The Bugzilla Guide

Matthew P. Barnson

The Bugzilla Team

This is the documentation for Bugzilla, the mozilla.org bug-tracking system. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that powers issue-tracking for hundreds of organizations around the world, tracking millions of bugs.

This documentation is maintained in DocBook 4.1.2 XML format. Changes are best submitted as plain text or SGML diffs, attached to a bug filed in mozilla.org's Bugzilla.

Table of Contents
1. About This Guide
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Document Conventions
2. Introduction
2.1. What is Bugzilla?
2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?
3. Using Bugzilla
3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?
3.2. Hints and Tips
3.3. User Preferences
4. Installation
4.1. Step-by-step Install
4.2. Optional Additional Configuration
4.3. Win32 Installation Notes
4.4. Mac OS X Installation Notes
4.5. Troubleshooting
5. Administering Bugzilla
5.1. Bugzilla Configuration
5.2. User Administration
5.3. Product, Component, Milestone, and Version Administration
5.4. Voting
5.5. Groups and Group Security
5.6. Bugzilla Security
5.7. Template Customisation
5.8. Upgrading to New Releases
5.9. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools
A. The Bugzilla FAQ
B. The Bugzilla Database
B.1. Database Schema Chart
B.2. MySQL Bugzilla Database Introduction
C. Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla
C.1. Apache mod_rewrite magic
C.2. Command-line Bugzilla Queries
D. Bugzilla Variants and Competitors
D.1. Red Hat Bugzilla
D.2. Loki Bugzilla (Fenris)
D.3. Issuezilla
D.4. Scarab
D.5. Perforce SCM
D.6. SourceForge
Glossary
List of Examples
4-1. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft Windows
4-2. Installing OpenInteract ppd Modules manually on Microsoft Windows
4-3. Removing encrypt() for Windows NT Bugzilla version 2.12 or earlier

Chapter 1. About This Guide

1.1. Copyright Information

 

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included below.

 
--Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Matthew P. Barnson and The Bugzilla Team 

If you have any questions regarding this document, its copyright, or publishing this document in non-electronic form, please contact The Bugzilla Team.

1.1.1. GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.1, March 2000

Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

0. PREAMBLE

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you".

A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.

The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.

A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".

Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.

The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.

2. VERBATIM COPYING

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.

3. COPYING IN QUANTITY

If you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.

It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.

4. MODIFICATIONS

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

  1. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.

  2. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).

  3. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.

  4. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.

  5. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.

  6. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.

  7. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.

  8. Include an unaltered copy of this License.

  9. Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.

  10. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

  11. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.

  12. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.

  13. Delete any section entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.

  14. Do not retitle any existing section as "Endorsements" or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.

If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

You may add a section entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice.

The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections entitled "Endorsements."

6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, does not as a whole count as a Modified Version of the Document, provided no compilation copyright is claimed for the compilation. Such a compilation is called an "aggregate", and this License does not apply to the other self-contained works thus compiled with the Document, on account of their being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that surround only the Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.

8. TRANSLATION

Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License provided that you also include the original English version of this License. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original English version of this License, the original English version will prevail.

9. TERMINATION

You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ .

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.

How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

If you have no Invariant Sections, write "with no Invariant Sections" instead of saying which ones are invariant. If you have no Front-Cover Texts, write "no Front-Cover Texts" instead of "Front-Cover Texts being LIST"; likewise for Back-Cover Texts.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.

1.2. Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples, and other content at your own risk. This document may contain errors and inaccuracies that may damage your system, cause your partner to leave you, your boss to fire you, your cats to pee on your furniture and clothing, and global thermonuclear war. Proceed with caution.

All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux". We wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux in every situation where it is appropriate. It is an extremely versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an ideal operating environment for Bugzilla.

You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before installing Bugzilla and at regular intervals thereafter. If you implement any suggestion in this Guide, implement this one!

Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure that all easily-exploitable bugs or options are documented or fixed in the code, security holes surely exist. Great care should be taken both in the installation and usage of this software. Carefully consider the implications of installing other network services with Bugzilla. The Bugzilla development team members, Netscape Communications, America Online Inc., and any affiliated developers or sponsors assume no liability for your use of this product. You have the source code to this product, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to ensure your security needs are met.

1.3. New Versions

This is the 2.16 version of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to match the current version of Bugzilla. If you are reading this from any source other than those below, please check one of these mirrors to make sure you are reading an up-to-date version of the Guide.

This document can be found in the following places:

The latest version of this document can always be checked out via CVS. Please follow the instructions available at the Mozilla CVS page, and check out the mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/ subtree.

The Bugzilla Guide is currently only available in English. If you would like to volunteer to translate it, please contact Dave Miller.

1.4. Credits

The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the creation of this Guide, through their writing, dedicated hacking efforts, numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall excellent contribution to the Bugzilla community:

Matthew P. Barnson for the Herculaean task of pulling together the Bugzilla Guide and shepherding it to 2.14.

Terry Weissman for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the README upon which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.

Tara Hernandez for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry left mozilla.org

Dave Lawrence for providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for the "Red Hat Bugzilla" appendix

Dawn Endico for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with my incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools

Last but not least, all the members of the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup. Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.

Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions to this documentation (in no particular order):

Zach Liption, Andrew Pearson, Spencer Smith, Eric Hanson, Kevin Brannen, Ron Teitelbaum, Jacob Steenhagen, Joe Robins, Gervase Markham.

1.5. Document Conventions

This document uses the following conventions:

DescriptionsAppearance
Warnings

Caution

Don't run with scissors!

Hint

Tip

Would you like a breath mint?

Notes

Note

Dear John...

Information requiring special attention

Warning

Read this or the cat gets it.

