3.7.1. Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer

The main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the "Diff" link next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may also do this within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As Diff" button in the Edit Attachment screen.

3.7.2. Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches

To see the difference between two patches, you must first view the newer patch in Patch Viewer. Then select the older patch from the dropdown at the top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and this patch") and click the "Diff" button. This will show you what is new or changed in the newer patch.

3.7.3. Getting More Context in a Patch

To get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at the top of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter. This will give you that many lines of context before and after each change. Alternatively, you can click on the "File" link there and it will show each change in the full context of the file. This feature only works against files that were diffed using "cvs diff".

3.7.4. Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch

To view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a patch is absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a time), you can click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to expand it or collapse it). If you want to collapse all files or expand all files, you can click the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the top of the page.

3.7.5. Linking to a Section of a Patch

To link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be able to give someone a URL to show them which part you are talking about) you simply click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The resulting URL can be copied and used in discussion. (Copy Link Location in Mozilla works as well.)

3.7.6. Going to Bonsai and LXR

To go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in, you can click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are interested in. This works even if the patch is against an old version of the file, since Bonsai stores all versions of the file.

To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header (unfortunately, since LXR only does the most recent version, line numbers are likely to rot).

3.7.7. Creating a Unified Diff

If the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it into a unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top of the page.

3.8.1. Autolinkification

Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will produce less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text. However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For example, the text "http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link: http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:

A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment, you should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified for the convenience of others.

3.8.2. Quicksearch

Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing "foo|bar" into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding ":BazProduct" would search only in that product.

You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's front page, along with a Help link which details how to use it.

3.8.3. Comments

If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if either you have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it. Otherwise, you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail. To take an example: a user can set up their account to filter out messages where someone just adds themselves to the CC field of a bug (which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself to the CC field, and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that person gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.

Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable, if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art creations are not.

3.8.4. Attachments

Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data, such as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't bloat the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to receive fat, useless mails.

Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.

Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one CSS file and an image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in reverse order and edit the referring file so that they point to the attached files. This way, the test case works immediately out of the bug.

3.9.1. Account Settings

On this tab, you can change your basic account information, including your password, email address and real name. For security reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your current password into the "Password" field at the top of the page. If you attempt to change your email address, a confirmation email is sent to both the old and new addresses, with a link to use to confirm the change. This helps to prevent account hijacking.

3.9.2. Email Settings

On this tab you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you from Bugzilla, opting in our out depending on your relationship to the bug and the change that was made to it.

You can also do further filtering on the client side by using the X-Bugzilla-Reason mail header which Bugzilla adds to all bugmail. This tells you what relationship you have to the bug in question, and can be any of Owner, Reporter, QAcontact, CClist, Voter and WatchingComponent.

By entering user email names, delineated by commas, into the "Users to watch" text entry box you can receive a copy of all the bugmail of other users (security settings permitting.) This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go on holiday.

The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla installations. If you can't see it, ask your administrator.

3.9.3. Permissions

This is a purely informative page which outlines your current permissions on this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you are in, and whether you can edit bugs or perform various administration functions.

4.1.1. Perl

Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. If your OS doesn't come with it, Perl can be got in source form from http://www.perl.com. There are also binary versions available for many platforms, most of which are linked to from perl.com. Although Bugzilla runs with perl 5.6.0, 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 5.8.2.

4.1.2. MySQL

If your OS doesn't come with it or provide official packages, visit the MySQL homepage at http://www.mysql.com to grab and install the latest stable release of the server.

Many of the binary versions of MySQL store their data files in /var. On some Unix systems, this is part of a smaller root partition, and may not have room for your bug database. You can set the data directory as an option to configure if you build MySQL from source yourself.

If you install from something other than a packaging/installation system (such as .rpm, .dep, .exe, or .msi) you will need to configure your system so the MySQL server daemon will come back up whenever your machine reboots.

If you wish to have attachments larger than 64K, you will have to configure MySQL to accept large packets. This is done by adding the text in Figure 4-1 to your my.conf file. There is also a parameter in Bugzilla for setting the maximum allowable attachment size. You should set this value to be slightly larger than that parameter.

