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<html>
<head>
<title>The Bugzilla FAQ v 0.2.4</title>
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#0000EE" vlink="#551A8B" alink="#FF0000">
<center>
<h1>
The Bugzilla FAQ v 0.2.4</h1></center>
The contents of this file are subject to the Mozilla Public License Version
1.1 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/">http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/</a>
. Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS
IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
<p>The Original Code is "The Bugzilla FAQ".
<p>The Initial Developer of the Original Code is AtHome Corporation. Portions
created by AtHome are Copyright © 1995-2000 AtHome Corporation. All
Rights Reserved. @Home, Excite@Home, @Work, and Excite are the trademarks
of At Home Corporation, and may be registered in certain jurisdictions
<p>Contributor(s):
<ul>
<li>
<a href="mailto:mbarnson@excitehome.net">Matthew P. Barnson</a></li>
<li>
<a href="mailto:terry@mozilla.org">Terry Weissman</a></li>
<li>
<a href="mailto:tara@tequilarista.org">Tara Hernandez</a></li>
<li>
Various contributors (you know who you are... thank you!)</li>
</ul>
Last change: June 7, 2000
<p>Changes:
<br>Version 0.2: Initial public release. (April 10, 2000)
<br>Version 0.2.1: Fixed formatting, released as HTML. Also corrected
incorrect fix for missing bugs from queries (it's syncshadowdb, not processmail)
and information about bugzilla maintainers (April 10,2000)
<br>Version 0.2.2: (May 15, 2000)
<ol>
<li>
Fixed mailto: links (they were showing up as "documents/"... weird)</li>
<li>
Added new sections:</li>
<ol>
<li>
API notes (such as it is)</li>
<li>
common feature requests</li>
<li>
more FAQ's</li>
<li>
Fixed several tpyos</li>
</ol>
<li>
Take into account recent submissions to the newsgroup</li>
<li>
Removed "Bugzilla Gotchas" section and integrated entries into "Bugzilla
Bugs"</li>
</ol>
<p><br>Version 0.2.4: (June 7, 2000)
<ol>
<li>
Added Dave Lawrence's excellent RedHat Bugzilla differences section verbatim.</li>
<li>
Added more information on Loki Bugzilla ("Fenris").</li>
<li>
Added questions from some corporate customers</li>
<li>
Removed unused text in API section</li>
<li>
Added information about other documentation (pending)</li>
<li>
Added a section for pointy-haired-bosses</li>
<li>
This will be the last release in strictly HTML format. Source will be SGML shortly, with
HTML and TXT versions included with the package from this point on</li>
</ol>
<p><br>Maintainer: <a href="mailto:mbarnson@excitehome.net">Matthew P.
Barnson</a>
<br>
<center>
<h2>
Table of Contents</h2></center>
<center><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a>
<br><a href="#BZGENERAL">BUGZILLA GENERAL</a>
<br><a href="#RHBZ">--redhat bugzilla</a>
<br><a href="#LOKIBZ">--loki bugzilla</a>
<br><a href="#PHB">--phb bugzilla</a>
<br><a href="#BZINSTALLATION">BUGZILLA INSTALLATION</a>
<br><a href="#BZCONFIGURATION">BUGZILLA CONFIGURATION</a>
<br><a href="#BZSECURITY">--security</a>
<br><a href="#BZEMAIL">--email</a>
<br><a href="#BZDATABASE">--database</a>
<br><a href="#BZNT">BUGZILLA and WINDOWS NT</a>
<br><a href="#BZUSE">BUGZILLA USE</a>
<br><a href="#BZKNOWNBUGS">BUGZILLA KNOWN BUGS</a>
<br><a href="#BZHACKING">BUGZILLA HACKING</a>
<br><a href="#BZAPI">--API</a></center>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2></center>
<center>or "And all this time we thought we were *reducing* the number
of bugs"</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<br>The Bugzilla FAQ has a new home! In addition to availability
via CVS and released versions 2.12 and higher of Bugzilla, you can find
the latest & greatest version of the FAQ at <a href="http://www.trilobyte.net/barnsons/">http://www.trilobyte.net/barnsons/</a>.
This is a living document; please be sure you are up-to-date with the latest
version before mirroring.
<p>The Bugzilla FAQ is designed to answer common user questions outside
the scope of the README file and supporting documentation in an easy "question
and answer" format. Where appropriate, this FAQ will refer to URLs rather
than including documents in their entirety to ensure completeness even
should this FAQ become out of date.
<p>This FAQ is not maintained by Netscape or Netscape employees, so please
do not contact them regarding errors or omissions contained herein. Please
direct all questions, comments, updates, flames, etc. to <a href="mailto:mbarnson@excitehome.net">Matthew
P. Barnson </a>(barnboy or barnhome on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools).
<p>I'm sure I've made some glaring errors or omissions in this paper --
please <a href="mailto:mbarnson@excitehome.net">email me</a> corrections
or post corrections to the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup.
<p>Bugzilla attracts very intelligent, competent people who need a good
bug-tracking system to support their projects, so I make a few assumptions
in this FAQ:
<ol>
<li>
You are using UNIX, or you use NT and have a high tolerance for pain.</li>
<li>
You are a competent systems administrator with a working knowledge of UNIX
shells, security, Apache or Netscape/iPlanet web server, Perl, and MySQL.</li>
<li>
You are not easily frustrated, and have a strong ability to figure out
answers to problems.</li>
</ol>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZGENERAL"></a>BUGZILLA GENERAL</h2></center>
<center>or "It's not a bug. It's a feature."</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Where can I find information about bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: You can stay up-to-date with the latest bugzilla information
at <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/">http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/</a>.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What license is Bugzilla distributed under?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Bugzilla is under the Mozilla Public License. See
details at <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/">http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/</a>
<p><b><i>Q:</i></b> <i>How do I get commercial support for Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: As far as I know, there are not yet any companies
that offer commercial Bugzilla support. However, I've heard there are consulting
companies that will install and maintain a Bugzilla installation for charge,
and would accept responsibility for its upkeep. I'm not sure which large
consulting firms do this yet -- I'm open to more contributions in this
area.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What major companies or projects are currently using
Bugzilla for bug-tracking?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: This is by no means a complete list, and is assembled
from contributions and about 10 minutes of searching on AltaVista. Contributions
welcome:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.netscape.com/">Netscape/AOL</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla.org</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.excitestores.com/">AtHome Corporation</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://fenris.lokigames.com/">Loki Entertainment Software</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.suse.com/">SuSe Corp</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.horde.org/">The Horde Project</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.eazel.com/">The Eazel Project</a></li>
</ul>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Who maintains Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: <a href="mailto:tara@tequilarista.org">Tara Hernandez</a>
is the current maintainer of Bugzilla. It was originally written and maintained
by <a href="mailto:terry@mozilla.org">Terry Weissman</a>, but he is no
longer heavily involved (Tara adds, "These days, <a href="mailto:terry@mozilla.org">Terry</a>
just hangs around and heckles"). The Quality Assurance contact for
Bugzilla, who makes sure we don't get too far out of line is <a href="mailto:matty@box.net.au">Matthew
Tuck</a>. You'll often hear from and about <a href="mailto:dmose@mozilla.org">Dan
Mosedale </a>and <a href="mailto:endico@mozilla.org">Dawn Endico</a>. Check
out their bios and responsibilities at <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/about.html">http://www.mozilla.org/about.html.</a>
They bear primary responsibility for keeping the current bugzilla.mozilla.org
site up-to-date, and have a vital interest in ensuring Bugzilla moves forward
(and doesn't break!)
