Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from the "Edit parameters" link in the page footer. Here are some of the key parameters on that page. You should run down this list and set them appropriately after installing Bugzilla. checklist maintainer The maintainer parameter is the email address of the person responsible for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The address need not be that of a valid Bugzilla account. urlbase This parameter defines the fully qualified domain name and web server path to your Bugzilla installation. For example, if your Bugzilla query page is http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your urlbase to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/. makeproductgroups This dictates whether or not to automatically create groups when new products are created. useentrygroupdefault Bugzilla products can have a group associated with them, so that certain users can only see bugs in certain products. When this parameter is set to on, this causes the initial group controls on newly created products to place all newly-created bugs in the group having the same name as the product immediately. After a product is initially created, the group controls can be further adjusted without interference by this mechanism. mail_delivery_method This is used to specify how email is sent, or if it is sent at all. There are several options included for different MTAs, along with two additional options that disable email sending. "testfile" does not send mail, but instead saves it in data/mailer.testfile for later review. "none" disables email sending entirely. shadowdb You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla reaches a high level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only table-level write locking. What this means is that if someone needs to make a change to a bug, they will lock the entire table until the operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is complete. Note that more recent versions of mysql support row level locking using different table types. These types are slower than the standard type, and Bugzilla does not yet take advantage of features such as transactions which would justify this speed decrease. The Bugzilla team are, however, happy to hear about any experiences with row level locking and Bugzilla. The shadowdb parameter was designed to get around this limitation. While only a single user is allowed to write to a table at a time, reads can continue unimpeded on a read-only shadow copy of the database. Although your database size will double, a shadow database can cause an enormous performance improvement when implemented on extremely high-traffic Bugzilla databases. As a guide, on reasonably old hardware, mozilla.org began needing shadowdb when they reached around 40,000 Bugzilla users with several hundred Bugzilla bug changes and comments per day. The value of the parameter defines the name of the shadow bug database. You will need to set the host and port settings from the params page, and set up replication in your database server so that updates reach this readonly mirror. Consult your database documentation for more detail. shutdownhtml If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform administration, enter some descriptive text (with embedded HTML codes, if you'd like) into this box. Anyone who tries to use Bugzilla (including admins) will receive a page displaying this text. Users can neither log in nor log out while shutdownhtml is enabled. Although regular log-in capability is disabled while 'shutdownhtml' is enabled, safeguards are in place to protect the unfortunate admin who loses connection to Bugzilla. Should this happen to you, go directly to the editparams.cgi (by typing the URL in manually, if necessary). Doing this will prompt you to log in, and your name/password will be accepted here (but nowhere else). movebugs This option is an undocumented feature to allow moving bugs between separate Bugzilla installations. You will need to understand the source code in order to use this feature. Please consult movebugs.pl in your Bugzilla source tree for further documentation, such as it is. useqacontact This allows you to define an email address for each component, in addition to that of the default assignee, who will be sent carbon copies of incoming bugs. globalwatcher This allows you to define specific users who will receive notification each time a new bug in entered, or when an existing bug changes, according to the normal groupset permissions. It may be useful for sending notifications to a mailing-list, for instance. usestatuswhiteboard This defines whether you wish to have a free-form, overwritable field associated with each bug. The advantage of the Status Whiteboard is that it can be deleted or modified with ease, and provides an easily-searchable field for indexing some bugs that have some trait in common. whinedays Set this to the number of days you want to let bugs go in the NEW or REOPENED state before notifying people they have untouched new bugs. If you do not plan to use this feature, simply do not set up the whining cron job described in the installation instructions, or set this value to "0" (never whine). commenton* All these fields allow you to dictate what changes can pass without comment, and which must have a comment from the person who changed them. Often, administrators will allow users to add themselves to the CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status Whiteboard without adding a comment as to their reasons for the change, yet require that most other changes come with an explanation. Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or reopen bugs at the very least. It is generally far better to require a developer comment when resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database users than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment as to what the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!) supportwatchers Turning on this option allows users to ask to receive copies of bug mail sent to another user. Watching a user with different group permissions is not a way to 'get around' the system; copied emails are still subject to the normal groupset permissions of a bug, and watchers will only be copied on emails from bugs they would normally be allowed to view. noresolveonopenblockers This option will prevent users from resolving bugs as FIXED if they have unresolved dependencies. Only the FIXED resolution is affected. Users will be still able to resolve bugs to resolutions other than FIXED if they have unresolved dependent bugs. sendmailnow When Bugzilla is using Sendmail older than 8.12, turning this option off will improve performance by not waiting for Sendmail to actually send mail. If Sendmail 8.12 or later is being used, there is nothing to gain by turning this off. If another MTA is being used, such as Postfix, then this option *must* be turned on (even if you are using the fake sendmail executable that Postfix provides).