[mysqld]
# Allow packets up to 1M
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=1M
        

If you are running Bugzilla and MySQL on the same machine, you may also wish to utilize the --skip-networking option as mentioned in Section 4.5.2 for the added security.

---

4.1.2.1. Adding a user to MySQL

This first thing you'll want to do is make sure you've given the "root" user a password as suggested in Section 4.5.2. Then, you need to add a user for Bugzilla to use. For clarity, these instructions will assume that your MySQL user for Bugzilla will be "bugs_user", the database will be called "bugs_db" and the password for the "bugs_user" user is "bugs_password". You should, of course, substitute the values you intend to use for your site.

Most people use "bugs" for both the user and database name. Don't use it for the password, though...

We use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs_user" user. This also restricts the "bugs_user" user to operations within a database called "bugs_db", 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.

mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,INDEX,ALTER,CREATE, DROP,REFERENCES ON bugs_db.* TO bugs_user@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'bugs_password'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

If you are using MySQL 4, the bugs user also needs to be granted the LOCK TABLES and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES permissions, so add them to the list in the GRANT command.

4.1.3. HTTP Server

You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is capable of running CGI scripts will work. Section 4.2 has more information about configuring web servers to work with Bugzilla.

We strongly recommend Apache as the web server to use. The Bugzilla Guide installation instructions, in general, assume you are using Apache. If you have got Bugzilla working using another webserver, please share your experiences with us by filing a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.

4.1.4. Bugzilla

You should untar the Bugzilla files into a directory that you're willing to make writable by the default web server user (probably "nobody"). You may decide to put the files in the main web space for your web server or perhaps in /usr/local with a symbolic link in the web space that points to the Bugzilla directory.

If you symlink the bugzilla directory into your Apache's html hierarchy, you may receive Forbidden errors unless you add the FollowSymLinks directive to the <Directory> entry for the HTML root directory in httpd.conf.

The default Bugzilla distribution is not designed to be placed in a cgi-bin directory (this includes any directory which is configured using the ScriptAlias directive of Apache).

Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that directory writable by your webserver's user. This is a temporary step until you run the post-install checksetup.pl script, which locks down your installation.

4.1.5. checksetup.pl

Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script. This is designed to check whether you have all of the right Perl modules in the correct versions, and that Bugzilla is generally set up correctly.

Eventually, it will make sure Bugzilla files and directories have reasonable permissions, set up the data directory, and create all the MySQL tables. But the first time you run it, it's highly likely to tell you that you are missing a few Perl modules. Make a note of which ones they are, and then proceed to the next section to install them.

bash# ./checksetup.pl
      

The first time you run it with all the correct modules installed, it will create a file called localconfig.

This file contains a variety of settings you may need to tweak including how Bugzilla should connect to the MySQL database.

The connection settings include:

1. server's host: just use "localhost" if the MySQL server is local

2. database name: "bugs_db" if you're following these directions

3. MySQL username: "bugs_user" if you're following these directions

4. Password for the "bugs_user" MySQL account; ("bugs_password" above)

Edit the file to change these. Once you are happy with the settings, su to the user your web server runs as, and re-run checksetup.pl. (Note: on some security-conscious systems, you may need to change the login shell for the webserver account before you can do this.) On this second run, it will create the database and an administrator account for which you will be prompted to provide information.

The checksetup.pl script is designed so that you can run it at any time without causing harm. You should run it after any upgrade to Bugzilla.

4.1.6. Perl Modules

Don't be intimidated by this long list of modules. See Section 4.1.6.1 for a way of installing all the ones you need with a single command.

Perl modules can be found using CPAN on Unix based systems or PPM on Win32.

Good instuctions can be found for using each of these services on their respective websites. The basics can be found in Example 4-1 for CPAN and Section 4.4.1.2 for PPM.

Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in "@INC". Virtually every time, this error is due to permissions being set too restrictively for you to compile Perl modules or not having the necessary Perl development libraries installed on your system. Consult your local UNIX systems administrator for help solving these permissions issues; if you are the local UNIX sysadmin, please consult the newsgroup/mailing list for further assistance or hire someone to help you out.

