Bugzilla is configured by changing various parameters, accessed from the "Edit parameters" link in the page footer. Here are some of the key parameters on that page. You should run down this list and set them appropriately after installing Bugzilla. checklist maintainer: The maintainer parameter is the email address of the person responsible for maintaining this Bugzilla installation. The address need not be that of a valid Bugzilla account. urlbase: This parameter defines the fully qualified domain name and web server path to your Bugzilla installation. For example, if your Bugzilla query page is http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/query.cgi, set your urlbase to http://www.foo.com/bugzilla/. makeproductgroups: This dictates whether or not to automatically create groups when new products are created. useentrygroupdefault: Bugzilla products can have a group associated with them, so that certain users can only see bugs in certain products. When this parameter is set to on, this causes the initial group controls on newly created products to place all newly-created bugs in the group having the same name as the product immediately. After a product is initially created, the group controls can be further adjusted without interference by this mechanism. shadowdb: You run into an interesting problem when Bugzilla reaches a high level of continuous activity. MySQL supports only table-level write locking. What this means is that if someone needs to make a change to a bug, they will lock the entire table until the operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is complete. Note that more recent versions of mysql support row level locking using different table types. These types are slower than the standard type, and Bugzilla does not yet take advantage of features such as transactions which would justify this speed decrease. The Bugzilla team are, however, happy to hear about any experiences with row level locking and Bugzilla. The shadowdb parameter was designed to get around this limitation. While only a single user is allowed to write to a table at a time, reads can continue unimpeded on a read-only shadow copy of the database. Although your database size will double, a shadow database can cause an enormous performance improvement when implemented on extremely high-traffic Bugzilla databases. As a guide, on reasonably old hardware, mozilla.org began needing shadowdb when they reached around 40,000 Bugzilla users with several hundred Bugzilla bug changes and comments per day. The value of the parameter defines the name of the shadow bug database. You will need to set the host and port settings from the params page, and set up replication in your database server so that updates reach this readonly mirror. Consult your database documentation for more detail. shutdownhtml: If you need to shut down Bugzilla to perform administration, enter some descriptive 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. :-) 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. movebugs: This option is an undocumented feature to allow moving bugs between separate Bugzilla installations. You will need to understand the source code in order to use this feature. Please consult movebugs.pl in your Bugzilla source tree for further documentation, such as it is. useqacontact: This allows you to define an email address for each component, in addition to that of the default owner, who will be sent carbon copies of incoming bugs. usestatuswhiteboard: This defines whether you wish to have a free-form, overwritable field associated with each bug. The advantage of the Status Whiteboard is that it can be deleted or modified with ease, and provides an easily-searchable field for indexing some bugs that have some trait in common. whinedays: Set this to the number of days you want to let bugs go in the NEW or REOPENED state before notifying people they have untouched new bugs. If you do not plan to use this feature, simply do not set up the whining cron job described in the installation instructions, or set this value to "0" (never whine). commenton*: All these fields allow you to dictate what changes can pass without comment, and which must have a comment from the person who changed them. Often, administrators will allow users to add themselves to the CC list, accept bugs, or change the Status Whiteboard without adding a comment as to their reasons for the change, yet require that most other changes come with an explanation. Set the "commenton" options according to your site policy. It is a wise idea to require comments when users resolve, reassign, or reopen bugs at the very least. It is generally far better to require a developer comment when resolving bugs than not. Few things are more annoying to bug database users than having a developer mark a bug "fixed" without any comment as to what the fix was (or even that it was truly fixed!) supportwatchers: Turning on this option allows users to ask to receive copies of 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. noresolveonopenblockers: This option will prevent users from resolving bugs as FIXED if they have unresolved dependencies. Only the FIXED resolution is affected. Users will be still able to resolve bugs to resolutions other than FIXED if they have unresolved dependent bugs.

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

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. After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query page, and then click "Add a new user". Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When done, click "Submit". Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts (watchers which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email addresses which are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to log out and use the New Account button to create users, as it will pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her account name and password.

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

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

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

Milestones are "targets" that you plan to get a bug fixed by. For example, you have a bug that you plan to fix for your 3.0 release, it would be assigned the milestone of 3.0. Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned on the "usetargetmilestone" Param in the "Edit Parameters" screen. To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone URL: Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner. text Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative number (-255 to 255) that defines where in the list this particular milestone appears. This is because milestones often do not occur in alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be after "Release 1.2". Select "Add". From the Edit product screen, you can enter the URL of a page which gives information about your milestones and what they mean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bug flags are used to set a status on the bug itself. You can see Bug Flags in the Show Bug screen (editbug.cgi). Only users with the ability to edit the bug may set flags on bugs. This includes the owner, reporter, and any user with the editbugs permission.

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

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

This is the name of the flag. This will be displayed to Bugzilla users who are looking at or setting the flag. The name may consist of any valid Unicode character.

This describes the flag in more detail. At present, this doesn't whos up anywhere helpful; ideally, it would be nice to have it show up as a tooltip. This field can be as long as you like, and can contain any character you want.