When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will prompt you for the administrative username (email address) and password for this "super user". If for some reason you delete the "super user" account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you for this username and password. If you wish to add more administrative users, add them to the "admin" group and, optionally, edit the tweakparams, editusers, creategroups, editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the entire admin group to those groups (which is the case by default).

If you have editusers privileges or if you are allowed to grant privileges for some groups, the Users link appears in the footer. The first screen you get is a search form to search for existing user accounts. You can run searches based either on the ID, real name or login name (i.e. the email address in most cases) of users. You can search in different ways the listbox to the right of the text entry box. You can match by case-insensitive substring (the default), regular expression, a reverse regular expression match, which finds every user name which does NOT match the regular expression, or the exact string if you know exactly who you are looking for. You can also restrict your search to users being in some specific group. By default, the restriction is turned off. Then you get a list of users matching your criteria, and clicking their login name lets you edit their properties.

By default, users can create their own user accounts by clicking the New Account link at the bottom of each page (assuming they aren't logged in as someone else already). If you want to disable this self-registration, or if you want to restrict who can create his own user account, you have to edit the createemailregexp parameter in the Configuration page, see .

Users with editusers privileges, such as administrators, can create user accounts for other users: After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query page, and then click "Add a new user". Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When done, click "Submit". 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.

Once you have found your user, you can change the following fields: Login Name: This is generally the user's full email address. However, if you have are using the emailsuffix parameter, this may just be the user's login name. Note that users can now change their login names themselves (to any valid email address). Real Name: The user's real name. Note that Bugzilla does not require this to create an account. Password: You can change the user's password here. Users can automatically request a new password, so you shouldn't need to do this often. If you want to disable an account, see Disable Text below. Bugmail Disabled: Mark this checkbox to disable bugmail and whinemail completely for this account. This checkbox replaces the data/nomail file which existed in older versions of Bugzilla. Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a space, the user is prevented from logging in, or making any changes to bugs via the web interface. The HTML you type in this box is presented to the user when they attempt to perform these actions, and should explain why the account was disabled. Users with disabled accounts will continue to receive mail from Bugzilla; furthermore, they will not be able to log in themselves to change their own preferences and stop it. If you want an account (disabled or active) to stop receiving mail, simply check the Bugmail Disabled checkbox above. Even users whose accounts have been disabled can still submit bugs via the e-mail gateway, if one exists. The e-mail gateway should not be enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla. Don't disable all the administrator accounts! <groupname>: If you have created some groups, e.g. "securitysensitive", then checkboxes will appear here to allow you to add users to, or remove them from, these groups. canconfirm: This field is only used if you have enabled the "unconfirmed" status. If you enable this for a user, that user can then move bugs from "Unconfirmed" to a "Confirmed" status (e.g.: "New" status). creategroups: This option will allow a user to create and destroy groups in Bugzilla. editbugs: Unless a user has this bit set, they can only edit those bugs for which they are the assignee or the reporter. Even if this option is unchecked, users can still add comments to bugs. editcomponents: This flag allows a user to create new products and components, as well as modify and destroy those that have no bugs associated with them. If a product or component has bugs associated with it, those bugs must be moved to a different product or component before Bugzilla will allow them to be destroyed. editkeywords: If you use Bugzilla's keyword functionality, enabling this feature allows a user to create and destroy keywords. As always, the keywords for existing bugs containing the keyword the user wishes to destroy must be changed before Bugzilla will allow it to die. editusers: This flag allows a user to do what you're doing right now: edit other users. This will allow those with the right to do so to remove administrator privileges from other users or grant them to themselves. Enable with care. tweakparams: This flag allows a user to change Bugzilla's Params (using editparams.cgi.) <productname>: This allows an administrator to specify the products in which a user can see bugs. If you turn on the makeproductgroups parameter in the Group Security Panel in the Parameters page, then Bugzilla creates one group per product (at the time you create the product), and this group has exactly the same name as the product itself. Note that for products that already exist when the parameter is turned on, the corresponding group will not be created. The user must still have the editbugs privilege to edit bugs in these products.

If the allowuserdeletion parameter is turned on, see , then you can also delete user accounts. Note that this is most of the time not the best thing to do. If only a warning in a yellow box is displayed, then the deletion is safe. If a warning is also displayed in a red box, then you should NOT try to delete the user account, else you will get referential integrity problems in your database, which can lead to unexpected behavior, such as bugs not appearing in bug lists anymore, or data displaying incorrectly. You have been warned!

There may be times when an administrator would like to do something as another user. The sudo feature may be used to do this. To use the sudo feature, you must be in the bz_sudoers group. By default, all administrators are in this group. If you have access to this feature, you may start a session by going to the Edit Users page, Searching for a user and clicking on their login. You should see a link below their login name titled "Impersonate this user". Click on the link. This will take you to a page where you will see a description of the feature and instructions for using it. After reading the text, simply enter the login of the user you would like to impersonate, provide a short message explaining why you are doing this, and press the button. As long as you are using this feature, everything you do will be done as if you were logged in as the user you are impersonating. The user you are impersonating will not be told about what you are doing. If you do anything that results in mail being sent, that mail will appear to be from the user you are impersonating. You should be extremely careful while using this feature.

