2.1.1. Perl

Installed Version Test:

perl -v

Any machine that doesn't have Perl on it is a sad machine indeed. If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit http://www.perl.com. Although Bugzilla runs with Perl 5.8.1, it's a good idea to be using the latest stable version.

2.1.2. Database Engine

Bugzilla supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle as database servers. You only require one of these systems to make use of Bugzilla.

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2.1.2.1. MySQL

Installed Version Test:

mysql -V

If you don't have it and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit http://www.mysql.com. You need MySQL version 4.1.2 or higher.

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. To change the data directory, you have to build MySQL from source yourself, and set it as an option to configure.

If you install from something other than a packaging/installation system, such as .rpm (Redhat Package), .deb (Debian Package), .exe (Windows Executable), or .msi (Microsoft Installer), make sure the MySQL server is started when the machine boots.

2.1.3. Web Server

Installed Version Test: view the default welcome page at http://<your-machine>/

You have freedom of choice here, pretty much any web server that is capable of running CGI scripts will work. However, we strongly recommend using the Apache web server (either 1.3.x or 2.x), and the installation instructions usually assume you are using it. If you have got Bugzilla working using another web server, please share your experiences with us by filing a bug in Bugzilla Documentation.

If you don't have Apache and your OS doesn't provide official packages, visit http://httpd.apache.org/.

2.1.4. Bugzilla

Download a Bugzilla tarball (or check it out from CVS) and place it in a suitable directory, accessible by the default web server user (probably "apache" or "www"). Good locations are either directly in the web server's document directories or in /usr/local with a symbolic link to the web server's document directories or an alias in the web server's configuration.

The default Bugzilla distribution is NOT designed to be placed in a cgi-bin directory. This includes any directory which is configured using the ScriptAlias directive of Apache.

Once all the files are in a web accessible directory, make that directory writable by your web server's user. This is a temporary step until you run the checksetup.pl script, which locks down your installation.

2.1.5. Perl Modules

Bugzilla's installation process is based on a script called checksetup.pl. The first thing it checks is whether you have appropriate versions of all the required Perl modules. The aim of this section is to pass this check. When it passes, proceed to Section 2.2.

At this point, you need to su to root. You should remain as root until the end of the install. To check you have the required modules, run:

bash# ./checksetup.pl --check-modules

checksetup.pl will print out a list of the required and optional Perl modules, together with the versions (if any) installed on your machine. The list of required modules is reasonably long; however, you may already have several of them installed.

The preferred way of installing Perl modules is to use the install-module.pl script on Unix, or PPM on Windows (see Section 2.5.1.2). If for some reason you need to install the Perl modules manually, see Appendix C. For instance, on Unix:

bash# perl install-module.pl <modulename>

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.

If you are using a package-based system, and attempting to install the Perl modules from CPAN, you may need to install the "development" packages for MySQL and GD before attempting to install the related Perl modules. The names of these packages will vary depending on the specific distribution you are using, but are often called <packagename>-devel.

Here is a complete list of modules and their minimum versions. Some modules have special installation notes, which follow.

Required Perl modules:

1. CGI 3.21

2. Date::Format (2.21)

3. DBI (1.41)

4. DBD::mysql (4.00) if using MySQL

5. DBD::Pg (1.45) if using PostgreSQL

6. DBD::Oracle (1.19) if using Oracle

7. Template (2.22)

8. Email::Send (2.00)

9. Email::MIME::Modifier (1.442)

1. GD (1.20) for bug charting

2. Template::Plugin::GD::Image (1.20) for Graphical Reports

3. Chart::Base (1.0) for bug charting

4. GD::Graph (any) for bug charting

5. GD::Text (any) for bug charting

6. XML::Twig (any) for bug import/export

7. MIME::Parser (5.406) for bug import/export

8. LWP::UserAgent (any) for Automatic Update Notifications

9. PatchReader (0.9.4) for pretty HTML view of patches

10. Image::Magick (any) for converting BMP image attachments to PNG

11. Net::LDAP (any) for LDAP Authentication

12. Authen::Radius (any) for RADIUS Authentication

13. SOAP::Lite (0.710.06) for the web service interface

14. HTML::Parser (3.40) for More HTML in Product/Group Descriptions

15. HTML::Scrubber (any) for More HTML in Product/Group Descriptions

16. Email::MIME::Attachment::Stripper (any) for Inbound Email

17. Email::Reply (any) for Inbound Email

18. mod_perl2 (1.999022) for mod_perl

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2.1.5.3. GD (1.20)

The GD module is only required if you want graphical reports.

The Perl GD module 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 module README. If compiling GD fails, it's probably because you're missing a required library.

The version of the GD module you need is very closely tied to the libgd version installed on your system. If you have a version 1.x of libgd the 2.x versions of the GD module won't work for you.

2.1.6. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)

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

This is not entirely true. It is possible to completely disable email sending, or to have Bugzilla store email messages in a file instead of sending them. However, this is mainly intended for testing, as disabling or diverting email on a production machine would mean that users could miss important events (such as bug changes or the creation of new accounts). For more information, see the "mail_delivery_method" parameter in Section 3.1.

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 Bugzilla will not distinguish between them.

If you are using Sendmail, version 8.7 or higher is required. If you are using a Sendmail-compatible MTA, it must be congruent with at least version 8.7 of Sendmail.

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.

2.1.7. Installing Bugzilla on mod_perl

It is now possible to run the Bugzilla software under mod_perl on Apache. mod_perl has some additional requirements to that of running Bugzilla under mod_cgi (the standard and previous way).

Bugzilla requires mod_perl to be installed, which can be obtained from http://perl.apache.org - Bugzilla requires version 1.999022 (AKA 2.0.0-RC5) to be installed.

2.2.1. localconfig

You should now run checksetup.pl again, this time without the --check-modules switch.

bash# ./checksetup.pl

This time, checksetup.pl should tell you that all the correct modules are installed and will display a message about, and write out a file called, localconfig. This file contains the default settings for a number of Bugzilla parameters.

Load this file in your editor. The only two values you need to change are $db_driver and $db_pass, respectively the type of the database and the password for the user you will create for your database. Pick a strong password (for simplicity, it should not contain single quote characters) and put it here. $db_driver can be either 'mysql', 'Pg' or 'oracle'.

In Oracle, $db_name should actually be the SID name of your database (e.g. "XE" if you are using Oracle XE).

You may need to change the value of webservergroup if your web server does not run in the "apache" group. On Debian, for example, Apache runs in the "www-data" group. If you are going to run Bugzilla on a machine where you do not have root access (such as on a shared web hosting account), you will need to leave webservergroup empty, ignoring the warnings that checksetup.pl will subsequently display every time it is run.

If you are using suexec, you should use your own primary group for webservergroup rather than leaving it empty, and see the additional directions in the suexec section Section 2.6.6.1.

The other options in the localconfig file are documented by their accompanying comments. If you have a slightly non-standard database setup, you may wish to change one or more of the other "$db_*" parameters.

2.2.2. Database Server

This section deals with configuring your database server for use with Bugzilla. Currently, MySQL (Section 2.2.2.2), PostgreSQL (Section 2.2.2.3) and Oracle (Section 2.2.2.4) are available.

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2.2.2.2. MySQL

MySQL's default configuration is insecure. We highly recommend to run mysql_secure_installation on Linux or the MySQL installer on Windows, and follow the instructions. Important points to note are: Be sure that the root account has a secure password set. Do not create an anonymous account, and if it exists, say "yes" to remove it. If your web server and MySQL server are on the same machine, you should disable the network access.

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2.2.2.2.1. Allow large attachments and many comments

By default, MySQL will only allow you to insert things into the database that are smaller than 1MB. Attachments may be larger than this. Also, Bugzilla combines all comments on a single bug into one field for full-text searching, and the combination of all comments on a single bug could in some cases be larger than 1MB.

To change MySQL's default, you need to edit your MySQL configuration file, which is usually /etc/my.cnf on Linux. We recommend that you allow at least 4MB packets by adding the "max_allowed_packet" parameter to your MySQL configuration in the "[mysqld]" section, like this:

[mysqld] # Allow packets up to 4MB max_allowed_packet=4M

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2.2.2.2.2. Allow small words in full-text indexes

By default, words must be at least four characters in length in order to be indexed by MySQL's full-text indexes. This causes a lot of Bugzilla specific words to be missed, including "cc", "ftp" and "uri".

MySQL can be configured to index those words by setting the ft_min_word_len param to the minimum size of the words to index. This can be done by modifying the /etc/my.cnf according to the example below:

[mysqld] # Allow small words in full-text indexes ft_min_word_len=2

Rebuilding the indexes can be done based on documentation found at http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Fine-tuning.html.

