The Bugzilla Guide
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4.2. User Administration

User administration is one of the easiest parts of Bugzilla. Keeping it from getting out of hand, however, can become a challenge.

4.2.1. Creating the Default User

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

Tip

If you wish to add more administrative users, you must use the MySQL interface. Run "mysql" from the command line, and use these commands ("mysql>" denotes the mysql prompt, not something you should type in): mysql> use bugs; mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7ffffffffffffff where login_name = "(user's login name)";

Yes, that is fourteen "f"'s. A whole lot of f-ing going on if you want to create a new administator.

4.2.2. Managing Other Users

4.2.2.1. Logging In

  1. Open the index.html page for your Bugzilla installation in your browser window.

  2. Click the "Query Existing Bug Reports" link.

  3. Click the "Log In" link at the foot of the page.

  4. Type your email address, and the password which was emailed to you when you created your Bugzilla account, into the spaces provided.

Congratulations, you are logged in!

4.2.2.2. Creating new users

Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New Account" link at the bottom of each page. However, should you desire to create user accounts ahead of time, here is how you do it.

  1. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query page.

  2. To see a specific user, type a portion of their login name in the box provided and click "submit". To see all users, simply click the "submit" button. You must click "submit" here to be able to add a new user.

    Tip

    More functionality is available via the list on the right-hand side of the text entry box. You can match what you type as a case-insensitive substring (the default) of all users on your system, a case-sensitive regular expression (please see the man regexp manual page for details on regular expression syntax), or a reverse regular expression match, where every user name which does NOT match the regular expression is selected.

  3. Click the "Add New User" link at the bottom of the user list

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

    Note

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

4.2.2.3. Disabling Users

I bet you noticed that big "Disabled Text" entry box available from the "Add New User" screen, when you edit an account? By entering any text in this box and selecting "submit", you have prevented the user from using Bugzilla via the web interface. Your explanation, written in this text box, will be presented to the user the next time she attempts to use the system.

Warning

Don't disable your own administrative account, or you will hate life!

At this time, "Disabled Text" does not prevent a user from using the email interface. If you have the email interface enabled, they can still continue to submit bugs and comments that way. We need a patch to fix this.

4.2.2.4. Modifying Users

Here I will attempt to describe the function of each option on the Edit User screen.

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