3.1.1. Create a Bugzilla Account

If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account. Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL: https://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-2.16.11/

1. Click the "Open a new Bugzilla account" link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the spaces provided, then click "Create Account" .

2. Within moments, you should receive an email to the address you provided above, which contains your login name (generally the same as the email address), and a password you can use to access your account. This password is randomly generated, and can be changed to something more memorable.

3. Click the "Log In" link in the yellow area at the bottom of the page in your browser, enter your email address and password into the spaces provided, and click "Login".

You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies for authentication so, unless your IP address changes, you should not have to log in again.

3.1.2. Anatomy of a Bug

The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. Bug 1 on Landfill is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks; clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every installation of Bugzilla.

1. Product and Component: Bugs are divided up by Product and Component, with a Product having one or more Components in it. For example, bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several Components:

   Administration: Administration of a Bugzilla installation.

   Bugzilla-General: Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans multiple components.

   Creating/Changing Bugs: Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.

   Documentation: The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.

   Email: Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.

   Installation: The installation process of Bugzilla.

   Query/Buglist: Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the buglists.

   Reporting/Charting: Getting reports from Bugzilla.

   User Accounts: Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in, etc.

   User Interface: General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates, etc.

2. Status and Resolution: These define exactly what state the bug is in - from not even being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the fix confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the context-sensitive help for those items.

3. Assigned To: The person responsible for fixing the bug.

4. *URL: A URL associated with the bug, if any.

5. Summary: A one-sentence summary of the problem.

6. *Status Whiteboard: (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes and tags to a bug.

7. *Keywords: The administrator can define keywords which you can use to tag and categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like crash and regression.

8. Platform and OS: These indicate the computing environment where the bug was found.

9. Version: The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product which have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a Component have the particular problem the bug report is about.

10. Priority: The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her bugs. It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.

11. Severity: This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker ("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You can also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement request.

12. *Target: (a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is to be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future Bugzilla versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not restricted to numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such as dates.

13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.

14. CC list: A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.

15. Attachments: You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there are any attachments, they are listed in this section.

16. *Dependencies: If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed (depends on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their numbers are recorded here.

17. *Votes: Whether this bug has any votes.

18. Additional Comments: You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have something worthwhile to say.

3.1.3. Life Cycle of a Bug

The life cycle, also known as work flow, of a bug is currently hardcoded into Bugzilla. Figure 3-1 contains a graphical repsentation of this life cycle. If you wish customize this image for your site, the diagram file is available in Dia's native XML format.

3.1.4. Searching for Bugs

The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find any bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You can play with it here: https://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-2.16.11/query.cgi .

The Search page has controls for selecting different possible values for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. Once you've defined a search, you can either run it, or save it as a Remembered Query, which can optionally appear in the footer of your pages.

Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts, which have their own context-sensitive help .

3.1.5. Bug Lists

If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned. The default search is to return all open bugs on the system - don't try running this search on a Bugzilla installation with a lot of bugs!

The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be accessed using the links at the bottom of the list:

3.1.6. Filing Bugs

Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your reading pleasure into the Bug Writing Guidelines. While some of the advice is Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of reporting Reproducible, Specific bugs, isolating the Product you are using, the Version of the Product, the Component which failed, the Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were using at the time of the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes for the bug that bit you.

The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:

1. Go to Landfill in your browser and click Enter a new bug report.

2. Select a product - any one will do.

3. Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If they are wrong, change them.

4. Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.

3.2.1. Autolinkification

Bugzilla comments are plain text - so posting HTML will result in literal HTML tags rather than being interpreted by a browser. However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For example, the text https://www.bugzilla.org will be turned into https://www.bugzilla.org. Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:

A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment, you should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified for the convenience of others.

3.2.2. Quicksearch

Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing "foo|bar" into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding ":BazProduct" would search only in that product.

You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's front page, along with a Help link which details how to use it.

3.2.3. Comments

If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if either you have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it. Otherwise, you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail. To take an example: a user can set up their account to filter out messages where someone just adds themselves to the CC field of a bug (which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself to the CC field, and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that person gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.

Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable, particularly if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art creations are not.

3.2.4. Attachments

Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data, such as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't bloat the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to receive fat, useless mails.

Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.

Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one CSS file and an image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in reverse order and edit the referring file so that they point to the attached files. This way, the test case works immediately out of the bug.

3.2.5. Dependency Tree

On the "Dependency tree" page linked from each bug page, you can see the dependency relationship from the bug as a tree structure.

You can change how much depth to show, and you can hide resolved bugs from this page.

3.2.6. Filing Bugs

Try to make sure that everything said in the summary is also said in the first comment. Summaries are often updated and this will ensure your original information is easily accessible.

You do not need to put "any" or similar strings in the URL field. If there is no specific URL associated with the bug, leave this field blank.

If you feel a bug you filed was incorrectly marked as a DUPLICATE of another, please question it in your bug, not the bug it was duped to. Feel free to CC the person who duped it if they are not already CCed.

3.3.1. Account Settings

On this tab, you can change your basic account information, including your password, email address and real name. For security reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your current password into the "Password" field at the top of the page. If you attempt to change your email address, a confirmation email is sent to both the old and new addresses, with a link to use to confirm the change. This helps to prevent account hijacking.

3.3.2. Email Settings

This tab controls the amount of email Bugzilla sends you.

The first item on this page is marked "Users to watch". When you enter one or more comma-delineated user accounts (usually email addresses) into the text entry box, you will receive a copy of all the bugmail those users are sent (security settings permitting). This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go on holiday.

The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla installations. If you don't see this feature, and feel that you need it, speak to your administrator.

The "Field/recipient specific options" table allows you to determine how much mail Bugzilla sends you. The rows of the table define events that can happen to a bug -- things like attachments being added, new comments being made, the priority changing, etc. The columns in the table define your relationship with the bug:

• Reporter - Where you are the person who initially reported the bug. Your name/account appears in the "Reporter:" field.

• Assignee - Where you are the person who has been designated as the one responsible for the bug. Your name/account appears in the "Assigned To:" field of the bug.

• QA Contact - You are one of the designated QA Contacts for the bug. Your account appears in the "QA Contact:" text-box of the bug.

• CC - You are on the list CC List for the bug. Your account appears in the "CC:" text box of the bug.

• Voter - You have placed one or more votes for the bug. Your account appears only if someone clicks on the "Show votes for this bug" link on the bug.

Some columns may not be visible for your installation, depending on your site's configuration.

To fine-tune your bugmail, decide the events for which you want to receive bugmail; then decide if you want to receive it all the time (enable the checkbox for every column), or only when you have a certain relationship with a bug (enable the checkbox only for those columns). For example: if you didn't want to receive mail when someone added themselves to the CC list, you could uncheck all the boxes in the "CC Field Changes" line. As another example, if you never wanted to receive email on bugs you reported unless the bug was resolved, you would un-check all boxes in the "Reporter" column except for the one on the "The bug is resolved or verified" row.

If you want to receive the maximum amount of email possible, check every box in every column. if you don't want to receive any email from Bugzilla at all, ensure that every box in this table is un-checked.

Your Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving bugmail by adding the user's name to the data/nomail file. This is a drastic step best taken only for disabled accounts, as it overrides the user's individual mail preferences.