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2.2.2.2.3. Add a user to MySQL

You need to add a new MySQL user for Bugzilla to use. (It's not safe to have Bugzilla use the MySQL root account.) The following instructions assume the defaults in localconfig; if you changed those, you need to modify the SQL command appropriately. You will need the $db_pass password you set in localconfig in Section 2.2.1.

We use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs" user. 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.

Run the mysql command-line client and 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;

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2.2.2.2.4. Permit attachments table to grow beyond 4GB

By default, MySQL will limit the size of a table to 4GB. This limit is present even if the underlying filesystem has no such limit. To set a higher limit, follow these instructions.

After you have completed the rest of the installation (or at least the database setup parts), you should run the MySQL command-line client and enter the following, replacing $bugs_db with your Bugzilla database name (bugs by default):

mysql> use $bugs_db mysql> ALTER TABLE attachments AVG_ROW_LENGTH=1000000, MAX_ROWS=20000;

The above command will change the limit to 20GB. Mysql will have to make a temporary copy of your entire table to do this. Ideally, you should do this when your attachments table is still small.

This does not affect Big Files, attachments that are stored directly on disk instead of in the database.

 bash# su - postgres

 bash$ createuser -U postgres -dAP bugs

    CREATE TABLESPACE bugs
    DATAFILE '$path_to_datafile' SIZE 500M
    AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 30M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED
          

    CREATE USER bugs
    IDENTIFIED BY "$db_pass"
    DEFAULT TABLESPACE bugs
    TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP
    PROFILE DEFAULT;
    -- GRANT/REVOKE ROLE PRIVILEGES
    GRANT CONNECT TO bugs;
    GRANT RESOURCE TO bugs;
    -- GRANT/REVOKE SYSTEM PRIVILEGES
    GRANT UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO bugs;
    GRANT EXECUTE ON CTXSYS.CTX_DDL TO bugs;
          

    SetEnv ORACLE_HOME /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/
    SetEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/lib/
          

2.2.3. checksetup.pl

Next, rerun checksetup.pl. It reconfirms that all the modules are present, and notices the altered localconfig file, which it assumes you have edited to your satisfaction. It compiles the UI templates, connects to the database using the 'bugs' user you created and the password you defined, and creates the 'bugs' database and the tables therein.

After that, it asks for details of an administrator account. Bugzilla can have multiple administrators - you can create more later - but it needs one to start off with. Enter the email address of an administrator, his or her full name, and a suitable Bugzilla password.

checksetup.pl will then finish. You may rerun checksetup.pl at any time if you wish.

2.2.4. Web server

Configure your web server according to the instructions in the appropriate section. (If it makes a difference in your choice, the Bugzilla Team recommends Apache.) To check whether your web server is correctly configured, try to access testagent.cgi from your web server. If "OK" is displayed, then your configuration is successful. Regardless of which web server you are using, however, ensure that sensitive information is not remotely available by properly applying the access controls in Section 4.2.1. You can run testserver.pl to check if your web server serves Bugzilla files as expected.

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2.2.4.1. Bugzilla using Apache

You have two options for running Bugzilla under Apache - mod_cgi (the default) and mod_perl (new in Bugzilla 2.23)

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2.2.4.1.1. Apache httpd with mod_cgi

To configure your Apache web server to work with Bugzilla while using mod_cgi, do the following:

1. Load httpd.conf in your editor. In Fedora and Red Hat Linux, this file is found in /etc/httpd/conf.

2. Apache uses <Directory> directives to permit fine-grained permission setting. Add the following lines to a directive that applies to the location of your Bugzilla installation. (If such a section does not exist, you'll want to add one.) In this example, Bugzilla has been installed at /var/www/html/bugzilla.

   <Directory /var/www/html/bugzilla> AddHandler cgi-script .cgi Options +Indexes +ExecCGI DirectoryIndex index.cgi AllowOverride Limit </Directory>

   These instructions: allow apache to run .cgi files found within the bugzilla directory; instructs the server to look for a file called index.cgi if someone only types the directory name into the browser; and allows Bugzilla's .htaccess files to override global permissions.

   It is possible to make these changes globally, or to the directive controlling Bugzilla's parent directory (e.g. <Directory /var/www/html/>). Such changes would also apply to the Bugzilla directory... but they would also apply to many other places where they may or may not be appropriate. In most cases, including this one, it is better to be as restrictive as possible when granting extra access.

   On Windows, you may have to also add the ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-Strict line, see Windows specific notes.

3. checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and directories if it knows what group the web server runs as. Find the Group line in httpd.conf, place the value found there in the $webservergroup variable in localconfig, then rerun checksetup.pl.

4. Optional: If Bugzilla does not actually reside in the webspace directory, but instead has been symbolically linked there, you will need to add the following to the Options line of the Bugzilla <Directory> directive (the same one as in the step above):

   +FollowSymLinks

   Without this directive, Apache will not follow symbolic links to places outside its own directory structure, and you will be unable to run Bugzilla.

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2.2.4.1.2. Apache httpd with mod_perl

Some configuration is required to make Bugzilla work with Apache and mod_perl

1. Load httpd.conf in your editor. In Fedora and Red Hat Linux, this file is found in /etc/httpd/conf.

2. Add the following information to your httpd.conf file, substituting where appropriate with your own local paths.

   This should be used instead of the <Directory> block shown above. This should also be above any other mod_perl directives within the httpd.conf and must be specified in the order as below.

   You should also ensure that you have disabled KeepAlive support in your Apache install when utilizing Bugzilla under mod_perl

   PerlSwitches -I/var/www/html/bugzilla -I/var/www/html/bugzilla/lib -w -T PerlConfigRequire /var/www/html/bugzilla/mod_perl.pl

3. checksetup.pl can set tighter permissions on Bugzilla's files and directories if it knows what group the web server runs as. Find the Group line in httpd.conf, place the value found there in the $webservergroup variable in localconfig, then rerun checksetup.pl.

On restarting Apache, Bugzilla should now be running within the mod_perl environment. Please ensure you have run checksetup.pl to set permissions before you restart Apache.

Please bear the following points in mind when looking at using Bugzilla under mod_perl: mod_perl support in Bugzilla can take up a HUGE amount of RAM. You could be looking at 30MB per httpd child, easily. Basically, you just need a lot of RAM. The more RAM you can get, the better. mod_perl is basically trading RAM for speed. At least 2GB total system RAM is recommended for running Bugzilla under mod_perl. Under mod_perl, you have to restart Apache if you make any manual change to any Bugzilla file. You can't just reload--you have to actually restart the server (as in make sure it stops and starts again). You can change localconfig and the params file manually, if you want, because those are re-read every time you load a page. You must run in Apache's Prefork MPM (this is the default). The Worker MPM may not work--we haven't tested Bugzilla's mod_perl support under threads. (And, in fact, we're fairly sure it won't work.) Bugzilla generally expects to be the only mod_perl application running on your entire server. It may or may not work if there are other applications also running under mod_perl. It does try its best to play nice with other mod_perl applications, but it still may have conflicts. It is recommended that you have one Bugzilla instance running under mod_perl on your server. Bugzilla has not been tested with more than one instance running.

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2.2.4.2. Microsoft Internet Information Services

If you are running Bugzilla on Windows and choose to use Microsoft's Internet Information Services or Personal Web Server you will need to perform a number of other configuration steps as explained below. You may also want to refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: 245225 "HOW TO: Configure and Test a PERL Script with IIS 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1" (for Internet Information Services) and 231998 "HOW TO: FP2000: How to Use Perl with Microsoft Personal Web Server on Windows 95/98" (for Personal Web Server).

You will need to create a virtual directory for the Bugzilla install. Put the Bugzilla files in a directory that is named something other than what you want your end-users accessing. That is, if you want your users to access your Bugzilla installation through "http://<yourdomainname>/Bugzilla", then do not put your Bugzilla files in a directory named "Bugzilla". Instead, place them in a different location, and then use the IIS Administration tool to create a Virtual Directory named "Bugzilla" that acts as an alias for the actual location of the files. When creating that virtual directory, make sure you add the "Execute (such as ISAPI applications or CGI)" access permission.

You will also need to tell IIS how to handle Bugzilla's .cgi files. Using the IIS Administration tool again, open up the properties for the new virtual directory and select the Configuration option to access the Script Mappings. Create an entry mapping .cgi to:

<full path to perl.exe >\perl.exe -x<full path to Bugzilla> -wT "%s" %s

For example:

c:\perl\bin\perl.exe -xc:\bugzilla -wT "%s" %s

The ActiveState install may have already created an entry for .pl files that is limited to "GET,HEAD,POST". If so, this mapping should be removed as Bugzilla's .pl files are not designed to be run via a web server.

IIS will also need to know that the index.cgi should be treated as a default document. On the Documents tab page of the virtual directory properties, you need to add index.cgi as a default document type. If you wish, you may remove the other default document types for this particular virtual directory, since Bugzilla doesn't use any of them.

