The Bugzilla Guide - 2.17.5 Development Release

Matthew P. Barnson

Jacob Steenhagen

The Bugzilla Team

2003-11-01


Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
2. Introduction
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
3. Using Bugzilla
3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?
3.2. Hints and Tips
3.3. User Preferences
4. Installation
4.1. Step-by-step Install
4.2. Optional Additional Configuration
4.3. OS Specific Installation Notes
4.4. HTTP Server Configuration
4.5. Troubleshooting
5. Administering Bugzilla
5.1. Bugzilla Configuration
5.2. User Administration
5.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
5.4. Voting
5.5. Groups and Group Security
5.6. Bugzilla Security
5.7. Template Customization
5.8. Change Permission Customization
5.9. Upgrading to New Releases
5.10. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. The Bugzilla Database
B.1. Modifying Your Running System
B.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
C. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
C.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
C.2. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
D. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
D.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
D.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
D.3. Issuezilla
D.4. Scarab
D.5. Perforce SCM
D.6. SourceForge
E. GNU Free Documentation License
0. PREAMBLE
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
2. VERBATIM COPYING
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
4. MODIFICATIONS
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8. TRANSLATION
9. TERMINATION
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents
Glossary
List of Figures
4-1. Set Max Packet Size in MySQL
4-2. Other File::Temp error messages
4-3. Patch for File::Temp in Perl 5.6.0
List of Examples
4-1. Installing perl modules with CPAN
4-2. .htaccess files for Apache
5-1. Upgrading using CVS
5-2. Upgrading using the tarball
5-3. Upgrading using patches

Chapter 1. About This Guide


1.2. Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples, and other content at your own risk. This document may contain errors and inaccuracies that may damage your system, cause your partner to leave you, your boss to fire you, your cats to pee on your furniture and clothing, and global thermonuclear war. Proceed with caution.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". We wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux in every situation where it is appropriate. It is an extremely versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an ideal operating environment for Bugzilla.

You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before installing Bugzilla and at regular intervals thereafter. If you implement any suggestion in this Guide, implement this one!

Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure that all easily-exploitable bugs or options are documented or fixed in the code, security holes surely exist. Great care should be taken both in the installation and usage of this software. Carefully consider the implications of installing other network services with Bugzilla. The Bugzilla development team members, Netscape Communications, America Online Inc., and any affiliated developers or sponsors assume no liability for your use of this product. You have the source code to this product, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to ensure your security needs are met.


1.3. New Versions

This is the 2.17.5 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to match the current version of Bugzilla. This version of the guide, like its associated Bugzilla version is a development version. Information is subject to change between now and when 2.18 is released. If you are reading this from any source other than those below, please check one of these mirrors to make sure you are reading an up-to-date version of the Guide.

The newest version of this guide can always be found at http://www.bugzilla.org; including documentation for past releases and the current development version.

The documentation for the most recent stable release of Bugzilla can also be found at The Linux Documentation Project.

The latest version of this document can always be checked out via CVS. Please follow the Mozilla CVS instructions and check out the mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ subtree.

The Bugzilla Guide is currently only available in English. If you would like to volunteer to translate it, please contact Dave Miller.


1.4. Credits

The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the creation of this Guide, through their writing, dedicated hacking efforts, numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall excellent contribution to the Bugzilla community:

Matthew P. Barnson

for the Herculaean task of pulling together the Bugzilla Guide and shepherding it to 2.14.

Terry Weissman

for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README upon which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.

Tara Hernandez

for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry left mozilla.org and for running landfill.

Dave Lawrence

for providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for Section D.1.

Dawn Endico

for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with Matthew's incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools

Jacob Steenhagen

for taking over documentation during the 2.17 development period.

Last but not least, all the members of the news://news.mozilla.org/netscape/public/mozilla/webtools newsgroup. Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.

Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions to this documentation (in alphabetical order): Andrew Pearson, Ben FrantzDale, Eric Hanson, Gervase Markham, Joe Robins, Kevin Brannen, Martin Wulffeld, Ron Teitelbaum, Spencer Smith, Zach Liption .


Chapter 2. Introduction


2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?

For many years, defect-tracking software has remained principally the domain of large software development houses. Even then, most shops never bothered with bug-tracking software, and instead simply relied on shared lists and email to monitor the status of defects. This procedure is error-prone and tends to cause those bugs judged least significant by developers to be dropped or ignored.

These days, many companies are finding that integrated defect-tracking systems reduce downtime, increase productivity, and raise customer satisfaction with their systems. Along with full disclosure, an open bug-tracker allows manufacturers to keep in touch with their clients and resellers, to communicate about problems effectively throughout the data management chain. Many corporations have also discovered that defect-tracking helps reduce costs by providing IT support accountability, telephone support knowledge bases, and a common, well-understood system for accounting for unusual system or software issues.

But why should you use Bugzilla?

Bugzilla is very adaptable to various situations. Known uses currently include IT support queues, Systems Administration deployment management, chip design and development problem tracking (both pre-and-post fabrication), and software and hardware bug tracking for luminaries such as Redhat, NASA, Linux-Mandrake, and VA Systems. Combined with systems such as CVS, Bonsai, or Perforce SCM, Bugzilla provides a powerful, easy-to-use solution to configuration management and replication problems.

Bugzilla can dramatically increase the productivity and accountability of individual employees by providing a documented workflow and positive feedback for good performance. How many times do you wake up in the morning, remembering that you were supposed to do something today, but you just can't quite remember? Put it in Bugzilla, and you have a record of it from which you can extrapolate milestones, predict product versions for integration, and follow the discussion trail that led to critical decisions.

Ultimately, Bugzilla puts the power in your hands to improve your value to your employer or business while providing a usable framework for your natural attention to detail and knowledge store to flourish.


Chapter 3. Using Bugzilla

3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?

This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There is a Bugzilla test installation, called Landfill, which you are welcome to play with (if it's up.) However, it does not necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled, and often runs cutting-edge versions of Bugzilla for testing, so some things may work slightly differently than mentioned here.


3.1.1. Create a Bugzilla Account

If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account. Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/.

  1. Click the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the spaces provided, then click "Create Account" .

  2. Within moments, you should receive an email to the address you provided above, which contains your login name (generally the same as the email address), and a password you can use to access your account. This password is randomly generated, and can be changed to something more memorable.

  3. Click the "Log In" link in the yellow area at the bottom of the page in your browser, enter your email address and password into the spaces provided, and click "Login".

You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies for authentication so, unless your IP address changes, you should not have to log in again.


3.1.2. Anatomy of a Bug

The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. Bug 1 on Landfill is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks; clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every installation of Bugzilla.