Classifications tend to be used in order to group several related products into one distinct entity. The classifications layer is disabled by default; it can be turned on or off using the useclassification parameter, in the Bug Fields section of the edit parameters screen. Access to the administration of classifications is controlled using the editclassifications system group, which defines a privilege for creating, destroying, and editing classifications. When activated, classifications will introduce an additional step when filling bugs (dedicated to classification selection), and they will also appear in the advanced search form.

Products tend to represent real-world shipping products. E.g. if your company makes computer games, you should have one product per game, perhaps a Common product for units of technology used in multiple games, and maybe a few special products (Website, Administration...) Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis. The number of votes available to users is set per-product, as is the number of votes required to move a bug automatically from the UNCONFIRMED status to the NEW status. To create a new product: Select Adminstration from the footer and then choose Products from the main administration page. Select the Add link in the bottom right. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description field may contain HTML.

On the Product Edit page, there is a link called Edit Group Access Controls. The settings on this page control the relationship of the groups to the product being edited. Groups may be applicable, default, and mandatory for each product. Groups can also control access to bugs for a given product, or be used to make bugs for a product totally read-only unless the group restrictions are met. If any group has Entry selected, then the product will restrict bug entry to only those users who are members of all the groups with Entry selected. If any group has Canedit selected, then the product will be read-only for any users who are not members of all of the groups with Canedit selected. ONLY users who are members of all the Canedit groups will be able to edit. This is an additional restriction that further limits what can be edited by a user. The following settings let you choose privileges on a per-product basis. This is a convenient way to give privileges to some users for some products only, without having to give them global privileges which would affect all products. Any group having editcomponents selected allows users who are in this group to edit all aspects of this product, including components, milestones and versions. Any group having canconfirm selected allows users who are in this group to confirm bugs in this product. Any group having editbugs selected allows users who are in this group to edit all fields of bugs in this product. The MemberControl and OtherControl fields indicate which bugs will be placed in this group according to the following definitions. For each group, it is possible to specify if membership in that group is: Required for bug entry. Not applicable to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a default restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on bugs in this product(Mandatory). Not applicable by non-members to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a default restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on bugs in this product when entered by a non-member(Mandatory). Required in order to make any change to bugs in this product including comments. These controls are often described in this order, so a product that requires a user to be a member of group "foo" to enter a bug and then requires that the bug stay restricted to group "foo" at all times and that only members of group "foo" can edit the bug even if they otherwise could see the bug would have its controls summarized by... foo: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY, CANEDIT

Components are subsections of a Product. E.g. the computer game you are designing may have a "UI" component, an "API" component, a "Sound System" component, and a "Plugins" component, each overseen by a different programmer. It often makes sense to divide Components in Bugzilla according to the natural divisions of responsibility within your Product or company. Each component has a default assignee and (if you turned it on in the parameters), a QA Contact. The default assignee should be the primary person who fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the person who will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Assignee, QA Contact, and Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in this Component and when these bugs change. Default Assignee and Default QA Contact fields only dictate the default assignments; these can be changed on bug submission, or at any later point in a bug's life. To create a new Component: Select the Edit components link from the Edit product page Select the Add link in the bottom right. Fill out the Component field, a short Description, the Default Assignee, Default CC List and Default QA Contact (if enabled). The Component Description field may contain a limited subset of HTML tags. The Default Assignee field must be a login name already existing in the Bugzilla database.

Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1", "Flinders 95", and "Flinders 2000". Version is not a multi-select field; the usual practice is to select the earliest version known to have the bug. To create and edit Versions: From the "Edit product" screen, select "Edit Versions" You will notice that the product already has the default version "undefined". Click the "Add" link in the bottom right. Enter the name of the Version. This field takes text only. Then click the "Add" button.

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. Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned on the "usetargetmilestone" Param in the "Edit Parameters" screen. To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone URL: Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner. text Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative number (-32768 to 32767) that defines where in the list this particular milestone appears. This is because milestones often do not occur in alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be after "Release 1.2". Select "Add". From the Edit product screen, you can enter the URL of a page which gives information about your milestones and what they mean.

Flags are a way to attach a specific status to a bug or attachment, either + or -. The meaning of these symbols depends on the text the flag itself, but contextually they could mean pass/fail, accept/reject, approved/denied, or even a simple yes/no. If your site allows requestable flags, then users may set a flag to ? as a request to another user that they look at the bug/attachment, and set the flag to its correct status.