Bugzilla adds the "X-Bugzilla-Reason" header to all bugmail it sends, describing the recipient's relationship (AssignedTo, Reporter, QAContact, CC, or Voter) to the bug. This header can be used to do further client-side filtering.

By default, Bugzilla sends out email regardless of who made the change... even if you were the one responsible for generating the email in the first place. If you don't care to receive bugmail from your own changes, check the box marked "Only email me reports of changes made by other people".

3.3.3. Page Footer

On the Search page, you can store queries in Bugzilla, so if you regularly run a particular query it is just a drop-down menu away. Once you have a stored query, you can come here to request that it also be displayed in your page footer.

3.3.4. Permissions

This is a purely informative page which outlines your current permissions on this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you are in, and whether you can edit bugs or perform various administration functions.

4.1.1. Introduction

Please note that Bugzilla 2.16.x will become unsupported with the release of Bugzilla 2.22. If you're installing Bugzilla for the first time, please consider a newer stable version. Stable versions of Bugzilla can be found at https://www.bugzilla.org/

Bugzilla has been successfully installed under Solaris, Linux, and Win32. Win32 is not yet officially supported, but many people have got it working fine. Please see the Win32 Installation Notes for further advice on getting Bugzilla to work on Microsoft Windows.

4.1.2. Package List

If you are running the very most recent version of Perl and MySQL (both the executables and development libraries) on your system, you can skip these manual installation steps for the Perl modules by using Bundle::Bugzilla; see Using Bundle::Bugzilla instead of manually installing Perl modules.

The software packages necessary for the proper running of Bugzilla (with download links) are:

1. MySQL database server (3.22.5 or greater. Note that versions of Bugzilla prior to 2.20RC1 do not work with MySQL 5.0.12 or higher. If you intend to install Bugzilla using MySQL 5.x as your back-end, please use a more current release of Bugzilla).

2. Perl (5.005 or greater, 5.6.1 is recommended if you wish to use Bundle::Bugzilla)

3. Perl Modules (minimum version):

   1. Template (v2.07)

   2. AppConfig (v1.52)

   3. Text::Wrap (v2001.0131)

   4. File::Spec (v0.8.2)

   5. Data::Dumper (any)

   6. DBD::mysql (v1.2209)

   7. DBI (v1.13)

   8. Date::Parse (any)

   9. CGI::Carp (any)

   and, optionally:

   1. GD (v1.19) for bug charting

   2. Chart::Base (v0.99c) for bug charting

   3. XML::Parser (any) for the XML interface

   4. MIME::Parser (any) for the email interface

4. The web server of your choice. Apache is highly recommended.

5. At least version 8.7 of Sendmail, or any Sendmail-compatible MTA congruent with this version or higher.

   Windows users will have to see the Win32 Installation Notes for one alternative to Sendmail for Windows.

It is a good idea, while installing Bugzilla, to ensure that there is some kind of firewall between you and the rest of the Internet, because your machine may be insecure for periods during the install. Many installation steps require an active Internet connection to complete, but you must take care to ensure that at no point is your machine vulnerable to an attack.

Linux-Mandrake 8.0 includes every required and optional library for Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is by using the urpmi utility. If you follow these commands, you should have everything you need for Bugzilla, and checksetup.pl should not complain about any missing libraries. You may already have some of these installed. bash# urpmi perl-mysql bash# urpmi perl-chart bash# urpmi perl-gd bash# urpmi perl-MailTools (for Bugzilla email integration) bash# urpmi apache-modules

4.1.3. MySQL

Visit the MySQL homepage at www.mysql.com to grab and install the latest stable 4.x release of MySQL. Note that versions of Bugzilla prior to 2.20RC1 do not work with MySQL 5.0.12 or higher. If you intend to install Bugzilla using MySQL 5.x as your back-end, please use a more current release of Bugzilla).

Many of the binary versions of MySQL store their data files in /var. On some Unix systems, this is part of a smaller root partition, and may not have room for your bug database. You can set the data directory as an option to configure if you build MySQL from source yourself.

If you install from something other than an RPM or Debian package, you will need to add mysqld to your init scripts so the server daemon will come back up whenever your machine reboots. Further discussion of UNIX init sequences are beyond the scope of this guide.

By default, MySQL will only accept packets up to 64Kb in size. If you want to have attachments larger than this, you will need to modify your /etc/my.cnf as below.

If you are using MySQL 4.0 or newer, enter:

  [mysqld]
  # Allow packets up to 1M
  max_allowed_packet=1M

If you are using an older version of MySQL, enter:

  [mysqld]
  # Allow packets up to 1M
  set-variable = max_allowed_packet=1M

There is also a parameter in Bugzilla called 'maxattachmentsize' (default = 1000 Kb) that controls the maximum allowable attachment size. Attachments larger than either the 'max_allowed_packet' or 'maxattachmentsize' value will not be accepted by Bugzilla.

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.

4.1.4. Perl

Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. Perl can be got in source form from perl.com for the rare *nix systems which don't have it. Although Bugzilla runs with all post-5.005 versions of Perl, it's a good idea to be up to the very latest version if you can when running Bugzilla. As of this writing, that is Perl version 5.6.1.

You can skip the following Perl module installation steps by installing Bundle::Bugzilla from CPAN, which installs all required modules for you. 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.

4.1.5. Perl Modules

All Perl modules can be found on the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). The CPAN servers have a real tendency to bog down, so please use mirrors.

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 a module:

bash# perl -MCPAN -e 'install "<modulename>"'

To do it the hard way:

Untar the module tarball -- it should create its own directory

CD to the directory just created, and enter the following commands:

1. bash# perl Makefile.PL

2. bash# make

3. bash# make test

4. bash# make install

Many people complain that Perl modules will not install for them. Most times, the error messages complain that they are missing a file in "@INC". Virtually every time, this error is due to permissions being set too restrictively for you to compile Perl modules or not having the necessary Perl development libraries installed on your system. Consult your local UNIX systems administrator for help solving these permissions issues; if you are the local UNIX sysadmin, please consult the newsgroup/mailing list for further assistance or hire someone to help you out.

---

4.1.5.5. GD (optional)

The GD library was written by Thomas Boutell a long while ago to programatically generate images in C. Since then it's become the defacto standard for programatic image construction. The Perl bindings to it found in the GD library are used on millions of web pages to generate graphs on the fly. That's what Bugzilla will be using it for so you must install it if you want any of the graphing to work.

The Perl GD library requires some other libraries that may or may not be installed on your system, including libpng and libgd. The full requirements are listed in the Perl GD library README. If compiling GD fails, it's probably because you're missing a required library.

4.1.6. HTTP Server

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

We strongly recommend Apache as the web server to use. The Bugzilla Guide installation instructions, in general, assume you are using Apache. If you have got Bugzilla working using another webserver, please share your experiences with us.

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 httpd.conf file:

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

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

Options ExecCGI AllowOverride Limit

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

AllowOverride Limit allows the use of a Deny statement in the .htaccess file generated by checksetup.pl Users of older versions of Apache may find the above lines in the srm.conf and access.conf files, respectively.

There are important files and directories that should not be a served by the HTTP server - most files in the "data" and "shadow" directories and the "localconfig" file. You should configure your HTTP server to not serve these files. Failure to do so will expose critical passwords and other data. Please see .htaccess files and security for details on how to do this for Apache; the checksetup.pl script should create appropriate .htaccess files for you.