  1. Product and Component: Bugs are divided up by Product and Component, with a Product having one or more Components in it. For example, bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several Components:

    Administration: Administration of a Bugzilla installation.
    Bugzilla-General: Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans multiple components.
    Creating/Changing Bugs: Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
    Documentation: The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.
    Email: Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.
    Installation: The installation process of Bugzilla.
    Query/Buglist: Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the buglists.
    Reporting/Charting: Getting reports from Bugzilla.
    User Accounts: Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in, etc.
    User Interface: General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates, etc.

  2. Status and Resolution: These define exactly what state the bug is in - from not even being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the fix confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the context-sensitive help for those items.

  3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.

  4. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.

  5. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.

  6. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes and tags to a bug.

  7. *Keywords: The administrator can define keywords which you can use to tag and categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like crash and regression.

  8. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where the bug was found.

  9. Version: The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product which have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a Component have the particular problem the bug report is about.

  10. Priority: The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her bugs. It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.

  11. Severity: This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker ("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You can also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement request.

  12. *Target: (a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is to be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future Bugzilla versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not restricted to numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such as dates.

  13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.

  14. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.

  15. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there are any attachments, they are listed in this section.

  16. *Dependencies: If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed (depends on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their numbers are recorded here.

  17. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.

  18. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have something worthwhile to say.


3.1.3. Searching for Bugs

The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find any bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can play with it here: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/query.cgi.

The Search page has controls for selecting different possible values for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some fields, multiple values can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla returns bugs where the content of the field matches one of the selected values. If none is selected, then the field can take any value.

Once you've defined a search, you can either run it, or save it as a Remembered Query, which can optionally appear in the footer of your pages.

Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts.


3.1.4. Bug Lists

If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned. The default search is to return all open bugs on the system - don't try running this search on a Bugzilla installation with a lot of bugs!

The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed using the links at the bottom of the list:

Long Format: this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields of each bug.
Change Columns: change the bug attributes which appear in the list.
Change several bugs at once: If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their owner.
Send mail to bug owners: Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the list.
Edit this query: If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you can return to the Query page through this link and make small revisions to the query you just made so you get more accurate results.


3.1.5. Filing Bugs

Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your reading pleasure into the Bug Writing Guidelines. While some of the advice is Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible, Specific bugs, isolating the Product you are using, the Version of the Product, the Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were using at the time of the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes for the bug that bit you.

The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:

  1. Go to Landfill in your browser and click Enter a new bug report.

  2. Select a product - any one will do.

  3. Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If they are wrong, change them.

  4. Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.


3.1.6. Patch Viewer

Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that raw patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed to fix that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.

Patch viewer allows you to:

View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying to interpret the contents of the patch.
See the difference between two patches.
Get more context in a patch.
Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy reading.
Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or review
Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and cross-references for the part of the patch you are looking at
Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no matter what format it came from


3.2. Hints and Tips

This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have been developed.


3.2.1. Autolinkification

Bugzilla comments are plain text - so posting HTML will result in literal HTML tags rather than being interpreted by a browser. However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For example, the text http://www.bugzilla.org will be turned into http://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:

bug 12345
bug 23456, comment 53
attachment 4321
mailto:george@example.com
george@example.com
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
Most other sorts of URL

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


3.3. User Preferences

Once you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of Bugzilla via the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer. The preferences are split into four tabs:


Chapter 4. Installation

4.1. Step-by-step Install

Bugzilla has been successfully installed under many different operating systems including almost all Unix clones and Microsoft Windows. Many operating systems have utilities that make installation easier or quirks that make it harder. We have tried to collect that information in Section 4.3, so be sure to check out that section before you start your installation.

Note

Windows is one of those operating systems that has many quirks and is not yet officially supported by the Bugzilla team. If you wish to install Bugzilla on Windows, be sure to see Section 4.3.1.

Warning

While installing Bugzilla, it is a good idea to ensure that there is some kind of firewall between you and the rest of the Internet as your machine may be insecure for periods during the install. Many installation steps require an active Internet connection to complete, but you must take care to ensure that at no point is your machine vulnerable to an attack.

This guide assumes that you already have your operating system installed, network configured, and have administrative access to the shell on the machine you are installing Bugzilla onto. It is possible to install and run Bugzilla without administrative access, but you have to either make sure all the required software is installed or get somebody with administrative access to install it for you.

The listing below is a basic step-by-step list. More information can be found in the sections below. Minimum versions will be included in parenthesis where appropriate.


4.1.1. MySQL

Visit the MySQL homepage at http://www.mysql.com to grab and install the latest stable release of the server.

Note

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

If you install from something other than 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.

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 5.6.2 for the added security.


4.1.2. Perl

Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. 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, 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.


4.1.3. Perl Modules

Perl modules can be found using CPAN on Unix based systems or PPM on Win32. The root servers have a real tendency to bog down, so please use mirrors.

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 4.3.1.2 for PPM.

Example 4-1. Installing perl modules with CPAN

The easy way:

bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "<modulename>"'
          

Or the hard way:

bash# tar xzvf <module>.tar.gz     (1)
bash# cd <module>                  (2)
bash# perl Makefile.PL
bash# make
bash# make test
bash# make install
          

(1)
This assumes that you've already downloaded the <module>.tar.gz to the current working directory.
(2)
The process of untaring the module as defined in (1) will create the <module> directory.

Tip

Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in "@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. AppConfig (1.52)

  3. CGI (2.88)

  4. Data::Dumper (any)

  5. Date::Format (2.21)

  6. DBI (1.32)

  7. DBD::mysql (2.1010)

  8. File::Spec (0.82)

  9. File::Temp (any)

  10. Template Toolkit (2.08)

  11. Text::Wrap (2001.0131)

and, optionally:

  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


4.1.3.12. GD (1.20) [optional]

The GD library was written by Thomas Boutell a long while ago to programmatically generate images in C. Since then it's become the defacto standard for programmatic image construction. The Perl bindings to it found in the GD library are used on millions of web pages to generate graphs on the fly. That's what Bugzilla will be using it for so you must install it if you want any of the graphing to work.

Note

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

Tip

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/
      


4.1.4. HTTP Server

You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is capable of running CGI scripts will work. Section 4.4 has more information about configuring web servers to work with Bugzilla.

Note

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


4.1.5. Bugzilla

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

Tip

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

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

Caution

The default Bugzilla distribution is not designed to be placed in a cgi-bin directory (this includes any directory which is configured using the ScriptAlias directive of Apache). This will probably change as part of bug 44659.


4.1.6. Setting Up the MySQL Database

After you've gotten all the software installed and working you're ready to start preparing the database for its life as the back end to a high quality bug tracker.

This first thing you'll want to do is make sure you've given the "root" user a password as suggested in Section 5.6.2. 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.

Note

Most people use "bugs" for both the user and database name.

