path: root/docs/en/xml/troubleshooting.xml

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<appendix id="troubleshooting">
<title>Troubleshooting</title>

  <para>This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation
  problems. If none of the section headings seems to match your
  problem, read the general advice.
  </para>
    
  <section id="general-advice">
  <title>General Advice</title>
    <para>If you can't get <filename>checksetup.pl</filename> to run to 
    completion, it normally explains what's wrong and how to fix it.
    If you can't work it out, or if it's being uncommunicative, post 
    the errors in the 
    <ulink url="news://news.mozilla.org/mozilla.support.bugzilla">mozilla.support.bugzilla</ulink>
    newsgroup.
    </para>

    <para>If you have made it all the way through
    <xref linkend="installation"/> (Installation) and
    <xref linkend="configuration"/> (Configuration) but accessing the Bugzilla
    URL doesn't work, the first thing to do is to check your webserver error
    log. For Apache, this is often located at
    <filename>/etc/logs/httpd/error_log</filename>. The error messages
    you see may be self-explanatory enough to enable you to diagnose and
    fix the problem. If not, see below for some commonly-encountered 
    errors. If that doesn't help, post the errors to the newsgroup.
    </para>

    <para>
      Bugzilla can also log all user-based errors (and many code-based errors)
      that occur, without polluting the web server error log.  To enable
      Bugzilla error logging, create a file that Bugzilla can write to, named
      <filename>errorlog</filename>, in the Bugzilla <filename>data</filename>
      directory.  Errors will be logged as they occur, and will include the type
      of the error, the IP address and username (if available) of the user who
      triggered the error, and the values of all environment variables; if a
      form was being submitted, the data in the form will also be included.
      To disable error logging, delete or rename the
      <filename>errorlog</filename> file.
    </para>
  </section>
        
  <section id="trbl-testserver">
  <title>The Apache webserver is not serving Bugzilla pages</title>
    <para>After you have run <command>checksetup.pl</command> twice,
    run <command>testserver.pl http://yoursite.yourdomain/yoururl</command>
    to confirm that your webserver is configured properly for
    Bugzilla.
    </para>
    <programlisting>
<prompt>bash$</prompt> ./testserver.pl http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip
TEST-OK Webserver is running under group id in $webservergroup.
TEST-OK Got ant picture.
TEST-OK Webserver is executing CGIs.
TEST-OK Webserver is preventing fetch of http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/localconfig.
</programlisting>
  </section>

  <section id="trbl-perlmodule">
  <title>I installed a Perl module, but 
      <filename>checksetup.pl</filename> claims it's not installed!</title>
      
    <para>This could be caused by one of two things:</para>
    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>You have two versions of Perl on your machine. You are installing
        modules into one, and Bugzilla is using the other. Rerun the CPAN
        commands (or manual compile) using the full path to Perl from the 
        top of <filename>checksetup.pl</filename>. This will make sure you 
        are installing the modules in the right place.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>The permissions on your library directories are set incorrectly.
	They must, at the very least, be readable by the webserver user or
	group. It is recommended that they be world readable.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
  </section>

  <section id="trbl-dbdSponge">
  <title>DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed</title>
      
    <para>The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql
    (over which the Bugzilla team have no control):
    </para>
      
<programlisting><![CDATA[ DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site/lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
  SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)
]]></programlisting>

    <para>To fix this, go to 
    <filename>&lt;path-to-perl&gt;/lib/DBD/sponge.pm</filename> 
    in your Perl installation and replace
    </para>
        
<programlisting><![CDATA[ my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};
]]></programlisting>

    <para>with</para>

<programlisting><![CDATA[ my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};
]]></programlisting>

     <para>(note the S added to NAME.)</para>
  </section>
    
  <section id="paranoid-security">
  <title>cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)</title>

    <para>If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other
    distributions with <quote>paranoid</quote> security options, it is
    possible that the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error: 
<programlisting><![CDATA[cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied
]]></programlisting>
    </para>
      
    <para>This is because your <filename>/var/spool/mqueue</filename>
    directory has a mode of <computeroutput>drwx------</computeroutput>.
    Type <command>chmod 755 <filename>/var/spool/mqueue</filename></command>
    as root to fix this problem. This will allow any process running on your
    machine the ability to <emphasis>read</emphasis> the
    <filename>/var/spool/mqueue</filename> directory.
    </para>
  </section>    

  <section id="trbl-relogin-everyone">
  <title>Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin</title>
  
  <para>The most-likely cause is that the <quote>cookiepath</quote> parameter
  is not set correctly in the Bugzilla configuration.  You can change this (if
  you're a Bugzilla administrator) from the editparams.cgi page via the web.
  </para>