4.1.7. Bugzilla

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 in the main web space for your web server or perhaps in /usr/local with a symbolic link in the web space that points to the Bugzilla directory.

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 in httpd.conf.

Add index.cgi to the end of the DirectoryIndex line.

Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that directory writable by your webserver's user. 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 to /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl for 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. This can be done using the following Perl one-liner, but I suggest using the symlink approach to avoid upgrade hassles.

perl -pi -e 's@#\!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl@#\!/usr/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm processmail syncshadowdb

Change /usr/bin/perl to match the location of Perl on your machine.

4.1.8. 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 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 Installation section, the Bugzilla username will be "bugs", and will have minimal permissions.

Begin by giving the MySQL root user a password. MySQL passwords are limited to 16 characters.

Next, we use an SQL GRANT command to create a "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.

If you are using MySQL 4.x or newer, enter:

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

If you are using an older version of MySQL, the LOCK TABLES and CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES permissions will be unavailable and should be removed from the permissions list. In this case, the following command line can be used:

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

4.1.9. checksetup.pl

Next, run the magic checksetup.pl script. (Many thanks to Holger Schurig for writing this script!) This script is designed to make sure your MySQL database and other configuration options are consistent with the Bugzilla CGI files. It will make sure Bugzilla files and directories have reasonable permissions, set up the data directory, and create all the MySQL tables.

At this point, you need to su to root. You should remain as root until the end of the install. Then run:

bash# ./checksetup.pl

The first time you run it, it will create a file called 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; (<bugs_password>) above

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.

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.

4.1.10. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)

Bugzilla is dependent on the availability of an e-mail system for its user authentication and for other tasks.

On Linux, any Sendmail-compatible MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) will suffice. Sendmail, Postfix, qmail and Exim are examples of common MTAs. Sendmail is the original Unix MTA, but the others are easier to configure, and therefore many people replace Sendmail with Postfix or Exim. They are drop-in replacements, so that Bugzilla will not distinguish between them.

Consult the manual for the specific MTA you choose for detailed installation instructions. Each of these programs will have their own configuration files where you must configure certain parameters to ensure that the mail is delivered properly. They are implemented as services, and you should ensure that the MTA is in the auto-start list of services for the machine.

If a simple mail sent with the command-line 'mail' program succeeds, then Bugzilla should also be fine.

4.1.11. Configuring Bugzilla

You should run through the parameters on the Edit Parameters page (link in the footer) and set them all to appropriate values. They key parameters are documented in Section 5.1.

4.2.1. Dependency Charts

As well as the text-based dependency graphs, Bugzilla also supports dependency graphing, using a package called 'dot'. Exactly how this works is controlled by the 'webdotbase' parameter, which can have one of three values:

1. A complete file path to the command 'dot' (part of GraphViz) will generate the graphs locally

2. A URL prefix pointing to an installation of the webdot package will generate the graphs remotely

3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.

So, to get this working, install GraphViz. If you do that, you need to enable server-side image maps in Apache. Alternatively, you could set up a webdot server, or use the AT&T public webdot server (the default for the webdotbase param). Note that AT&T's server won't work if Bugzilla is only accessible using HTTPS.

4.2.2. Bug Graphs

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

Add a cron entry like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:

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

4.2.3. The Whining Cron

By now you have 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 to complain at engineers which leave their bugs in the NEW state without triaging them.

This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry (for help on that see that crontab man page):

Depending on your system, crontab may have several manpages. The following command should lead you to the most useful page for this purpose: man 5 crontab

4.2.4. LDAP Authentication

This information on using the LDAP authentication options with Bugzilla is old, and the authors do not know of anyone who has tested it. Approach with caution.

The existing authentication scheme for Bugzilla uses email addresses as the primary user ID, and a password to authenticate that user. All places within Bugzilla where you need to deal with user ID (e.g assigning a bug) use the email address. The LDAP authentication builds on top of this scheme, rather than replacing it. The initial log in is done with a username and password for the LDAP directory. This then fetches the email address from LDAP and authenticates seamlessly in the standard Bugzilla authentication scheme using this email address. If an account for this address already exists in your Bugzilla system, it will log in to that account. If no account for that email address exists, one is created at the time of login. (In this case, Bugzilla will attempt to use the "displayName" or "cn" attribute to determine the user's full name.) After authentication, all other user-related tasks are still handled by email address, not LDAP username. You still assign bugs by email address, query on users by email address, etc.

Using LDAP for Bugzilla authentication requires the Mozilla::LDAP (aka PerLDAP) Perl module. The Mozilla::LDAP module in turn requires Netscape's Directory SDK for C. After you have installed the SDK, then install the PerLDAP module. Mozilla::LDAP and the Directory SDK for C are both available for download from mozilla.org.

Set the Param 'useLDAP' to "On" **only** if you will be using an LDAP directory for authentication. Be very careful when setting up this parameter; if you set LDAP authentication, but do not have a valid LDAP directory set up, you will not be able to log back in to Bugzilla once you log out. (If this happens, you can get back in by manually editing the data/params file, and setting useLDAP back to 0.)

If using LDAP, you must set the three additional parameters: Set LDAPserver to the name (and optionally port) of your LDAP server. If no port is specified, it defaults to the default port of 389. (e.g "ldap.mycompany.com" or "ldap.mycompany.com:1234") Set LDAPBaseDN to the base DN for searching for users in your LDAP directory. (e.g. "ou=People,o=MyCompany") uids must be unique under the DN specified here. Set LDAPmailattribute to the name of the attribute in your LDAP directory which contains the primary email address. On most directory servers available, this is "mail", but you may need to change this.

4.2.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious Javascript code

It is possible for a Bugzilla to execute malicious Javascript code. Due to internationalization concerns, we are unable to incorporate the code changes necessary to fulfill the CERT advisory requirements mentioned in http://www.cet.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_mitigation.html/#3. Executing the following code snippet from a UNIX command shell will rectify the problem if your Bugzilla installation is intended for an English-speaking audience. As always, be sure your Bugzilla installation has a good backup before making changes, and I recommend you understand what the script is doing before executing it.

bash# perl -pi -e "s/Content-Type\: text\/html/Content-Type\: text\/html\; charset=ISO-8859-1/i" *.cgi *.pl

All this one-liner command does is search for all instances of "Content-type: text/html" and replaces it with "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" . This specification prevents possible Javascript attacks on the browser, and is suggested for all English-speaking sites. For non-English-speaking Bugzilla sites, I suggest changing "ISO-8859-1", above, to "UTF-8".

Note: using <meta> tags to set the charset is not recommended, as there's a bug in Netscape 4.x which causes pages marked up in this way to load twice.

4.2.6. .htaccess files and security

To enhance the security of your Bugzilla installation, Bugzilla's checksetup.pl script will generate .htaccess files which the Apache webserver can use to restrict access to the bugzilla data files. These .htaccess files will not work with Apache 1.2.x - but this has security holes, so you shouldn't be using it anyway.

If you are using an alternate provider of webdot services for graphing (as described when viewing editparams.cgi in your web browser), you will need to change the ip address in data/webdot/.htaccess to the ip address of the webdot server that you are using.