Next, we use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs_user" user, and grant sufficient permissions for checksetup.pl, which we'll use later, to work its magic. 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;
      

Note

If you are using MySQL 4, the bugs user also needs to be granted the LOCK TABLES and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES permissions.


4.1.7. checksetup.pl

Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script. (Many thanks to Holger Schurig for writing this script!) This script is designed to make sure your perl modules are the correct version and your MySQL database and other configuration options are consistent with the Bugzilla CGI files. It will make sure Bugzilla files and directories have reasonable permissions, set up the data directory, and create all the MySQL tables.


bash# ./checksetup.pl
      

The first time you run it, it will create a file called localconfig.

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

The connection settings include:

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

  2. database name: "bugs_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)

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

Note

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


4.2. Optional Additional Configuration

4.2.1. Dependency Charts

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

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

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

  3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.

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


4.2.4. LDAP Authentication

Note

LDAP authentication has been rewritten for the 2.18 release of Bugzilla. It no longer requires the Mozilla::LDAP module and now uses Net::LDAP instead. This rewrite was part of a larger landing that allowed for additional authentication schemes to be easily added (bug 180642).

This patch originally landed in 21-Mar-2003 and was included in the 2.17.4 development release.

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.

Caution

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

Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:

loginmethod

This parameter should be set to "LDAP" only if you will be using an LDAP directory for authentication. If you set this param to "LDAP" but fail to set up the other parameters listed below you will not be able to log back in to Bugzilla one you log out. If this happens to you, you will need to manually edit data/params and set loginmethod to "DB".

LDAPserver

This parameter should be set to the name (and optionally the port) of your LDAP server. If no port is specified, it assumes the default LDAP port of 389.

Ex. "ldap.company.com" or "ldap.company.com:3268"

LDAPbinddn [Optional]

Some LDAP servers will not allow an anonymous bind to search the directory. If this is the case with your configuration you should set the LDAPbinddn parameter to the user account Bugzilla should use instead of the anonymous bind.

Ex. "cn=default,cn=user:password"

LDAPBaseDN

The LDAPBaseDN parameter should be set to the location in your LDAP tree that you would like to search for e-mail addresses. Your uids should be unique under the DN specified here.

Ex. "ou=People,o=Company"

LDAPuidattribute

The LDAPuidattribute parameter should be set to the attribute which contains the unique UID of your users. The value retrieved from this attribute will be used when attempting to bind as the user to confirm their password.

Ex. "uid"

LDAPmailattribute

The LDAPmailattribute parameter should be the name of the attribute which contains the e-mail address your users will enter into the Bugzilla login boxes.

Ex. "mail"


4.2.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious Javascript code

It is possible for a Bugzilla to execute malicious Javascript code. Due to internationalization concerns, we are unable to incorporate the code changes necessary to fulfill the CERT advisory requirements mentioned in http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_mitigation.html/#3. Making the change below will fix the problem if your installation is for an English speaking audience.

Telling Bugzilla to output a charset as part of the HTTP header is much easier in version 2.18 and higher (including any cvs pull after 4-May-2003 and development release after 2.17.5) than it was in previous versions. Simply locate the following line in Bugzilla/CGI.pm:

    # Make sure that we don't send any charset headers
    $self->charset('');
      
and change it to:

    # Send all data using the ISO-8859-1 charset
    $self->charset('ISO-8859-1');
      

Note

Using <meta> tags to set the charset is not recommended, as there's a bug in Netscape 4.x which causes pages marked up in this way to load twice. See bug 126266 for more information including progress toward making bugzilla charset aware by default.


4.3. OS Specific Installation Notes

Many aspects of the Bugzilla installation can be affected by the the operating system you choose to install it on. Sometimes it can be made easier and others more difficult. This section will attempt to help you understand both the difficulties of running on specific operating systems and the utilities available to make it easier.

If you have anything to add or notes for an operating system not covered, please file a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.


4.3.1. Microsoft Windows

Making Bugzilla work on windows is still a very 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.


4.3.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32

Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in Section 4.1.3. The main difference is that windows uses PPM instead of CPAN.


C:\perl> ppm <module name>
        

Note

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.

Tip

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


4.3.1.3. Code changes required to run on win32

Unfortunately, Bugzilla still doesn't run "out of the box" on Windows. There is work in progress to make this easier, but until that happens code will have to be modified. This section is an attempt to list the required changes. It is an attempt to be all inclusive, but there may be other changes required. If you find something is missing, please file a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.


4.3.1.3.1. Changes to checksetup.pl

In checksetup.pl, the line reading:


my $mysql_binaries = `which mysql`;
          

to


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

And you'll also need to change:


my $webservergid = getgrnam($my_webservergroup)
          

to


my $webservergid = '8'
          

4.3.1.3.2. Changes to BugMail.pm

To make bug e-mail work on Win32 (until bug 84876 lands), the simplest way is to have Net::SMTP installed and change this (in Bugzilla/BugMail.pm):


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

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

to


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;
          

Don't forget to change the name of your SMTP server and the domain of the sending e-mail address (after the '@') in the above lines of code.


4.3.1.4. 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 5.6.4. More information on configuring specific web servers can be found in Section 4.4.

Note

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.


4.3.2. 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.

Note

To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and headers 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'        (1)
# perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include
# make; make test; make install           (2)
# exit                                    (3)
      
(1)(3)
The look command will download the module and spawn a new shell with the extracted files as the current working directory. The exit command will return you to your original shell.
(2)
You should watch the output from these make commands, especially "make test" as errors may prevent XML::Parser from functioning correctly with Bugzilla.

4.4. HTTP Server Configuration

The Bugzilla Team recommends Apache when using Bugzilla, however, any web server that can be configured to run CGI scripts should be able to handle Bugzilla. No matter what web server you choose, but especially if you choose something other than Apache, you should be sure to read Section 5.6.4.

The plan for this section is to eventually document the specifics of how to lock down permissions on individual web servers.


4.4.1. Apache httpd

As mentioned above, the Bugzilla Team recommends Apache for use with Bugzilla. 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 (shown in Example 4-2 for the curious) are allowed to override Apache's normal access permissions or else important password information may be exposed to the Internet.

Many Apache installations are not configured to run scripts anywhere but in the cgi-bin directory; however, we recommend that Bugzilla not be installed in the cgi-bin, otherwise the static files such as images and JavaScript will not work correctly. To allow scripts to run in the normal web space, the following changes should be made to your httpd.conf file.

To allow files with a .cgi extension to be run, 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
        

Note

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


4.4.3. 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"
}
      

Warning

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.

Note

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.


4.5. Troubleshooting

This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems.


4.5.2. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed

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

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

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

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

by

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

(note the S added to NAME.)


Chapter 5. Administering Bugzilla

5.1. Bugzilla Configuration

Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from the "Edit parameters" link in the page footer. Here are some of the key parameters on that page. You should run down this list and set them appropriately after installing Bugzilla.