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Why does Bugzilla use .png files instead of .gifs
for graphs?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Patent restrictions (see <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html</a>
for details). If you're using a recent version of the GD library and a
recent version of Bugzilla, this is no longer a FAQ.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How does Bugzilla stack up against other bug-tracking
databases?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: As far as I know, there have been no feature-by-feature
comparisons to other bug-tracking systems. However, here are some
primary reasons people cite for moving to Bugzilla:
<ol>
<li>
Customizability</li>
<li>
Maintainability (quick security fixes and trivial upgrades)</li>
<li>
Industry support (<a href="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL</a>, <a href="http://www.oracle.com/">Oracle</a>,
instead of custom little <a href="http://www.sqlcourse.com/">SQL</a> DB)</li>
<li>
Adherence to web standards (<a href="http://web.golux.com/coar/cgi/">CGI</a>,
<a href="http://www.perl.org/">Perl</a>,
SQL)</li>
<li>
Speed, proven on very large installations (<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/">bugzilla.mozilla.org</a>)</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.usenix.org/">UNIX</a>-based</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar.html">Open
Source</a>.</li>
<li>
Price. However, don't let price be the selling point of Bugzilla
-- it survives on its own merits.</li>
</ol>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I change my username in Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: If you are the administrator, open up editusers.cgi
and change the login name. Simple!
<p><i><b>Q</b>: Why doesn't Bugzilla offer this or that feature or compatability
with <insert cool tracking software here>?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Terry writes,
<blockquote>I wrote Bugzilla primarily for mozilla.org's use. It is a secondary
concern (but one still important to me) that it be of use to other folks,
too. So, rather than spend a lot of time making everything thoroughly portable
and easy to install, I just threw it over the wall, and prayed that random
developers would help pitch in and make things easier for everyone.(I'm
being a little hard on myself here. I *did* spend a week porting the whole
thing from TCL to Perl, just so that outside folk would have a chance of
using it. You shoulda seen it before...)</blockquote>
<b><font color="#FF0000">UPDATE</font></b>: Bugzilla is making tremendous
strides in usability, customizability, scalability, and user interfaces.
It is widely considered the most complete and popular open-source bug database
in existence. <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/bugs/source.html">Download
a copy today!</a>
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Why MySQL? I'm interested in seeing this run on
(insert "real" RDBMS name here)...</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Terry answers,
<blockquote>You're not the only one. But *I* am not very interested. I'm
not real SQL or database person. I just wanted to make a useful tool, and
build it on top of free software. So, I picked MySQL, and learned SQL by
staring at the MySQL manual and some code lying around here, and
<br>wrote Bugzilla. I didn't know that Enum's were non-standard SQL. I'm
not sure if I would have cared, but I didn't even know. So, to me, things
are "portable" because it uses MySQL, and MySQL is portable enough. I fully
understand (now) that people want to be portable to other databases, but
that's never been a real concern of mine.</blockquote>
<b><font color="#FF0000">UPDATE</font></b>: Looks like RedHat might land
changes real soon that will bring some more portability to Bugzilla.
However, they are in severe need of help. Please contact <a href="mailto:dkl@redhat.com">Dave
Lawrence</a> if you are interested in helping this effort.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Why do the scripts say "/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl"
instead of "/usr/bin/perl" or something else?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Mozilla.org uses /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl. The prime
rule in making submissions is "don't break bugzilla.mozilla.org". If it
breaks it, your patch will be reverted faster than you can do a diff.
Terry says:
<blockquote>Purely my own convention. I wanted a place to put a version
of Perl and other tools that was strictly under my control for the various
webtools, and not subject to anyone else. Edit it to point to whatever
you like.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="RHBZ"></a>Red Hat Bugzilla</h3>
</blockquote>
<p><br><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What about Red Hat Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: <a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</a> has a
(arguably more user-friendly/customizable/scalable buzzword here) version
of Bugzilla available. Check it out at <a href="http://bugzilla.redhat.com/">http://bugzilla.redhat.com
</a>and
the sources at <a href="ftp://people.redhat.com/dkl/">ftp://people.redhat.com/dkl/</a>.
They've set theirs up to work with Oracle out of the box. The buzz says
their changes will be landing in the source tree "real soon now".
Note that it is based primarily upon the 2.8 Bugzilla tree; Bugzilla has
made some tremendous advances since the 2.8 release. I recommend
you download the primary Bugzilla as well as Red Hat's to check out the
differences for yourself. Red Hat Bugzilla's maintainer, <a href="mailto:dkl@redhat.com">Dave
Lawrence</a>, when asked about landing the changes from the Red Hat fork,
notes,
<blockquote>Somebody needs to take the ball and run with it. I'm
the only maintainer and am very pressed for time.</blockquote>
<i><b>Q:</b> What are the primary benefits of Red Hat Bugzilla? (answer
by Dave Lawrence, of Red Hat)</i>
<br><i>A: </i>For the record, we are not using any template
type implementation for the cosmetic changes maded to Bugzilla. It
is just alot of html changes in the code itself. I admit I may have
gotten a little carried away with it but the corporate types asked
for a more standardized interface to match up with other projects
relating to Red Hat web sites. A lot of other web based internal tools
I am working on also look like Bugzilla.
<br> I do want to land the changes that I have made to Bugzilla
but I may have to back out a good deal and make a different version
of Red Hat's Bugzilla for checking in to CVS. Especially the cosmetic
changes because it seems they may not fit the general public.
I will do that as soon as I can. I also still do my regular QA responsibilities
along with Bugzilla so time is difficult sometimes to come by.
<br> There are also a good deal of other changes that were requested
by management for things like support contracts and different permission
groups for making bugs private. Here is a short list of the major
changes that have been made:
<ol>
<li>
No enum types. All old enum types are now separate smaller tables.</li>
<li>
No bit wise operations. Not all databases support this so they were changed
to a more generic way of doing this task.</li>
<li>
Bug reports can only be altered by the reporter, assignee, or a privileged
bugzilla user. The rest of the world can see the bug but in a non-changeable
format (unless the bug has been marked private). They can however
add comments, add and remove themselves from the CC list.</li>
<li>
Different group scheme. Each group has an id number related to it.
There is a user_group table which contains userid to groupid mappings to
determine which groups each user belongs to. Additionally there is
a bug_group table that has bugid to groupid mappings to show which groups
can see a particular bug. If there are no entries for a bug in this table
then the bug is public.</li>
<li>
Product groups. product_table created to only allow certain products to
be visible for certain groups in both bug entry and query. This was particulary
helpful for support contracts.</li>
<li>
Of course many (too many) changes to Bugzilla code itself to allow use
with Oracle and still allow operation with Mysql if so desired. Currently
if you use Mysql it is set to use Mysql's old permission scheme to keep
breakage to a minimum. Hopefully one day this will standardize on one style
which may of course be something completely different.</li>
<li>
Uses Text::Template perl module for rendering of the dynamic HTML pages
such as enter_bug.cgi, query.cgi, bug_form.pl, and for the header and footer
parts of the page. This allows the html to be separate from the perl code
for customizing the look and feel of the page to one's preference.</li>
<li>
There are many other smaller changes. There is also a port to Oracle
that I have been working on as time permits but is not completely</li>
<li>
finished but somewhat usable. I will merge it into our standard code
base when it becomes production quality. Unfortunately there will
have to be some conditionals in the code to make it work with other
than Oracle due to some differences between Oracle and Mysql. </li>
</ol>
Both the Mysql and Oracle versions of our current code base
are available from ftp://people.redhat.com/dkl. If Terry/Tara wants
I can submit patch files for all of the changes I have made and he
can determine what is suitable for addition to the main bugzilla cade
base. But for me to commit changes to the actual CVS I will need to
back out alot of things that are not suitable for the rest of the
Bugzilla community. I am open to suggestions.