Perl Modules (minimum version):

1. Bundle::Bugzilla (Will allow you to skip the rest)

2. CGI (2.88)

3. Date::Format (2.21)

4. DBI (1.32)

5. DBD::mysql (2.1010)

6. File::Spec (0.82)

7. File::Temp (any)

8. Template Toolkit (2.08)

9. Text::Wrap (2001.0131)

1. GD (1.20) for bug charting

2. Chart::Base (0.99c) for bug charting

3. XML::Parser (any) for the XML interface

4. GD::Graph (any) for bug charting

5. GD::Text::Align (any) for bug charting

6. MIME::Parser (any) for the email interface

7. PatchReader (0.9.1) for pretty HTML view of patches

bash# perl -MCPAN -eshell              
cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.63)
ReadLine support enabled

cpan>

        

---

4.1.6.10. GD (1.20) [optional]

You need the GD library if you want any of the graphing to work.

The Perl GD library requires some other libraries that may or may not be installed on your system, including libpng and libgd. The full requirements are listed in the Perl GD library README. If compiling GD fails, it's probably because you're missing a required library.

The version of the GD perl module you need is very closely tied to the libgd version installed on your system. If you have a version 1.x of libgd the 2.x versions of the GD perl module won't work for you.

        CPAN Download Page: http://search.cpan.org/dist/GD/
        PPM Download Link: http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/6xx-builds-only/GD.zip
        Documentation: http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/GD/
      

4.1.7. Configuring Bugzilla

Once checksetup.pl has run successfully, Bugzilla should start up. Proceed to the correct URL and log in with the administrator account you defined in the last checksetup.pl run.

You should run through the parameters on the Edit Parameters page (link in the footer) and set them all to appropriate values. They key parameters are documented in Section 5.1.

4.2.1. Apache httpd

You will have to make sure that Apache is properly configured to run the Bugzilla CGI scripts. You also need to make sure that the .htaccess files created by ./checksetup.pl are allowed to override Apache's normal access permissions or else important password information may be exposed to the Internet.

You need to configure Apache to run .cgi files outside the cgi-bin directory. Open your httpd.conf file and make sure the following line exists and is uncommented:

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
        

To allow .htaccess files to override permissions and .cgi files to run in the Bugzilla directory, make sure the following two lines are in a Directory directive that applies to the Bugzilla directory on your system (either the Bugzilla directory or one of its parents).

Options +ExecCGI
AllowOverride Limit
        

You should modify the <DirectoryIndex> parameter for the Apache virtual host running your Bugzilla installation to allow index.cgi as the index page for a directory, as well as the usual index.html, index.htm, and so forth.

For more information on Apache and its directives, see the glossary entry on Apache.

4.2.2. Microsoft Internet Information Services

If you need, or for some reason even want, to use Microsoft's Internet Information Services or Personal Web Server you should be able to. You will need to configure them to know how to run CGI scripts, however. This is described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q245225 for Internet Information Services and Q231998 for Personal Web Server.

Also, and this can't be stressed enough, make sure that files such as localconfig and your data directory are secured as described in Section 4.5.4.

4.2.3. AOL Server

Ben FrantzDale reported success using AOL Server with Bugzilla. He reported his experience and what appears below is based on that.

AOL Server will have to be configured to run CGI scripts, please consult the documentation that came with your server for more information on how to do this.

Because AOL Server doesn't support .htaccess files, you'll have to create a TCL script. You should create an aolserver/modules/tcl/filter.tcl file (the filename shouldn't matter) with the following contents (change /bugzilla/ to the web-based path to your Bugzilla installation):

ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/localconfig filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/localconfig~ filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/\#localconfig\# filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/*.pl filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/syncshadowdb filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/runtests.sh filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/data/* filter_deny
ns_register_filter preauth GET /bugzilla/template/* filter_deny
                                                                                
proc filter_deny { why } {
    ns_log Notice "filter_deny"
    return "filter_return"
}
      

This probably doesn't account for all possible editor backup files so you may wish to add some additional variations of localconfig. For more information, see bug 186383 or Bugtraq ID 6501.

If you are using webdot from research.att.com (the default configuration for the webdotbase paramater), you will need to allow access to data/webdot/*.dot for the reasearch.att.com machine. If you are using a local installation of GraphViz, you will need to allow everybody to access *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, and *.map in the data/webdot directory.