  1. maintainer: The maintainer parameter is the email address of the person responsible for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The address need not be that of a valid Bugzilla account.

  2. urlbase: This parameter defines the fully qualified domain name and web server path to your Bugzilla installation.

    For example, if your Bugzilla query page is http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your "urlbase" to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/.

  3. makeproductgroups: This dictates whether or not to automatically create groups when new products are created.

  4. 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.

  5. shadowdb: You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla reaches a high level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only table-level write locking. What this means is that if someone needs to make a change to a bug, they will lock the entire table until the operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is complete. 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, 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.

  6. shutdownhtml: If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform administration, enter some descriptive HTML here and anyone who tries to use Bugzilla will receive a page to that effect. Obviously, editparams.cgi will still be accessible so you can remove the HTML and re-enable Bugzilla. :-)

  7. passwordmail: Every time a user creates an account, the text of this parameter (with substitutions) is sent to the new user along with their password message.

    Add any text you wish to the "passwordmail" parameter box. For instance, many people choose to use this box to give a quick training blurb about how to use Bugzilla at your site.

  8. 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.

  9. useqacontact: This allows you to define an email address for each component, in addition to that of the default owner, who will be sent carbon copies of incoming bugs.

  10. 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.

  11. 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).

  12. commenton*: All these fields allow you to dictate what changes can pass without comment, and which must have a comment from the person who changed them. Often, administrators will allow users to add themselves to the CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status Whiteboard without adding a comment as to their reasons for the change, yet require that most other changes come with an explanation.

    Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or reopen bugs at the very least.

    Note

    It is generally far better to require a developer comment when resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database users than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment as to what the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!)

  13. supportwatchers: Turning on this option allows users to ask to receive copies of all a particular other user's bug email. This is, of course, subject to the groupset restrictions on the bug; if the "watcher" would not normally be allowed to view a bug, the watcher cannot get around the system by setting herself up to watch the bugs of someone with bugs outside her privileges. They would still only receive email updates for those bugs she could normally view.


5.2. User Administration

5.2.1. Creating the Default User

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

Tip

If you wish to add more administrative users, 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

5.2.2.1. Creating new users

Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New Account" link at the bottom of each page (assuming they aren't logged in as someone else already.) However, should you desire to create user accounts ahead of time, here is how you do it.

  1. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query page, and then click "Add a new user".

  2. Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When done, click "Submit".

    Note

    Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts (watchers which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email addresses which are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to log out and use the "New Account" button to create users, as it will pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her account name and password.


5.2.2.2. Modifying Users

To see a specific user, search for their login name in the box provided on the "Edit Users" page. To see all users, leave the box blank.

You can search in different ways the listbox to the right of the text entry box. You can match by case-insensitive substring (the default), regular expression, or a reverse regular expression match, which finds every user name which does NOT match the regular expression. (Please see the man regexp manual page for details on regular expression syntax.)

Once you have found your user, you can change the following fields:


5.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration

5.3.1. Products

Products are the broadest category in Bugzilla, and tend to represent real-world shipping products. E.g. if your company makes computer games, you should have one product per game, perhaps a "Common" product for units of technology used in multiple games, and maybe a few special products (Website, Administration...)

Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis. The number of "votes" available to users is set per-product, as is the number of votes required to move a bug automatically from the UNCONFIRMED status to the NEW status.

To create a new product:

  1. Select "products" from the footer

  2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right

  3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description field may contain HTML.

Don't worry about the "Closed for bug entry", "Maximum Votes per person", "Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug", "Number of votes a bug in this Product needs to automatically get out of the UNCOMFIRMED state", and "Version" options yet. We'll cover those in a few moments.


5.5. Groups and Group Security

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.

On the product edit page, there is a page to edit the "Group Controls" for a product and determine which groups are applicable, default, and mandatory for each product as well as controlling entry for each product and being able to set bugs in a product to be totally read-only unless some group restrictions are met.

For each group, it is possible to specify if membership in that group is...

  1. required for bug entry,

  2. 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).

  3. 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).

  4. required in order to make any change to bugs in this product including comments.

To create Groups:

  1. Select the "groups" link in the footer.

  2. Take a moment to understand the instructions on the "Edit Groups" screen, then select the "Add Group" link.

  3. Fill out the "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".

    Warning

    The User Regexp is a perl regexp and, if not anchored, will match any part of an address. So, if you do not want to grant access into 'mycompany.com' to 'badperson@mycompany.com.hacker.net', use '@mycompany\.com$' as the regexp.

  4. 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.

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.


5.6. Bugzilla Security

Warning

Poorly-configured MySQL and Bugzilla installations have given attackers full access to systems in the past. Please take these guidelines seriously, even for Bugzilla machines hidden away behind your firewall. 80% of all computer trespassers are insiders, not anonymous crackers.

Note

These instructions must, of necessity, be somewhat vague since Bugzilla runs on so many different platforms. If you have refinements of these directions, please submit a bug to Bugzilla Documentation.

Warning

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of every possible security issue regarding the tools mentioned in this section. There is no subsitute for reading the information written by the authors of any software running on your system.


5.6.4. 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 layed out, the list of what should and should not be accessible is rather complicated. A new installation method is currently in the works which should solve this by allowing files that shouldn't be accessible from the web to be placed in directory outside the webroot. See bug 44659 for more information.

  • 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

Tip

Bugzilla ships with the ability to generate .htaccess files instructing Apache which files should and should not be accessible. For more information, see Section 4.4.1.

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.

Caution

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

Tip

You should check Section 4.4 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.


5.7. Template Customization

One of the large changes for 2.16 was the templatization of the entire user-facing UI, using the Template Toolkit. Administrators can now configure the look and feel of Bugzilla without having to edit Perl files or face the nightmare of massive merge conflicts when they upgrade to a newer version in the future.

Templatization also makes localized versions of Bugzilla possible, for the first time. As of version 2.17.4 which will soon become 2.18, it's possible to have Bugzilla's language determined by the user's browser. More information is available in Section 5.7.5.


5.7.1. What to Edit

There are two different ways of editing of Bugzilla's templates, and which you use depends mainly on how you upgrade Bugzilla. The template directory structure is that there's a top level directory, template, which contains a directory for each installed 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.

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

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

Note

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

Note

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


5.7.2. How To Edit Templates

The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of this guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current templates; or, you can read the manual, available on the Template Toolkit home page. However, you should particularly remember (for security reasons) to always HTML filter things which come from the database or user input, to prevent cross-site scripting attacks.

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

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

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

Note

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


5.7.4. 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/process/midair.html.tmpl: This is the page used if two people submit simultaneous changes to the same bug. The second person to submit their changes will get this page to tell them what the first person did, and ask if they wish to overwrite those changes or go back and revisit the bug. The default title and header on this page read "Mid-air collision detected!" If you work in the aviation industry, or other environment where this might be found offensive (yes, we have true stories of this happening) you'll want to change this to something more appropriate for your environment.