  <para>The value of the cookiepath parameter should be the actual directory
  containing your Bugzilla installation, <emphasis>as seen by the end-user's
  web browser</emphasis>. Leading and trailing slashes are mandatory. You can
  also set the cookiepath to any directory which is a parent of the Bugzilla
  directory (such as '/', the root directory). But you can't put something
  that isn't at least a partial match or it won't work. What you're actually
  doing is restricting the end-user's browser to sending the cookies back only
  to that directory.
  </para>

  <para>How do you know if you want your specific Bugzilla directory or the
  whole site?
  </para>

  <para>If you have only one Bugzilla running on the server, and you don't
  mind having other applications on the same server with it being able to see
  the cookies (you might be doing this on purpose if you have other things on
  your site that share authentication with Bugzilla), then you'll want to have
  the cookiepath set to "/", or to a sufficiently-high enough directory that
  all of the involved apps can see the cookies.
  </para>

  <example id="trbl-relogin-everyone-share">
  <title>Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies</title>

    <blockquote>
      <literallayout>
        urlbase is <ulink url="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/"/>
        cookiepath is /

        urlbase is <ulink url="http://tools.mysite.tld/bugzilla/"/>
                but you have http://tools.mysite.tld/someotherapp/ which shares
                authentication with your Bugzilla
        cookiepath is /
      </literallayout>
    </blockquote>
  </example>
          
   <para>On the other hand, if you have more than one Bugzilla running on the
   server (some people do - we do on landfill) then you need to have the
   cookiepath restricted enough so that the different Bugzillas don't
   confuse their cookies with one another.
   </para>


   <example id="trbl-relogin-everyone-restrict">
   <title>Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login cookie</title>
      <blockquote>
        <literallayout>
        urlbase is <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/"/>
        cookiepath is /bugzilla-tip/

        urlbase is <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-2.16-branch/"/>
        cookiepath is /bugzilla-2.16-branch/
        </literallayout>
      </blockquote>
    </example>

    <para>If you had cookiepath set to <quote>/</quote> at any point in the
    past and need to set it to something more restrictive
    (i.e. <quote>/bugzilla/</quote>), you can safely do this without
    requiring users to delete their Bugzilla-related cookies in their
    browser (this is true starting with Bugzilla 2.18 and Bugzilla 2.16.5).
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="trbl-relogin-some">
  <title>Some users are constantly being forced to relogin</title>

    <para>First, make sure cookies are enabled in the user's browser.
    </para>

    <para>If that doesn't fix the problem, it may be that the user's ISP
     implements a rotating proxy server. This causes the user's effective IP
     address (the address which the Bugzilla server perceives him coming from)
     to change periodically. Since Bugzilla cookies are tied to a specific IP
     address, each time the effective address changes, the user will have to
     log in again.
     </para>

     <para>If you are using 2.18 (or later), there is a
     parameter called <quote>loginnetmask</quote>, which you can use to set
     the number of bits of the user's IP address to require to be matched when
     authenticating the cookies. If you set this to something less than 32,
     then the user will be given a checkbox for <quote>Restrict this login to
     my IP address</quote> on the login screen, which defaults to checked. If
     they leave the box checked, Bugzilla will behave the same as it did
     before, requiring an exact match on their IP address to remain logged in.
     If they uncheck the box, then only the left side of their IP address (up
     to the number of bits you specified in the parameter) has to match to
     remain logged in.
     </para>

   </section>

  <section id="trbl-index">
  <title><filename>index.cgi</filename> doesn't show up unless specified in the URL</title>
    <para>
      You probably need to set up your web server in such a way that it
      will serve the index.cgi page as an index page.
    </para>
    <para>
      If you are using Apache, you can do this by adding 
      <filename>index.cgi</filename> to the end of the 
      <computeroutput>DirectoryIndex</computeroutput> line
      as mentioned in <xref linkend="http-apache"/>.
    </para>

  </section>

  <section id="trbl-passwd-encryption">
    <title>
      checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication protocol
      requested by server..."
    </title>

    <para>
      This error is occurring because you are using the new password
      encryption that comes with MySQL 4.1, while your
      <filename>DBD::mysql</filename> module was compiled against an
      older version of MySQL. If you recompile <filename>DBD::mysql</filename>
      against the current MySQL libraries (or just obtain a newer version
      of this module) then the error may go away.
    </para>

    <para>
      If that does not fix the problem, or if you cannot recompile the
      existing module (e.g. you're running Windows) and/or don't want to
      replace it (e.g. you want to keep using a packaged version), then a
      workaround is available from the MySQL docs:
      <ulink url="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Old_client.html"/>
    </para>

  </section>

</appendix> 

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