4.3.1. Dependency Charts

As well as the text-based dependency graphs, Bugzilla also supports dependency graphing, using a package called 'dot'. Exactly how this works is controlled by the 'webdotbase' parameter, which can have one of three values:

1. A complete file path to the command 'dot' (part of GraphViz) will generate the graphs locally

2. A URL prefix pointing to an installation of the webdot package will generate the graphs remotely

3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.

So, to get this working, install GraphViz. If you do that, you need to enable server-side image maps in Apache. Alternatively, you could set up a webdot server, or use the AT&T public webdot server (the default for the webdotbase param). Note that AT&T's server won't work if Bugzilla is only accessible using HARTS.

4.3.2. Bug Graphs

As long as you installed the GD and Graph::Base Perl modules you might as well turn on the nifty Bugzilla bug reporting graphs.

Add a cron entry like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:

After two days have passed you'll be able to view bug graphs from the Bug Reports page.

4.3.3. The Whining Cron

By now you have a fully functional Bugzilla, but what good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make those bugs more annoying you can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at engineers which leave their bugs in the NEW state without triaging them.

This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry (for help on that see that crontab man page):

Depending on your system, crontab may have several manpages. The following command should lead you to the most useful page for this purpose: man 5 crontab

4.3.4. LDAP Authentication

LDAP authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication architecture.

The existing authentication scheme for Bugzilla uses email addresses as the primary user ID, and a password to authenticate that user. All places within Bugzilla where you need to deal with user ID (e.g assigning a bug) use the email address. The LDAP authentication builds on top of this scheme, rather than replacing it. The initial log in is done with a username and password for the LDAP directory. This then fetches the email address from LDAP and authenticates seamlessly in the standard Bugzilla authentication scheme using this email address. If an account for this address already exists in your Bugzilla system, it will log in to that account. If no account for that email address exists, one is created at the time of login. (In this case, Bugzilla will attempt to use the "displayName" or "cn" attribute to determine the user's full name.) After authentication, all other user-related tasks are still handled by email address, not LDAP username. You still assign bugs by email address, query on users by email address, etc.

Because the Bugzilla account is not created until the first time a user logs in, a user who has not yet logged is unknown to Bugzilla. This means they cannot be used as an assignee or QA contact (default or otherwise), added to any cc list, or any other such operation. One possible workaround is the bugzilla_ldapsync.rb script in the contrib directory. Another possible solution is fixing bug 201069.

Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:

4.3.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious Javascript code

It is possible for a Bugzilla attachment to contain malicious Javascript code, which would be executed in the domain of your Bugzilla, thereby making it possible for the attacker to e.g. steal your login cookies. Due to internationalization concerns, we are unable to incorporate by default the code changes necessary to fulfill the CERT advisory requirements mentioned in http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_mitigation.html/#3. If your installation is for an English speaking audience only, making the change below will prevent this problem.

Simply locate the following line in Bugzilla/CGI.pm:

$self->charset('');

and change it to:

$self->charset('ISO-8859-1');

4.3.6. Bugzilla and mod_perl

Bugzilla is unsupported under mod_perl. Effort is underway to make it work cleanly in a mod_perl environment, but it is slow going.

4.3.7. mod_throttle and Security

It is possible for a user, by mistake or on purpose, to access the database many times in a row which can result in very slow access speeds for other users. If your Bugzilla installation is experiencing this problem , you may install the Apache module mod_throttle which can limit connections by ip-address. You may download this module at http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/. Follow the instructions to install into your Apache install. This module only functions with the Apache web server! You may use the ThrottleClientIP command provided by this module to accomplish this goal. See the Module Instructions for more information.

4.4.1. Microsoft Windows

Making Bugzilla work on windows is still a painful processes. The Bugzilla Team is working to make it easier, but that goal is not considered a top priority. If you wish to run Bugzilla, we still recommend doing so on a Unix based system such as GNU/Linux. As of this writing, all members of the Bugzilla team and all known large installations run on Unix based systems.