A developer might want to ask their manager, Should we fix this bug before we release version 2.0? They might want to do this for a lot of bugs, so it would be nice to streamline the process... In Bugzilla, it would work this way: The Bugzilla administrator creates a flag type called blocking2.0 that shows up on all bugs in your product. It shows up on the Show Bug screen as the text blocking2.0 with a drop-down box next to it. The drop-down box contains four values: an empty space, ?, -, and +. The developer sets the flag to ?. The manager sees the blocking2.0 flag with a ? value. If the manager thinks the feature should go into the product before version 2.0 can be released, he sets the flag to +. Otherwise, he sets it to -. Now, every Bugzilla user who looks at the bug knows whether or not the bug needs to be fixed before release of version 2.0.

Flags can have three values: ? A user is requesting that a status be set. (Think of it as 'A question is being asked'.) - The status has been set negatively. (The question has been answered no.) + The status has been set positively. (The question has been answered yes.) Actually, there's a fourth value a flag can have -- unset -- which shows up as a blank space. This just means that nobody has expressed an opinion (or asked someone else to express an opinion) about this bug or attachment.

If a flag has been defined as 'requestable', and a user has enough privileges to request it (see below), the user can set the flag's status to ?. This status indicates that someone (a.k.a. the requester) is asking someone else to set the flag to either + or -. If a flag has been defined as 'specifically requestable', a text box will appear next to the flag into which the requester may enter a Bugzilla username. That named person (a.k.a. the requestee) will receive an email notifying them of the request, and pointing them to the bug/attachment in question. If a flag has not been defined as 'specifically requestable', then no such text-box will appear. A request to set this flag cannot be made of any specific individual, but must be asked to the wind. A requester may ask the wind on any flag simply by leaving the text-box blank.

Flags can go in two places: on an attachment, or on a bug.

Attachment flags are used to ask a question about a specific attachment on a bug. Many Bugzilla installations use this to request that one developer review another developer's code before they check it in. They attach the code to a bug report, and then set a flag on that attachment called review to review?boss@domain.com. boss@domain.com is then notified by email that he has to check out that attachment and approve it or deny it. For a Bugzilla user, attachment flags show up in three places: On the list of attachments in the Show Bug screen, you can see the current state of any flags that have been set to ?, +, or -. You can see who asked about the flag (the requester), and who is being asked (the requestee). When you Edit an attachment, you can see any settable flag, along with any flags that have already been set. This Edit Attachment screen is where you set flags to ?, -, +, or unset them. Requests are listed in the Request Queue, which is accessible from the My Requests link (if you are logged in) or Requests link (if you are logged out) visible in the footer of all pages.

Bug flags are used to set a status on the bug itself. You can see Bug Flags in the Show Bug and Requests screens, as described above. Only users with enough privileges (see below) may set flags on bugs. This doesn't necessarily include the assignee, reporter, or users with the editbugs permission.

If you have the editcomponents permission, you can edit Flag Types from the main administration page. Clicking the Flags link will bring you to the Administer Flag Types page. Here, you can select whether you want to create (or edit) a Bug flag, or an Attachment flag. No matter which you choose, the interface is the same, so we'll just go over it once.

To edit a flag's properties, just click on the Edit link next to the flag's description. That will take you to the same form as described below ().

When you click on the Create a Flag Type for... link, you will be presented with a form. Here is what the fields in the form mean:

This is the name of the flag. This will be displayed to Bugzilla users who are looking at or setting the flag. The name may contain any valid Unicode characters except commas and spaces.

The description describes the flag in more detail. It is visible in a tooltip when hovering over a flag either in the Show Bug or Edit Attachment pages. This field can be as long as you like, and can contain any character you want.

Default behaviour for a newly-created flag is to appear on products and all components, which is why __Any__:__Any__ is already entered in the Inclusions box. If this is not your desired behaviour, you must either set some exclusions (for products on which you don't want the flag to appear), or you must remove __Any__:__Any__ from the Inclusions box and define products/components specifically for this flag. To create an Inclusion, select a Product from the top drop-down box. You may also select a specific component from the bottom drop-down box. (Setting __Any__ for Product translates to, all the products in this Bugzilla. Selecting __Any__ in the Component field means all components in the selected product.) Selections made, press Include, and your Product/Component pairing will show up in the Inclusions box on the right. To create an Exclusion, the process is the same; select a Product from the top drop-down box, select a specific component if you want one, and press Exclude. The Product/Component pairing will show up in the Exclusions box on the right. This flag will and can be set for any products/components that appearing in the Inclusions box (or which fall under the appropriate __Any__). This flag will not appear (and therefore cannot be set) on any products appearing in the Exclusions box. IMPORTANT: Exclusions override inclusions. You may select a Product without selecting a specific Component, but you can't select a Component without a Product, or to select a Component that does not belong to the named Product. If you do so, Bugzilla will display an error message, even if all your products have a component by that name. Example: Let's say you have a product called Jet Plane that has thousands of components. You want to be able to ask if a problem should be fixed in the next model of plane you release. We'll call the flag fixInNext. But, there's one component in Jet Plane, called Pilot. It doesn't make sense to release a new pilot, so you don't want to have the flag show up in that component. So, you include Jet Plane:__Any__ and you exclude Jet Plane:Pilot.