<br>
<p>Q: What's the current status of Red Hat Bugzilla?
<br><font color="#FF0000">Update</font>: From Dave Lawrence (June 7 2000)
<blockquote>I suppose the current thread warrants an update on the status
of Oracle and bugzilla ;) We have now been running Bugzilla 2.8 on Oracle
for the last two days in our production environment. I tried to do as much
testing as possible with it before going live which is some of the reason
for the long delay. I did not get enough feedback as I would have liked
from internal developers to help weed out any bugs still left so I said
"Fine, i will take it live and then I will get the feedback I want :)"
So it is now starting to stabilize and it running quite well after working
feverishly the last two days fixing problems as soon as they came in from
the outside world. The current branch in cvs is up2date if anyone would
like to grab it and try it out. The oracle _setup.pl is broken right now
due to some last minute changes but I will update that soon. Therefore
you would probably need to create the database tables the old fashioned
way using the supplied sql creation scripts located in the ./oracle directory.
We have heavy optimizations in the database it self thanks to the in-house
DBA here at Red Hat so it is running quite fast. The database itself
is located on a dual PII450 with 1GB ram and 14 high voltage differential
raided scsi drives. The tables and indexes are partitioned in 4 chuncks
across the raided drive which is nice because when ever you need to do
a full table scan, it is actually starting in 4 different locations on
4 different drives simultaneously. And the indexes of course are on separate
drives from the data so that speeds things up tremendously. When
I can find the time I will document all that we have done to get this
thing going to help others that may need it.
<p>As Matt has mentioned it is still using out-dated code and with a
little help I would like to bring everything up to date for eventual
incorporation with the main cvs tree. Due to other duties I have with the
company any help with this wiould be appreciated. What we are using
now is what I call a best first effort. It definitely can be improved on
and may even need complete rewrites in a lot of areas. A lot of changes
may have to be made in the way Bugzilla does things currently to
make this transition to a more generic database interface. Fortunately
when making the Oracle changes I made sure I didn't do anything that
I would consider Oracle specific and could not be easily done with other
databases. Alot of the sql statements need to be broken up into smaller
utilities that themselves would need to make decisions on what database
they are using but the majority of the code can be made database neutral.
<h3>
<a NAME="LOKIBZ"></a>Loki Bugzilla (AKA: Fenris)</h3>
</blockquote>
<b><i><font color="#FF0000">Note: </font></i></b>This is based primarily
on a single email conversation with the first developer of Fenris, <a href="mailto:briareos@lokigames.com">Michael
Vance</a>. Maintenance of Fenris has since been handed off to <a href="mailto:raistlin@lokigames.com">Raphael
Barrerro</a> <raistlin@lokigames.com>.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>What about Loki Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Loki Games has a customized version of Bugzilla
available at <a href="http://fenris.lokigames.com/">http://fenris.lokigames.com</a>.
From that page,
<blockquote>You may have noticed that Fenris is a fork from Bugzilla--
our patches weren't suitable for integration --and a few people have expressed
interest in the code. Fenris has one major improvement over Bugzilla,
and that is individual comments are not appended onto a string blob, they
are stored as a record in a separate table. This allows you to, for instance,
separate comments out according to privilege levels in case your bug database
could contain sensitive information not for public eyes. We also provide
things like email hiding to protect user's privacy, additional fields such
as 'user_affected' in case someone enters someone else's bug, comment editing
and deletion, and more conditional system variables than Bugzilla does
(turn off attachments, qacontact, etc.).</blockquote>
<i><b>Q:</b> Are you interested in landing your [Fenris] changes
back in the main tree so Fenris can live on the tip again?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Sure, although many of them are probably obsolete
by now.
<p><b><i>Q:</i></b> <i>If so, when?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Well, if there's anything interesting, people
of course can just grab the code. I don't really maintain it anymore. We
have a real, honest to goodness sysadmin, Raphael Barrerro, who works on
it now. His email is raistlin@lokigames.com.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Main tree bugzilla changed for 2.10 to storing individual
comments in a separate table. Are there reasons for users to use
Fenris, based on Bugzilla 2.8, over main tree 2.10 or the current CVS version?
What are they?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> I have no idea :). IMNSHO, Bugzilla is an interesting
piece of software in that it has a lot of logic encoded into it that is
sometimes really cumbersome to some people, and then it doesn't have *enough*
logic in it for other people's tastes. If I were going to start over, I
would again try to use the CVS and get any changes I felt necessary integrated.
But for us, right now, it works fine, so we haven't bothered to really
change our setup.
<p><b><i>Q:</i></b> <i>What do you mean by "our patches weren't suitable
for integration" on your web page?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Basically, I did not know:
<ol>
<li>
Apache</li>
<li>
MySQL, or</li>
<li>
Perl</li>
</ol>
when I was charged with the task of getting our Bugzilla up and running.
Therefore I found it necessary to futz with a lot of things,
<br>mostly formatting of the Perl code, until I could understand what they
were doing. This resulted in lots of whitespace diff, and even when I created
a diff with -B (no whitespace), it still had too much crud in it. I also
hadn't written any migration scripts or anything. Terry didn't want to
bother with it, and that was cool with me. Terry and I had a really weird
conversation that I didn't quite understand, about us using CVS HEAD, etc.,
but I just didn't have the time/energy for something that already worked.
<br>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="PHB"></a>Pointy-Haired-Boss Questions</h3>
</blockquote>
<b><font color="#FF0000">Note</font></b>: The title of this section doesn't
mean you're a PHB -- it just means you probably HAVE a PHB who wants to
know this :)
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Is Bugzilla web-based or do you have to have specific
software or specific operating system on your machine?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> It is web and e-mail based. You can edit
bugs by sending specially formatted email to a properly configured Bugzilla,
or control via the web. Bugzilla works best with Netscape Navigator, but
works fine with IE (just some Javascript is disabled for IE).
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Has anyone you know of already done any Bugzilla
integration with Perforce (SCM software)?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Not to my knowledge -- but that would be a question
much better asked in the newsgroup (news://netscape.public.mozilla.webtools).
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Does Bugzilla allow the user to track multiple projects?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> It's not specifically a "project management
tool", although it does have some project management features, such as
the ability for a task/bug to "block" another task/bug. We use it
here at Excite@Home to track requests to our Network Operations Center,
software defects in our online inventories, requests for enhancement, quality
assurance, personnel tasks, and other things.
<br> So the answer is: Yes, it handles multiple projects very well.
When discussing Bugzilla with people who use it a lot, it's helpful to
refer to a "project" as a "product", individual areas of the project as
"components", and tasks as "bugs".
<p><i><b>Q:</b> 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?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> The heart of the Bugzilla system is the query
interface. Within that query interface, you can customize extremely
powerful queries to deliver exactly what you need. Once delivered,
you can sort by age (bug ID number), severity, priority, platform, owner,
current state, or current result (only for "resolved" bugs).
<br> You cannot sort a query by product/project at this time -- most
people consider the current options sufficient. We are trying very
hard to reduce complexity in Bugzilla. I'm personally involved in
a half-dozen products in Bugzilla, and routinely just sort by priority.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Does Bugzilla allow attachments (text, screenshots,
urls etc)? If yes, are there any that are NOT allowed?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Yes, it allows any kind of attachment.