If after hearing all that, you have enough pain tolerance to attempt installing Bugzilla on Win32, here are some pointers. Because this is a development version of the guide, these instructions are subject to change without notice. In fact, the Bugzilla Team hopes they do as we would like to have Bugzilla resonabally close to "out of the box" compatibility by the 2.18 release.

---

4.4.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32

Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in Section 4.1.6. The main difference is that windows uses PPM instead of CPAN.

C:\perl> ppm <module name>

The above syntax should work for all modules with the exception of Template Toolkit. The Template Toolkit website suggests using the instructions on OpenInteract's website.

A complete list of modules that can be installed using ppm can be found at http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus.

my $mysql_binaries = `which mysql`;
          

my $mysql_binaries = "D:\\mysql\\bin\\mysql";
          

my $webservergid = getgrnam($my_webservergroup)
          

my $webservergid = '8'
          

open(SENDMAIL, "|/usr/lib/sendmail $sendmailparam -t -i") ||
  die "Can't open sendmail";

print SENDMAIL trim($msg) . "\n";
close SENDMAIL;
          

use Net::SMTP;
my $smtp_server = 'smtp.mycompany.com';  # change this

# Use die on error, so that the mail will be in the 'unsent mails' and
# can be sent from the sanity check page.
my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($smtp_server) ||
  die 'Cannot connect to server \'$smtp_server\'';

$smtp->mail('bugzilla-daemon@mycompany.com');  # change this
$smtp->to($person);
$smtp->data();
$smtp->datasend($msg);
$smtp->dataend();
$smtp->quit;
          

---

4.4.1.4. Serving the web pages

As is the case on Unix based systems, any web server should be able to handle Bugzilla; however, the Bugzilla Team still recommends Apache whenever asked. No matter what web server you choose, be sure to pay attention to the security notes in Section 4.5.4. More information on configuring specific web servers can be found in Section 4.2.

If using Apache on windows, you can set the ScriptInterpreterSource directive in your Apache config, if you don't do this, you'll have to modify the first line of every script to contain your path to perl instead of /usr/bin/perl.

4.4.2. Mac OS X

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 use it to install the gd2 package.

It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to install all of the dependencies and then watch it work. You will then be able to use CPAN to install the GD perl module.

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 be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and /usr/local/include. When the Perl module config script asks where your libgd is, be sure to tell it /sw/lib.

Also available via Fink is expat. Once running using fink to install the expat package you will be able to install XML::Parser using CPAN. There is one caveat. Unlike recent versions of the GD module, XML::Parser doesn't prompt for the location of the required libraries. When using CPAN, you will need to use the following command sequence:

# perl -MCPAN -e'look XML::Parser'        
# perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include
# make; make test; make install           
# exit                                    
      

4.4.3. Linux-Mandrake 8.0

Linux-Mandrake 8.0 includes every required and optional library for Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is by using the urpmi utility. If you follow these commands, you should have everything you need for Bugzilla, and ./checksetup.pl should not complain about any missing libraries. You may already have some of these installed.

bash# urpmi perl-mysql
bash# urpmi perl-chart
bash# urpmi perl-gd
bash# urpmi perl-MailTools             
bash# urpmi apache-modules
      

4.5.1. TCP/IP Ports

TCP/IP defines 65,000 some ports for trafic. Of those, Bugzilla only needs 1, or 2 if you need to use features that require e-mail such as bug moving or the e-mail interface from contrib. You should audit your server and make sure that you aren't listening on any ports you don't need to be. You may also wish to use some kind of firewall software to be sure that trafic can only be recieved on ports you specify.

4.5.2. MySQL

MySQL ships by default with many settings that should be changed. By defaults it allows anybody to connect from localhost without a password and have full administrative capabilities. It also defaults to not have a root password (this is not the same as the system root). Also, many installations default to running mysqld as the system root.

1. Consult the documentation that came with your system for information on making mysqld run as an unprivleged user.

2. You should also be sure to disable the anonymous user account and set a password for the root user. This is accomplished using the following commands:

   bash$ mysql mysql mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE user = ''; mysql> UPDATE user SET password = password('new_password') WHERE user = 'root'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   From this point forward you will need to use mysql -u root -p and enter new_password when prompted when using the mysql client.