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

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

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

For example, if your enter_bug template had a field
<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">
and then your comment.txt.tmpl had
BuildID: [% form.buildid %]
then
BuildID: 20020303
would appear in the initial checkin comment.


5.7.5. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language

Begining in version 2.18 (first introduced in version 2.17.4), it's now possible to have the users web browser tell Bugzilla which language templates to use for each visitor (using the HTTP_ACCEPT header). For this to work, Bugzilla needs to have the correct language templates installed for the version of Bugzilla you are using. 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_Root]/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.


5.8. Change Permission Customization

Warning

This feature should be considered experimental; the Bugzilla code you will be changing is not stable, and could change or move between versions. Be aware that if you make modifications to it, you may have to re-make them or port them if Bugzilla changes internally between versions.

Companies often have rules about which employees, or classes of employees, are allowed to change certain things in the bug system. For example, only the bug's designated QA Contact may be allowed to VERIFY the bug. Bugzilla has been designed to make it easy for you to write your own custom rules to define who is allowed to make what sorts of value transition.

For maximum flexibility, customizing this means editing Bugzilla's Perl code. This gives the administrator complete control over exactly who is allowed to do what. The relevant function is called CheckCanChangeField(), and is found in process_bug.cgi in your Bugzilla directory. If you open that file and grep for "sub CheckCanChangeField", you'll find it.

This function has been carefully commented to allow you to see exactly how it works, and give you an idea of how to make changes to it. Certain marked sections should not be changed - these are the "plumbing" which makes the rest of the function work. In between those sections, you'll find snippets of code like:
    # Allow the owner to change anything.
    if ($ownerid eq $whoid) {
        return 1;
    }
It's fairly obvious what this piece of code does.

So, how does one go about changing this function? Well, simple changes can be made just be removing pieces - for example, if you wanted to prevent any user adding a comment to a bug, just remove the lines marked "Allow anyone to change comments." And if you want the reporter to have no special rights on bugs they have filed, just remove the entire section which refers to him.

More complex customizations are not much harder. Basically, you add a check in the right place in the function, i.e. after all the variables you are using have been set up. So, don't look at $ownerid before $ownerid has been obtained from the database. You can either add a positive check, which returns 1 (allow) if certain conditions are true, or a negative check, which returns 0 (deny.) E.g.:
    if ($field eq "qacontact") {
        if (Bugzilla->user->groups("quality_assurance")) {
            return 1;
        } 
        else {
            return 0;
        }
    }
This says that only users in the group "quality_assurance" can change the QA Contact field of a bug. Getting more weird:
    if (($field eq "priority") &&
        (Bugzilla->user->email =~ /.*\@example\.com$/))
    {
        if ($oldvalue eq "P1") {
            return 1;
        } 
        else {
            return 0;
        }
    }
This says that if the user is trying to change the priority field, and their email address is @example.com, they can only do so if the old value of the field was "P1". Not very useful, but illustrative.

For a list of possible field names, look in data/versioncache for the list called @::log_columns. If you need help writing custom rules for your organization, ask in the newsgroup.


5.9. Upgrading to New Releases

Warning

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.

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.

There are also three different methods to upgrade your installation.

  1. Using CVS (Example 5-1)

  2. Downloading a new tarball (Example 5-2)

  3. Applying the relevant patches (Example 5-3)

Which options are available to you may depend on how large a jump you are making and/or your network configuration.

Revisions are normally released to fix security vulnerabilities and are distinguished by an increase in the third number. For example, when 2.16.2 was released, it was a revision to 2.16.1.

Point releases are normally released when the Bugzilla team feels that there has been a significant amount of progress made between the last point release and the current time. These are often proceeded by a stabilization period and release candidates, however the use of development versions or release candidates is beyond the scope of this document. Point releases can be distinguished by an increase in the second number, or minor version. For example, 2.16.2 is a newer point release than 2.14.5.

The examples in this section are written as if you were updating to version 2.16.2. The procedures are the same regardless if you are updating to a new point release or a new revision. However, the chance of running into trouble increases when upgrading to a new point release, escpecially if you've made local changes.

These examples also assume that your Bugzilla installation is at /var/www/html/bugzilla. If that is not the case, simply substitute the proper paths where appropriate.


5.10. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools

5.10.1. Bonsai

Bonsai is a web-based tool for managing CVS, the Concurrent Versioning System . Using Bonsai, administrators can control open/closed status of trees, query a fast relational database back-end for change, branch, and comment information, and view changes made since the last time the tree was closed. Bonsai also integrates with Tinderbox, the Mozilla automated build management system.


5.10.3. 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.


Appendix A. The Bugzilla FAQ

This FAQ includes questions not covered elsewhere in the Guide.

