path: root/README

This is Bugzilla.  See <http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/>.


        ==========
        DISCLAIMER
        ==========

  Bugzilla is not a package where you can just plop it in a directory,
twiddle a few things, and you're off.  Installing Bugzilla assumes you
know your variant of UNIX or Microsoft Windows well, are familiar with the
command line, and are comfortable compiling and installing a plethora
of third-party utilities.  To install Bugzilla on Win32 requires
fair Perl proficiency, and if you use a webserver other than Apache you
should be intimately familiar with the security mechanisms and CGI
environment thereof.

  Bugzilla has not undergone a complete security review. Security holes
may exist in the code.  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.


        ===========
        CONVENTIONS
        ===========


  Throughout this README and "The Bugzilla Guide" in the docs/ folder,
we use some writing conventions.  Bourne shell prompts are used
generically to indicate any shell.

    File Names                                    file.extension
    Directory Names                               directory/
    Commands to be typed                          <shell> command
    Prompt of user command under bash shell:      bash$
    Prompt of root user command under bash shell: bash#
    Prompt of user command under tcsh shell:      tcsh$
    Environment Variables                         VARIABLE
    Emphasized word                               *word* 


        ============
        INSTALLATION
        ============


0. Introduction

  Installation of bugzilla is pretty straightforward, particularly if your
machine already has MySQL and the MySQL-related perl packages installed.
If those aren't installed yet, then that's the first order of business.  The
other necessary ingredient is a web server set up to run cgi scripts.
While using Apache for your webserver is not required, it is recommended.

  Bugzilla has been successfully installed under Solaris, Linux, and
Win32. The peculiarities of installing on Win32 (Win98+/NT/2K) are not
included in this README; please consult the Bugzilla Guide for more
detailed Win32 installation instructions.

  The Bugzilla Guide is contained in the "docs/" folder.  It is available
in plain text (docs/txt), HTML (docs/html), or SGML source (docs/sgml).


1. Installing the Prerequisites

  The software packages necessary for the proper running of bugzilla are:

        1. MySQL database server and the mysql client (3.22.5 or greater)
        2. Perl (5.004 or greater)
        3. DBI Perl module 
        4. Data::Dumper Perl module
        5. DBD::mySQL 
        6. TimeDate Perl module collection
        7. GD perl module (1.8.3) (optional, for bug charting)
        8. Chart::Base Perl module (0.99c) (optional, for bug charting)
        9. DB_File Perl module (optional, for bug charting)
        10. The web server of your choice.  Apache is recommended.

  For the contrib/bug_email.pl interface, you also need:
        11.  MIME::Parser Perl module

  You must also run Bugzilla on a filesystem that supports file locking via
flock().  This is necessary for Bugzilla to operate safely with multiple
instances.

  It is a good idea, while installing Bugzilla, to ensure it is not
accessible from the Internet.  The machine may be vulnerable to attacks
while you are installing. 

1.1. Getting and setting up MySQL database (3.22.5 or greater)

  Visit MySQL homepage at http://www.mysql.org/ and grab the latest stable
release of the server.  Both binaries and source are available and which
you get shouldn't matter.  Be aware that many of the binary versions
of MySQL store their data files in /var which on many installations
(particularly common with linux installations) is part of a smaller
root partition.  If you decide to build from sources you can easily set
the dataDir as an option to configure.

  If you've installed from source or non-package (RPM, deb, etc.) binaries
you'll want to make sure to add mysqld to your init scripts so the server
daemon will come back up whenever your machine reboots.

  You also may want to edit those init scripts, to make sure that
mysqld will accept large packets.  By default, mysqld is set up to only
accept packets up to 64K long.  This limits the size of attachments you
may put on bugs.  If you add something like "-O max_allowed_packet=1M"
to the command that starts mysqld (or safe_mysqld), then you will be
able to have attachments up to about 1 megabyte.

  If you plan on running Bugzilla and MySQL on the same machine,
consider using the "--skip-networking" option in the init script.
This enhances security by preventing network access to MySQL.

1.2. Perl (5.004 or greater)

  Any machine that doesn't have perl on it is a sad machine indeed.  Perl
for *nix systems can be gotten in source form from http://www.perl.com.

  Perl is now a far cry from the the single compiler/interpreter binary it
once was.  It now includes a great many required modules and quite a
few other support files.  If you're not up to or not inclined to build
perl from source, you'll want to install it on your machine using some
sort of packaging system (be it RPM, deb, or what have you) to ensure
a sane install.  In the subsequent sections you'll be installing quite
a few perl modules; this can be quite ornery if your perl installation
isn't up to snuff.