However, if you do not have a MIME type defined for that kind of file in
your web *server*, the browser may klonk on you. URL's in comments
are automatically hyperlinked if they are properly formatted (http://www.somedomain.com),
but any HTML in a comment shows up as raw html, not the formatting you'd
expect. If someone refers to "bug #4444" it's automatically hyperlinked
to that bug in the existing database. It's pretty cool.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> 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?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> In part. Priority, severity, target milestones,
product names, and many many other fields are completely configurable.
However, at this time for certain types of changes you need someone who
knows some Perl and HTML -- not a lot, but enough to provide consistency
and be able to re-apply your customizations if you update your installation
of Bugzilla.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Does Bugzilla provide any reporting features, metrics,
graphs, etc? You know, the type of stuff that management likes to see.
:)</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Yes. Check out http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/reports.cgi
for some pre-cooked reports. The reports other than the pre-fab ones
that you can create are limited only by your imagination and experience
in Perl.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Is there email notification and if so, what do you
see when you get an email? Do you see bug number and title or is it only
the number?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> You can choose to see complete status of the
bug (using old email tech) or just the changes (using new email tech).
The subject is just the bug ID and short description of the bug, but the
content is very complete.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> If there is email notification, can it be set up
to send to multiple people, some on the To List, CC List, BCC List etc?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> You bet! By default, the person who reported
the bug, the person to whom the bug is assigned, and anyone on the CC list
for the bug will get email notification when anything regarding the bug
changes. You can also enable a "Q/A Contact" field that will assign
a default Q/A person to monitor the bug and ensure it's completed correctly
(we use this a lot and love it). The
<br>equivalent to a "BCC" list is a "watcher": someone who watches another
person's bugs (if they are out of town, whatever). We have several
of these people who need to see what bugs someone else is working on (team
leads, coding partners, etc.)
<p><i><b>Q: </b> If there is email notification, do users have to
have any particular type of email application? For example, our users have
a variety of email apps in use, like Outlook, Netscape Mail, Eudora etc.
Our system would need to work with just about anything.</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> The emails SENT from Bugzilla will work with
any mail reader that's reasonably current (newer than about 5 years old).
However, if you set up the email RECEPTION capabilities of Bugzilla, it's
important your users configure their mailreader to send mail as plain text
instead of HTML. HTML mail sent to Bugzilla looks horrible.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> If I just wanted to track certain bugs, as they go
through life, can I set it up to alert me via email whenever that bug changes,
whether it be owner, status or description etc.?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Yes. You could, for instance, set yourself
up as the default QA contact for all bugs in a certain component of a product,
and would be CC'd on every single bug that came into that component.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> 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?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> Rudimentary exporting ability is currently in
development, but is not ready for prime-time. Ditto for importing
data. However, it works against an industry-standard database (MySQL),
so anyone with a little SQL knowledge can create queries to import and
export any data they want. That's one of the reasons development
is going slow on import/export in Bugzilla: SQL already
<br>has it. It requires a certain level of familiarity with SQL though.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>Does Bugzilla allow fields to be added, changed or
deleted? If I want to customize the bug submission form to meet our needs,
can I do that using our terminology?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> This is really two questions in one.
<br> Bugzilla allows some fields to be added, changed, and deleted
with ease using the standard parameters. Realize, since you have
the code (and Bugzilla is really not terribly complicated), you can change
ANYTHING to behave however you want it. However, the more adjustments
you make to the code, the more painful your next upgrade will be as you
re-apply your custom
<br>patches. On the other hand, you can create your own HTML bug
submission form to make it look however you want. Check http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bug-form.html
for an example of what can be done creating a standard HTML bug submission
form. It makes some things much easier, and submitters never have
to have a clue what the actual names of your fields are -- just the people
who work with the bugs every day do.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Has anyone converted Bugzilla to another language
to be used in other countries? Is it localizable?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> There are efforts underway to allow easy indo-european
localization of Bugzilla, but i18n (Kanji, Chinese, etc.) are a long way
off. So, to answer your question, right now, no.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Can a user create and save reports? Can they do this in
Word format? Excel format?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Yes, no, and no.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Can a user re-run a report with a new project, same
query?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Yes.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Can a user modify an existing report and then save
it into another name?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> Umm... You'd save the report as HTML from
your browser. You can modify it however you want after that.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Does Bugzilla have the ability to search by word,
phrase, compound search?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> You can search by just about ANYTHING.
If you know basic boolean formatting, you can go completely crazy and do
things without even using the query interface (create your own custom query
in the location bar in your browser). We routinely search here by
descriptions, subjects, dates, users, reporters, projects, severity, priority,
and anything else that strikes our fancy.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Can the admin person establish separate group and
individual user privileges?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> Yes, using Bug Group Sentry. Right now,
it's not terribly granular, though: you can restrict users to editing bugs
assigned to them, reported by them, assigned to a particular product, etc.
but cannot restrict them based on product components, allow access to only
certain bugs outside their product, etc.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> 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?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> If someone has a bug open and another person
attempts to write to the bug, you get a "mid-air collision" error in Bugzilla.
the second person is told who currently has the existing record locked,
and is told he/she cannot commit the bug until they have finished editing
it. You can specify a timeout value (ours is 30 minutes) where it
will break locks on the database,
<br>assuming someone just left the edit screen up.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>Are there any backup features provided?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> You have the ability to lock all users out of
the database for backups via the Bugzilla interface or using MySQL itself.
Once you've locked people out of the database, use some backup utility
standard to your operating system.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Can users be on the system while a backup is in progress?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> If they make a change, you can end up with a
corrupt database on your backup tape. Bugzilla databases are relatively
small. We have over 5000 bugs in our database and a backup takes
about 45 seconds. We lock the MySQL database, copy the databases
over to a second hard drive, unlock the database, and that second hard
drive is covered by our standard backup procedures.
<br> You may wish to consider a robust backup solution, like ARCserveIT,
which will backup up open files by finding a time when it can lock the
file, copy it to memory, unlock it, and back it up. That product
is the "Open Files Agent", or OFA. That would allow you to never
have to down your database just to back it up -- but it's a good idea to
plan on a daily maintenance period in which it's backed up, for the time
when your database grows absolutely huge.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> 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.</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> My experience with "Out-of-the-Box" solutions
are these:
<ol>
<li>
They are very proprietary. Good luck getting data out of them into
something else unless you pay the company to create an export filter for
you.</li>
<li>
They generally have exhorbitant licensing fees.</li>
<li>
They tend to lock you in to a particular hardware or software platform</li>
<li>
They frequently cater much more to the management aspect of bug reporting
than using it as a day-to-day bug-tracking system. In other words,
managers/marketdroids love it, your programmers hate it.</li>
<li>
Forget interoperability with other programs.</li>
<li>
Many use sub-standard database management techniques. The commercial
solution I have in mind claims to have an "SQL database" when in fact they
wrote a small, crippled SQL query method to talk to a heirarchy of flat
text files.</li>
<li>
"Out-of-the-box" solutions just seem to suck most of the time. That's
just my opinion, though ;)</li>
</ol>
I'd recommend you hire a consultant to get Bugzilla working the
way you want, then it's "fire-and-forget". It takes virtually no
maintenance once it's up and running, if you don't wish to remain "on the
tip" of the latest development changes. However, finding a consultant
who already knows Bugzilla may be challenging, I think.