Default behaviour for a newly-created flag is to appear on products and all components, which is why __Any__:__Any__ is already entered in the Inclusions box. If this is not your desired behaviour, you must either set some exclusions (for products on which you don't want the flag to appear), or you must remove __Any__:__Any__ from the Inclusions box and define products/components specifically for this flag. To create an Inclusion, select a Product from the top drop-down box. You may also select a specific component from the bottom drop-down box. (Setting __Any__ for Product translates to, all the products in this Bugzilla. Selecting __Any__ in the Component field means all components in the selected product.) Selections made, press Include, and your Product/Component pairing will show up in the Inclusions box on the right. To create an Exclusion, the process is the same; select a Product from the top drop-down box, select a specific component if you want one, and press Exclude. The Product/Component pairing will show up in the Exclusions box on the right. This flag will and can be set for any products/components that appearing in the Inclusions box (or which fall under the appropriate __Any__). This flag will not appear (and therefore cannot be set) on any products appearing in the Exclusions box. IMPORTANT: Exclusions override inclusions. You may select a Product without selecting a specific Component, but it is illegal to select a Component without a Product, or to select a Component that does not belong to the named Product. Doing so as of this writing (2.18rc3) will raise an error... even if all your products have a component by that name. Example: Let's say you have a product called Jet Plane that has thousands of components. You want to be able to ask if a problem should be fixed in the next model of plane you release. We'll call the flag fixInNext. But, there's one component in Jet Plane, called Pilot. It doesn't make sense to release a new pilot, so you don't want to have the flag show up in that component. So, you include Jet Plane:__Any__ and you exclude Jet Plane:Pilot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To edit a flag's properties, just click on the Edit link next to the flag's description. That will take you to the same form described in the Creating a Flag section.

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

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

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

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

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

On the product edit page, there is a page to edit the Group Controls for a product. This allows you to configure how a group relates to the product. Groups may be applicable, default, and mandatory as well as used to control entry or used to make bugs in the product totally read-only unless the group restrictions are met. For each group, it is possible to specify if membership in that group is... required for bug entry, Not applicable to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a default restriction for a member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on bugs in this product(Mandatory). Not applicable by non-members to this product(NA), a possible restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Shown), a default restriction for a non-member of the group to place on a bug in this product(Default), or a mandatory restriction to be placed on bugs in this product when entered by a non-member(Mandatory). required in order to make any change to bugs in this product including comments. These controls are often described in this order, so a product that requires a user to be a member of group "foo" to enter a bug and then requires that the bug stay resticted to group "foo" at all times and that only members of group "foo" can edit the bug even if they otherwise could see the bug would have its controls summarized by... foo: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY, CANEDIT

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

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

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

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. If the new version is a revision or a new point release How many, if any, local changes have been made There are also three different methods to upgrade your installation. Using CVS () Downloading a new tarball () Applying the relevant patches () 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 2.16.6 was released, it was a revision to 2.16.5. 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, 2.18.0 is a newer point release than 2.16.5. The examples in this section are written as if you were updating to version 2.18.1. 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. Every release of Bugzilla, whether it is a revision or a point release, is tagged in CVS. Also, every tarball we have distributed since version 2.12 has been primed for using CVS. This does, however, require that you are able to access cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port 2401. If you can do this, updating using CVS is probably the most painless method, especially if you have a lot of local changes. bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ cvs login Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401/cvsroot CVS password: anonymous bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_18_1 -dP P checksetup.pl P collectstats.pl P globals.pl P docs/rel_notes.txt P template/en/default/list/quips.html.tmpl If a line in the output from cvs update begins with a C that represents a file with local changes that CVS was unable to properly merge. You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla (or at least the portion using that file) will be usable. You also need to run ./checksetup.pl before your Bugzilla upgrade will be complete. If you are unable or unwilling to use CVS, another option that's always available is to download the latest tarball. This is the most difficult option to use, especially if you have local changes. bash$ cd /var/www/html bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.gz Output omitted bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.gz bugzilla-2.18.1/ bugzilla-2.18.1/.cvsignore bugzilla-2.18.1/1x1.gif Output truncated bash$ cd bugzilla-2.18.1 bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* . bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data . bash$ cd .. bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old bash$ mv bugzilla-2.18.1 bugzilla bash$ cd bugzilla bash$ ./checksetup.pl Output omitted The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important detail, it tells the shell that the destination directory is the current working directory. Also, the period at the beginning of the ./checksetup.pl is important and can not be omitted. You will now have to reapply any changes you have made to your local installation manually. The Bugzilla team will normally make a patch file available for revisions to go from the most recent revision to the new one. You could also read the release notes and grab the patches attached to the mentioned bug, but it is safer to use the released patch file as sometimes patches get changed before they get checked in. It is also theoretically possible to scour the fixed bug list and pick and choose which patches to apply from a point release, but this is not recommended either as what you'll end up with is a hodge podge Bugzilla that isn't really any version. This would also make it more difficult to upgrade in the future. bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff.gz Output omitted bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff.gz bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff patching file checksetup.pl patching file collectstats.pl patching file globals.pl If you do this, beware that this doesn't change the entires in your CVS directory so it may make updates using CVS () more difficult in the future.