  SHORTCUT:  You can skip the following Perl module installation
steps by installing "Bundle::Bugzilla" from CPAN, which includes them.
All Perl module installation steps require you have an active Internet
connection.

        bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Bundle::Bugzilla"'

  Bundle::Bugzilla doesn't include GD, Chart::Base, or MIME::Parser,
which are not essential to a basic Bugzilla install.  If installing
this bundle fails, you should install each module individually to
isolate the problem.


1.3. DBI Perl module

  The DBI module is a generic Perl module used by other database related
Perl modules.  For our purposes it's required by the MySQL-related
modules.  As long as your Perl installation was done correctly the
DBI module should be a breeze.  It's a mixed Perl/C module, but Perl's
MakeMaker system simplifies the C compilation greatly.

  Like almost all Perl modules DBI can be found on the Comprehensive Perl
Archive Network (CPAN) at http://www.cpan.org.  The CPAN servers have a
real tendency to bog down, so please use mirrors.  The current location
at the time of this writing (02/17/99) can be found in Appendix A.

  Quality, general Perl module installation instructions can be found on
the CPAN website, but the easy thing to do is to just use the CPAN shell
which does all the hard work for you.

To use the CPAN shell to install DBI:

        bash#  perl -MCPAN -e 'install "DBI"'
(replace DBI with the name of the module you wish to install, Data::Dumper,
etc...)

To do it the hard way:

        1. Untar the module tarball -- it should create its own directory
        2. Enter the following commands:
                perl Makefile.PL
                make
                make test
                make install

  If everything went ok that should be all it takes.  For the vast
majority of perl modules this is all that's required.

1.4 Data::Dumper Perl module

  The Data::Dumper module provides data structure persistence for Perl
(similar to Java's serialization).  It comes with later sub-releases of
Perl 5.004, but a re-installation just to be sure it's available won't
hurt anything.

  Data::Dumper is used by the MySQL related Perl modules.  It can be
found on CPAN (link in Appendix A) and can be installed by following
the same four step make sequence used for the DBI module.

1.5. MySQL related Perl module collection

  The Perl/MySQL interface requires a few mutually-dependent perl
modules.  These modules are grouped together into the the
Msql-Mysql-modules package.  This package can be found at CPAN (link
in Appendix A).  After the archive file has been downloaded it should
be untarred.

  The MySQL modules are all build using one make file which is generated
by running:

        perl Makefile.PL

  The MakeMaker process will ask you a few questions about the desired
compilation target and your MySQL installation.  For many of the questions
the provided default will be adequate.

  When asked if your desired target is the MySQL or mSQL packages
selected the MySQL related ones.  Later you will be asked if you wish
to provide backwards compatibility with the older MySQL packages; you
must answer YES to this question.  The default will be no, and if you
select it things won't work later.

  A host of 'localhost' should be fine and a testing user of 'test' and
a null password should find itself with sufficient access to run tests
on the 'test' database which MySQL created upon installation.  If 'make
test' and 'make install' go through without errors you should be ready
to go as far as database connectivity is concerned.

1.6. TimeDate Perl module collection

  Many of the more common date/time/calendar related Perl modules have
been grouped into a bundle similar to the MySQL modules bundle. This
bundle is stored on the CPAN under the name TimeDate.  A (hopefully
current) link can be found in Appendix A.  The component module we're
most interested in is the Date::Format module, but installing all of them
is probably a good idea anyway.  The standard Perl module installation
instructions should work perfectly for this simple package.

1.7. GD Perl module (1.8.3)

  The GD library was written by Thomas Boutell a long while ago to
programatically generate images in C.  Since then it's become almost a
defacto standard for programatic image construction.  The Perl bindings
to it found in the GD library are used on a million web pages to generate
graphs on the fly.  That's what bugzilla will be using it for so you'd
better install it if you want any of the graphing to work.
  Actually bugzilla uses the Graph module which relies on GD itself,
but isn't that always the way with OOP.  At any rate, you can find the
GD library on CPAN (link in Appendix A).  