<br> If you want to hire someone to run it, I'd recommend someone
with strong UNIX systems administration skills and light Perl and HTML
skills. They don't need much Perl or HTML knowledge coming in --
Bugzilla is a pretty standard type of program to install, so a decent SysAdmin
can get it done easily. If you're using NT, you probably require
an NT admin with UNIX experience, very strong Perl skills, and light HTML
skills. Personally, I wouldn't hire someone JUST to maintain Bugzilla.
If you already have a network admin on staff, get him working on it.
A basic install requires 1-8 hours of work (depending on how familiar you
are with
<br>it). Setting up cool email gateways and tweaking configuration
parameters seems to suck up enormous amounts of time.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> 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?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> It's really hard to say -- it depends on the
level of commitment you want. If you want someone on-staff who's an absolute
expert on the system, plan on them working on it full-time for a week,
then 10 hours a week for a few months thereafter. If you just want
the thing to work and don't want to worry about how it works, just hire
that consultant for a week and call it
<br>good.
<br> Personally, I spend about 15 minutes a week maintaining our
installation Bugzilla. But since I'm the documentation person for
Bugzilla, I spend about 10 hours a week documenting, answering questions
like this, etc.
<br> If you get somebody to install Bugzilla, and they don't have
at least a basic installation mostly functional within a day on UNIX, or
within a week on NT, you probably should consider getting a different admin
to install it.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Is there any licensing fee or other fees for using
Bugzilla? Any out-of-pocket cost other than the bodies needed as identified
above?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> No, Bugzilla is free software (free as in speech
and free as in beer) licensed under the <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/">Mozilla
Public License</a>. However, depending on your level of expertise you may
wish to find a company that you can pay to maintain it for you if you really
need somebody to blame. MySQL, the database Bugzilla uses for
storage, asks for a licensing fee if you're going to use it for non-internal
commercial usage. The license is cheap (170 euro), but support can
be expensive depending on the level of support you desire. There
is also a version of Bugzilla available at http://bugzilla.redhat.com which
runs over top of Oracle; that's a pretty expensive product, but Oracle
support and proven scalability may be worth it to you.
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZINSTALLATION"></a>BUGZILLA INSTALLATION</h2></center>
<center>or "Divide by cucumber error. Please re-install universe
and reboot."</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<br><b><i>Q</b>: How do I download and install Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: The README included with Bugzilla documents the installation
procedures much more thoroughly than I can do here. You can always find
a current copy of the README in the distribution tarballs available at
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/">http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/
</a>.
This will eventually be documented in "The Bugzilla Installation Guide".
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I install Bugzilla on Windows NT?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: That question is complex enough it deserves
<a href="#BZNT">its
own section</a>, below.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>Is there an easy way to change the Bugzilla cookie
name?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: At present, no.
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZCONFIGURATION"></a>BUGZILLA CONFIGURATION</h2></center>
<center>or "make config. not war"</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<br>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="BZSECURITY"></a>SECURITY</h3>
</blockquote>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I completely disable MySQL security if
it's giving me problems (I've followed the instructions in the README!)?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Run mysql like this: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables".
Please remember this makes mysql as secure as taping a $100 to the floor
of a football stadium bathroom for safekeeping. Before you plan to
put Bugzilla up for general consumption, you REALLY need to become familiar
with <a href="http://www.mysql.com/Manual_chapter/manual_Privilege_system.html#Privilege_system">MySQL
security</a>.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Are there any security problems with Bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Prior to 2.10, yes. For 2.10 and later, probably,
but we haven't discovered them yet.. You should upgrade to 2.10 and use
the following instructions from Chris Yeh's security advisory of 5/10/2000
if you are running a previous version of bugzilla. Chances are good a lot
of these permissions issues will make it into checksetup.pl.
<br>It is recommended that you closely examine permissions on your Bugzilla
installation. Make sure you are not running mysqld as root. Included is
one person's examination of their local Bugzilla installation, and how
they secured it:
<p><tt><pre><font size=-1> I closed-up some of the all-writeable files
and directories. The code itself had to be modified to keep it from making
directories and files world-writeable again... Once this was done, I felt
confident that this install of bugzilla was running securely. (We don't
run ftp, and mysql doesn't run as root). The setup we have is that apache
runs as user 'nobody'. Directories being written into via CGI are therefore
owner.group==nobody.nobody and only read/writable by user nobody, not world-writeable
as before ... The *.cgi/*.pl/etc scripts (source) are owned by root.root
and we can prevent CGI execution and HTTPD reading of the scripts by doing
chmod go-rwx.... Finally, we prevent reading of the writeable directories
by HTTP. (The security of this could further be improved by running bugzilla
as user 'bugzilla' with same privs as 'nobody' but at least a different
user than the webserver). I did the following to secure our install:</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(1) cd /home/httpd/bugzilla ensure all files owned
root.root (other than ones in 'shadow' and 'data').</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(2) chmod go-rwx backdoor.cgi ; chmod go-rwx *.sh
; chmod go-rwx printenv.cgi ; chmod go-rwx 0CGI.pl ; chmod go-rwx *~* ;
chown -R nobody.nobody data ; chmod -R go-rwx data ; chown -R nobody.nobody
shadow ; chmod -R go-rwx shadow</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(3) in emacs, in *.pl and *.cgi and processmail in
bugzilla dir</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(etags *.cgi *.pl processmail) ... do: (tags-query-replace
"umask 0" "umask 077" nil)</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(tags-query-replace "umask(0)" "umask(077)" nil)</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(tags-query-replace "0777" "0700" nil)</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(tags-query-replace "0666" "0600" nil)</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(4) re-enable bugzilla with /home/httpd/bug-track.conf
set to:</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>--------------------</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>AddHandler cgi-script .cgi</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>#</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1># setup ExecCGI'able directory alias from which we
run</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1># "bugzilla" under URL "bugs"</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>#</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Alias /bugs/ "/home/httpd/bugzilla/"</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1><Directory "/home/httpd/bugzilla"></font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Options Indexes ExecCGI</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>AllowOverride None</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Order allow,deny</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Allow from all</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1></Directory></font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>--------------------</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>(5) add to /home/httpd/bug-track.conf (prevent cgi
from being</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>written into data or shadow directories, and prevent
contents from</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>being read):</font></tt>
<p><tt><font size=-1>--------------------</font></tt>
<p><tt><font size=-1><Directory "/home/httpd/bugzilla/data"></font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Options None</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>AllowOverride None</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Deny from all</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1></Directory></font></tt>
<p><tt><font size=-1><Directory "/home/httpd/bugzilla/shadow"></font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Options None</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>AllowOverride None</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>Deny from all</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1></Directory></font></tt>
<p><tt><font size=-1>--------------------</font></tt>
<p><tt><font size=-1>(6) I noticed that my non-superuser-$PATH had wound
up in apache's GGI</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>environment... that $PATH included "." so that could
have been a security-exploit-in-waiting right there... so remember, when
restarting apache on servers, do (in tcsh anyways):</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>unsetenv *</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>prior to doing</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>apachectl stop</font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1><wait></font></tt>
<br><tt><font size=-1>apachectl start</font></tt>
</pre>
<p><i><b>Q</b>: 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.</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Mozilla.org had a problem getting enough file descriptors
once they stopped running mysql as root; they have many tables in their
database and had "shadowdb" turned on, which doubles the number of tables.
Terry mentioned in IRC: "I added the line "ulimit -n unlimited" to the
/bin/sh script in /etc/init.d that starts mysqld." That should fix ulimit
problems with MySQL.