1. General Questions
A.1.1. Where can I find information about Bugzilla?
A.1.2. What license is Bugzilla distributed under?
A.1.3. How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?
A.1.4. What major companies or projects are currently using Bugzilla for bug-tracking?
A.1.5. Who maintains Bugzilla?
A.1.6. How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking databases?
A.1.7. Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or compatibility with this other tracking software?
A.1.8. Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing Bugzilla run on Oracle/Sybase/Msql/PostgreSQL/MSSQL.
A.1.9. What is /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl?
A.1.10. My perl is not located at /usr/bin/perl, is there an easy way to change it everywhere it needs to be changed?
A.1.11. Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie name?
2. Managerial Questions
A.2.1. Is Bugzilla web-based, or do you have to have specific software or a specific operating system on your machine?
A.2.2. Can Bugzilla integrate with Perforce (SCM software)?
A.2.3. Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?
A.2.4. If I am on many projects, and search for all bugs assigned to me, will Bugzilla list them for me and allow me to sort by project, severity etc?
A.2.5. Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots, URLs etc)? If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?
A.2.6. Does Bugzilla allow us to define our own priorities and levels? Do we have complete freedom to change the labels of fields and format of them, and the choice of acceptable values?
A.2.7. Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics, graphs, etc? You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see. :)
A.2.8. Is there email notification and if so, what do you see when you get an email?
A.2.9. Can email notification be set up to send to multiple people, some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?
A.2.10. Do users have to have any particular type of email application?
A.2.11. Does Bugzilla allow data to be imported and exported? If I had outsiders write up a bug report using a MS Word bug template, could that template be imported into "matching" fields? If I wanted to take the results of a query and export that data to MS Excel, could I do that?
A.2.12. Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language to be used in other countries? Is it localizable?
A.2.13. Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in Word format? Excel format?
A.2.14. Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word, phrase, compound search?
A.2.15. Does Bugzilla provide record locking when there is simultaneous access to the same bug? Does the second person get a notice that the bug is in use or how are they notified?
A.2.16. Are there any backup features provided?
A.2.17. Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?
A.2.18. What type of human resources are needed to be on staff to install and maintain Bugzilla? Specifically, what type of skills does the person need to have? I need to find out if we were to go with Bugzilla, what types of individuals would we need to hire and how much would that cost vs buying an "Out-of-the-Box" solution.
A.2.19. What time frame are we looking at if we decide to hire people to install and maintain the Bugzilla? Is this something that takes hours or weeks to install and a couple of hours per week to maintain and customize or is this a multi-week install process, plus a full time job for 1 person, 2 people, etc?
A.2.20. Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using Bugzilla? Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as identified above?
3. Bugzilla Security
A.3.1. How do I completely disable MySQL security if it's giving me problems (I've followed the instructions in the installation section of this guide)?
A.3.2. Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?
A.3.3. I've implemented the security fixes mentioned in Chris Yeh's security advisory of 5/10/2000 advising not to run MySQL as root, and am running into problems with MySQL no longer working correctly.
4. Bugzilla Email
A.4.1. I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more email from Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?
A.4.2. I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send email to anyone but me. How do I do it?
A.4.3. I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more, or other than, only new bugs. How do I do it?
A.4.4. I don't like/want to use Procmail to hand mail off to bug_email.pl. What alternatives do I have?
A.4.5. How do I set up the email interface to submit/change bugs via email?
A.4.6. Email takes FOREVER to reach me from Bugzilla -- it's extremely slow. What gives?
A.4.7. How come email from Bugzilla changes never reaches me?
5. Bugzilla Database
A.5.1. I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?
A.5.2. I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid entries. What do I do?
A.5.3. I want to manually edit some entries in my database. How?
A.5.4. I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly, but Bugzilla still can't connect.
A.5.5. How do I synchronize bug information among multiple different Bugzilla databases?
6. Bugzilla and Win32
A.6.1. What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on Win32 (Win98+/NT/2K)?
A.6.2. Is there a "Bundle::Bugzilla" equivalent for Win32?
A.6.3. CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a valid Windows NT application" error. Why?
A.6.4. I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not being able to talk to to the database.
7. Bugzilla Usage
A.7.1. How do I change my user name (email address) in Bugzilla?
A.7.2. The query page is very confusing. Isn't there a simpler way to query?
A.7.3. I'm confused by the behavior of the "accept" button in the Show Bug form. Why doesn't it assign the bug to me when I accept it?
A.7.4. I can't upload anything into the database via the "Create Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?
A.7.5. How do I change a keyword in Bugzilla, once some bugs are using it?
A.7.6. Why can't I close bugs from the "Change Several Bugs at Once" page?
8. Bugzilla Hacking
A.8.1. What kind of style should I use for templatization?
A.8.2. What bugs are in Bugzilla right now?
A.8.3. How can I change the default priority to a null value? For instance, have the default priority be "---" instead of "P2"?
A.8.4. What's the best way to submit patches? What guidelines should I follow?

1. General Questions

http://bugzilla.org/consulting.html is a list of people and companies who have asked us to list them as consultants for Bugzilla.

http://www.collab.net/ offers Bugzilla as part of their standard offering to large projects. They do have some minimum fees that are pretty hefty, and generally aren't interested in small projects.

There are several experienced Bugzilla hackers on the mailing list/newsgroup who are willing to make themselves available for generous compensation. Try sending a message to the mailing list asking for a volunteer.

There are dozens of major companies with public Bugzilla sites to track bugs in their products. We have a fairly complete list available on our website at http://bugzilla.org/installation_list.html. If you have an installation of Bugzilla and would like to be added to the list, whether it's a public install or not, simply e-mail Gerv . Keep in mind that it's kinda difficult to get onto the "high-profile" list ;).

A core team, led by Dave Miller (justdave@bugzilla.org).

2. Managerial Questions

Note

Questions likely to be asked by managers. :-)

Yes. Look at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/report.cgi for samples of what Bugzilla can do in reporting and graphing.

If you can not get the reports you want from the included reporting scripts, it is possible to hook up a professional reporting package such as Crystal Reports using ODBC. If you choose to do this, beware that giving direct access to the database does contain some security implications. Even if you give read-only access to the bugs database it will bypass the secure bugs features of Bugzilla.

Bugzilla email is sent in plain text, the most compatible mail format on the planet.

Note

If you decide to use the bugzilla_email integration features to allow Bugzilla to record responses to mail with the associated bug, you may need to caution your users to set their mailer to "respond to messages in the format in which they were sent". For security reasons Bugzilla ignores HTML tags in comments, and if a user sends HTML-based email into Bugzilla the resulting comment looks downright awful.

Yes. For more information including available translated templates, see http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. The admin interfaces are still not included in these translated templates and is therefore still English only. Also, there may be issues with the charset not being declared. See bug 126226 for more information.

4. Bugzilla Email

If you are using an alternate MTA, make sure the options given in Bugzilla/BugMail.pm and any other place where sendmail is called from are correct for your MTA. You should also ensure that the sendmailnow param is set to on.

If you are using sendmail, try enabling sendmailnow in editparams.cgi.

5. Bugzilla Database

6. Bugzilla and Win32

7. Bugzilla Usage

8. Bugzilla Hacking

Try this link to view current bugs or requests for enhancement for Bugzilla.

You can view bugs marked for 2.18 release here. This list includes bugs for the 2.18 release that have already been fixed and checked into CVS. Please consult the Bugzilla Project Page for details on how to check current sources out of CVS so you can have these bug fixes early!

This is well-documented in bug 49862. Ultimately, it's as easy as adding the "---" priority field to your localconfig file in the appropriate area, re-running checksetup.pl, and then changing the default priority in your browser using "editparams.cgi".

  1. Enter a bug into bugzilla.mozilla.org for the "Bugzilla" product.

  2. Upload your patch as a unified diff (having used "diff -u" against the current sources checked out of CVS), or new source file by clicking "Create a new attachment" link on the bug page you've just created, and include any descriptions of database changes you may make, into the bug ID you submitted in step #1. Be sure and click the "Patch" checkbox to indicate the text you are sending is a patch!

  3. Announce your patch and the associated URL (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXXXX) for discussion in the newsgroup (netscape.public.mozilla.webtools). You'll get a really good, fairly immediate reaction to the implications of your patch, which will also give us an idea how well-received the change would be.

  4. If it passes muster with minimal modification, the person to whom the bug is assigned in Bugzilla is responsible for seeing the patch is checked into CVS.

  5. Bask in the glory of the fact that you helped write the most successful open-source bug-tracking software on the planet :)


Appendix B. The Bugzilla Database

Note

This document really needs to be updated with more fleshed out information about primary keys, interrelationships, and maybe some nifty tables to document dependencies. Any takers?