  The latest version of the GD library can be found at:

   http://www.boutell.com/gd/

1.8. Chart::Base Perl module (0.99c)

  The Chart module provides bugzilla with on-the-fly charting
abilities.  It can be installed in the usual fashion after it has been
fetched from CPAN where it is found as the Chart-x.x... tarball in a
directory to be listed in Appendix A.  Note that as with the GD perl
module, only the specific versions listed above will work. Earlier
versions used GIF's, which are no longer supported by the latest
versions of GD.

1.9. HTTP server

  You have a freedom of choice here - Apache, Netscape or any other
server on UNIX would do.  You can easily run the web server on a different
machine than MySQL, but need to adjust the MySQL "bugs" user permissions
accordingly.

  You'll want to make sure that your web server will run any file
with the .cgi extension as a cgi and not just display it.  If you're using
apache that means uncommenting the following line in the srm.conf file:

        AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

  With apache you'll also want to make sure that within the access.conf
file the line:

        Options ExecCGI

is in the stanza that covers the directories you intend to put the
bugzilla .html and .cgi files into.

If you are using a newer version of Apache, both of the above lines will be
(or will need to be) in the httpd.conf file, rather than srm.conf or
access.conf.

There are two critical directories and a file that should not be a served by
the HTTP server. These are the 'data' and 'shadow' directories and the
'localconfig' file. You should configure your HTTP server to not serve
content from these files. Failure to do so will expose critical passwords
and other data. Please see your HTTP server configuration manual on how
to do this. If you use quips (at the top of the buglist pages) you will want
the 'data/comments' file to still be served. This file contains those quips.

2. Installing the Bugzilla Files

  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 off of the main web space
for your web server or perhaps off of /usr/local with a symbolic link
in the web space that points to the bugzilla directory.  At any rate,
just dump all the files in the same place (optionally omitting the CVS
directories if they were accidentally tarred up with the rest of Bugzilla)
and make sure you can access the files in that directory through your
web server.

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

  Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that
directory writable by your webserver's user (which may require just
making it world writable).  This is a temporary step until you run
the post-install "checksetup.pl" script, which locks down your
installation.
        
  Lastly, you'll need to set up a symbolic link from /usr/bonsaitools/bin
to the correct location of your perl executable (probably /usr/bin/perl).
Otherwise you must hack all the .cgi files to change where they look
for perl.  To make future upgrades easier, you should use the symlink
approach.

3. 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 a the back end to a high
quality bug tracker.

  First, you'll want to fix MySQL permissions to allow access from
Bugzilla.  For the purpose of this README, the Bugzilla username
will be "bugs", and will have minimal permissions.  Bugzilla has
not undergone a thorough security audit.  It may be possible for
a system cracker to somehow trick Bugzilla into executing a command
such as "; DROP DATABASE mysql".

  That would be bad.

  Give the MySQL root user a password.  MySQL passwords are
limited to 16 characters.

    bash$ mysql -u root mysql
    mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD ('new_password')
           WHERE user='root';
    mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  From this point on, if you need to access MySQL as the
MySQL root user, you will need to use "mysql -u root -p" and
enter your new_password.  Remember that MySQL user names have
nothing to do with Unix user names (login names).

  Next, we create the "bugs" user, and grant sufficient
permissions for checksetup.pl, which we'll use later, to work
its magic.  This also restricts the "bugs" user to operations
within a database called "bugs", 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.

  Remember to set bugs_password to some unique password.

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

  Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script.  (Many thanks to Holger
Schurig <holgerschurig@nikocity.de> for writing this script!)
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".


4. Tweaking 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" if you're following these directions
        3. MySQL username: "bugs" if you're following these directions
        4. Password for the "bugs" MySQL account in item 3.

  Once you are happy with the settings, re-run checksetup.pl.  On this
second run, it will create the database and an administrator account
for which you will be prompted to provide information.

  When logged into an administrator account once Bugzilla is running,
if you go to the query page (off of the bugzilla main menu), you'll
find an 'edit parameters' option that is filled with editable treats.

  Should everything work, you should have a nearly empty copy of the bug
tracking setup.

  The second time around, checksetup.pl will stall if it is on a
filesystem that does not fully support file locking via flock(), such as
NFS mounts.  This support is required for Bugzilla to operate safely with
multiple instances. If flock() is not fully supported, it will stall at:

  "Now regenerating the shadow database for all bugs."

  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.

5. Setting Up Maintainers Manually (Optional)

  If you want to add someone else to every group by hand, you can do it
by typing the appropriate MySQL commands.  Run 'mysql -u root -p bugs'
(you may need different parameters, depending on your security settings
according to section 3, above).  Then:

        mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7fffffffffffffff
               where login_name = 'XXX';

replacing XXX with the Bugzilla email address.