Flags normally show up in alphabetical order. If you want them to show up in a different order, you can use this key set the order on each flag. Flags with a lower sort key will appear before flags with a higher sort key. Flags that have the same sort key will be sorted alphabetically, but they will still be after flags with a lower sort key, and before flags with a higher sort key. Example: I have AFlag (Sort Key 100), BFlag (Sort Key 10), CFlag (Sort Key 10), and DFlag (Sort Key 1). These show up in the order: DFlag, BFlag, CFlag, AFlag.

Sometimes, you might want to keep old flag information in the Bugzilla database, but stop users from setting any new flags of this type. To do this, uncheck active. Deactivated flags will still show up in the UI if they are ?, +, or -, but they may only be cleared (unset), and cannot be changed to a new value. Once a deactivated flag is cleared, it will completely disappear from a bug/attachment, and cannot be set again.

New flags are, by default, requestable, meaning that they offer users the ? option, as well as + and -. To remove the ? option, uncheck requestable.

By default this box is checked for new flags, meaning that users may make flag requests of specific individuals. Unchecking this box will remove the text box next to a flag; if it is still requestable, then requests may only be made to the wind. Removing this after specific requests have been made will not remove those requests; that data will stay in the database (though it will no longer appear to the user).

Any flag with Multiplicable set (default for new flags is 'on') may be set more than once. After being set once, an unset flag of the same type will appear below it with addl. (short for additional) before the name. There is no limit to the number of times a Multiplicable flags may be set on the same bug/attachment.

If you want certain users to be notified every time this flag is set to ?, -, +, or unset, add them here. This is a comma-separated list of email addresses that need not be restricted to Bugzilla usernames.

When this field is set to some given group, only users in the group can set the flag to + and -. This field does not affect who can request or cancel the flag. For that, see the Request Group field below. If this field is left blank, all users can set or delete this flag. This field is useful for restricting which users can approve or reject requests.

When this field is set to some given group, only users in the group can request or cancel this flag. Note that this field has no effect if the grant group field is empty. You can set the value of this field to a different group, but both fields have to be set to a group for this field to have an effect.

When you are at the Administer Flag Types screen, you will be presented with a list of Bug flags and a list of Attachment Flags. To delete a flag, click on the Delete link next to the flag description. Once you delete a flag, it is gone from your Bugzilla. All the data for that flag will be deleted. Everywhere that flag was set, it will disappear, and you cannot get that data back. If you want to keep flag data, but don't want anybody to set any new flags or change current flags, unset active in the flag Edit form.

The administrator can define keywords which can be used to tag and categorise bugs. For example, the keyword "regression" is commonly used. A company might have a policy stating all regressions must be fixed by the next release - this keyword can make tracking those bugs much easier. Keywords are global, rather than per-product. If the administrator changes a keyword currently applied to any bugs, the keyword cache must be rebuilt using the script. Currently keywords can not be marked obsolete to prevent future usage. Keywords can be created, edited or deleted by clicking the "Keywords" link in the admin page. There are two fields for each keyword - the keyword itself and a brief description. Once created, keywords can be selected and applied to individual bugs in that bug's "Details" section.

One of the most requested features was the ability to add your own custom fields to bugs, based on your needs. With the release of Bugzilla 3.0, this dream finally comes true. Administrators can manage these fields using the Custom Fields link in the footer of pages. The first thing they will see is the list of existing custom fields (which is empty by default).

The Add a new custom field link permits you to add a new field which can be either a free text box or a drop down menu. More field types will be available in future releases. The following attributes must be set for each new custom field: Name: the name of the field, used internally. This name MUST begin with cf_. If you omit this string, it will be automatically added to the name you entered. This way, all custom fields added to Bugzilla begin with cf_, avoiding any conflict with default fields. Description: the string which is used as a label for this custom field. That is the string that users will see, and so should be short and explicit. Type: as mentioned above, only two types are implemented so far. Free text boxes let you type any string, while drop down menus only let you choose one value in the list provided. The list of legal values for this field can be created and edited as soon as this custom field is added to the DB. See for information about editing legal values. Sortkey: this integer determines in which order custom fields are displayed in the UI, especially when viewing a bug. Fields with lower values are displayed first. Can be set on bug creation: this boolean determines whether this field can be set on bug creation or not. If not, then you have to create the bug first before being able to set this field. Else you can set its value at the same time you file a bug, see about filing bugs. Displayed in bugmail for new bugs: this boolean determines whether the value set on this field should appear in bugmail when the bug is filed. This attribute has no effect if the field cannot be set on bug creation. Is obsolete: this boolean determines whether or not this field should be displayed at all. Obsolete custom fields are hidden.