<br>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="BZEMAIL"></a>EMAIL</h3>
</blockquote>
<p><br><i><b>Q</b>: I have a user who doesn't want to receive any more
email from Bugzilla. How do I stop it entirely for this user?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Easy. Add his/her login name to "bugzilla_home/data/nomail".
One entry per line. It must match the login name exactly.
<br><b>UPDATE</b>: I'm not sure this works as advertised...
Anyone know of any bugs with this solution?
<p><i><b>Q</b>: I'm evaluating/testing Bugzilla, and don't want it to send
email to anyone but me. How do I do it?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: According to Terry, the *correct* way to do this is,
in editparams.cgi: "Go tweak the param for the mail text, replacing "To:"
with "X-Real-To:", and replacing "Cc:" with "X-Real-CC", and add a "To:
(myemailaddress)". This param file can also be manually edited bugzilla_home/data/params
(but is not recommended).
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I want whineatnews.pl to whine at something more,
or other than, only new bugs. How do I do it?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Try Klaas Freitag's excellent patch for "whineatassigned"
functionality. You can find it at <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6679">http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6679</a>.
Realize that as Bugzilla progresses, this patch may go out of date. At
present, I know of no plans to integrate this functionality into the core
Bugzilla distribution.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I don't like/want to use Procmail to handle email
to bugzilla. What else can I use?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Bugzilla can work with alternate MTA's/filters,
but there is no documentation how.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I set up the email interface to submit/change
bugs via email?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Download the tarball or CVS and extract it (if applicable).
CD to the (bugzilla_home)/contrib directory, and read the README contained
therein. Seth will be pulling his changes (the bugzilla email submission
stuff) into the main tree sometime as soon as he gets the OK from the powers-that-be.
Procmail is included by default on most Linux distributions, and if you
use the bugzilla.procmailrc file as the .procmailrc for the user bugzilla
runs as, it works pretty quickly.
<br>My setup is a little different from the standard way of doing things.
Here's what I do:
<ol>
<li>
cd (bugzilla_home, wherever that is)</li>
<li>
chmod 775 contrib</li>
<li>
chmod 644 contrib/*</li>
<li>
chmod 755 contrib/*.pl</li>
<li>
chmod 777 data</li>
<li>
chmod -R 775 data/mimedump-tmp</li>
<li>
chmod -R 775 data/mining</li>
<li>
vi /etc/aliases: add 'bugs: | "/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrcs/bugs"'</li>
<li>
cp /usr/local/bugzilla/contrib/bugzilla.procmailrc /etc/procmailrcs/bugs</li>
<li>
chmod 775 /etc/procmailrcs/bugs</li>
<li>
And, in my case, since we use Linux-Mandrake most everywhere (which includes
some extra security options), I also had to "ln -s /usr/bin/procmail /etc/smrsh/procmail.
smrsh is a way to prevent people from running any applications over Sendmail
unless you specify it in this directory. YMMV.</li>
</ol>
If you've followed the README, you should be good to go; send an email
to "bugs@my.host.name" and watch it work.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Email takes FOREVER to reach me from bugzilla --
it's extremely slow. What gives?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: If you are using an alternate Mail Transport Agent
(MTA other than sendmail), make sure the options given in the "processmail"
script for all instances of "sendmail" are correct for your MTA. If you
are using Sendmail, you may wish to delete the "-ODeliveryMode=deferred"
option in the "processmail" script for every invocation of "sendmail".
(Be sure and leave the "-t" option, though!) This option is put into
the code to handle the massive mail delivery load bugzilla.mozilla.org
gets -- but most of us don't need it. We're lobbying to make it a
settable parameter. Realize if you turn this off, and plan on sending
more than a few hundred email messages a day, people may experience nasty
slowdowns when submitting changes to bugs because Sendmail insists on delivering
it *that instant*.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Email never reaches me from bugzilla changes! What
gives?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Chances are really good Bugzilla expects "sendmail"
to live somewhere else than you have it installed. Make sure your "sendmail"
lives in, or has a symlink to, "/usr/lib/sendmail".
<br>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="BZDATABASE"></a>DATABASE</h3>
</blockquote>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I've heard Bugzilla can be used with Oracle?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: <a href="http://bugzilla.redhat.com/">Red Hat Bugzilla</a>
works with Oracle. The current mozilla.org version takes some work,
though.
<p><b><i>Q:</i></b> <i>Bugs are missing from queries, but exist in the
database (and I can pull them up by specifying the bug ID). What's wrong?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: You've almost certainly enabled the "shadow database",
but for some reason it hasn't been updated for all your bugs. This is the
database against which queries are run, so that really complex or slow
queries won't lock up portions of the database for other users. You can
turn off the shadow database in editparams.cgi. If you wish to continue
using the shadow database, then as your "bugs" user run "./syncshadowdb
-syncall" from the command line in the bugzilla installation directory
to recreate your shadow database. After it finishes, be sure to check the
params and make sure that "queryagainstshadowdb" is still turned on. The
syncshadowdb program turns it off if it was on, and is supposed to turn
it back on when completed; that way, if it crashes in the middle of recreating
the database, it will stay off forever until someone turns it back on by
hand. Apparently, it doesn't always do that yet.
<p><b>Q</b>: <i>I think my database might be corrupted, or contain invalid
entries. What do I do?</i>
<br>A: Run the "sanity check" utility (./sanitycheck.cgi in the bugzilla_home
directory) to see! If it all comes back, you're OK. If it doesn't
come back OK (i.e. any red letters), there are certain things Bugzilla
can recover from and certain things it can't. If it can't auto-recover,
I hope you're familiar with mysqladmin commands or have installed another
way to manage your database...
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I want to manually edit some entries in my database.
How?</i>
<br><b>A</b>: There is no facility in Bugzilla itself to do this. It's
also generally not a smart thing to do if you don't know exactly what you're
doing. However, if you understand SQL you can use the mysqladmin utility
to manually insert, delete, and modify table information. Personally, I
hate dealing with big SELECT statements and such, so I use "<a href="http://www.phpwizard.net/phpMyAdmin/">phpMyAdmin</a>",
to do all my database administration. You have to compile a PHP module
with MySQL support to make it work, but it's very clean and easy to use.
There are other utilities that work, as well, but I am lacking URL's.
<p><b>Q</b>: <i>MySQL GPL edition doesn't seem to work...</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Right! It doesn't! It's too old. Download the latest
tarball or rpm from <a href="http://www.mysql.com/">www.mysql.com</a> if
you want this to work.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I think I've set up MySQL permissions correctly,
but bugzilla still can't connect.</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Try running MySQL from its binary: "mysqld --skip-grant-tables".
This will allow you to completely rule out grant tables as the cause of
your frustration. However, I do not recommend you run it this way on a
regular basis, unless you really want your web site defaced and your machine
cracked...
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I synchronize bug information among multiple
different Bugzilla databases?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Currently, there is no way to do this. However, a
discussion about this has raged on and off in the newsgroup -- feel free
to whip something up, put it out there, and see how it's received. We're
at the point where most folks are sick of discussion. If you can create
a working model with working code, that's 90% of the battle.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>I get bizarre errors when trying to submit data,
particularly problems with "groupset". What gives?</i>
<br>A: If you're sure your MySQL parameters are correct, you might
want turn "strictvaluechecks" OFF in editparams.cgi. If you have
"usebugsentry" set "On", you also cannot submit a bug as readable by more
than one group with "strictvaluechecks" ON.
<p><b><i>Q: </i></b> Even after I delete bugs, the long descriptions
show up?
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Delete everything from $BUZILLAHOME/shadow.
