
statement that is causing the block and the closing brace should
be at the same indentation level as that statement, for example:
if ($var) {
print "The variable is true";
}
else {
print "Try again";
}
-- NOT THIS --
if ($var)
{
print "The variable is true";
}
else
{
print "Try again";
}
* File Names
File names for bugzilla code and support documention should be
legal across multiple platforms. \ / : * ? " < > and | are all
illegal characters for filenames on various platforms. Also, file
names should not have spaces in them as they can cause confusion
in CVS and other mozilla.org utilities.
* Variable Names
If a variable is scoped globally ($::variable) its name should be
descriptive of what it contains. Local variables can be named a
bit looser, provided the context makes their content obvious. For
example, $ret could be used as a staging variable for a routine's
return value as the line return $ret; will make it blatantly
obvious what the variable holds and most likely be shown on the
same screen as my $ret = "";.
* Cross Database Compatability
Bugzilla was originally written to work with MySQL and therefore
took advantage of some of its features that aren't contained in
other RDBMS software. These should be avoided in all new code.
Examples of these features are enums and encrypt().
* Cross Platform Compatability
While Bugzilla was written to be used on Unix based systems (and
Unix/Linux is still the only officially supported platform) there
are many who desire/need to run Bugzilla on Microsoft Windows
boxes. Whenever possible, we should strive not to make the lives
of these people any more complicated and avoid doing things that
break Bugzilla's ability to run on multiple operating systems.
_________________________________________________________________
Appendix E. GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.1, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place,
Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy
and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but
changing it is not allowed.
_________________________________________________________________
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other
written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone
the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily,
this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get
credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for
modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative
works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It
complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft
license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free
software, because free software needs free documentation: a free
program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the
software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it
can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License
principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
_________________________________________________________________
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed
under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any
such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is
addressed as "you".
A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the
Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with
modifications and/or translated into another language.
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of
the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the
publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall
subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall
directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is
in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain
any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical
connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal,
commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles
are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice
that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed,
as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that
the Document is released under this License.
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the
general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and
straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available
drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or
for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input
to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file
format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage
subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is
not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain
ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML
or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple
HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include
PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only
by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or
processing tools are not generally available, and the
machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output
purposes only.
The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself,
plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material
this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in
formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means
the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
_________________________________________________________________
2. VERBATIM COPYING
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either
commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the
copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies
to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no
other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further
copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept
compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough
number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and
you may publicly display copies.
_________________________________________________________________
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must
enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and
Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and
legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover
must present the full title with all words of the title equally
prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in
addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they
preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can
be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit
legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit
reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent
pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering
more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent
copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy
a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete
Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the
general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no
charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter
option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this
Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location
until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque
copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to
the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the
Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to
give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the
Document.
_________________________________________________________________
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under
the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release
the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified
Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution
and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy
of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct
from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions
(which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section
of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version
if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or
entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the
Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal
authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has
less than five).
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified
Version, as the publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications
adjacent to the other copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice
giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the
terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant
Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license
notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to
it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If
there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one
stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
Version as stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for
public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise
the network locations given in the Document for previous versions
it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You
may omit a network location for a work that was published at least
four years before the Document itself, or if the original
publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
K. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the
substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in
their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent
are not considered part of the section titles.
M. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not
be included in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to
conflict in title with any Invariant Section.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or
appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material
copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all
of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the
list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice.
These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains
nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various
parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has
been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a
standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a
passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list
of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of
Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or
through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or
by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of,
you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit
permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License
give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or
imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
_________________________________________________________________
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified
versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the
Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and
list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its
license notice.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and
multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single
copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but
different contents, make the title of each such section unique by
adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original
author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number.
Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of
Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History"
in the various original documents, forming one section entitled
"History"; likewise combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgements",
and any sections entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections
entitled "Endorsements."
_________________________________________________________________
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other
documents released under this License, and replace the individual
copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy
that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules
of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all
other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and
distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a
copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this
License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that
document.
_________________________________________________________________
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate
and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version
of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the
compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this
License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled
with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they
are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these
copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter
of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on
covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise
they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.
_________________________________________________________________
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may
distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4.
Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special
permission from their copyright holders, but you may include
translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the
original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a
translation of this License provided that you also include the
original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement
between the translation and the original English version of this
License, the original English version will prevail.
_________________________________________________________________
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document
except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt
to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and
will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However,
parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this
License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such
parties remain in full compliance.
_________________________________________________________________
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the
GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions
will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in
detail to address new problems or concerns. See
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number.
If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this
License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of
following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or
of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the
Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version
number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not
as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.
_________________________________________________________________
How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of
the License in the document and put the following copyright and
license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy,
distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant
Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being
LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A copy of the
license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation
License".