As soon as a custom field is created, its name and type cannot be changed. If this field is a drop down menu, its legal values can be set as described in . All other attributes can be edited as described above.

At this point, it is not possible to delete custom fields from your web browser. If you don't want to make one available anymore, mark it as obsolete. This way, you will preserve your DB referential integrity.

Since Bugzilla 2.20 RC1, legal values for Operating Systems, platforms, bug priorities and severities can be edited from the User Interface directly. This means that it is no longer required to manually edit localconfig. Starting with Bugzilla 2.23.3, you can also customize the list of valid resolutions from the same interface.

Editing legal values requires admin privileges. A link named Field Values is visible in your footer and clicking on it displays the list of fields whose values can be edited. You can add as many legal values as you want, and each value must be unique (on a per field basis). The sortkey is important to display these values in the desired order.

You can also delete legal values, but only if the two following conditions are respected: The value is not used by default for the field. No bug is currently using this value. If any of these conditions is not respected, the value cannot be deleted. The only way to delete these values is to reassign bugs to another value and to set another value as default for the field.

Voting allows users to be given a pot of votes which they can allocate to bugs, to indicate that they'd like them fixed. This allows developers to gauge user need for a particular enhancement or bugfix. By allowing bugs with a certain number of votes to automatically move from "UNCONFIRMED" to "NEW", users of the bug system can help high-priority bugs garner attention so they don't sit for a long time awaiting triage. To modify Voting settings: Navigate to the "Edit product" screen for the Product you wish to modify Maximum Votes per person: Setting this field to "0" disables voting. Maximum Votes a person can put on a single bug: It should probably be some number lower than the "Maximum votes per person". Don't set this field to "0" if "Maximum votes per person" is non-zero; that doesn't make any sense. Number of votes a bug in this product needs to automatically get out of the UNCONFIRMED state: Setting this field to "0" disables the automatic move of bugs from UNCONFIRMED to NEW. Once you have adjusted the values to your preference, click "Update".

Quips are small text messages that can be configured to appear next to search results. A Bugzilla installation can have its own specific quips. Whenever a quip needs to be displayed, a random selection is made from the pool of already existing quips. Quips are controlled by the enablequips parameter. It has several possible values: on, approved, frozen or off. In order to enable quips approval you need to set this parameter to "approved". In this way, users are free to submit quips for addition but an administrator must explicitly approve them before they are actually used. In order to see the user interface for the quips, it is enough to click on a quip when it is displayed together with the search results. Or it can be seen directly in the browser by visiting the quips.cgi URL (prefixed with the usual web location of the Bugzilla installation). Once the quip interface is displayed, it is enough to click the "view and edit the whole quip list" in order to see the administration page. A page with all the quips available in the database will be displayed. Next to each tip there is a checkbox, under the "Approved" column. Quips who have this checkbox checked are already approved and will appear next to the search results. The ones that have it unchecked are still preserved in the database but they will not appear on search results pages. User submitted quips have initially the checkbox unchecked. Also, there is a delete link next to each quip, which can be used in order to permanently delete a quip.

Groups allow the administrator to isolate bugs or products that should only be seen by certain people. The association between products and groups is controlled from the product edit page under Edit Group Controls. If the makeproductgroups param is on, a new group will be automatically created for every new product. It is primarily available for backward compatibility with older sites. Note that group permissions are such that you need to be a member of all the groups a bug is in, for whatever reason, to see that bug. Similarly, you must be a member of all of the entry groups for a product to add bugs to a product and you must be a member of all of the canedit groups for a product in order to make any change to bugs in that product. By default, bugs can also be seen by the Assignee, the Reporter, and by everyone on the CC List, regardless of whether or not the bug would typically be viewable by them. Visibility to the Reporter and CC List can be overridden (on a per-bug basis) by bringing up the bug, finding the section that starts with Users in the roles selected below... and un-checking the box next to either 'Reporter' or 'CC List' (or both).

To create Groups: Select the groups link in the footer. Take a moment to understand the instructions on the Edit Groups screen, then select the Add Group link. Fill out the Group, Description, and User RegExp fields. User RegExp allows you to automatically place all users who fulfill the Regular Expression into the new group. When you have finished, click Add. Users whose email addresses match the regular expression will automatically be members of the group as long as their email addresses continue to match the regular expression. This is a change from 2.16 where the regular expression resulted in a user acquiring permanent membership in a group. To remove a user from a group the user was in due to a regular expression in version 2.16 or earlier, the user must be explicitly removed from the group. This can easily be done by pressing buttons named 'Remove Memberships' or 'Remove Memberships included in regular expression' under the table. If specifying a domain in the regexp, make sure you end the regexp with a $. Otherwise, when granting access to "@mycompany\.com", you will allow access to 'badperson@mycompany.com.cracker.net'. You need to use '@mycompany\.com$' as the regexp. If you plan to use this group to directly control access to bugs, check the "use for bugs" box. Groups not used for bugs are still useful because other groups can include the group as a whole. After you add your new group, edit the new group. On the edit page, you can specify other groups that should be included in this group and which groups should be permitted to add and delete users from this group.