Bugzilla creates shadow files there, with each filename corresponding to
a
<br>bug number. Also be sure to run syncshadowdb to make sure, if
you are using a shadow database, that the shadow database is current.
<br>
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZNT"></a>BUGZILLA AND WINDOWS NT</h2></center>
<center>or "Welcome to Microsoft, where we put the 'NT' in "CAN'T"!</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p>Right now, running Bugzilla under Windows NT is an extremely hairy process.
I'll provide the instructions below, but please don't ask me how it's done
-- getting this working on NT involves a lot of patience, skill, and PFM
(Pure Fscking Magic). As far as I know, nobody has been able to get a recent
(2.8 or post) version of Bugzilla running on NT. If you know different,
or can provide updated instructions to those provided below, please email
<a href="mailto:mbarnson@excitehome.net">Matthew
Barnson</a> with details.
<br>These are hints straight out of the newsgroup discussions. I
can't offer much more editing or insight, since I don't manage Bugzilla
on any NT boxes.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What is the easiest way to run Bugzilla on NT?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Remove NT. Install Linux. Slap a label on the box
that says "Windows NT." The boss will never know the difference, except
perhaps wonder why the machine isn't crashing anymore.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>CGI's are failing with a "something.cgi is not a
valid Windows NT application" error. Why?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Depending on what Web server you are using, you will
have to configure the Web server to treat *.cgi files as CGI scripts. In
IIS, you do this by adding *.cgi to the App Mappings with the <path>\perl.exe
%s %s as the executable.
<br>...or this tip from Microsoft's web site...
<br>"Set application mappings. In the ISM, map the extension for the script
file(s) to the executable for the script interpreter. For example, you
might map the extension .py to Python.exe, the executable for the Python
script interpreter. Note For the ActiveState Perl script interpreter, the
extension .pl is associated with PerlIS.dll by default. If you want to
change the association of .pl to perl.exe, you need to change the application
mapping. In the mapping, you must add two percent (%) characters to the
end of the pathname for perl.exe, as shown in this example: c:\perl\bin\perl.exe
%s %s"
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Can I have some general instructions on how to make
this work?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Sure. Your Mileage May Vary. Contact <a href="mailto:andrew_lahser@merck.com">Andrew
Lahser </a>for the patches mentioned.
<ol>
<li>
#!C:/perl/bin/perl had to be added to every perl file.</li>
<li>
Converted to Net::SMTP to handle mail messages instead of /usr/bin/sendmail.</li>
<li>
The crypt function isn't available on Windows NT (at least none that I
am aware), so I made encrypted passwords = plaintext passwords.</li>
<li>
The system call to diff had to be changed to the Cygwin diff.</li>
<li>
This was just to get a demo running under NT, it seems to be working good,
and I have inserted almost 100 bugs from another bug tracking system. Since
this work was done just to get an in-house demo, I am NOT planning on making
a patch for submission to Bugzilla. If you would like a zip file, let me
know.</li>
</ol>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Hmm, couldn't figure it out from the general instructions
above. How about step-by-step?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Sure! Here ya go!
<ol>
<li>
Install IIS 4.0 from the NT Option Pack #4.</li>
<li>
Download and install Active Perl.</li>
<li>
Install the Windows GNU tools from Cygwin. Make sure to add the bin directory
to your system path. (Everyone should have these, whether they decide to
use Bugzilla or not. :-) )</li>
<li>
Download relevant packages from ActiveState at http://www.activestate.com/packages/zips/.
+ DBD-Mysql.zip</li>
<li>
Extract each zip file with WinZip, and install each ppd file using the
notation: ppm install <module>.ppd</li>
<li>
Install Mysql. *Note: If you move the default install from c:\mysql,
you must add the appropriate startup parameters to the NT service. (ex.
-b e:\\programs\\mysql)</li>
<li>
Download any Mysql client. http://www.mysql.com/download_win.html</li>
<li>
Setup MySql. (These are the commands that I used.)</li>
<ol>
<br>I. Cleanup default database settings.
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
<br> mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='';
<br> mysql> quit
<br>C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin reload
<p>II. Set password for root.
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql
<br> mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password')
<br> WHERE user='root';
<br> mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
<br> mysql> quit
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload
<p>III. Create bugs user.
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root -p
<br> mysql> insert into user (host,user,password) values('localhost','bugs','');
<br> mysql> quit
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload
<p>IV. Create the bugs database.
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root -p
<br> mysql> create database bugs;
<p>V. Give the bugs user access to the bugs database.
<br> mysql> insert into db (host,db,user,select_priv,insert_priv,update_priv,delete_priv,create_priv,drop_priv)
values('localhost','bugs','bugs','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','N')
<br> mysql> quit
<br> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root reload</ol>
<li>
Run the table scripts to setup the bugs database.</li>
<li>
Change CGI.pm to use the following regular expression because of differing
backslashes in NT versus UNIX.</li>
<ul>
<li>
$0 =~ m:[^\\]*$:;</li>
</ul>
<li>
Had to make the crypt password = plain text password in the database. (Thanks
to Andrew Lahser" <andrew_lahser@merck.com>" on this one.) The files
that I changed were:</li>
<ul>
<li>
globals.pl</li>
<li>
CGI.pl</li>
<li>
alternately, you can try commenting all references to 'crypt' string and
replace them with similar lines but without encrypt() or crypr() functions
insida all files.</li>
</ul>
<li>
Replaced sendmail with Windmail. Basically, you have to come up with a
sendmail substitute for NT. Someone said that they used a Perl module (Net::SMTP),
but I was trying to save time and do as little Perl coding as possible.</li>
<li>
Added "perl" to the beginning of all Perl system calls that use a perl
script as an argument and renamed processmail to processmail.pl.</li>
<li>
In processmail.pl, I added binmode(HANDLE) before all read() calls. I'm
not sure about this one, but the read() under NT wasn't counting the EOLs
without the binary read."</li>
</ol>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I'm having trouble with the perl modules for NT not
being able to talk to to the database...</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Your modules may be outdated or inaccurate...
<ol>
<li>
Try hitting http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl</li>
<li>
Download ActivePerl from there.</li>
<br>After that:
<li>
go to your prompt</li>
<li>
type 'ppm'</li>
<li>
PPM> install DBI DBD-mysql GD</li>
</ol>
I reckon TimeDate and Data::Dumper come with the activeperl. You can check
the ActiveState site for packages for installation through PPM. [http://www.activestate.com/Packages/]
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZUSE"></a>BUGZILLA USE</h2></center>
<center>or "Keyboard: Device used for entering errors into computer"</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How do I use "new email tech"?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: First, go to editparams.cgi and make sure the "newemailtech"
option is set to "on", then set the "new email tech" option in your personal
user prefs "on".
<p><b>Q</b>: <i>How do I make "new email tech" the default for my entire
site?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: You need to alter the user preferences table using
one of the tools mentioned in the <a href="#BZDATABASE">DATABASE section</a>.
Change the default value for "newemailtech" to "1", and change any user
values you think apply.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>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?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Right now, how this should behave is the subject of
considerable discussion on the mailing list and in the bug database. There
is a <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25273">patch
</a>for
this, and a lot of talk. Tara has this to say:
<blockquote>"I think I put this in the main bug itself, but I have to admit
I *really* don't like the whole "accept" thing at this point. I especially
am completely against anything that changes the current functionality,
and am only moderately placated by the idea of seperate additional functionality.