Also, and this can't be stressed enough, make sure that files such as localconfig and your data directory are secured as described in Section 4.2.1.

2.2.5. Bugzilla

Your Bugzilla should now be working. Access http://<your-bugzilla-server>/ - you should see the Bugzilla front page. If not, consult the Troubleshooting section, Appendix A.

The URL above may be incorrect if you installed Bugzilla into a subdirectory or used a symbolic link from your web site root to the Bugzilla directory.

Log in with the administrator account you defined in the last checksetup.pl run. You should go through the parameters on the Edit Parameters page (see link in the footer) and see if there are any you wish to change. They key parameters are documented in Section 3.1; you should certainly alter maintainer and urlbase; you may also want to alter cookiepath or requirelogin.

This would also be a good time to revisit the localconfig file and make sure that the names of the priorities, severities, platforms and operating systems are those you wish to use when you start creating bugs. Remember to rerun checksetup.pl if you change it.

Bugzilla has several optional features which require extra configuration. You can read about those in Section 2.3.

2.3.1. Bug Graphs

If you have installed the necessary Perl modules you can start collecting statistics for the nifty Bugzilla graphs.

bash# crontab -e

This should bring up the crontab file in your editor. Add a cron entry like this to run collectstats.pl daily at 5 after midnight:

5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl

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

Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler, which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.

2.3.2. The Whining Cron

What good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make them more so you can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at engineers which leave their bugs in the NEW or REOPENED state without triaging them.

This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry, in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This example runs it at 12.55am.

55 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whineatnews.pl

Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler, which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.

2.3.3. Whining

As of Bugzilla 2.20, users can configure Bugzilla to regularly annoy them at regular intervals, by having Bugzilla execute saved searches at certain times and emailing the results to the user. This is known as "Whining". The process of configuring Whining is described in Section 5.13, but for it to work a Perl script must be executed at regular intervals.

This can be done by adding the following command as a daily crontab entry, in the same manner as explained above for bug graphs. This example runs it every 15 minutes.

*/15 * * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./whine.pl

Whines can be executed as often as every 15 minutes, so if you specify longer intervals between executions of whine.pl, some users may not be whined at as often as they would expect. Depending on the person, this can either be a very Good Thing or a very Bad Thing.

Windows does not have 'cron', but it does have the Task Scheduler, which performs the same duties. There are also third-party tools that can be used to implement cron, such as nncron.

2.3.4. Serving Alternate Formats with the right MIME type

Some Bugzilla pages have alternate formats, other than just plain HTML. In particular, a few Bugzilla pages can output their contents as either XUL (a special Mozilla format, that looks like a program GUI) or RDF (a type of structured XML that can be read by various programs).

In order for your users to see these pages correctly, Apache must send them with the right MIME type. To do this, add the following lines to your Apache configuration, either in the <VirtualHost> section for your Bugzilla, or in the <Directory> section for your Bugzilla:

AddType application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml .xul AddType application/rdf+xml .rdf

2.5.1. Microsoft Windows

Making Bugzilla work on Windows is more difficult than making it work on Unix. For that reason, we still recommend doing so on a Unix based system such as GNU/Linux. That said, if you do want to get Bugzilla running on Windows, you will need to make the following adjustments. A detailed step-by-step installation guide for Windows is also available if you need more help with your installation.

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2.5.1.1. Win32 Perl

Perl for Windows can be obtained from ActiveState. You should be able to find a compiled binary at http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/. The following instructions assume that you are using version 5.8.1 of ActiveState.

These instructions are for 32-bit versions of Windows. If you are using a 64-bit version of Windows, you will need to install 32-bit Perl in order to install the 32-bit modules as described below.

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2.5.1.2. Perl Modules on Win32

Bugzilla on Windows requires the same perl modules found in Section 2.1.5. The main difference is that windows uses PPM instead of CPAN. ActiveState provides a GUI to manage Perl modules. We highly recommend that you use it. If you prefer to use ppm from the command-line, type:

C:\perl> ppm install <module name>

The best source for the Windows PPM modules needed for Bugzilla is probably the theory58S website, which you can add to your list of repositories as follows (for Perl 5.8.x):

ppm repo add theory58S http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/

If you are using Perl 5.10.x, you cannot use the same PPM modules as Perl 5.8.x as they are incompatible. In this case, you should add the following repository:

ppm repo add theory58S http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/PPMPackages/10xx/

In versions prior to 5.8.8 build 819 of PPM the command is ppm repository add theory58S http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/

The PPM repository stores modules in 'packages' that may have a slightly different name than the module. If retrieving these modules from there, you will need to pay attention to the information provided when you run checksetup.pl as it will tell you what package you'll need to install.

If you are behind a corporate firewall, you will need to let the ActiveState PPM utility know how to get through it to access the repositories by setting the HTTP_proxy system environmental variable. For more information on setting that variable, see the ActiveState documentation.

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2.5.1.3. Serving the web pages

As is the case on Unix based systems, any web server should be able to handle Bugzilla; however, the Bugzilla Team still recommends Apache whenever asked. No matter what web server you choose, be sure to pay attention to the security notes in Section 4.2.1. More information on configuring specific web servers can be found in Section 2.2.4.

The web server looks at /usr/bin/perl to call Perl. If you are using Apache on windows, you can set the ScriptInterpreterSource directive in your Apache config file to make it look at the right place: insert the line ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-Strict into your httpd.conf file, and create the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cgi\Shell\ExecCGI\Command with C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe -T as value (adapt to your path if needed) in the registry. When this is done, restart Apache.

2.5.2. Mac OS X

Making Bugzilla work on Mac OS X requires the following adjustments.

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2.5.2.2. Libraries & Perl Modules on Mac OS X

Apple does not include the GD library with Mac OS X. Bugzilla needs this for bug graphs.

You can use DarwinPorts (http://darwinports.com/) or Fink (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/), both of which are similar in nature to the CPAN installer, but install common unix programs.

Follow the instructions for setting up DarwinPorts or Fink. Once you have one installed, you'll want to use it to install the gd2 package.

Fink will prompt you for a number of dependencies, type 'y' and hit enter to install all of the dependencies and then watch it work. You will then be able to use CPAN to install the GD Perl module.

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 will be at /sw/lib and /sw/include instead of /usr/lib and /usr/include. When the Perl module config script asks where your libgd is, be sure to tell it /sw/lib.

Also available via DarwinPorts and Fink is expat. After installing the expat package, you will be able to install XML::Parser using CPAN. If you use fink, there is one caveat. Unlike recent versions of the GD module, XML::Parser doesn't prompt for the location of the required libraries. When using CPAN, you will need to use the following command sequence:

# perl -MCPAN -e'look XML::Parser' # perl Makefile.PL EXPATLIBPATH=/sw/lib EXPATINCPATH=/sw/include # make; make test; make install # exit

The look command will download the module and spawn a new shell with the extracted files as the current working directory. The exit command will return you to your original shell.

You should watch the output from these make commands, especially "make test" as errors may prevent XML::Parser from functioning correctly with Bugzilla.

2.5.3. Linux Distributions

Many Linux distributions include Bugzilla and its dependencies in their native package management systems. Installing Bugzilla with root access on any Linux system should be as simple as finding the Bugzilla package in the package management application and installing it using the normal command syntax. Several distributions also perform the proper web server configuration automatically on installation.

Please consult the documentation of your Linux distribution for instructions on how to install packages, or for specific instructions on installing Bugzilla with native package management tools. There is also a Bugzilla Wiki Page for distro-specific installation notes.

2.6.1. 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 Section 2.1 first to get an idea on the installation steps required. (These notes will reference to steps in that guide.)

2.6.2. 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.

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2.6.2.1. Running MySQL as Non-Root

2.6.2.1.1. 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

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2.6.2.1.2. 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.

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2.6.2.1.3. 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!

2.6.3. 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 will need to install the Perl Modules, described below.

2.6.4. Perl Modules

Installing the Perl modules as a non-root user is accomplished by running the install-module.pl script. For more details on this script, see install-module.pl documentation

2.6.5. HTTP Server

Ideally, this also needs to be installed as root and run under a special web server 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.

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2.6.5.1. 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!

2.6.6. Bugzilla

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 Section 2.6.4, then delete the localconfig file and try again.

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.

2.7.1. Before You Upgrade

Before you start your upgrade, there are a few important steps to take:

1. Read the Release Notes of the version you're upgrading to, particularly the "Notes for Upgraders" section.

2. View the Sanity Check (Section 3.16) page on your installation before upgrading. Attempt to fix all warnings that the page produces before you go any further, or you may experience problems during your upgrade.

3. Shut down your Bugzilla installation by putting some HTML or text in the shutdownhtml parameter (see Section 3.1).

4. Make a backup of the Bugzilla database. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. If anything goes wrong during the upgrade, your installation can be corrupted beyond recovery. Having a backup keeps you safe.