Users can become a member of a group in several ways. The user can be explicitly placed in the group by editing the user's own profile The group can include another group of which the user is a member. The user's email address can match a regular expression that the group specifies to automatically grant membership to the group.

For information on assigning group controls to products, see .

To permit any user to file bugs in each product (A, B, C...) and to permit any user to submit those bugs into a security group.... Product A... security: SHOWN/SHOWN Product B... security: SHOWN/SHOWN Product C... security: SHOWN/SHOWN

To permit any user to file bugs in a Security product while keeping those bugs from becoming visible to anyone outside the securityworkers group unless a member of the securityworkers group removes that restriction.... Product Security... securityworkers: DEFAULT/MANDATORY

To permit users of product A to access the bugs for product A, users of product B to access product B, and support staff to access both, 3 groups are needed Support: Contains members of the support staff. AccessA: Contains users of product A and the Support group. AccessB: Contains users of product B and the Support group. Once these 3 groups are defined, the products group controls can be set to.. Product A... AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Product B... AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Optionally, the support group could be permitted to make bugs inaccessible to the users and could be permitted to publish bugs relevant to all users in a common product that is read-only to anyone outside the support group. That configuration could be... Product A... AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Support: SHOWN/NA Product B... AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Support: SHOWN/NA Product Common... Support: ENTRY, DEFAULT/MANDATORY, CANEDIT

Over time it is possible for the Bugzilla database to become corrupt or to have anomalies. This could happen through normal usage of Bugzilla, manual database administration outside of the Bugzilla user interface, or from some other unexpected event. Bugzilla includes a "Sanity Check" script that can perform several basic database checks, and repair certain problems or inconsistencies. To run the "Sanity Check" script, log in as an Administrator and click the "Sanity Check" link in the admin page. Any problems that are found will be displayed in red letters. If the script is capable of fixing a problem, it will present a link to initiate the fix. If the script can not fix the problem it will require manual database administration or recovery. The "Sanity Check" script can also be run from the command line via the perl script sanitycheck.pl. The script can also be run as a cron job. Results will be delivered by email. The "Sanity Check" script should be run on a regular basis as a matter of best practice. The "Sanity Check" script is no substitute for a competent database administrator. It is only designed to check and repair basic database problems.

Upgrading Bugzilla is something we all want to do from time to time, be it to get new features or pick up the latest security fix. How easy it is to update depends on a few factors: If the new version is a revision or a new point release How many local changes (if any) have been made

Bugzilla displays the version you are using at the top of the home page index.cgi. It looks something like '2.20.3', '2.22.1' or '3.0rc1'. The first number in this series is the Major Version. This does not change very often; Bugzilla was 1.x.x when it was first created, and went to 2.x.x when it was re-written in perl in Sept 1998. The major version 3.x.x, released in early 2007, is pretty far from what the 2.x.x series looked like, both about its UI and its code. The second number in the version is called the 'minor number', and a release that changes the minor number is called a 'point release'. An even number in this position (2.18, 2.20, 2.22, 3.0, 3.2, etc.) represents a stable version, while an odd number (2.19, 2.21, 2.23, etc.) represents a development version. In the past, stable point releases were feature-based, coming when certain enhancements had been completed, or the Bugzilla development team felt that enough progress had been made overall. As of version 2.18, however, Bugzilla has moved to a time-based release schedule; current plans are to create a stable point release every 6 months or so after 2.18 is deployed. The third number in the Bugzilla version represents a bugfix version. Bugfix Revisions are released only to address security vulnerabilities and, for a limited period, bug fixes. Once enough of these bugfixes have accumulated (or a new security vulnerability is identified and closed), a bugfix release is made. As an example, 2.20.3 was a bugfix release, and improved on 2.20.2. When reading version numbers, everything separated by a point ('.') should be read as a single number. It is not the same as decimal. 2.22 is newer than 2.8 because minor version 22 is greater than minor version 8. The now unsupported release 2.16.11 was newer than 2.16.9 (because bugfix 11 is greater than bugfix 9. This is confusing to some people who aren't used to dealing with software.

Bugzilla 3.0 introduces the ability to automatically notify administrators when new releases are available, based on the upgrade_notification parameter, see . Administrators will see these notifications when they access the index.cgi page, i.e. generally when logging in. Bugzilla will check once per day for new releases, unless the parameter is set to disabled. If you are behind a proxy, you may have to set the proxy_url parameter accordingly. If the proxy requires authentication, use the http://user:pass@proxy_url/ syntax.