6. Setting Up the Whining Cron Job (Optional)

  By now you've got a fully functional bugzilla, but what good are bugs
if they're not annoying?  To help make those bugs more annoying you can
set up bugzilla's automatic whining system.  This can be done by adding
the following command as a daily crontab entry (for help on that see that
crontab man page):

        cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl

7. Bug Graphs (Optional)

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

        bash# crontab -e
  Adding this entry runs collectstats daily at 5 after midnight:
        5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl

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

8. Real security for MySQL

  If you followed the README for setting up your "bugs" and "root" user in
MySQL, much of this should not apply to you.  If you are upgrading
an existing installation of Bugzilla, you should pay close attention
to this section.

  MySQL has "interesting" default security parameters:
        mysqld defaults to running as root
        it defaults to allowing external network connections
        it has a known port number, and is easy to detect
        it defaults to no passwords whatsoever
        it defaults to allowing "File_Priv"
This means anyone from anywhere on the internet can not only drop the
database with one SQL command, and they can write as root to the system.

  To see your permissions do:
        > mysql -u root -p
        use mysql;
        show tables;
        select * from user;
        select * from db;

  To fix the gaping holes:
        DELETE FROM user WHERE User='';
        UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password') WHERE user='root';
        FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  If you're not running "mit-pthreads" you can use:
        GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@localhost;
        GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost;
        REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@localhost;
        FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  With "mit-pthreads" you'll need to modify the "globals.pl" Mysql->Connect
line to specify a specific host name instead of "localhost", and accept
external connections:
        GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
        GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
        REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@bounce.hop.com;
        FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  Consider also:
        o Turning off external networking with "--skip-networking",
          unless you have "mit-pthreads", in which case you can't.
          Without networking, MySQL connects with a Unix domain socket.

        o using the --user= option to mysqld to run it as an unprivileged
          user.

        o starting MySQL in a chroot jail

        o running the httpd in a jail

        o making sure the MySQL passwords are different from the OS
          passwords (MySQL "root" has nothing to do with system "root").

        o running MySQL on a separate untrusted machine

        o making backups ;-)



---------[ Appendices ]-----------------------

Appendix A. Required Software Download Links

  All of these sites are current as of February 17, 1999.  Hopefully
they'll stay current for a while.

MySQL: http://www.mysql.org

Perl: http://www.perl.org

CPAN: http://www.cpan.org

DBI Perl module: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/DBI/

Data::Dumper module:
        ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Data/

MySQL related Perl modules:
        ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Mysql/

TimeDate Perl module collection:
        ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Date/

GD Perl module: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/GD/

Chart::Base module:
        ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Chart/


Appendix B. Modifying Your Running System

  Bugzilla optimizes database lookups by storing all relatively static
information in the versioncache file, located in the data/ subdirectory
under your installation directory (we said before it needs to be writable,
right?!)

  If you make a change to the structural data in your database (the
versions table for example), or to the "constants" encoded in
defparams.pl, you will need to remove the cached content from the data
directory (by doing a "rm data/versioncache"), or your changes won't show
up!

  That file gets automatically regenerated whenever it's more than an
hour old, so Bugzilla will eventually notice your changes by itself, but
generally you want it to notice right away, so that you can test things.


Appendix C. Upgrading from previous versions of Bugzilla

  The developers of Bugzilla are constantly adding new tables, columns and
fields.  You'll get SQL errors if you just update the code.  The strategy
to update is to simply always run the checksetup.pl script whenever
you upgrade your installation of Bugzilla.  If you want to see what has
changed, you can read the comments in that file, starting from the end.


Appendix D. History

  This document was originally adapted from the Bonsai installation
instructions by Terry Weissman <terry@mozilla.org>.

  The February 25, 1999 re-write of this page was done by Ry4an Brase
<ry4an@ry4an.org>, with some edits by Terry Weissman, Bryce Nesbitt,
Martin Pool, & Dan Mosedale (But don't send bug reports to them!
Report them using bugzilla, at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi ,
project Webtools, component Bugzilla).

  This document was heavily modified again Wednesday, March 07 2001 to
reflect changes for Bugzilla 2.12 release by Matthew P. Barnson.  The
securing MySQL section should be changed to become standard procedure
for Bugzilla installations.

  Comments from people using this document for the first time are
especially welcomed.