B.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction

This information comes straight from my life. I was forced to learn how Bugzilla organizes database because of nitpicky requests from users for tiny changes in wording, rather than having people re-educate themselves or figure out how to work our procedures around the tool. It sucks, but it can and will happen to you, so learn how the schema works and deal with it when it comes.

So, here you are with your brand-new installation of Bugzilla. You've got MySQL set up, Apache working right, Perl DBI and DBD talking to the database flawlessly. Maybe you've even entered a few test bugs to make sure email's working; people seem to be notified of new bugs and changes, and you can enter and edit bugs to your heart's content. Perhaps you've gone through the trouble of setting up a gateway for people to submit bugs to your database via email, have had a few people test it, and received rave reviews from your beta testers.

What's the next thing you do? Outline a training strategy for your development team, of course, and bring them up to speed on the new tool you've labored over for hours.

Your first training session starts off very well! You have a captive audience which seems enraptured by the efficiency embodied in this thing called "Bugzilla". You are caught up describing the nifty features, how people can save favorite queries in the database, set them up as headers and footers on their pages, customize their layouts, generate reports, track status with greater efficiency than ever before, leap tall buildings with a single bound and rescue Jane from the clutches of Certain Death!

But Certain Death speaks up -- a tiny voice, from the dark corners of the conference room. "I have a concern," the voice hisses from the darkness, "about the use of the word 'verified'."

The room, previously filled with happy chatter, lapses into reverential silence as Certain Death (better known as the Vice President of Software Engineering) continues. "You see, for two years we've used the word 'verified' to indicate that a developer or quality assurance engineer has confirmed that, in fact, a bug is valid. I don't want to lose two years of training to a new software product. You need to change the bug status of 'verified' to 'approved' as soon as possible. To avoid confusion, of course."

Oh no! Terror strikes your heart, as you find yourself mumbling "yes, yes, I don't think that would be a problem," You review the changes with Certain Death, and continue to jabber on, "no, it's not too big a change. I mean, we have the source code, right? You know, 'Use the Source, Luke' and all that... no problem," All the while you quiver inside like a beached jellyfish bubbling, burbling, and boiling on a hot Jamaican sand dune...

Thus begins your adventure into the heart of Bugzilla. You've been forced to learn about non-portable enum() fields, varchar columns, and tinyint definitions. The Adventure Awaits You!


B.2.1. Bugzilla Database Basics

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

  1. To connect to your database:

    bash# mysql -u root

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

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

    mysql>

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

    mysql use bugs;


B.2.1.1. Bugzilla Database Tables

Imagine your MySQL database as a series of spreadsheets, and you won't be too far off. If you use this command:

mysql> show tables from bugs;

you'll be able to see the names of all the "spreadsheets" (tables) in your database.

From the command issued above, ou should have some output that looks like this:

+-------------------+
| Tables in bugs    |
+-------------------+
| attachments       |
| bugs              |
| bugs_activity     |
| cc                |
| components        |
| dependencies      |
| fielddefs         |
| groups            |
| keyworddefs       |
| keywords          |
| logincookies      |
| longdescs         |
| milestones        |
| namedqueries      |
| products          |
| profiles          |
| profiles_activity |
| tokens            |
| versions          |
| votes             |
| watch             |
+-------------------+


  Here's an overview of what each table does. Most columns in each table have
descriptive names that make it fairly trivial to figure out their jobs.

attachments: This table stores all attachments to bugs. It tends to be your
largest table, yet also generally has the fewest entries because file
attachments are so (relatively) large.

bugs:  This is the core of your system. The bugs table stores most of the
current information about a bug, with the exception of the info stored in the
other tables.

bugs_activity:  This stores information regarding what changes are made to bugs
when -- a history file.

cc:  This tiny table simply stores all the CC information for any bug which has
any entries in the CC field of the bug. Note that, like most other tables in
Bugzilla, it does not refer to users by their user names, but by their unique
userid, stored as a primary key in the profiles table.

components: This stores the programs and components (or products and
components, in newer Bugzilla parlance) for Bugzilla. Curiously, the "program"
(product) field is the full name of the product, rather than some other unique
identifier, like bug_id and user_id are elsewhere in the database.

dependencies: Stores data about those cool dependency trees.

fielddefs:  A nifty table that defines other tables. For instance, when you
submit a form that changes the value of "AssignedTo" this table allows
translation to the actual field name "assigned_to" for entry into MySQL.

groups:  defines bitmasks for groups. A bitmask is a number that can uniquely
identify group memberships. For instance, say the group that is allowed to
tweak parameters is assigned a value of "1", the group that is allowed to edit
users is assigned a "2", and the group that is allowed to create new groups is
assigned the bitmask of "4". By uniquely combining the group bitmasks (much
like the chmod command in UNIX,) you can identify a user is allowed to tweak
parameters and create groups, but not edit users, by giving him a bitmask of
"5", or a user allowed to edit users and create groups, but not tweak
parameters, by giving him a bitmask of "6" Simple, huh?
  If this makes no sense to you, try this at the mysql prompt:
mysql> select * from groups;
  You'll see the list, it makes much more sense that way.

keyworddefs:  Definitions of keywords to be used

keywords: Unlike what you'd think, this table holds which keywords are
associated with which bug id's.

logincookies: This stores every login cookie ever assigned to you for every
machine you've ever logged into Bugzilla from. Curiously, it never does any
housecleaning -- I see cookies in this file I've not used for months. However,
since Bugzilla never expires your cookie (for convenience' sake), it makes
sense.

longdescs:  The meat of bugzilla -- here is where all user comments are stored!
You've only got 2^24 bytes per comment (it's a mediumtext field), so speak
sparingly -- that's only the amount of space the Old Testament from the Bible
would take (uncompressed, 16 megabytes). Each comment is keyed to the
bug_id to which it's attached, so the order is necessarily chronological, for
comments are played back in the order in which they are received.

milestones:  Interesting that milestones are associated with a specific product
in this table, but Bugzilla does not yet support differing milestones by
product through the standard configuration interfaces.

namedqueries:  This is where everybody stores their "custom queries". Very
cool feature; it beats the tar out of having to bookmark each cool query you
construct.

products:  What products you have, whether new bug entries are allowed for the
product, what milestone you're working toward on that product, votes, etc. It
will be nice when the components table supports these same features, so you
could close a particular component for bug entry without having to close an
entire product...

profiles:  Ahh, so you were wondering where your precious user information was
stored?  Here it is!  With the passwords in plain text for all to see! (but
sshh... don't tell your users!)

profiles_activity:  Need to know who did what when to who's profile?  This'll
tell you, it's a pretty complete history.

versions:  Version information for every product

votes:  Who voted for what when

watch:  Who (according to userid) is watching who's bugs (according to their
userid).