The default .htaccess file may not provide adequate access restrictions, depending on your web server configuration. Be sure to check the <Directory> entries for your Bugzilla directory so that the .htaccess file is allowed to override web server defaults. For instance, let's assume your installation of Bugzilla is installed to /usr/local/bugzilla . You should have this <Directory> entry in your httpd.conf file:

<Directory /usr/local/bugzilla/> Options +FollowSymLinks +Indexes +Includes +ExecCGI AllowOverride All </Directory>

The important part above is "AllowOverride All" . Without that, the .htaccess file created by checksetup.pl will not have sufficient permissions to protect your Bugzilla installation.

If you are using Internet Information Server (IIS) or another web server which does not observe .htaccess conventions, you can disable their creation by editing localconfig and setting the $create_htaccess variable to 0.

4.2.7. mod_throttle and Security

It is possible for a user, by mistake or on purpose, to access the database many times in a row which can result in very slow access speeds for other users. If your Bugzilla installation is experiencing this problem , you may install the Apache module mod_throttle which can limit connections by ip-address. You may download this module at http://www.snert.com/Software/mod_throttle/ Follow the instructions to install into your Apache install. This module only functions with the Apache web server! You may use the ThrottleClientIP command provided by this module to accomplish this goal. See the Module Instructions for more information.

4.3.1. Win32 Installation: Step-by-step

You should be familiar with, and cross-reference, the rest of the Bugzilla Installation section while performing your Win32 installation. Making Bugzilla work on Microsoft Windows is no picnic. Support for Win32 has improved dramatically in the last few releases, but, if you choose to proceed, you should be a very skilled Windows Systems Administrator with strong troubleshooting abilities, a high tolerance for pain, and moderate perl skills. Bugzilla on NT requires hacking source code and implementing some advanced utilities. What follows is the recommended installation procedure for Win32; additional suggestions are provided in Appendix A .

If you are using IIS or Personal Web Server, you must add cgi relationships to Properties -> Home directory (tab) -> Application Settings (section) -> Configuration (button), such as: .cgi to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s %s .pl to: <perl install directory>\perl.exe %s %s GET,HEAD,POST Change the path to Perl to match your install, of course.

4.3.2. Additional Windows Tips

From Andrew Pearson: You can make Bugzilla work with Personal Web Server for Windows 98 and higher, as well as for IIS 4.0. Microsoft has information available at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q231/9/98.ASP Basically you need to add two String Keys in the registry at the following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Parameters\ScriptMap The keys should be called ".pl" and ".cgi", and both should have a value something like: c:/perl/bin/perl.exe "%s" "%s" The KB article only talks about .pl, but it goes into more detail and provides a perl test script.

If attempting to run Bugzilla 2.12 or older, you will need to remove encrypt() calls from the Perl source. This is not necessary for Bugzilla 2.13 and later, which includes the current release, Bugzilla 2.16.11. Example 4-3. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12 or earlier Replace this: SendSQL("SELECT encrypt(" . SqlQuote($enteredpwd) . ", " . SQLQuote(substr($realcryptpwd, 0, 2)) . ")"); my $enteredcryptpwd = FetchOneColumn(); with this: my $enteredcryptpwd = $enteredpwd in cgi.pl.

4.4.1. Sendmail

In Mac OS X 10.3 and later, Postfix is used as the built-in email server. Postfix provides an executable that mimics sendmail enough to fool Bugzilla, as long as Bugzilla can find it.

The substitute Sendmail executable is located at /usr/sbin/sendmail, while Bugzilla expects the executable to be located at /usr/lib/sendmail. Rather than copying the sendmail executable, a symbolic link can be used. To create the symbolic link, launch the Terminal application and execute the following command:

[localhost:~] sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/sendmail
/usr/lib/sendmail 
Enter Password: ********
      

The other change to be made involves turning on the sendmailnow Bugzilla parameter, which is described in Section 5.1.

4.4.2. Libraries & Perl Modules on Mac OS X

There are a lot of common libraries and utilities out there that Apple did not include with Mac OS X, but which run perfectly well on it. The GD library, which Bugzilla needs to do bug graphs, is one of these.

The easiest way to get a lot of these is with a program called Fink, which is similar in nature to the CPAN installer, but installs common GNU utilities. Fink is available from <https://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/>.

Follow the instructions for setting up Fink. Once it's installed, you'll want to run the following as root: fink install gd

It will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to install all of the dependencies. Then watch it work.

To prevent creating conflicts with the software that Apple installs by default, Fink creates its own directory tree at /sw where it installs most of the software that it installs. This means your libraries and headers for libgd will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and /usr/local/include. Because of these changed locations for the libraries, the Perl GD module will not install directly via CPAN, because it looks for the specific paths instead of getting them from your environment. But there's a way around that :-)

Instead of typing "install GD" at the cpan> prompt, type look GD. This should go through the motions of downloading the latest version of the GD module, then it will open a shell and drop you into the build directory. Apply this patch to the Makefile.PL file (save the patch into a file and use the command patch < patchfile.)

Then, run these commands to finish the installation of the GD module:

4.5.1. Introduction

If you are running a *NIX OS as non-root, either due to lack of access (web hosts, for example) or for security reasons, this will detail how to install Bugzilla on such a setup. It is recommended that you read through the Bugzilla Installation first to get an idea on the installation steps required. (These notes will reference to steps in that guide.)

4.5.2. MySQL

You may have MySQL installed as root. If you're setting up an account with a web host, a MySQL account needs to be set up for you. From there, you can create the bugs account, or use the account given to you.

You may have problems trying to set up GRANT permissions to the database. If you're using a web host, chances are that you have a separate database which is already locked down (or one big database with limited/no access to the other areas), but you may want to ask your system administrator what the security settings are set to, and/or run the GRANT command for you. Also, you will probably not be able to change the MySQL root user password (for obvious reasons), so skip that step.

---

4.5.2.1. Running MySQL as Non-Root

4.5.2.1.1. The Custom Configuration Method

Create a file .my.cnf in your home directory (using /home/foo in this example) as follows....

[mysqld] datadir=/home/foo/mymysql socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock port=8081 [mysql] socket=/home/foo/mymysql/thesock port=8081 [mysql.server] user=mysql basedir=/var/lib [safe_mysqld] err-log=/home/foo/mymysql/the.log pid-file=/home/foo/mymysql/the.pid

---

4.5.2.1.2. The Custom Built Method

You can install MySQL as a not-root, if you really need to. Build it with PREFIX set to /home/foo/mysql, or use pre-installed executables, specifying that you want to put all of the data files in /home/foo/mysql/data. If there is another MySQL server running on the system that you do not own, use the -P option to specify a TCP port that is not in use.

---

4.5.2.1.3. Starting the Server

After your mysqld program is built and any .my.cnf file is in place, you must initialize the databases (ONCE).

bash$ mysql_install_db

Then start the daemon with

bash$ safe_mysql &

After you start mysqld the first time, you then connect to it as "root" and GRANT permissions to other users. (Again, the MySQL root account has nothing to do with the *NIX root account.)

You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a crontab entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart them if needed.

Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources and running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any machine on which you are a user!

