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 :)