===
THE DETAILS
===

  Ahh, so you're wondering just what to do with the information above?  At the
mysql prompt, you can view any information about the columns in a table with
this command (where "table" is the name of the table you wish to view):

mysql> show columns from table;

  You can also view all the data in a table with this command:

mysql> select * from table;

  -- note: this is a very bad idea to do on, for instance, the "bugs" table if
you have 50,000 bugs. You'll be sitting there a while until you ctrl-c or
50,000 bugs play across your screen.

  You can limit the display from above a little with the command, where
"column" is the name of the column for which you wish to restrict information:

mysql> select * from table where (column = "some info");

  -- or the reverse of this

mysql> select * from table where (column != "some info");

  Let's take our example from the introduction, and assume you need to change
the word "verified" to "approved" in the resolution field. We know from the
above information that the resolution is likely to be stored in the "bugs"
table. Note we'll need to change a little perl code as well as this database
change, but I won't plunge into that in this document. Let's verify the
information is stored in the "bugs" table:

mysql> show columns from bugs

  (exceedingly long output truncated here)
| bug_status| enum('UNCONFIRMED','NEW','ASSIGNED','REOPENED','RESOLVED','VERIFIED','CLOSED')||MUL | UNCONFIRMED||

  Sorry about that long line. We see from this that the "bug status" column is
an "enum field", which is a MySQL peculiarity where a string type field can
only have certain types of entries. While I think this is very cool, it's not
standard SQL. Anyway, we need to add the possible enum field entry
'APPROVED' by altering the "bugs" table.

mysql> ALTER table bugs CHANGE bug_status bug_status
    -> enum("UNCONFIRMED", "NEW", "ASSIGNED", "REOPENED", "RESOLVED",
    -> "VERIFIED", "APPROVED", "CLOSED") not null;

    (note we can take three lines or more -- whatever you put in before the
semicolon is evaluated as a single expression)

Now if you do this:

mysql> show columns from bugs;

  you'll see that the bug_status field has an extra "APPROVED" enum that's
available!  Cool thing, too, is that this is reflected on your query page as
well -- you can query by the new status. But how's it fit into the existing
scheme of things?
  Looks like you need to go back and look for instances of the word "verified"
in the perl code for Bugzilla -- wherever you find "verified", change it to
"approved" and you're in business (make sure that's a case-insensitive search).
Although you can query by the enum field, you can't give something a status
of "APPROVED" until you make the perl changes. Note that this change I
mentioned can also be done by editing checksetup.pl, which automates a lot of
this. But you need to know this stuff anyway, right?


Appendix C. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla

Are you looking for a way to put your Bugzilla into overdrive? Catch some of the niftiest tricks here in this section.


C.2. Command-line Bugzilla Queries

There are a suite of Unix utilities for querying Bugzilla from the command line. They live in the contrib/cmdline directory. However, they have not yet been updated to work with 2.16 (post-templatisation.). There are three files - query.conf, buglist and bugs.

query.conf contains the mapping from options to field names and comparison types. Quoted option names are "grepped" for, so it should be easy to edit this file. Comments (#) have no effect; you must make sure these lines do not contain any quoted "option".

buglist is a shell script which submits a Bugzilla query and writes the resulting HTML page to stdout. It supports both short options, (such as "-Afoo" or "-Rbar") and long options (such as "--assignedto=foo" or "--reporter=bar"). If the first character of an option is not "-", it is treated as if it were prefixed with "--default=".

The column list is taken from the COLUMNLIST environment variable. This is equivalent to the "Change Columns" option when you list bugs in buglist.cgi. If you have already used Bugzilla, grep for COLUMNLIST in your cookies file to see your current COLUMNLIST setting.

bugs is a simple shell script which calls buglist and extracts the bug numbers from the output. Adding the prefix "http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=" turns the bug list into a working link if any bugs are found. Counting bugs is easy. Pipe the results through sed -e 's/,/ /g' | wc | awk '{printf $2 "\n"}'

Akkana Peck says she has good results piping buglist output through w3m -T text/html -dump


Appendix D. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors

I created this section to answer questions about Bugzilla competitors and variants, then found a wonderful site which covers an awful lot of what I wanted to discuss. Rather than quote it in its entirety, I'll simply refer you here: http://linas.org/linux/pm.html.


Appendix E. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.1, March 2000

Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.


1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".

A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.

The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".

Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.

The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.


3. COPYING IN QUANTITY

If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.

It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.


4. MODIFICATIONS

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

  1. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.

  2. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).

  3. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.

  4. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.

  5. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.

  6. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.

  7. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.

  8. Include an unaltered copy of this License.

  9. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.

  10. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

  11. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.

  12. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.

  13. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.

  14. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.

If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.


10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.

Glossary

A

Apache

In this context, Apache is the web server most commonly used for serving up Bugzilla pages. Contrary to popular belief, the apache web server has nothing to do with the ancient and noble Native American tribe, but instead derived its name from the fact that it was "a patchy" version of the original NCSA world-wide-web server.

Useful Directives when configuring Bugzilla

AddHandler

Tell Apache that it's OK to run CGI scripts.

AllowOverride, Options

These directives are used to tell Apache many things about the directory they apply to. For Bugzilla's purposes, we need them to allow script execution and .htaccess overrides.

DirectoryIndex

Used to tell Apache what files are indexes. If you can not add index.cgi to the list of valid files, you'll need to set $index_html to 1 in localconfig so ./checksetup.pl will create an index.html that redirects to index.cgi.

ScriptInterpreterSource

Used when running Apache on windows so the shebang line doesn't have to be changed in every Bugzilla script.

For more information about how to configure Apache for Bugzilla, see Section 4.4.1.

M

Message Transport Agent
(MTA)

A Message Transport Agent is used to control the flow of email on a system. Many unix based systems use sendmail which is what Bugzilla expects to find by default at /usr/sbin/sendmail. Many other MTA's will work, but they all require that the sendmailnow param be set to on.

MySQL

MySQL is currently the required RDBMS for Bugzilla. MySQL can be downloaded from http://www.mysql.com. While you should familiarize yourself with all of the documentation, some high points are:

Backup

Methods for backing up your Bugzilla database.

Option Files

Information about how to configure MySQL using my.cnf.

Privilege System

Much more detailed information about the suggestions in Section 5.6.2.

P

Perl Package Manager
(PPM)

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/PPM/

Product

A Product is a broad category of types of bugs, normally representing a single piece of software or entity. In general, there are several Components to a Product. A Product may define a group (used for security) for all bugs entered into its Components.

Perl

First written by Larry Wall, Perl is a remarkable program language. It has the benefits of the flexibility of an interpreted scripting language (such as shell script), combined with the speed and power of a compiled language, such as C. Bugzilla is maintained in Perl.