If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections"
instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover
Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts
being LIST"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we
recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of
free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to
permit their use in free software.
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 files. These restrict parameters of the web server.
In Bugzilla, they are used to restrict access to certain files
which would otherwise compromise your installation. For
instance, the localconfig file contains the password to your
database. If this information were generally available, and
remote access to your database turned on, you risk corruption
of your database by computer criminals or the curious.
A
Apache
In this context, Apache is the web server most commonly used
for serving up Bugzilla pages. Contrary to popular belief, the
apache web server has nothing to do with the ancient and noble
Native American tribe, but instead derived its name from the
fact that it was "a patchy" version of the original NCSA
world-wide-web server.
B
Bug
A "Bug" in Bugzilla refers to an issue entered into the
database which has an associated number, assignments, comments,
etc. Some also refer to a "tickets" or "issues"; in the context
of Bugzilla, they are synonymous.
Bug Number
Each Bugzilla Bug is assigned a number that uniquely identifies
that Bug. The Bug associated with a Bug Number can be pulled up
via a query, or easily from the very front page by typing the
number in the "Find" box.
Bug Life Cycle
A Bug has stages through which it must pass before becoming a
"closed bug", including acceptance, resolution, and
verification. The "Bug Life Cycle" is moderately flexible
according to the needs of the organization using it, though.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is the industry-standard bug tracking system. It is
quite popular among Open Source enthusiasts.
Component
A Component is a subsection of a Product. It should be a narrow
category, tailored to your organization. All Products must
contain at least one Component (and, as a matter of fact,
creating a Product with no Components will create an error in
Bugzilla).
CPAN
CPAN stands for the "Comprehensive Perl Archive Network". CPAN
maintains a large number of extremely useful Perl modules. By
themselves, Perl modules generally do nothing, but when used as
part of a larger program, they provide much-needed algorithms
and functionality.
D
daemon
A daemon is a computer program which runs in the background. In
general, most daemons are started at boot time via System V
init scripts, or through RC scripts on BSD-based systems.
mysqld, the MySQL server, and apache, a web server, are
generally run as daemons.
Groups
The word "Groups" has a very special meaning to Bugzilla.
Bugzilla's main security mechanism comes by lumping users into
groups, and assigning those groups certain privileges to
Products and Components in the Bugzilla database.
I
Infinite Loop
A loop of information that never ends; see recursion.
M
mysqld
mysqld is the name of the daemon for the MySQL database. In
general, it is invoked automatically through the use of the
System V init scripts on GNU/Linux and AT&T System V-based
systems, such as Solaris and HP/UX, or through the RC scripts
on BSD-based systems.
P
Product
A Product is a broad category of types of bugs. In general,
there are several Components to a Product. A Product also
defines a default Group (used for Bug Security) for all bugs
entered into components beneath it.
Example 1. A Sample Product
A company sells a software product called "X". They also
maintain some older software called "Y", and have a secret
project "Z". An effective use of Products might be to create
Products "X", "Y", "Z", each with Components of User Interface,
Database, and Business Logic. They might also change group
permissions so that only those people who are members of Group
"Z" can see components and bugs under Product "Z".
Perl
First written by Larry Wall, Perl is a remarkable program
language. It has the benefits of the flexibility of an
interpreted scripting language (such as shell script), combined
with the speed and power of a compiled language, such as C.
Bugzilla is maintained in Perl.
Q
QA
"QA", "Q/A", and "Q.A." are short for "Quality Assurance". In
most large software development organizations, there is a team
devoted to ensuring the product meets minimum standards before
shipping. This team will also generally want to track the
progress of bugs over their life cycle, thus the need for the
"QA Contact" field in a Bug.
R
Recursion
The property of a function looking back at itself for
something. "GNU", for instance, stands for "GNU's Not UNIX",
thus recursing upon itself for definition. For further clarity,
see Infinite Loop.
S
SGML
SGML stands for "Standard Generalized Markup Language". Created
in the 1980's to provide an extensible means to maintain
documentation based upon content instead of presentation, SGML
has withstood the test of time as a robust, powerful language.
XML is the "baby brother" of SGML; any valid XML document it,
by definition, a valid SGML document. The document you are
reading is written and maintained in SGML, and is also valid
XML if you modify the Document Type Definition.
T
Target Milestone
Target Milestones are Product goals. They are configurable on a
per-Product basis. Most software development houses have a
concept of "milestones" where the people funding a project
expect certain functionality on certain dates. Bugzilla
facilitates meeting these milestones by giving you the ability
to declare by which milestone a bug will be fixed, or an
enhancement will be implemented.
Z
Zarro Boogs Found
This is the cryptic response sent by Bugzilla when a query
returned no results. It is just a goofy way of saying "Zero
Bugs Found".