4.5.3. Perl

On the extremely rare chance that you don't have Perl on the machine, you will have to build the sources yourself. The following commands should get your system installed with your own personal version of Perl:

        bash$
        wget http://perl.com/CPAN/src/stable.tar.gz
        bash$
        tar zvxf stable.tar.gz
        bash$
        cd perl-5.8.1 (or whatever the version of Perl is called)
        bash$
        sh Configure -de -Dprefix=/home/foo/perl
        bash$
        make && make test && make install
      

Once you have Perl installed into a directory (probably in ~/perl/bin), you'll have to change the locations on the scripts, which is detailed later on this page.

4.5.4. Perl Modules

Installing the Perl modules as a non-root user is probably the hardest part of the process. There are two different methods: a completely independant Perl with its own modules, or personal modules using the current (root installed) version of Perl. The independant method takes up quite a bit of disk space, but is less complex, while the mixed method only uses as much space as the modules themselves, but takes more work to setup.

          cpan>
          install GD
          cpan>
          install Chart::Base
          cpan>
          install MIME::Parser
        

4.5.5. HTTP Server

Ideally, this also needs to be installed as root and run under a special webserver account. As long as the web server will allow the running of *.cgi files outside of a cgi-bin, and a way of denying web access to certain files (such as a .htaccess file), you should be good in this department.

---

4.5.5.1. Running Apache as Non-Root

You can run Apache as a non-root user, but the port will need to be set to one above 1024. If you type httpd -V, you will get a list of the variables that your system copy of httpd uses. One of those, namely HTTPD_ROOT, tells you where that installation looks for its config information.

From there, you can copy the config files to your own home directory to start editing. When you edit those and then use the -d option to override the HTTPD_ROOT compiled into the web server, you get control of your own customized web server.

You will need to start the daemons yourself. You can either ask your system administrator to add them to system startup files, or add a crontab entry that runs a script to check on these daemons and restart them if needed.

Do NOT run daemons or other services on a server without first consulting your system administrator! Daemons use up system resources and running one may be in violation of your terms of service for any machine on which you are a user!

4.5.6. Bugzilla

Since you probably can't set up a symbolic link to /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl as a non-root user, you will need to hack the scripts to point to the right Perl:

perl -pi -e 's@#\!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl@#\!/usr/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm processmail syncshadowdb

Change /usr/bin/perl to match the location of Perl on your machine. If you had to install Perl as non-root, this would be the location in your home directory.

Version 2.17+ of Bugzilla now already has the scripts pointing to /usr/bin/perl.

Of course, the scripts will not work if they don't know the location of your newly install Perl modules, so you will have to hack the scripts to look for those, too:

perl -pi -e 's@use strict\;@use strict\; use lib \"/home/foo/perl/lib\"\;@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm processmail syncshadowdb

Change /home/foo/perl/lib to your personal Perl library directory. You can probably skip this step if you are using the independant method of Perl module installation.

When you run ./checksetup.pl to create the localconfig file, it will list the Perl modules it finds. If one is missing, go back and double-check the module installation from the CPAN shell, then delete the localconfig file and try again.

The one option in localconfig you might have problems with is the web server group. If you can't successfully browse to the index.cgi (like a Forbidden error), you may have to relax your permissions, and blank out the web server group. Of course, this may pose as a security risk. Having a properly jailed shell and/or limited access to shell accounts may lessen the security risk, but use at your own risk.

4.6.1. Bundle::Bugzilla makes me upgrade to Perl 5.6.1

Try executing perl -MCPAN -e 'install CPAN' and then continuing.

Certain older versions of the CPAN toolset were somewhat naive about how to upgrade Perl modules. When a couple of modules got rolled into the core Perl distribution for 5.6.1, CPAN thought that the best way to get those modules up to date was to haul down the Perl distribution itself and build it. Needless to say, this has caused headaches for just about everybody. Upgrading to a newer version of CPAN with the commandline above should fix things.

4.6.2. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed

The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql (over which the Bugzilla team have no control):

 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)

To fix this, go to <path-to-perl>/lib/DBD/sponge.pm in your Perl installation and replace

 my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};

by

 my $numFields;
 if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
     $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
 } elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
     $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};

(note the S added to NAME.)

4.6.3. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)

If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other distributions with "paranoid" security options, it is possible that the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error:

cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied

This is because your /var/spool/mqueue directory has a mode of "drwx------". Type chmod 755 /var/spool/mqueue as root to fix this problem.

4.6.4. Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT

This is caused by a bug in the version of File::Temp that is distributed with perl 5.6.0. Many minor variations of this error have been reported. Examples can be found in Figure 4-1.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_NOINHERIT, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 208.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_EXLOCK, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 210.

Your vendor has not defined Fcntl macro O_TEMPORARY, used 
at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/File/Temp.pm line 233.
        

Numerous people have reported that upgrading to version 5.6.1 or higher solved the problem for them. A less involved fix is to apply the patch in Figure 4-2. The patch is also available as a patch file.

--- File/Temp.pm.orig   Thu Feb  6 16:26:00 2003
+++ File/Temp.pm        Thu Feb  6 16:26:23 2003
@@ -205,6 +205,7 @@
     # eg CGI::Carp
     local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
     local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+    local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
     $bit = &$func();
     1;
   };
@@ -226,6 +227,7 @@
     # eg CGI::Carp
     local $SIG{__DIE__} = sub {};
     local $SIG{__WARN__} = sub {};
+    local *CORE::GLOBAL::die = sub {};
     $bit = &$func();
     1;
   };
        

5.2.1. Creating the Default User

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

If you wish to add more administrative users, you must use the MySQL interface. Run "mysql" from the command line, and use these commands: mysql> use bugs; mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7fffffffffffffff where login_name = "(user's login name)"; Yes, that is fifteen "f" 's. A whole lot of f-ing going on if you want to create a new administator.

5.2.2. Managing Other Users

5.3.1. Products

Products are the broadest category in Bugzilla, and tend to represent real-world shipping products. E.g. if your company makes computer games, you should have one product per game, perhaps a "Common" product for units of technology used in multiple games, and maybe a few special products (Website, Administration...)

Many of Bugzilla's settings are configurable on a per-product basis. The number of "votes" available to users is set per-product, as is the number of votes required to move a bug automatically from the UNCONFIRMED status to the NEW status.

To create a new product:

1. Select "products" from the footer

2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right

3. Enter the name of the product and a description. The Description field may contain HTML.

Don't worry about the "Closed for bug entry", "Maximum Votes per person", "Maximum votes a person can put on a single bug", "Number of votes a bug in this Product needs to automatically get out of the UNCONFIRMED state", and "Version" options yet. We'll cover those in a few moments.

5.3.2. Components

Components are subsections of a Product. E.g. the computer game you are designing may have a "UI" component, an "API" component, a "Sound System" component, and a "Plugins" component, each overseen by a different programmer. It often makes sense to divide Components in Bugzilla according to the natural divisions of responsibility within your Product or company.

Each component has a owner and (if you turned it on in the parameters), a QA Contact. The owner should be the primary person who fixes bugs in that component. The QA Contact should be the person who will ensure these bugs are completely fixed. The Owner, QA Contact, and Reporter will get email when new bugs are created in this Component and when these bugs change. Default Owner and Default QA Contact fields only dictate the default assignments; these can be changed on bug submission, or at any later point in a bug's life.