IMHO Bugzilla is getting so kludgy that all we're doing is making things
harder and harder to understand and maintain, not to mention adding additional
fields to an already almost overwhelming query form. For now I'm going
to have to make people who want this suffer through sharing patches until
I come up with a course of action on it."</blockquote>
I'm working on a real patch for this now that allows you to select which
behavior you want vi editparams.cgi!
<p><b>Q: </b><i>How do I enable voting?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Make sure you're using at least version 2.10.
It's available via editparams.cgi.
<p><i><b>Q: </b>I can't upload anything into the database via the
"Create Attachment" link. What am I doing wrong?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: The most likely cause is a very old browser
or a browser that is incompatible with file upload via POST. Download
the latest Netscape, Microsoft, or Mozilla browser to handle uploads correctly.
<p><i><b>Q:</b> Email submissions to Bugzilla that have attachments
end up asking me to save it as a "cgi" file.</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> Right now, submissions via email only have one
mime-type "applications/octet-stream". Just save the file and look
at it in your favorite editor, you'll be fine (even though the name of
it will be "showattachment.cgi").
<p><i><b>Q: </b> Argh, I forgot my password!</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> No problem. Visit the query page, click
the "log in" button at the bottom, then just type in your email address
and click the "Email me a password" button. Your password will arrive
in your inbox in moments.
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZKNOWNBUGS"></a>BUGZILLA KNOWN BUGS</h2></center>
<center>or "These are all 'known bugs'. Whats the frickin' problem?"</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What bugs currently exist in bugzilla?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: The answer is too long (and easily outdated)
to keep in this FAQ. However, bugzilla is made for this, so just
try <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=substring&emailreporter2=1&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&product=Webtools&component=Bugzilla&short_desc=&short_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&bug_file_loc=&bug_file_loc_type=substring&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=substring&keywords=&keywords_type=anywords&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&order=bugs.bug_id">this
link</a>.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Groups don't quite work right yet...</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Correct. That's a current area of hacking.
You may want to check out Loki's version of Bugzilla for some patches that
support the group functionality you need.
<p><i><b>Q</b>: Why can't I set "target milestone" to something other
than a number?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: The concept of a target milestone was initially
that each group would have their own definition for what each target milestone
number is, but share a common pool of numbers. Unfortunately, this
concept has proven confusing for new and experienced users alike.
Someone needs to pick up the ball and run with "target milestone" so it
has the following features:
<ul>
<li>
Each Product can have milestone names independent of the other projects</li>
<li>
Each Product can use numbers or names for arbitrary milestones</li>
<li>
There must be a clean way to define these milestones without a ridiculously
complex params file</li>
</ul>
<i><b>Q: </b>Why shouldn't I delete bugs?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> If you allow bug deletion, you run the risk
of screwing up dependencies in your database. While these aren't
always critical, it's sometimes tought to repair. I recommend you
do not allow bug deletion.
<br>
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="BZHACKING"></a>BUGZILLA HACKING</h2></center>
<center>or "Who's this General Failure guy, and why is he trying to read
my hard drive?"</center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>What's the best way to submit patches? What
guidelines should I follow.</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Tara summed this FAQ up nicely:
<blockquote>"Well, I guess I'd better answer this, as I'm the one who's
supposed to be in charge of this stuff...
<br>I say, if you have a patch that is a bug fix or feature enhancement,
log a bug and attach the patch. I've inherited almost 300 bugs from
the ownership transition, so I can't guarantee how soon I'll get to it,
but I'm steadily working my way through the bug list and trying to pay
special attention to all bugs that do come with patches. Secondly, if you'd
like faster feedback or better exposure, I'd post the bug number URL to
the newsgroup so more people can have a look and provide feedback, suggestions,
etc. That way I think all bases are covered. Speaking for myself
in trying to be a good module owner, getting a new bug makes sure I
<br>don't lose track of your patch, so this makes it easier for me."</blockquote>
<i><b>Q</b>:</i> <i>What does the above mean for me when I want to
submit a bug?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Follow this procedure:
<ol>
<li>
<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Webtools">Enter
a bug</a> into bugzilla.mozilla.org for the "Webtools" product, "Bugzilla"
component.</li>
<li>
Upload your patch as a unified DIFF (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.</li>
<li>
Announce your patch and the associated URL (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=XXXX)
for discussion in the <a href="news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.mozilla.webtools">newsgroup</a>
(netscape.public/mozilla.webtools). You'll get a really good, fairly
immediate reaction to the implications of your patch, which will also give
Tara an idea how well-received the change would be.</li>
<li>
If it passes muster with minimal modification, Tara will put it into CVS.
If you submit enough really good patches (I have no idea how much "enough"
is), you may be granted CVS write access.</li>
<li>
Bask in the glory of the fact that YOU helped write the most successful
open-source bug-tracking software on the planet :)</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<h3>
<a NAME="BZAPI"></a>API</h3>
</blockquote>
<b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>I want to add a new form or module to Bugzilla.
Where can I find API documention?</i>
<br><b><i>A:</i></b> Right now, there really is none. I plan
on writing copious documentation for what each file and module does, as
well how to program new .cgi's to use the functionality and present alternate
interfaces. Right now, use the source.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: What are the most-needed features?
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Check out the Bugzilla Development Roadmap at
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/roadmap.html">http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bugzilla/roadmap.html</a>
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
<a NAME="MAINTAINER"></a>MAINTAINER & THIS DOCUMENT</h2></center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<p><i><b>Q: </b>Why do you use this antiquated format for maintaining
the FAQ, instead of FAQ-O-Matic or (insert cool FAQ program here)</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b>I'm actively seeking a better way to maintain
this. It's easily maintainable in its current form, but as it grows
it will become much less so. I'm interested in more options, but
don't want to lose control of the FAQ or be subjected to a page that's
a nest of hyperlinks and unprintable. The FAQ-O-Matic tends to create
FAQ's that cannot be easily printed as one page, and not easily portable
to another format (particulary PDF). One must be able to maintain
the FAQ as a single, printable document; if you know of a good system that
will fit the bill, let me know.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Who are you?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: I'm Matthew P. Barnson, manager of Systems Administration
for <a href="http://www.excitestores.com">Excite Business Applications
</a>and
part-time Bugzilla hacker.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Why are you doing this?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: I have nothing better to do with my time!
<br> Seriously, I run a fairly large private Bugzilla database.
I felt the need for some documentation to help other SysAdmins run this
thing. There was nothing out there like it, so I decided to improve
what I'd written for internal documentation with more general questions
and release it to the public under the MPL. I feel like the Mozilla
Webtools are far more in need of good documentation and a major architectural
rewrite than they are more hacks to support more features. Since
I'm not qualified to write more than trivial hacks for Bugzilla if I were
to code, I figured doing some documentation would be A Good Thing.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>How are you affiliated with <a href="http://www.mozilla.org">Mozilla.org</a>?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> I'm not, except I've been appointed the "Docs
Knight" for Bugzilla, and contribute documentation to other webtools.
<p><b><i>Q</i></b>: <i>Where do those lame quotes in each section
heading come from?</i>
<br><b><i>A</i></b>: Check out <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/data/comments">http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/data/comments</a>.
These are random quips added by people who use bugzilla. I find them
endlessly entertaining.
<p><i><b>Q: </b> What other documentation is available?</i>
<br><b><i>A: </i></b> I am personally attempting to address the numerous
documentation needs, including an Installation guide (based upon the README),
Administration Guide, Troubleshooting guide, Database Management Guide,
and Configuration Guide.
<br>
<p>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
<center>
<h2>
THE END</h2></center>
<hr WIDTH="100%">
</body>
</html>
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