   Upgrading is a one-way process. You cannot "downgrade" an upgraded Bugzilla. If you wish to revert to the old Bugzilla version for any reason, you will have to restore your database from this backup.

   Here are some sample commands you could use to backup your database, depending on what database system you're using. You may have to modify these commands for your particular setup.

   MySQL:

   mysqldump --opt -u bugs -p bugs > bugs.sql

   PostgreSQL:

   pg_dump --no-privileges --no-owner -h localhost -U bugs > bugs.sql

2.7.2. Getting The New Bugzilla

There are three ways to get the new version of Bugzilla. We'll list them here briefly and then explain them more later.

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2.7.2.2. Upgrading using CVS

This requires that you have cvs installed (most Unix machines do), and requires that you are able to access cvs-mirror.mozilla.org on port 2401, which may not be an option if you are behind a highly restrictive firewall or don't have Internet access.

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:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:2401/cvsroot CVS password: ('anonymous', or just leave it blank) bash$ cvs -q update -r BUGZILLA-2_22_1 -dP P checksetup.pl P collectstats.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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2.7.2.3. 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 http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.22.1.tar.gz (Output omitted) bash$ tar xzvf bugzilla-2.22.1.tar.gz bugzilla-2.22.1/ bugzilla-2.22.1/.cvsignore (Output truncated) bash$ cd bugzilla-2.22.1 bash$ cp ../bugzilla/localconfig* . bash$ cp -r ../bugzilla/data . bash$ cd .. bash$ mv bugzilla bugzilla.old bash$ mv bugzilla-2.22.1 bugzilla

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

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

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2.7.2.4. Upgrading using patches

A patch is a collection of all the bug fixes that have been made since the last bug-fix release.

If you are doing a bug-fix upgrade—that is, one where only the last number of the revision changes, such as from 2.22 to 2.22.1—then you have the option of obtaining and applying a patch file from the Download Page.

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 http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff.gz (Output omitted) bash$ gunzip bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff.gz bash$ patch -p1 < bugzilla-2.22-to-2.22.1.diff patching file checksetup.pl patching file collectstats.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 2.7.2.2) in the future.

2.7.3. Completing Your Upgrade

Now that you have the new Bugzilla code, there are a few final steps to complete your upgrade.

1. If your new Bugzilla installation is in a different directory or on a different machine than your old Bugzilla installation, make sure that you have copied the data directory and the localconfig file from your old Bugzilla installation. (If you followed the tarball instructions above, this has already happened.)

2. If this is a major update, check that the configuration (Section 2.2) for your new Bugzilla is up-to-date. Sometimes the configuration requirements change between major versions.

3. If you didn't do it as part of the above configuration step, now you need to run checksetup.pl, which will do everything required to convert your existing database and settings for the new version:

   bash$ cd /var/www/html/bugzilla bash$ ./checksetup.pl

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

   If this is a major upgrade (say, 2.22 to 3.0 or similar), running checksetup.pl on a large installation (75,000 or more bugs) can take a long time, possibly several hours.

4. Clear any HTML or text that you put into the shutdownhtml parameter, to re-activate Bugzilla.

5. View the Sanity Check (Section 3.16) page in your upgraded Bugzilla.

   It is recommended that, if possible, you fix any problems you see, immediately. Failure to do this may mean that Bugzilla will not work correctly. Be aware that if the sanity check page contains more errors after an upgrade, it doesn't necessarily mean there are more errors in your database than there were before, as additional tests are added to the sanity check over time, and it is possible that those errors weren't being checked for in the old version.

2.7.4. Automatic Notifications of New Releases

Bugzilla 3.0 introduced the ability to automatically notify administrators when new releases are available, based on the upgrade_notification parameter, see Section 3.1. Administrators will see these notifications when they access the index.cgi page, i.e. generally when logging in. Bugzilla will check once per day for new releases, unless the parameter is set to "disabled". If you are behind a proxy, you may have to set the proxy_url parameter accordingly. If the proxy requires authentication, use the http://user:pass@proxy_url/ syntax.

3.1.1. Required Settings

The core required parameters for any Bugzilla installation are set here. These parameters must be set before a new Bugzilla installation can be used. Administrators should review this list before deploying a new Bugzilla installation.

3.1.2. Administrative Policies

This page contains parameters for basic administrative functions. Options include whether to allow the deletion of bugs and users, and whether to allow users to change their email address.

3.1.3. User Authentication

This page contains the settings that control how this Bugzilla installation will do its authentication. Choose what authentication mechanism to use (the Bugzilla database, or an external source such as LDAP), and set basic behavioral parameters. For example, choose whether to require users to login to browse bugs, the management of authentication cookies, and the regular expression used to validate email addresses. Some parameters are highlighted below.

3.1.4. Attachments

This page allows for setting restrictions and other parameters regarding attachments to bugs. For example, control size limitations and whether to allow pointing to external files via a URI.

3.1.5. Bug Change Policies

Set policy on default behavior for bug change events. For example, choose which status to set a bug to when it is marked as a duplicate, and choose whether to allow bug reporters to set the priority or target milestone. Also allows for configuration of what changes should require the user to make a comment, described below.

3.1.6. Bug Fields

The parameters in this section determine the default settings of several Bugzilla fields for new bugs, and also control whether certain fields are used. For example, choose whether to use the "target milestone" field or the "status whiteboard" field.

3.1.7. Bug Moving

This page controls whether this Bugzilla installation allows certain users to move bugs to an external database. If bug moving is enabled, there are a number of parameters that control bug moving behaviors. For example, choose which users are allowed to move bugs, the location of the external database, and the default product and component that bugs moved from other bug databases to this Bugzilla installation are assigned to.

3.1.8. Dependency Graphs

This page has one parameter that sets the location of a Web Dot server, or of the Web Dot binary on the local system, that is used to generate dependency graphs. Web Dot is a CGI program that creates images from .dot graphic description files. If no Web Dot server or binary is specified, then dependency graphs will be disabled.

3.1.9. Group Security

Bugzilla allows for the creation of different groups, with the ability to restrict the visibility of bugs in a group to a set of specific users. Specific products can also be associated with groups, and users restricted to only see products in their groups. Several parameters are described in more detail below. Most of the configuration of groups and their relationship to products is done on the "Groups" and "Product" pages of the "Administration" area. The options on this page control global default behavior. For more information on Groups and Group Security, see Section 3.15

3.1.10. LDAP Authentication

LDAP authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication architecture. This page contains all the parameters necessary to configure Bugzilla for use with LDAP authentication.

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 that require a 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. Bugzilla tries to bind to LDAP using those credentials and, if successful, tries to map this account to a Bugzilla account. If an LDAP mail attribute is defined, the value of this attribute is used, otherwise the "emailsuffix" parameter is appended to LDAP username to form a full email address. If an account for this address already exists in the Bugzilla installation, 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. For example, bugs are still assigned by email address and users are still queried by email address.

Because the Bugzilla account is not created until the first time a user logs in, a user who has not yet logged is unknown to Bugzilla. This means they cannot be used as an assignee or QA contact (default or otherwise), added to any CC list, or any other such operation. One possible workaround is the bugzilla_ldapsync.rb script in the contrib directory. Another possible solution is fixing bug 201069.

Parameters required to use LDAP Authentication:

3.1.11. RADIUS Authentication

RADIUS authentication is a module for Bugzilla's plugin authentication architecture. This page contains all the parameters necessary for configuring Bugzilla to use RADIUS authentication.

Most caveats that apply to LDAP authentication apply to RADIUS authentication as well. See Section 3.1.10 for details.

Parameters required to use RADIUS Authentication:

3.1.12. Email

This page contains all of the parameters for configuring how Bugzilla deals with the email notifications it sends. See below for a summary of important options.

3.1.13. Patch Viewer

This page contains configuration parameters for the CVS server, Bonsai server and LXR server that Bugzilla will use to enable the features of the Patch Viewer. Bonsai is a tool that enables queries to a CVS tree. LXR is a tool that can cross reference and index source code.

3.1.14. Query Defaults

This page controls the default behavior of Bugzilla in regards to several aspects of querying bugs. Options include what the default query options are, what the "My Bugs" page returns, whether users can freely add bugs to the quip list, and how many duplicate bugs are needed to add a bug to the "most frequently reported" list.

3.1.15. Shadow Database

This page controls whether a shadow database is used, and all the parameters associated with the shadow database. Versions of Bugzilla prior to 3.2 used the MyISAM table type, which supports only table-level write locking. With MyISAM, any time someone is making a change to a bug, the entire table is locked until the write operation is complete. Locking for write also blocks reads until the write is complete.

The "shadowdb" parameter was designed to get around this limitation. While only a single user is allowed to write to a table at a time, reads can continue unimpeded on a read-only shadow copy of the database.