To create a new Component:

1. Select the "Edit components" link from the "Edit product" page

2. Select the "Add" link in the bottom right.

3. Fill out the "Component" field, a short "Description", the "Initial Owner" and "Initial QA Contact" (if enabled.) The Component and Description fields may contain HTML; the "Initial Owner" field must be a login name already existing in the database.

5.3.3. Versions

Versions are the revisions of the product, such as "Flinders 3.1", "Flinders 95", and "Flinders 2000". Version is not a multi-select field; the usual practice is to select the most recent version with the bug.

To create and edit Versions:

1. From the "Edit product" screen, select "Edit Versions"

2. You will notice that the product already has the default version "undefined". Click the "Add" link in the bottom right.

3. Enter the name of the Version. This field takes text only. Then click the "Add" button.

5.3.4. Milestones

Milestones are "targets" that you plan to get a bug fixed by. For example, you have a bug that you plan to fix for your 3.0 release, it would be assigned the milestone of 3.0.

Milestone options will only appear for a Product if you turned on the "usetargetmilestone" Param in the "Edit Parameters" screen.

To create new Milestones, set Default Milestones, and set Milestone URL:

1. Select "Edit milestones" from the "Edit product" page.

2. Select "Add" in the bottom right corner. text

3. Enter the name of the Milestone in the "Milestone" field. You can optionally set the "sortkey", which is a positive or negative number (-255 to 255) that defines where in the list this particular milestone appears. This is because milestones often do not occur in alphanumeric order For example, "Future" might be after "Release 1.2". Select "Add".

4. From the Edit product screen, you can enter the URL of a page which gives information about your milestones and what they mean.

   If you want your milestone document to be restricted so that it can only be viewed by people in a particular Bugzilla group, the best way is to attach the document to a bug in that group, and make the URL the URL of that attachment.

5.6.1. TCP/IP Ports

TCP/IP defines 65,000 some ports for trafic. Of those, Bugzilla only needs 1... 2 if you need to use features that require e-mail such as bug moving or the e-mail interface from contrib. You should audit your server and make sure that you aren't listening on any ports you don't need to be. You may also wish to use some kind of firewall software to be sure that trafic can only be recieved on ports you specify.

5.6.2. MySQL

MySQL ships by default with many settings that should be changed. By defaults it allows anybody to connect from localhost without a password and have full administrative capabilities. It also defaults to not have a root password (this is not the same as the system root). Also, many installations default to running mysqld as the system root.

1. Make sure you are running at least version 3.22.32 of MySQL as earlier versions had notable security holes.

2. Consult the documentation that came with your system for information on making mysqld run as an unprivileged user.

3. You should also be sure to disable the anonymous user account and set a password for the root user. This is accomplished using the following commands:

   bash$ mysql mysql mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE user = ''; mysql> UPDATE user SET password = password('new_password') WHERE user = 'root'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   From this point forward you will need to use mysql -u root -p and enter new_password when prompted when using the mysql client.

4. If you run MySQL on the same machine as your httpd server, you should consider disabling networking from within MySQL by adding the following to your /etc/my.cnf:

   [myslqd] # Prevent network access to MySQL. skip-networking

5. You may also consider running MySQL, or even all of Bugzilla in a chroot jail; however, instructions for doing that are beyond the scope of this document.

5.6.3. Daemon Accounts

Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd and MySQL's mysqld default to running as either "root" or "nobody". Running as "root" introduces obvious security problems, but the problems introduced by running everything as "nobody" may not be so obvious. Basically, if you're running every daemon as "nobody" and one of them gets compromised, they all get compromised. For this reason it is recommended that you create a user account for each daemon.

You will need to set the webservergroup to the group you created for your webserver to run as in localconfig. This will allow ./checksetup.pl to better adjust the file permissions on your Bugzilla install so as to not require making anything world-writable.

5.6.4. Web Server Access Controls

There are many files that are placed in the Bugzilla directory area that should not be accessable from the web. Because of the way Bugzilla is currently layed out, the list of what should and should not be accessible is rather complicated. A new installation method is currently in the works which should solve this by allowing files that shouldn't be accessible from the web to be placed in directory outside the webroot. See bug 44659 for more information.

• In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:

  • Block: *.pl, *localconfig*, runtests.sh, processmail, syncshadowdb

  • But allow: localconfig.js, localconfig.rdf

• In data:

  • Block everything

  • But allow: duplicates.rdf

• In data/webdot:

  • If you use a remote webdot server:

    • Block everything

    • But allow *.dot only for the remote webdot server

  • Otherwise, if you use a local GraphViz:

    • Block everything

    • But allow: *.png, *.gif, *.jpg, *.map

  • And if you don't use any dot:

    • Block everything

• In Bugzilla:

  • Block everything

• In template:

  • Block everything

Bugzilla ships with the ability to generate .htaccess files instructing Apache which files should and should not be accessible.

You should test to make sure that the files mentioned above are not accessible from the Internet, especially your localconfig file which contains your database password. To test, simply point your web browser at the file; for example, to test mozilla.org's installation, we'd try to access https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/localconfig. You should get a 403 Forbidden error.

Not following the instructions in this section, including testing, may result in sensitive information being globally accessible.

5.7.1. Template Directory Structure

The template directory structure starts with top level directory named template, which contains a directory for each installed localization. The next level defines the language used in the templates. Bugzilla comes with English templates, so the directory name is en, and we will discuss template/en throughout the documentation. Below template/en is the default directory, which contains all the standard templates shipped with Bugzilla.

A directory data/templates also exists; this is where Template Toolkit puts the compiled versions of the templates from either the default or custom directories. Do not directly edit the files in this directory, or all your changes will be lost the next time Template Toolkit recompiles the templates.

5.7.2. Choosing a Customization Method

If you want to edit Bugzilla's templates, the first decision you must make is how you want to go about doing so. There are two choices, and which you use depends mainly on the scope of your modifications, and the method you plan to use to upgrade Bugzilla.

The first method of making customizations is to directly edit the templates found in template/en/default. This is probably the best way to go about it if you are going to be upgrading Bugzilla through CVS, because if you then execute a cvs update, any changes you have made will be merged automagically with the updated versions.

If you use this method, and CVS conflicts occur during an update, the conflicted templates (and possibly other parts of your installation) will not work until they are resolved.

The second method is to copy the templates to be modified into a mirrored directory structure under template/en/custom. Templates in this directory structure automatically override any identically-named and identically-located templates in the default directory.

The custom directory does not exist at first and must be created if you want to use it.

The second method of customization should be used if you use the overwriting method of upgrade, because otherwise your changes will be lost. This method may also be better if you are using the CVS method of upgrading and are going to make major changes, because it is guaranteed that the contents of this directory will not be touched during an upgrade, and you can then decide whether to continue using your own templates, or make the effort to merge your changes into the new versions by hand.

Using this method, your installation may break if incompatible changes are made to the template interface. Such changes should be documented in the release notes, provided you are using a stable release of Bugzilla. If you use using unstable code, you will need to deal with this one yourself, although if possible the changes will be mentioned before they occur in the deprecations section of the previous stable release's release notes.

Regardless of which method you choose, it is recommended that you run ./checksetup.pl after creating or editing any templates in the template/en/default directory, and after editing any templates in the custom directory.

It is required that you run ./checksetup.pl after creating a new template in the custom directory. Failure to do so will raise an incomprehensible error message.