3. If you run MySQL on the same machine as your httpd server, you should consider disabling networking from within MySQL by adding the following to your /etc/my.conf:

   [myslqd] # Prevent network access to MySQL. skip-networking

4. You may also consider running MySQL, or even all of Bugzilla in a chroot jail; however, instructions for doing that are beyond the scope of this document.

4.5.3. Daemon Accounts

Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd and MySQL's mysqld default to running as either "root" or "nobody". Running as "root" introduces obvious security problems, but the problems introduced by running everything as "nobody" may not be so obvious. Basically, if you're running every daemon as "nobody" and one of them gets compromised, they all get compromised. For this reason it is recommended that you create a user account for each daemon.

You will need to set the webservergroup to the group you created for your webserver to run as in localconfig. This will allow ./checksetup.pl to better adjust the file permissions on your Bugzilla install so as to not require making anything world-writable.

4.5.4. Web Server Access Controls

There are many files that are placed in the Bugzilla directory area that should not be accessable from the web. Because of the way Bugzilla is currently laid out, the list of what should and should not be accessible is rather complicated.

Users of Apache don't need to worry about this, however, because Bugzilla ships with .htaccess files which restrict access to all the sensitive files in this section. Users of other webservers, read on.

• In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:

  • Block: *.pl, *localconfig*, runtests.sh

  • But allow: localconfig.js, localconfig.rdf

• In data:

  • Block everything

  • But allow: duplicates.rdf

• In data/webdot:

  • If you use a remote webdot server:

    • Block everything

    • But allow *.dot only for the remote webdot server

  • Otherwise, if you use a local GraphViz:

    • Block everything

    • But allow: *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, *.map

  • And if you don't use any dot:

    • Block everything

• In Bugzilla:

  • Block everything

• In template:

  • Block everything

You should test to make sure that the files mentioned above are not accessible from the Internet, especially your localconfig file which contains your database password. To test, simply point your web browser at the file; for example, to test mozilla.org's installation, we'd try to access http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig. You should get a 403 Forbidden error.

Not following the instructions in this section, including testing, may result in sensitive information being globally accessible.

You should check Section 4.2 to see if instructions have been included for your web server. You should also compare those instructions with this list to make sure everything is properly accounted for.

4.6.1. Bundle::Bugzilla makes me upgrade to Perl 5.6.1

Try executing perl -MCPAN -e 'install CPAN' and then continuing.

Certain older versions of the CPAN toolset were somewhat naive about how to upgrade Perl modules. When a couple of modules got rolled into the core Perl distribution for 5.6.1, CPAN thought that the best way to get those modules up to date was to haul down the Perl distribution itself and build it. Needless to say, this has caused headaches for just about everybody. Upgrading to a newer version of CPAN with the commandline above should fix things.

4.6.2. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed

The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql (over which the Bugzilla team have no control):

 DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site/lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
  SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)

To fix this, go to <path-to-perl>/lib/DBD/sponge.pm in your Perl installation and replace

 my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};

by

 my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};

(note the S added to NAME.)

4.6.3. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)

If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other distributions with "paranoid" security options, it is possible that the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error:

cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied

This is because your /var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of "drwx------". Type chmod 755 /var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this problem.

4.6.4. Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT

This is caused by a bug in the version of File::Temp that is distributed with perl 5.6.0. Many minor variations of this error have been reported. Examples can be found in Figure 4-2.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 208.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_EXLOCK, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 210.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_TEMPORARY, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 233.
        

Numerous people have reported that upgrading to version 5.6.1 or higher solved the problem for them. A less involved fix is to apply the patch in Figure 4-3. The patch is also available as a patch file.

--- File/Temp.pm.orig   Thu Feb  6 16:26:00 2003
+++ File/Temp.pm        Thu Feb  6 16:26:23 2003
@@ -205,6 +205,7 @@
     # eg CGI::Carp
     local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
     local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+    local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
     $bit = &$func();
     1;
   };
@@ -226,6 +227,7 @@
     # eg CGI::Carp
     local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
     local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+    local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
     $bit = &$func();
     1;
   };
        

5.2.1. Creating the Default User

When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will prompt you for the administrative username (email address) and password for this "super user". If for some reason you delete the "super user" account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you for this username and password.