As of version 3.2, Bugzilla no longer uses the MyISAM table type. Instead, InnoDB is used, which can do transaction-based locking. Therefore, the limitations the Shadow Database feature was designed to workaround no longer exist.

3.1.16. User Matching

The settings on this page control how users are selected and queried when adding a user to a bug. For example, users need to be selected when choosing who the bug is assigned to, adding to the CC list or selecting a QA contact. With the "usemenuforusers" parameter, it is possible to configure Bugzilla to display a list of users in the fields instead of an empty text field. This should only be used in Bugzilla installations with a small number of users. If users are selected via a text box, this page also contains parameters for how user names can be queried and matched when entered.

3.2.1. 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, add them to the "admin" group and, optionally, edit the tweakparams, editusers, creategroups, editcomponents, and editkeywords groups to add the entire admin group to those groups (which is the case by default).

3.2.2. Managing Other Users

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3.2.2.5. Impersonating Users

There may be times when an administrator would like to do something as another user. The sudo feature may be used to do this.

To use the sudo feature, you must be in the bz_sudoers group. By default, all administrators are in this group.

If you have access to this feature, you may start a session by going to the Edit Users page, Searching for a user and clicking on their login. You should see a link below their login name titled "Impersonate this user". Click on the link. This will take you to a page where you will see a description of the feature and instructions for using it. After reading the text, simply enter the login of the user you would like to impersonate, provide a short message explaining why you are doing this, and press the button.

As long as you are using this feature, everything you do will be done as if you were logged in as the user you are impersonating.

The user you are impersonating will not be told about what you are doing. If you do anything that results in mail being sent, that mail will appear to be from the user you are impersonating. You should be extremely careful while using this feature.

3.4.1. Creating New Products

To create a new product:

1. Select "Administration" from the footer and then choose "Products" from the main administration page.

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.

4. When the product is created, Bugzilla will give a message stating that a component must be created before any bugs can be entered against the new product. Follow the link to create a new component. See Components for more information.

3.4.2. Editing Products

To edit an existing product, click the "Products" link from the "Administration" page. If the 'useclassification' parameter is turned on, a table of existing classifications is displayed, including an "Unclassified" category. The table indicates how many products are in each classification. Click on the classification name to see its products. If the 'useclassification' parameter is not in use, the table lists all products directly. The product table summarizes the information about the product defined when the product was created. Click on the product name to edit these properties, and to access links to other product attributes such as the product's components, versions, milestones, and group access controls.

3.4.3. Adding or Editing Components, Versions and Target Milestones

To edit existing, or add new, Components, Versions or Target Milestones to a Product, select the "Edit Components", "Edit Versions" or "Edit Milestones" links from the "Edit Product" page. A table of existing Components, Versions or Milestones is displayed. Click on a item name to edit the properties of that item. Below the table is a link to add a new Component, Version or Milestone.

For more information on components, see Components.

For more information on versions, see Section 3.6.

For more information on milestones, see Section 3.7.

3.4.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products

On the "Edit Product" page, there is a link called "Edit Group Access Controls". The settings on this page control the relationship of the groups to the product being edited.

Group Access Controls are an important aspect of using groups for isolating products and restricting access to bugs filed against those products. For more information on groups, including how to create, edit add users to, and alter permission of, see Section 3.15.

After selecting the "Edit Group Access Controls" link from the "Edit Product" page, a table containing all user-defined groups for this Bugzilla installation is displayed. The system groups that are created when Bugzilla is installed are not applicable to Group Access Controls. Below is description of what each of these fields means.

Groups may be applicable (e.g bugs in this product can be associated with this group) , default (e.g. bugs in this product are in this group by default), and mandatory (e.g. bugs in this product must be associated with this group) for each product. Groups can also control access to bugs for a given product, or be used to make bugs for a product totally read-only unless the group restrictions are met. The best way to understand these relationships is by example. See Section 3.4.4.1 for examples of product and group relationships.

Products and Groups are not limited to a one-to-one relationship. Multiple groups can be associated with the same product, and groups can be associated with more than one product.

If any group has Entry selected, then the product will restrict bug entry to only those users who are members of all the groups with Entry selected.

If any group has Canedit selected, then the product will be read-only for any users who are not members of all of the groups with Canedit selected. Only users who are members of all the Canedit groups will be able to edit bugs for this product. This is an additional restriction that enables finer-grained control over products rather than just all-or-nothing access levels.

The following settings let you choose privileges on a per-product basis. This is a convenient way to give privileges to some users for some products only, without having to give them global privileges which would affect all products.

Any group having editcomponents selected allows users who are in this group to edit all aspects of this product, including components, milestones and versions.

Any group having canconfirm selected allows users who are in this group to confirm bugs in this product.

Any group having editbugs selected allows users who are in this group to edit all fields of bugs in this product.

The MemberControl and OtherControl are used in tandem to determine which bugs will be placed in this group. The only allowable combinations of these two parameters are listed in a table on the "Edit Group Access Controls" page. Consult this table for details on how these fields can be used. Examples of different uses are described below.

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3.4.4.1. Common Applications of Group Controls

The use of groups is best explained by providing examples that illustrate configurations for common use cases. The examples follow a common syntax: Group: Entry, MemberControl, OtherControl, CanEdit, EditComponents, CanConfirm, EditBugs. Where "Group" is the name of the group being edited for this product. The other fields all correspond to the table on the "Edit Group Access Controls" page. If any of these options are not listed, it means they are not checked.

Basic Product/Group Restriction

Suppose there is a product called "Bar". The "Bar" product can only have bugs entered against it by users in the group "Foo". Additionally, bugs filed against product "Bar" must stay restricted to users to "Foo" at all times. Furthermore, only members of group "Foo" can edit bugs filed against product "Bar", even if other users could see the bug. This arrangement would achieved by the following:

Product Bar: foo: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY, CANEDIT

Perhaps such strict restrictions are not needed for product "Bar". A more lenient way to configure product "Bar" and group "Foo" would be:

Product Bar: foo: ENTRY, SHOWN/SHOWN, EDITCOMPONENTS, CANCONFIRM, EDITBUGS

The above indicates that for product "Bar", members of group "Foo" can enter bugs. Any one with permission to edit a bug against product "Bar" can put the bug in group "Foo", even if they themselves are not in "Foo". Anyone in group "Foo" can edit all aspects of the components of product "Bar", can confirm bugs against product "Bar", and can edit all fields of any bug against product "Bar".

General User Access With Security Group

To permit any user to file bugs against "Product A", and to permit any user to submit those bugs into a group called "Security":

Product A: security: SHOWN/SHOWN

General User Access With A Security Product

To permit any user to file bugs against product called "Security" while keeping those bugs from becoming visible to anyone outside the group "SecurityWorkers" (unless a member of the "SecurityWorkers" group removes that restriction):

Product Security: securityworkers: DEFAULT/MANDATORY

Product Isolation With a Common Group

To permit users of "Product A" to access the bugs for "Product A", users of "Product B" to access the bugs for "Product B", and support staff, who are members of the "Support Group" to access both, three groups are needed:

1. Support Group: Contains members of the support staff.

2. AccessA Group: Contains users of product A and the Support group.

3. AccessB Group: Contains users of product B and the Support group.

Once these three groups are defined, the product group controls can be set to:

Product A: AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Product B: AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY

Perhaps the "Support Group" wants more control. For example, the "Support Group" could be permitted to make bugs inaccessible to users of both groups "AccessA" and "AccessB". Then, the "Support Group" could be permitted to publish bugs relevant to all users in a third product (let's call it "Product Common") that is read-only to anyone outside the "Support Group". In this way the "Support Group" could control bugs that should be seen by both groups. That configuration would be:

Product A: AccessA: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Support: SHOWN/NA Product B: AccessB: ENTRY, MANDATORY/MANDATORY Support: SHOWN/NA Product Common: Support: ENTRY, DEFAULT/MANDATORY, CANEDIT

Make a Product Read Only

Sometimes a product is retired and should no longer have new bugs filed against it (for example, an older version of a software product that is no longer supported). A product can be made read-only by creating a group called "readonly" and adding products to the group as needed:

Product A: ReadOnly: ENTRY, NA/NA, CANEDIT

For more information on Groups outside of how they relate to products see Section 3.15.

3.8.1. A Simple Example

A developer might want to ask their manager, "Should we fix this bug before we release version 2.0?" They might want to do this for a lot of bugs, so it would be nice to streamline the process...

In Bugzilla, it would work this way:

1. The Bugzilla administrator creates a flag type called "blocking2.0" that shows up on all bugs in your product.

   It shows up on the "Show Bug" screen as the text "blocking2.0" with a drop-down box next to it. The drop-down box contains four values: an empty space, "?", "-", and "+".