5.7.3. How To Edit Templates

If you are making template changes that you intend on submitting back for inclusion in standard Bugzilla, you should read the relevant sections of the Developers' Guide.

The syntax of the Template Toolkit language is beyond the scope of this guide. It's reasonably easy to pick up by looking at the current templates; or, you can read the manual, available on the Template Toolkit home page.

One thing you should take particular care about is the need to properly HTML filter data that has been passed into the template. This means that if the data can possibly contain special HTML characters such as <, and the data was not intended to be HTML, they need to be converted to entity form, ie &lt;. You use the 'html' filter in the Template Toolkit to do this. If you forget, you may open up your installation to cross-site scripting attacks.

Also note that Bugzilla adds a few filters of its own, that are not in standard Template Toolkit. In particular, the 'url_quote' filter can convert characters that are illegal or have special meaning in URLs, such as &, to the encoded form, ie %26. This actually encodes most characters (but not the common ones such as letters and numbers and so on), including the HTML-special characters, so there's never a need to HTML filter afterwards.

Editing templates is a good way of doing a "poor man's custom fields". For example, if you don't use the Status Whiteboard, but want to have a free-form text entry box for "Build Identifier", then you can just edit the templates to change the field labels. It's still be called status_whiteboard internally, but your users don't need to know that.

5.7.4. Template Formats

Some CGIs have the ability to use more than one template. For example, buglist.cgi can output itself as RDF, or as two formats of HTML (complex and simple). If you would like to retrieve a certain format, you can use the &format=<format> (such as simple or complex) in the URL. (Try this out by appending &format=simple to a buglist.cgi URL on your Bugzilla installation.) The mechanism that provides this feature is extensible.

To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats, grep the CGI for "ValidateOutputFormat". If it's not present, adding multiple format support isn't too hard; see how it's done in other CGIs.

To make a new format template for a CGI which supports this, open a current template for that CGI and take note of the INTERFACE comment (if present.) This comment defines what variables are passed into this template. If there isn't one, I'm afraid you'll have to read the template and the code to find out what information you get.

Write your template in whatever markup or text style is appropriate.

You now need to decide what content type you want your template served as. Open up the localconfig file and find the $contenttypes variable. If your content type is not there, add it. Remember the three- or four-letter tag assigned to your content type. This tag will be part of the template filename.

Save the template as <stubname>-<formatname>.<contenttypetag>.tmpl. Try out the template by calling the CGI as <cginame>.cgi?format=<formatname> .

5.7.5. Particular Templates

There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in customising for your installation.

index.html.tmpl: This is the Bugzilla front page.

global/header.html.tmpl: This defines the header that goes on all Bugzilla pages. The header includes the banner, which is what appears to users and is probably what you want to edit instead. However the header also includes the HTML HEAD section, so you could for example add a stylesheet or META tag by editing the header.

global/banner.html.tmpl: This contains the "banner", the part of the header that appears at the top of all Bugzilla pages. The default banner is reasonably barren, so you'll probably want to customise this to give your installation a distinctive look and feel. It is recommended you preserve the Bugzilla version number in some form so the version you are running can be determined, and users know what docs to read.

global/footer.html.tmpl: This defines the footer that goes on all Bugzilla pages. Editing this is another way to quickly get a distinctive look and feel for your Bugzilla installation.

list/table.html.tmpl: This template controls the appearance of the bug lists created by Bugzilla. Editing this template allows per-column control of the width and title of a column, the maximum display length of each entry, and the wrap behaviour of long entries. For long bug lists, Bugzilla inserts a 'break' every 100 bugs by default; this behaviour is also controlled by this template, and that value can be modified here.

bug/create/user-message.html.tmpl: This is a message that appears near the top of the bug reporting page. By modifying this, you can tell your users how they should report bugs.

bug/process/midair.html.tmpl: This is the page used if two people submit simultaneous changes to the same bug. The second person to submit their changes will get this page to tell them what the first person did, and ask if they wish to overwrite those changes or go back and revisit the bug. The default title and header on this page read "Mid-air collision detected!" If you work in the aviation industry, or other environment where this might be found offensive (yes, we have true stories of this happening) you'll want to change this to something more appropriate for your environment.

bug/create/create.html.tmpl and bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl: You may not wish to go to the effort of creating custom fields in Bugzilla, yet you want to make sure that each bug report contains a number of pieces of important information for which there is not a special field. The bug entry system has been designed in an extensible fashion to enable you to add arbitrary HTML widgets, such as drop-down lists or textboxes, to the bug entry page and have their values appear formatted in the initial comment.

An example of this is the mozilla.org guided bug submission form. The code for this comes with the Bugzilla distribution as an example for you to copy. It can be found in the files create-guided.html.tmpl and comment-guided.html.tmpl.

So to use this feature, create a custom template for enter_bug.cgi. The default template, on which you could base it, is custom/bug/create/create.html.tmpl. Call it create-<formatname>.html.tmpl, and in it, add widgets for each piece of information you'd like collected - such as a build number, or set of steps to reproduce.

Then, create a template like custom/bug/create/comment.txt.tmpl, and call it comment-<formatname>.txt.tmpl. This template should reference the form fields you have created using the syntax [% form.<fieldname> %]. When a bug report is submitted, the initial comment attached to the bug report will be formatted according to the layout of this template.

For example, if your enter_bug template had a field

<input type="text" name="buildid" size="30">

and then your comment.txt.tmpl had

BuildID: [% form.buildid %]

then

BuildID: 20020303

would appear in the initial checkin comment.

5.8.1. Version Definitions

Bugzilla displays the version you are using at the top of most pages you load. It will look something like '2.16.7' or '2.18rc3' or '2.19.1+'. The first number in this series is the Major Version. This does not change very often (that is to say, almost never); Bugzilla was 1.x.x when it was first created, and went to 2.x.x when it was re-written in perl in Sept 1998. If/When the major version is changed to 3.x.x, it will signify a significant structural change and will be accompanied by much fanfare and many instructions on how to upgrade, including a revision to this page. :)

The second number in the version is called the 'minor number', and a release that changes the minor number is called a 'point release'. An even number in this position (2.14, 2.16, 2.18, 2.20, etc.) represents a stable version, while an odd number (2.17, 2.19, etc.) represents a development version. In the past, stable point releases were feature-based, coming when certain enhancements had been completed, or the Bugzilla development team felt that enough progress had been made overall. As of version 2.18, however, Bugzilla has moved to a time-based release schedule; current plans are to create a stable point release every 6 months or so after 2.18 is deployed.

The third number in the Bugzilla version represents a bugfix version. Bugfix Revisions are normally released only to address security vulnerabilities; in the future, it is likely that the Bugzilla development team will back-port bugfixes in a new point release to the old point release for a limited period. Once enough of these bugfixes have accumulated (or a new security vulnerability is identified and closed), a bugfix release will be made. As an example, 2.16.6 was a bugfix release, and improved on 2.16.5.

When reading version numbers, everything separated by a point ('.') should be read as a single number. It is not the same as decimal. 2.14 is newer than 2.8 because minor version 14 is greater than minor version 8. 2.24.11 would be newer than 2.24.9 (because bugfix 11 is greater than bugfix 9. This is confusing to some people who aren't used to dealing with software.

5.8.2. Upgrading - Methods and Procedure

There are three different ways to upgrade your installation.