If you wish to add more administrative users, add them to the "admin" group and, optionally, add edit the tweakparams, editusers, creategroups, editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the entire admin group to those groups.

5.2.2. Managing Other Users

6.1.1. What to Edit

The template directory structure is that there's a top level directory, template, which contains a directory for each installed localization. The default English templates are therefore in en. Underneath that, there is the default directory and optionally the custom directory. The default directory contains all the templates shipped with Bugzilla, whereas the custom directory does not exist at first and must be created if you want to use it.

There are two different ways of editing Bugzilla's templates, and which you use depends mainly on the method you plan to use to upgrade Bugzilla. The first method of making customizations is to directly edit the templates in template/en/default. This is probably the best method for small changes if you are going to use the CVS method of upgrading, because if you then execute a cvs update, any template fixes will get automagically merged into your modified versions.

If you use this method, your installation will break if CVS conflicts occur.

The other method is to copy the templates to be modified into a mirrored directory structure under template/en/custom. The templates in this directory automatically override those in default. This is the technique you need to use if you use the overwriting method of upgrade, because otherwise your changes will be lost. This method is also better if you are using the CVS method of upgrading and are going to make major changes, because it is guaranteed that the contents of this directory will not be touched during an upgrade, and you can then decide whether to continue using your own templates, or make the effort to merge your changes into the new versions by hand.

If you use this method, your installation may break if incompatible changes are made to the template interface. If such changes are made they will be documented in the release notes, provided you are using a stable release of Bugzilla. If you use using unstable code, you will need to deal with this one yourself, although if possible the changes will be mentioned before they occur in the deprecations section of the previous stable release's release notes.

Don't directly edit the compiled templates in data/template/* - your changes will be lost when Template Toolkit recompiles them.

It is recommended that you run ./checksetup.pl after any template edits, especially if you've created a new file in the custom directory.

6.1.2. How To Edit Templates

If you are making template changes that you intend on submitting back for inclusion in standard Bugzilla, you should read the relevant sections of the Developers' Guide.

The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of this guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current templates; or, you can read the manual, available on the Template Toolkit home page.

One thing you should take particular care about is the need to properly HTML filter data that has been passed into the template. This means that if the data can possibly contain special HTML characters such as <, and the data was not intended to be HTML, they need to be converted to entity form, ie &lt;. You use the 'html' filter in the Template Toolkit to do this. If you forget, you may open up your installation to cross-site scripting attacks.

Also note that Bugzilla adds a few filters of its own, that are not in standard Template Toolkit. In particular, the 'url_quote' filter can convert characters that are illegal or have special meaning in URLs, such as &, to the encoded form, ie %26. This actually encodes most characters (but not the common ones such as letters and numbers and so on), including the HTML-special characters, so there's never a need to HTML filter afterwards.

Editing templates is a good way of doing a "poor man's custom fields". For example, if you don't use the Status Whiteboard, but want to have a free-form text entry box for "Build Identifier", then you can just edit the templates to change the field labels. It's still be called status_whiteboard internally, but your users don't need to know that.

6.1.3. Template Formats

Some CGIs have the ability to use more than one template. For example, buglist.cgi can output bug lists as RDF or two different forms of HTML (complex and simple). (Try this out by appending &format=simple to a buglist.cgi URL on your Bugzilla installation.) This mechanism, called template 'formats', is extensible.

To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats, grep the CGI for "GetFormat". If it's not present, adding multiple format support isn't too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs, e.g. config.cgi.

To make a new format template for a CGI which supports this, open a current template for that CGI and take note of the INTERFACE comment (if present.) This comment defines what variables are passed into this template. If there isn't one, I'm afraid you'll have to read the template and the code to find out what information you get.

Write your template in whatever markup or text style is appropriate.

You now need to decide what content type you want your template served as. Open up the localconfig file and find the $contenttypes variable. If your content type is not there, add it. Remember the three- or four-letter tag assigned to you content type. This tag will be part of the template filename.

Save the template as <stubname>-<formatname>.<contenttypetag>.tmpl. Try out the template by calling the CGI as <cginame>.cgi?format=<formatname> .