2. The developer sets the flag to "?".

3. The manager sees the blocking2.0 flag with a "?" value.

4. If the manager thinks the feature should go into the product before version 2.0 can be released, he sets the flag to "+". Otherwise, he sets it to "-".

5. Now, every Bugzilla user who looks at the bug knows whether or not the bug needs to be fixed before release of version 2.0.

3.8.2. About Flags

3.8.3. Using flag requests

If a flag has been defined as 'requestable', and a user has enough privileges to request it (see below), the user can set the flag's status to "?". This status indicates that someone (a.k.a. "the requester") is asking someone else to set the flag to either "+" or "-".

If a flag has been defined as 'specifically requestable', a text box will appear next to the flag into which the requester may enter a Bugzilla username. That named person (a.k.a. "the requestee") will receive an email notifying them of the request, and pointing them to the bug/attachment in question.

If a flag has not been defined as 'specifically requestable', then no such text-box will appear. A request to set this flag cannot be made of any specific individual, but must be asked "to the wind". A requester may "ask the wind" on any flag simply by leaving the text-box blank.

3.8.4. Two Types of Flags

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

3.8.5. Administering Flags

If you have the "editcomponents" permission, you can edit Flag Types from the main administration page. Clicking the "Flags" link will bring you to the "Administer Flag Types" page. Here, you can select whether you want to create (or edit) a Bug flag, or an Attachment flag.

No matter which you choose, the interface is the same, so we'll just go over it once.

---

3.8.5.3. Deleting a Flag

When you are at the "Administer Flag Types" screen, you will be presented with a list of Bug flags and a list of Attachment Flags.

To delete a flag, click on the "Delete" link next to the flag description.

Once you delete a flag, it is gone from your Bugzilla. All the data for that flag will be deleted. Everywhere that flag was set, it will disappear, and you cannot get that data back. If you want to keep flag data, but don't want anybody to set any new flags or change current flags, unset "active" in the flag Edit form.

3.10.1. Adding Custom Fields

To add a new Custom Field, click the "Add a new custom field" link. This page displays several options for the new field, described below.

The following attributes must be set for each new custom field:

• Name: The name of the field in the database, used internally. This name MUST begin with "cf_" to prevent confusion with standard fields. If this string is omitted, it will be automatically added to the name entered.

• Description: A brief string which is used as the label for this Custom Field. That is the string that users will see, and should be short and explicit.

• Type: The type of field to create. There are several types available:

  Large Text Box: A multiple line box for entering free text.

  Free Text: A single line box for entering free text.

  Multiple-Selection Box: A list box where multiple options can be selected. After creating this field, it must be edited to add the selection options. See Section 3.11.1 for information about editing legal values.

  Drop Down: A list box where only one option can be selected. After creating this field, it must be edited to add the selection options. See Section 3.11.1 for information about editing legal values.

  Date/Time: A date field. This field appears with a calendar widget for choosing the date.

• Sortkey: Integer that determines in which order Custom Fields are displayed in the User Interface, especially when viewing a bug. Fields with lower values are displayed first.

• Can be set on bug creation: Boolean that determines whether this field can be set on bug creation. If not selected, then a bug must be created before this field can be set. See Section 5.6 for information about filing bugs.

• Displayed in bugmail for new bugs: Boolean that determines whether the value set on this field should appear in bugmail when the bug is filed. This attribute has no effect if the field cannot be set on bug creation.

• Is obsolete: Boolean that determines whether this field should be displayed at all. Obsolete Custom Fields are hidden.

3.10.2. Editing Custom Fields

As soon as a Custom Field is created, its name and type cannot be changed. If this field is a drop down menu, its legal values can be set as described in Section 3.11.1. All other attributes can be edited as described above.

3.10.3. Deleting Custom Fields

It is only possible to delete obsolete Custom Fields if the field has never been used in the database. To remove a field which already has content, mark it as obsolete.

3.11.1. Viewing/Editing legal values

Editing legal values requires "admin" privileges. Select "Legal Values" from the Administration page. A list of all fields, both system fields and Custom Fields, for which legal values can be edited appears. Click a field name to edit its legal values.

There is no limit to how many values a field can have, but each value must be unique to that field. The sortkey is important to display these values in the desired order.

3.11.2. Deleting legal values

Legal values from Custom Fields can be deleted, but only if the following two conditions are respected:

1. The value is not used by default for the field.

2. No bug is currently using this value.

If any of these conditions is not respected, the value cannot be deleted. The only way to delete these values is to reassign bugs to another value and to set another value as default for the field.

3.15.1. Creating Groups

To create a new group, follow the steps below:

1. Select the "Administration" link in the page footer, and then select the "Groups" link from the Administration page.

2. A table of all the existing groups is displayed. Below the table is a description of all the fields. To create a new group, select the "Add Group" link under the table of existing groups.

3. There are five fields to fill out. These fields are documented below the form. Choose a name and description for the group. Decide whether this group should be used for bugs (in all likelihood this should be selected). Optionally, choose a regular expression that will automatically add any matching users to the group, and choose an icon that will help identify user comments for the group. The regular expression can be useful, for example, to automatically put all users from the same company into one group (if the group is for a specific customer or partner).

   If "User RegExp" is filled out, users whose email addresses match the regular expression will automatically be members of the group as long as their email addresses continue to match the regular expression. If their email address changes and no longer matches the regular expression, they will be removed from the group. Versions 2.16 and older of Bugzilla did not automatically remove users who's email addresses no longer matched the RegExp.

   If specifying a domain in the regular expression, end the regexp with a "$". Otherwise, when granting access to "@mycompany\.com", access will also be granted to 'badperson@mycompany.com.cracker.net'. Use the syntax, '@mycompany\.com$' for the regular expression.

4. After the new group is created, it can be edited for additional options. The "Edit Group" page allows for specifying other groups that should be included in this group and which groups should be permitted to add and delete users from this group. For more details, see Section 3.15.2.

3.15.2. Editing Groups and Assigning Group Permissions

To access the "Edit Groups" page, select the "Administration" link in the page footer, and then select the "Groups" link from the Administration page. A table of all the existing groups is displayed. Click on a group name you wish to edit or control permissions for.

The "Edit Groups" page contains the same five fields present when creating a new group. Below that are two additional sections, "Group Permissions," and "Mass Remove". The "Mass Remove" option simply removes all users from the group who match the regular expression entered. The "Group Permissions" section requires further explanation.

The "Group Permissions" section on the "Edit Groups" page contains four sets of permissions that control the relationship of this group to other groups. If the 'usevisibilitygroups' parameter is in use (see Section 3.1) two additional sets of permissions are displayed. Each set consists of two select boxes. On the left, a select box with a list of all existing groups. On the right, a select box listing all groups currently selected for this permission setting (this box will be empty for new groups). The way these controls allow groups to relate to one another is called inheritance. Each of the six permissions is described below.

3.15.3. Assigning Users to Groups

A User can become a member of a group in several ways:

1. The user can be explicitly placed in the group by editing the user's profile. This can be done by accessing the "Users" page from the "Administration" page. Use the search form to find the user you want to edit group membership for, and click on their email address in the search results to edit their profile. The profile page lists all the groups, and indicates if the user is a member of the group either directly or indirectly. More information on indirect group membership is below. For more details on User administration, see Section 3.2.

2. The group can include another group of which the user is a member. This is indicated by square brackets around the checkbox next to the group name in the user's profile. See Section 3.15.2 for details on group inheritance.

3. The user's email address can match the regular expression that has been specified to automatically grant membership to the group. This is indicated by "*" around the check box by the group name in the user's profile. See Section 3.15.1 for details on the regular expression option when creating groups.

3.15.4. Assigning Group Controls to Products

The primary functionality of groups is derived from the relationship of groups to products. The concepts around segregating access to bugs with product group controls can be confusing. For details and examples on this topic, see Section 3.4.4.

4.1.1. TCP/IP Ports

The TCP/IP standard defines more than 65,000 ports for sending and receiving traffic. Of those, Bugzilla needs exactly one to operate (different configurations and options may require up to 3). You should audit your server and make sure that you aren't listening on any ports you don't need to be. It's also highly recommended that the server Bugzilla resides on, along with any other machines you administer, be placed behind some kind of firewall.

4.1.2. System User Accounts

Many daemons, such as Apache's httpd or MySQL's mysqld, run as either "root" or "nobody". This is even worse on Windows machines where the majority of services run as "SYSTEM". While running as "root" or "SYSTEM" introduces obvious security concerns, the problems introduced by running everything as "nobody" may not be so obvious. Basically, if you run every daemon as "nobody" and one of them gets compromised it can compromise every other daemon running as "nobody" on your machine. For this reason, it is recommended that you create a user account for each daemon.

You will need to set the webservergroup option in localconfig to the group your web server runs as. This will allow ./checksetup.pl to set file permissions on Unix systems so that nothing is world-writable.