There are three different ways to upgrade your installation. Using CVS () Downloading a new tarball () Applying the relevant patches () Each of these options has its own pros and cons; the one that's right for you depends on how long it has been since you last installed, the degree to which you have customized your installation, and/or your network configuration. (Some discussion of the various methods of updating compared with degree and methods of local customization can be found in .) The larger the jump you are trying to make, the more difficult it is going to be to upgrade if you have made local customizations. Upgrading from 2.22 to 2.22.1 should be fairly painless even if you are heavily customized, but going from 2.18 to 3.0 is going to mean a fair bit of work re-writing your local changes to use the new files, logic, templates, etc. If you have done no local changes at all, however, then upgrading should be approximately the same amount of work regardless of how long it has been since your version was released. Upgrading is a one-way process. You should backup your database and current Bugzilla directory before attempting the upgrade. If you wish to revert to the old Bugzilla version for any reason, you will have to restore from these backups. The examples in the following sections are written as though the user were updating to version 2.22.1, but the procedures are the same regardless of whether one is updating to a new point release or simply trying to obtain a new bugfix release. Also, in the examples the user's Bugzilla installation is found at /var/www/html/bugzilla. If that is not the same as the location of your Bugzilla installation, simply substitute the proper paths where appropriate.

Every release of Bugzilla, whether it is a point release or a bugfix, is tagged in CVS. Also, every tarball that has been distributed since version 2.12 has been created in such a way that it can be used with CVS once it is unpacked. Doing so, however, requires that you are able to access cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port 2401, which may not be an option or a possibility for some users, especially those behind a highly restrictive firewall. If you can, updating using CVS is probably the most painless method, especially if you have a lot of local changes. The following shows the sequence of commands needed to update a Bugzilla installation via CVS, and a typical series of results. bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ cvs login Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401/cvsroot CVS password: ('anonymous', or just leave it blank) bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_22_1 -dP P checksetup.pl P collectstats.pl P docs/rel_notes.txt P template/en/default/list/quips.html.tmpl (etc.) If a line in the output from cvs update begins with a C, then that represents a file with local changes that CVS was unable to properly merge. You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla (or at least the portion using that file) will be usable.

If you are unable (or unwilling) to use CVS, another option that's always available is to obtain the latest tarball from the Download Page and create a new Bugzilla installation from that. This sequence of commands shows how to get the tarball from the command-line; it is also possible to download it from the site directly in a web browser. If you go that route, save the file to the /var/www/html directory (or its equivalent, if you use something else) and omit the first three lines of the example. bash$ cd /var/www/html bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.22.1.tar.gz (Output omitted) bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.22.1.tar.gz bugzilla-2.22.1/ bugzilla-2.22.1/.cvsignore (Output truncated) bash$ cd bugzilla-2.22.1 bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* . bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data . bash$ cd .. bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old bash$ mv bugzilla-2.22.1 bugzilla The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important detail, it tells the shell that the destination directory is the current working directory. This upgrade method will give you a clean install of Bugzilla with the same version as the tarball. That's fine if you don't have any local customizations that you want to maintain, but if you do then you will need to reapply them by hand to the appropriate files. It's worth noting that since 2.12, the Bugzilla tarballs come CVS-ready, so if you decide at a later date that you'd rather use CVS as an upgrade method, your code will already be set up for it.

If you are doing a bugfix upgrade -- that is, one where only the last number of the revision changes, such as from 2.22 to 2.22.1 -- then you have the option of obtaining and applying a patch file from the Download Page. This file is made available by the Bugzilla Development Team, and is a collection of all the bug fixes and security patches that have been made since the last bugfix release. If you are planning to upgrade via patches, it is safer to grab this developer-made patch file than to read the patch notes and apply all (or even just some of) the patches oneself, as sometimes patches on bugs get changed before they get checked in. As above, this example starts with obtaining the file via the command line. If you have already downloaded it, you can omit the first two commands. bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff.gz (Output omitted) bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff.gz bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff patching file checksetup.pl patching file collectstats.pl (etc.) Be aware that upgrading from a patch file does not change the entries in your CVS directory. This could make it more difficult to upgrade using CVS () in the future.

Regardless of which upgrade method you choose, you will need to run ./checksetup.pl before your Bugzilla upgrade will be complete. bash$ cd bugzilla bash$ ./checksetup.pl The period at the beginning of the command ./checksetup.pl is important and can not be omitted. If you have done a lot of local modifications, it wouldn't hurt to run the Bugzilla Testing suite. This is not a required step, but it isn't going to hurt anything, and might help point out some areas that could be improved. (More information on the test suite can be had by following this link to the appropriate section in the Developers' Guide.)