6.1.4. Particular Templates

There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in customizing for your installation.

index.html.tmpl: This is the Bugzilla front page.

global/header.html.tmpl: This defines the header that goes on all Bugzilla pages. The header includes the banner, which is what appears to users and is probably what you want to edit instead. However the header also includes the HTML HEAD section, so you could for example add a stylesheet or META tag by editing the header.

global/banner.html.tmpl: This contains the "banner", the part of the header that appears at the top of all Bugzilla pages. The default banner is reasonably barren, so you'll probably want to customize this to give your installation a distinctive look and feel. It is recommended you preserve the Bugzilla version number in some form so the version you are running can be determined, and users know what docs to read.

global/footer.html.tmpl: This defines the footer that goes on all Bugzilla pages. Editing this is another way to quickly get a distinctive look and feel for your Bugzilla installation.

bug/create/user-message.html.tmpl: This is a message that appears near the top of the bug reporting page. By modifying this, you can tell your users how they should report bugs.

bug/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may wish to get bug submitters to give certain bits of structured information, each in a separate input widget, for which there is not a field in the database. The bug entry system has been designed in an extensible fashion to enable you to define arbitrary fields and widgets, and have their values appear formatted in the initial Description, rather than in database fields. An example of this is the mozilla.org guided bug submission form.

To make this work, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi (the default template, on which you could base it, is create.html.tmpl), and either call it create.html.tmpl or use a format and call it create-<formatname>.html.tmpl. Put it in the custom/bug/create directory. In it, add widgets for each piece of information you'd like collected - such as a build number, or set of steps to reproduce.

Then, create a template like custom/bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl, also named after your format if you are using one, which references the form fields you have created. When a bug report is submitted, the initial comment attached to the bug report will be formatted according to the layout of this template.

For example, if your enter_bug template had a field

<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">

and then your comment.txt.tmpl had

BuildID: [% form.buildid %]

then

BuildID: 20020303

would appear in the initial checkin comment.

6.1.5. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language

Bugzilla honours the user's Accept: HTTP header. You can install templates in other languages, and Bugzilla will pick the most appropriate according to a priority order defined by you. Many language templates can be obtained from http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Instructions for submitting new languages are also available from that location.

After untarring the localizations (or creating your own) in the $BUGZILLA_HOME/template directory, you must update the languages parameter to contain any localizations you'd like to permit. You may also wish to set the defaultlanguage parameter to something other than "en" if you don't want Engish to be the default language.

6.4.1. Bugzilla Database Basics

If you were like me, at this point you're totally clueless about the internals of MySQL, and if it weren't for this executive order from the Vice President you couldn't care less about the difference between a "bigint" and a "tinyint" entry in MySQL. I recommend you refer to the MySQL documentation . Below are the basics you need to know about the Bugzilla database. Check the chart above for more details.

1. To connect to your database:

   bash# mysql -u root

   If this works without asking you for a password, shame on you ! You should have locked your security down like the installation instructions told you to. You can find details on locking down your database in the Bugzilla FAQ in this directory (under "Security"), or more robust security generalities in the MySQL searchable documentation.

2. You should now be at a prompt that looks like this:

   mysql>

   At the prompt, if "bugs" is the name you chose in the localconfig file for your Bugzilla database, type:

   mysql use bugs;

6.5.1. 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. Bonsai also integrates with Tinderbox, the Mozilla automated build management system.

6.5.2. CVS

CVS integration is best accomplished, at this point, using the Bugzilla Email Gateway.

Follow the instructions in this Guide for enabling Bugzilla e-mail integration. Ensure that your check-in script sends an email to your Bugzilla e-mail gateway with the subject of "[Bug XXXX]", and you can have CVS check-in comments append to your Bugzilla bug. If you want to have the bug be closed automatically, you'll have to modify the contrib/bugzilla_email_append.pl script.

There is also a CVSZilla project, based upon somewhat dated Bugzilla code, to integrate CVS and Bugzilla through CVS' ability to email. Check it out at: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/~tonyg/.

6.5.3. 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.

6.5.4. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2

Tinderbox is a continuous-build system which can integrate with Bugzilla - see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tinderbox for details of Tinderbox, and http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi to see it in action.