4.1.3. The chroot Jail

If your system supports it, you may wish to consider running Bugzilla inside of a chroot jail. This option provides unprecedented security by restricting anything running inside the jail from accessing any information outside of it. If you wish to use this option, please consult the documentation that came with your system.

4.2.1. Disabling Remote Access to Bugzilla Configuration Files

There are many files that are placed in the Bugzilla directory area that should not be accessible from the web server. Because of the way Bugzilla is currently layed out, the list of what should and should not be accessible is rather complicated. A quick way is to run testserver.pl to check if your web server serves Bugzilla files as expected. If not, you may want to follow the few steps below.

Bugzilla ships with the ability to create .htaccess files that enforce these rules. Instructions for enabling these directives in Apache can be found in Section 2.2.4.1

• In the main Bugzilla directory, you should:

  • Block: *.pl, *localconfig*

• In data:

  • Block everything

• 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

Be sure to test that data that should not be accessed remotely is properly blocked. Of particular interest is the localconfig file which contains your database password. Also, be aware that many editors create temporary and backup files in the working directory and that those should also not be accessible. For more information, see bug 186383 or Bugtraq ID 6501. To test, simply run testserver.pl, as said above.

Be sure to check Section 2.2.4 for instructions specific to the web server you use.

4.3.1. Prevent users injecting malicious Javascript

If you installed Bugzilla version 2.22 or later from scratch, then the utf8 parameter is switched on by default. This makes Bugzilla explicitly set the character encoding, following a CERT advisory recommending exactly this. The following therefore does not apply to you; just keep utf8 turned on.

If you've upgraded from an older version, then it may be possible for a Bugzilla user to take advantage of character set encoding ambiguities to inject HTML into Bugzilla comments. This could include malicious scripts. This is because due to internationalization concerns, we are unable to turn the utf8 parameter on by default for upgraded installations. Turning it on manually will prevent this problem.

5.5.1. Boolean Charts

Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts.

The boolean charts further restrict the set of results returned by a query. It is possible to search for bugs based on elaborate combinations of criteria.

The simplest boolean searches have only one term. These searches permit the selected left field to be compared using a selectable operator to a specified value. Using the "And," "Or," and "Add Another Boolean Chart" buttons, additional terms can be included in the query, further altering the list of bugs returned by the query.

There are three fields in each row of a boolean search.

• Field: the items being searched

• Operator: the comparison operator

• Value: the value to which the field is being compared

5.5.2. 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 can use it to find a bug by its number or its alias, too.

You'll find the Quicksearch box in Bugzilla's footer area. On Bugzilla's front page, there is an additional Help link which details how to use it.

5.5.3. Case Sensitivity in Searches

Bugzilla queries are case-insensitive and accent-insensitive, when used with either MySQL or Oracle databases. When using Bugzilla with PostgreSQL, however, some queries are case-sensitive. This is due to the way PostgreSQL handles case and accent sensitivity.

5.5.4. Bug Lists

If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.

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:

If you would like to access the bug list from another program it is often useful to have the list returned in something other than HTML. By adding the ctype=type parameter into the bug list URL you can specify several alternate formats. Besides the types described above, the following formats are also supported: ECMAScript, also known as JavaScript (ctype=js), and Resource Description Framework RDF/XML (ctype=rdf).

5.5.5. Adding/removing tags to/from bugs

You can add and remove tags from individual bugs, which let you find and manage them more easily. Creating a new tag automatically generates a saved search - whose name is the name of the tag - which lists bugs with this tag. This saved search will be displayed in the footer of pages by default, as all other saved searches. The main difference between tags and normal saved searches is that saved searches, as described in the previous section, are stored in the form of a list of matching criteria, while the saved search generated by tags is a list of bug numbers. Consequently, you can easily edit this list by either adding or removing tags from bugs. To enable this feature, you have to turn on the "Enable tags for bugs" user preference, see Section 5.10. This feature is disabled by default.

This feature is useful when you want to keep track of several bugs, but for different reasons. Instead of adding yourself to the CC list of all these bugs and mixing all these reasons, you can now store these bugs in separate lists, e.g. "Keep in mind", "Interesting bugs", or "Triage". One big advantage of this way to manage bugs is that you can easily add or remove bugs one by one, which is not possible to do with saved searches without having to edit the search criteria again.

5.6.1. Reporting a New Bug

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 bug is as follows:

1. Click the "New" link available in the footer of pages, or the "Enter a new bug report" link displayed on the home page of the Bugzilla installation.

   If you want to file a test bug to see how Bugzilla works, you can do it on one of our test installations on Landfill.

2. You first have to select the product in which you found a bug.

3. You now see a form where you can specify the component (part of the product which is affected by the bug you discovered; if you have no idea, just select "General" if such a component exists), the version of the program you were using, the Operating System and platform your program is running on and the severity of the bug (if the bug you found crashes the program, it's probably a major or a critical bug; if it's a typo somewhere, that's something pretty minor; if it's something you would like to see implemented, then that's an enhancement).

4. You now have to give a short but descriptive summary of the bug you found. "My program is crashing all the time" is a very poor summary and doesn't help developers at all. Try something more meaningful or your bug will probably be ignored due to a lack of precision. The next step is to give a very detailed list of steps to reproduce the problem you encountered. Try to limit these steps to a minimum set required to reproduce the problem. This will make the life of developers easier, and the probability that they consider your bug in a reasonable timeframe will be much higher.

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

5. As you file the bug, you can also attach a document (testcase, patch, or screenshot of the problem).

6. Depending on the Bugzilla installation you are using and the product in which you are filing the bug, you can also request developers to consider your bug in different ways (such as requesting review for the patch you just attached, requesting your bug to block the next release of the product, and many other product specific requests).

7. Now is a good time to read your bug report again. Remove all misspellings, otherwise your bug may not be found by developers running queries for some specific words, and so your bug would not get any attention. Also make sure you didn't forget any important information developers should know in order to reproduce the problem, and make sure your description of the problem is explicit and clear enough. When you think your bug report is ready to go, the last step is to click the "Commit" button to add your report into the database.

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.

5.6.2. Clone an Existing Bug

Starting with version 2.20, Bugzilla has a feature that allows you to clone an existing bug. The newly created bug will inherit most settings from the old bug. This allows you to track more easily similar concerns in a new bug. To use this, go to the bug that you want to clone, then click the "Clone This Bug" link on the bug page. This will take you to the "Enter Bug" page that is filled with the values that the old bug has. You can change those values and/or texts if needed.

5.7.1. Patch Viewer

Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that raw patches present. Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed to fix that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.

Patch viewer allows you to:

5.8.1. Autolinkification

Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing <U> will produce less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text. However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain sorts of text in comments. For example, the text "http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link: http://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.

5.8.2. 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, if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style four line ASCII art creations are not.

5.8.3. Server-Side Comment Wrapping

Bugzilla stores comments unwrapped and wraps them at display time. This ensures proper wrapping in all browsers. Lines beginning with the ">" character are assumed to be quotes, and are not wrapped.

5.8.4. 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. You can also collaps/expand dependencies for each bug on the tree view, using the [-]/[+] buttons that appear before its summary. This option is not available for terminal bugs in the tree (that don't have further dependencies).

5.10.1. General Preferences

This tab allows you to change several default settings of Bugzilla.

• Bugzilla's general appearance (skin) - select which skin to use. Bugzilla supports adding custom skins.

• Quote the associated comment when you click on its reply link - sets the behavior of the comment "Reply" link. Options include quoting the full comment, just reference the comment number, or turn the link off.

• Language used in email - select which language email will be sent in, from the list of available languages.

• After changing a bug - This controls what page is displayed after changes to a bug are submitted. The options include to show the bug just modified, to show the next bug in your list, or to do nothing.

• Enable tags for bugs - turn bug tagging on or off.

• Zoom textareas large when in use (requires JavaScript) - enable or disable the automatic expanding of text areas when text is being entered into them.

• Field separator character for CSV files - Select between a comma and semi-colon for exported CSV bug lists.

• Automatically add me to the CC list of bugs I change - set default behavior of CC list. Options include "Always", "Never", and "Only if I have no role on them".

• When viewing a bug, show comments in this order - controls the order of comments. Options include "Oldest to Newest", "Newest to Oldest" and "Newest to Oldest, but keep the bug description at the top".

• Show a quip at the top of each bug list - controls whether a quip will be shown on the Bug list page.

5.10.2. Email Preferences

This tab allows you to enable or disable email notification on specific events.

In general, users have almost complete control over how much (or how little) email Bugzilla sends them. If you want to receive the maximum amount of email possible, click the "Enable All Mail" button. If you don't want to receive any email from Bugzilla at all, click the "Disable All Mail" button.

A Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving bugmail by clicking the "Bugmail Disabled" checkbox when editing the user account. This is a drastic step best taken only for disabled accounts, as it overrides the user's individual mail preferences.

There are two global options -- "Email me when someone asks me to set a flag" and "Email me when someone sets a flag I asked for". These define how you want to receive bugmail with regards to flags. Their use is quite straightforward; enable the checkboxes if you want Bugzilla to send you mail under either of the above conditions.

If you'd like to set your bugmail to something besides 'Completely ON' and 'Completely OFF', the "Field/recipient specific options" table allows you to do just that. 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.

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.

Bugzilla has a feature called "Users Watching". 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.

Each user listed in the "Users watching you" field has you listed in their "Users to watch" list and can get bugmail according to your relationship to the bug and their "Field/recipient specific options" setting.

5.10.3. Saved Searches

On this tab you can view and run any Saved Searches that you have created, and also any Saved Searches that other members of the group defined in the "querysharegroup" parameter have shared. Saved Searches can be added to the page footer from this screen. If somebody is sharing a Search with a group she or he is allowed to assign users to, the sharer may opt to have the Search show up in the footer of the group's direct members by default.

5.10.4. Name and Password

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.

5.10.5. Permissions

This is a purely informative page which outlines your current permissions on this installation of Bugzilla.

A complete list of permissions is below. Only users with editusers privileges can change the permissions of other users.

For more information on how permissions work in Bugzilla (i.e. who can change what), see Section 6.4.

5.11.1. Reports

A report is a view of the current state of the bug database.

You can run either an HTML-table-based report, or a graphical line/pie/bar-chart-based one. The two have different pages to define them, but are close cousins - once you've defined and viewed a report, you can switch between any of the different views of the data at will.

Both report types are based on the idea of defining a set of bugs using the standard search interface, and then choosing some aspect of that set to plot on the horizontal and/or vertical axes. You can also get a form of 3-dimensional report by choosing to have multiple images or tables.

So, for example, you could use the search form to choose "all bugs in the WorldControl product", and then plot their severity against their component to see which component had had the largest number of bad bugs reported against it.

Once you've defined your parameters and hit "Generate Report", you can switch between HTML, CSV, Bar, Line and Pie. (Note: Pie is only available if you didn't define a vertical axis, as pie charts don't have one.) The other controls are fairly self-explanatory; you can change the size of the image if you find text is overwriting other text, or the bars are too thin to see.

5.11.2. Charts

A chart is a view of the state of the bug database over time.

Bugzilla currently has two charting systems - Old Charts and New Charts. Old Charts have been part of Bugzilla for a long time; they chart each status and resolution for each product, and that's all. They are deprecated, and going away soon - we won't say any more about them. New Charts are the future - they allow you to chart anything you can define as a search.

Both charting forms require the administrator to set up the data-gathering script. If you can't see any charts, ask them whether they have done so.

An individual line on a chart is called a data set. All data sets are organised into categories and subcategories. The data sets that Bugzilla defines automatically use the Product name as a Category and Component names as Subcategories, but there is no need for you to follow that naming scheme with your own charts if you don't want to.

Data sets may be public or private. Everyone sees public data sets in the list, but only their creator sees private data sets. Only administrators can make data sets public. No two data sets, even two private ones, can have the same set of category, subcategory and name. So if you are creating private data sets, one idea is to have the Category be your username.

5.13.1. The Event

The whining system defines an "Event" as one or more queries being executed at regular intervals, with the results of said queries (if there are any) being emailed to the user. Events are created by clicking on the "Add new event" button.

Once a new event is created, the first thing to set is the "Email subject line". The contents of this field will be used in the subject line of every email generated by this event. In addition to setting a subject, space is provided to enter some descriptive text that will be included at the top of each message (to help you in understanding why you received the email in the first place).

The next step is to specify when the Event is to be run (the Schedule) and what searches are to be performed (the Searches).

5.13.2. Whining Schedule

Each whining event is associated with zero or more schedules. A schedule is used to specify when the query (specified below) is to be run. A new event starts out with no schedules (which means it will never run, as it is not scheduled to run). To add a schedule, press the "Add a new schedule" button.

Each schedule includes an interval, which you use to tell Bugzilla when the event should be run. An event can be run on certain days of the week, certain days of the month, during weekdays (defined as Monday through Friday), or every day.

Be careful if you set your event to run on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of the month, as your event may not run exactly when expected. If you want your event to run on the last day of the month, select "Last day of the month" as the interval.

Once you have specified the day(s) on which the event is to be run, you should now specify the time at which the event is to be run. You can have the event run at a certain hour on the specified day(s), or every hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour on the specified day(s).

If a single schedule does not execute an event as many times as you would want, you can create another schedule for the same event. For example, if you want to run an event on days whose numbers are divisible by seven, you would need to add four schedules to the event, setting the schedules to run on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th (one day per schedule) at whatever time (or times) you choose.

If you are a member of the bz_canusewhineatothers group, then you will be presented with another option: "Mail to". Using this you can control who will receive the emails generated by this event. You can choose to send the emails to a single user (identified by email address) or a single group (identified by group name). To send to multiple users or groups, create a new schedule for each additional user/group.

5.13.3. Whining Searches

Each whining event is associated with zero or more searches. A search is any saved search to be run as part of the specified schedule (see above). You start out without any searches associated with the event (which means that the event will not run, as there will never be any results to return). To add a search, press the "Include search" button.

The first field to examine in your newly added search is the Sort field. Searches are run, and results included, in the order specified by the Sort field. Searches with smaller Sort values will run before searches with bigger Sort values.

The next field to examine is the Search field. This is where you choose the actual search that is to be run. Instead of defining search parameters here, you are asked to choose from the list of saved searches (the same list that appears at the bottom of every Bugzilla page). You are only allowed to choose from searches that you have saved yourself (the default saved search, "My Bugs", is not a valid choice). If you do not have any saved searches, you can take this opportunity to create one (see Section 5.5.4).

When running queries, the whining system acts as if you are the user executing the query. This means that the whining system will ignore bugs that match your query, but that you can not access.

Once you have chosen the saved search to be executed, give the query a descriptive title. This title will appear in the email, above the results of the query. If you choose "One message per bug", the query title will appear at the top of each email that contains a bug matching your query.

Finally, decide if the results of the query should be sent in a single email, or if each bug should appear in its own email.

Think carefully before checking the "One message per bug" box. If you create a query that matches thousands of bugs, you will receive thousands of emails!

5.13.4. Saving Your Changes

Once you have defined at least one schedule, and created at least one query, go ahead and "Update/Commit". This will save your Event and make it available for immediate execution.

If you ever feel like deleting your event, you may do so using the "Remove Event" button in the upper-right corner of each Event. You can also modify an existing event, so long as you "Update/Commit" after completing your modifications.

6.2.1. 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.

6.2.2. 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 editing any templates in the template/en/default directory, and after creating or 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.

6.2.3. 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, i.e. &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, i.e. %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.

6.2.4. Template Formats and Types

Some CGI's 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). The mechanism that provides this feature is extensible.

Bugzilla can support different types of output, which again can have multiple formats. In order to request a certain type, you can append the &ctype=<contenttype> (such as rdf or html) to the <cginame>.cgi URL. If you would like to retrieve a certain format, you can use the &format=<format> (such as simple or complex) in the URL.

To see if a CGI supports multiple output formats and types, grep the CGI for "get_format". If it's not present, adding multiple format/type support isn't too hard - see how it's done in other CGIs, e.g. config.cgi.

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. The content types are defined in the Bugzilla/Constants.pm file in the contenttypes constant. 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.

After adding or changing a content type, it's suitable to edit Bugzilla/Constants.pm in order to reflect the changes. Also, the file should be kept up to date after an upgrade if content types have been customized in the past.

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

6.2.5. Particular Templates

There are a few templates you may be particularly interested in customizing 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 customize 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.

global/variables.none.tmpl: This defines a list of terms that may be changed in order to "brand" the Bugzilla instance In this way, terms like "bugs" can be replaced with "issues" across the whole Bugzilla installation. The name "Bugzilla" and other words can be customized as well.

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. A hidden field that indicates the format should be added inside the form in order to make the template functional. Its value should be the suffix of the template filename. For example, if the file is called create-cust.html.tmpl, then

<input type="hidden" name="format" value="cust">

should be used inside the form.

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 custom enter_bug template had a field

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

and then your comment.txt.tmpl had

BuildID: [% form.buildid %]

then something like

BuildID: 20020303

would appear in the initial comment.

6.2.6. Configuring Bugzilla to Detect the User's Language

Bugzilla honours the user's Accept: HTTP header. You can install templates in other languages, and Bugzilla will pick the most appropriate according to a priority order defined by you. Many language templates can be obtained from http://www.bugzilla.org/download.html#localizations. Instructions for submitting new languages are also available from that location.