1. Using CVS (Section 5.8.2.1)

2. Downloading a new tarball (Section 5.8.2.2)

3. Applying the relevant patches (Section 5.8.2.3)

Each of these options has its own pros and cons; the one that's right for you depends on how long it has been since you last installed, the degree to which you have customized your installation, and/or your network configuration. (Some discussion of the various methods of updating compared with degree and methods of local customization can be found in Section 5.7.2.)

The larger the jump you are trying to make, the more difficult it is going to be to upgrade if you have made local customizations. Upgrading from 2.18 to 2.18.1 should be fairly painless even if you are heavily customized, but going from 2.14 to 2.18 is going to mean a fair bit of work re-writing your local changes to use the new files, logic, templates, etc. If you have done no local changes at all, however, then upgrading should be approximately the same amount of work regardless of how long it has been since your version was released.

Upgrading is a one-way process. You should backup your database and current Bugzilla directory before attempting the upgrade. If you wish to revert to the old Bugzilla version for any reason, you will have to restore from these backups.

The examples in the following sections are written as though the user were updating to version 2.18.1, but the procedures are the same regardless of whether one is updating to a new point release or simply trying to obtain a new bugfix release. Also, in the examples the user's Bugzilla installation is found at /var/www/html/bugzilla. If that is not the same as the location of your Bugzilla installation, simply substitute the proper paths where appropriate.

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5.8.2.1. Upgrading using CVS

Every release of Bugzilla, whether it is a point release or a bugfix, is tagged in CVS. Also, every tarball that has been distributed since version 2.12 has been created in such a way that it can be used with CVS once it is unpacked. Doing so, however, requires that you are able to access cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port 2401, which may not be an option or a possibility for some users, especially those behind a highly restrictive firewall.

If you can, updating using CVS is probably the most painless method, especially if you have a lot of local changes.

The following shows the sequence of commands needed to update a Bugzilla installation via CVS, and a typical series of results.

bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ cvs login Logging in to :pserver:[email protected]:2401/cvsroot CVS password: ('anonymous', or just leave it blank) bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_18_1 -dP P checksetup.pl P collectstats.pl P globals.pl P docs/rel_notes.txt P template/en/default/list/quips.html.tmpl (etc.)

If a line in the output from cvs update begins with a C, then that represents a file with local changes that CVS was unable to properly merge. You need to resolve these conflicts manually before Bugzilla (or at least the portion using that file) will be usable.

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5.8.2.2. Upgrading using the tarball

If you are unable (or unwilling) to use CVS, another option that's always available is to obtain the latest tarball from the Download Page and create a new Bugzilla installation from that.

This sequence of commands shows how to get the tarball from the command-line; it is also possible to download it from the site directly in a web browser. If you go that route, save the file to the /var/www/html directory (or its equivalent, if you use something else) and omit the first three lines of the example.

bash$ cd /var/www/html bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.gz (Output omitted) bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.18.1.tar.gz bugzilla-2.18.1/ bugzilla-2.18.1/.cvsignore bugzilla-2.18.1/1x1.gif (Output truncated) bash$ cd bugzilla-2.18.1 bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* . bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data . bash$ cd .. bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old bash$ mv bugzilla-2.18.1 bugzilla

The cp commands both end with periods which is a very important detail, it tells the shell that the destination directory is the current working directory.

This upgrade method will give you a clean install of Bugzilla with the same version as the tarball. That's fine if you don't have any local customizations that you want to maintain, but if you do then you will need to reapply them by hand to the appropriate files.

It's worth noting that since 2.12, the Bugzilla tarballs come CVS-ready, so if you decide at a later date that you'd rather use CVS as an upgrade method, your code will already be set up for it.

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5.8.2.3. Upgrading using patches

If you are doing a bugfix upgrade -- that is, one where only the last number of the revision changes, such as from 2.16.6 to 2.16.7 -- then you have the option of obtaining and applying a patch file from the Download Page. This file is made available by the Bugzilla Development Team, and is a collection of all the bug fixes and security patches that have been made since the last bugfix release. If you are planning to upgrade via patches, it is safer to grab this developer-made patch file than to read the patch notes and apply all (or even just some of) the patches oneself, as sometimes patches on bugs get changed before they get checked in.

As above, this example starts with obtaining the file via the command line. If you have already downloaded it, you can omit the first two commands.

bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff.gz (Output omitted) bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff.gz bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.18.0-to-2.18.1.diff patching file checksetup.pl patching file collectstats.pl patching file globals.pl (etc.)

Be aware that upgrading from a patch file does not change the entries in your CVS directory. This could make it more difficult to upgrade using CVS (Section 5.8.2.1) in the future.

5.8.3. Completing Your Upgrade

Regardless of which upgrade method you choose, you will need to run ./checksetup.pl before your Bugzilla upgrade will be complete.

bash$ cd bugzilla
bash$ ./checksetup.pl
      

The period at the beginning of the command ./checksetup.pl is important and can not be omitted.

If you have done a lot of local modifications, it wouldn't hurt to run the Bugzilla Testing suite. This is not a required step, but it isn't going to hurt anything, and might help point out some areas that could be improved. (More information on the test suite can be had by following this link to the appropriate section in the Developers' Guide.)

5.9.1. Bonsai

Bonsai is a web-based tool for managing CVS, the Concurrent Versioning System . Using Bonsai, administrators can control open/closed status of trees, query a fast relational database back-end for change, branch, and comment information, and view changes made since the last time the tree was closed. Bonsai also integrates with Tinderbox, the Mozilla automated build management system.

5.9.2. CVS

CVS integration is best accomplished, at this point, using the Bugzilla Email Gateway.

Follow the instructions in this Guide for enabling Bugzilla e-mail integration. Ensure that your check-in script sends an email to your Bugzilla e-mail gateway with the subject of "[Bug XXXX]", and you can have CVS check-in comments append to your Bugzilla bug. If you want to have the bug be closed automatically, you'll have to modify the contrib/bugzilla_email_append.pl script.

There is also a CVSZilla project, based upon somewhat dated Bugzilla code, to integrate CVS and Bugzilla through CVS' ability to email. Check it out at: http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/~tonyg/.

Another system capable of CVS integration with Bugzilla is Scmbug. This system provides generic integration of Source code Configuration Management with Bugtracking. Check it out at: http://freshmeat.net/projects/scmbug/.

5.9.3. Perforce SCM

You can find the project page for Bugzilla and Teamtrack Perforce integration (p4dti) at: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti . "p4dti" is now an officially supported product from Perforce, and you can find the "Perforce Public Depot" p4dti page at http://public.perforce.com/public/perforce/p4dti/index.html .

Integration of Perforce with Bugzilla, once patches are applied, is seamless. Perforce replication information will appear below the comments of each bug. Be certain you have a matching set of patches for the Bugzilla version you are installing. p4dti is designed to support multiple defect trackers, and maintains its own documentation for it. Please consult the pages linked above for further information.

5.9.4. Subversion

Subversion is a free/open-source version control system, designed to overcome various limitations of CVS. Integration of Subversion with Bugzilla is possible using Scmbug, a system providing generic integration of Source Code Configuration Management with Bugtracking. Scmbug is available at http://freshmeat.net/projects/scmbug/.

5.9.5. Tinderbox/Tinderbox2

We need Tinderbox integration information.