File Names filename
Directory Names directory
Commands to be typed command
Applications Names application
Prompt of users command under bash shellbash$
Prompt of root users command under bash shellbash#
Prompt of user command under tcsh shelltcsh$
Environment Variables VARIABLE
Emphasized word word
Code Example 
<para>
Beginning and end of paragraph
</para>

Chapter 2. Introduction

2.1. What is Bugzilla?

Bugzilla is a bug- or issue-tracking system. Bug-tracking systems allow individual or groups of developers effectively to keep track of outstanding problems with their product. Bugzilla was originally written by Terry Weissman in a programming language called TCL, to replace a rudimentary bug-tracking database used internally by Netscape Communications. Terry later ported Bugzilla to Perl from TCL, and in Perl it remains to this day. Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors at the time charged enormous licensing fees, and Bugzilla quickly became a favorite of the open-source crowd (with its genesis in the open-source browser project, Mozilla). It is now the de-facto standard defect-tracking system against which all others are measured.

Bugzilla boasts many advanced features. These include:

2.2. Why Should We Use Bugzilla?

For many years, defect-tracking software has remained principally the domain of large software development houses. Even then, most shops never bothered with bug-tracking software, and instead simply relied on shared lists and email to monitor the status of defects. This procedure is error-prone and tends to cause those bugs judged least significant by developers to be dropped or ignored.

These days, many companies are finding that integrated defect-tracking systems reduce downtime, increase productivity, and raise customer satisfaction with their systems. Along with full disclosure, an open bug-tracker allows manufacturers to keep in touch with their clients and resellers, to communicate about problems effectively throughout the data management chain. Many corporations have also discovered that defect-tracking helps reduce costs by providing IT support accountability, telephone support knowledge bases, and a common, well-understood system for accounting for unusual system or software issues.

But why should you use Bugzilla?

Bugzilla is very adaptable to various situations. Known uses currently include IT support queues, Systems Administration deployment management, chip design and development problem tracking (both pre-and-post fabrication), and software and hardware bug tracking for luminaries such as Redhat, NASA, Linux-Mandrake, and VA Systems. Combined with systems such as CVS, Bonsai, or Perforce SCM, Bugzilla provides a powerful, easy-to-use solution to configuration management and replication problems.

Bugzilla can dramatically increase the productivity and accountability of individual employees by providing a documented workflow and positive feedback for good performance. How many times do you wake up in the morning, remembering that you were supposed to do something today, but you just can't quite remember? Put it in Bugzilla, and you have a record of it from which you can extrapolate milestones, predict product versions for integration, and follow the discussion trail that led to critical decisions.

Ultimately, Bugzilla puts the power in your hands to improve your value to your employer or business while providing a usable framework for your natural attention to detail and knowledge store to flourish.

Chapter 3. Using Bugzilla

3.1. How do I use Bugzilla?

This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla. There is a Bugzilla test installation, called Landfill, which you are welcome to play with (if it's up.) However, it does not necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled, and often runs cutting-edge versions of Bugzilla for testing, so some things may work slightly differently than mentioned here.

3.1.1. Create a Bugzilla Account

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

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

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

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

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

3.1.2. Anatomy of a Bug

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

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

    Administration: Administration of a Bugzilla installation.
    Bugzilla-General: Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans multiple components.
    Creating/Changing Bugs: Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.
    Documentation: The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.
    Email: Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.
    Installation: The installation process of Bugzilla.
    Query/Buglist: Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the buglists.
    Reporting/Charting: Getting reports from Bugzilla.
    User Accounts: Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective. Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in, etc.
    User Interface: General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates, etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  13. Reporter: The person who filed the bug.

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

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

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

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

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

3.1.3. Searching for Bugs

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

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

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

3.1.4. Bug Lists

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

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

Long Format: this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields of each bug.
Change Columns: change the bug attributes which appear in the list.
Change several bugs at once: If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their owner.
Send mail to bug owners: Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the list.
Edit this query: If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you can return to the Query page through this link and make small revisions to the query you just made so you get more accurate results.

3.1.5. Filing Bugs

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

The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:

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

  2. Select a product - any one will do.

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

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

3.2. Hints and Tips

This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices that have been developed.

3.2.1. Autolinkification

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

bug 12345
bug 23456, comment 53
attachment 4321
mailto:george@example.com
george@example.com
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org
Most other sorts of URL

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

3.2.2. Quicksearch

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

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

3.2.3. Comments

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

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

3.2.4. Attachments

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

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

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

3.2.5. Filing Bugs

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

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

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

3.3. User Preferences

Once you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of Bugzilla via the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer. The preferences are split into four tabs:

3.3.1. Account Settings

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

3.3.2. Email Settings

On this tab you can reduce or increase the amount of email sent you from Bugzilla, opting in our out depending on your relationship to the bug and the change that was made to it. (Note that you can also do client-side filtering using the X-Bugzilla-Reason header which Bugzilla adds to all bugmail.)

By entering user email names, delineated by commas, into the "Users to watch" text entry box you can receive a copy of all the bugmail of other users (security settings permitting.) This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers change projects or users go on holiday.

Note

The ability to watch other users may not be available in all Bugzilla installations. If you can't see it, ask your administrator.

3.3.3. Page Footer

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

3.3.4. Permissions

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

Chapter 4. Installation

4.1. Step-by-step Install

4.1.1. Introduction

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

4.1.2. Package List

Note

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

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

  1. MySQL database server (3.22.5 or greater)

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

  3. Perl Modules (minimum version):

    1. Template (v2.07)

    2. AppConfig (v1.52)

    3. Text::Wrap (v2001.0131)

    4. File::Spec (v0.8.2)

    5. Data::Dumper (any)

    6. DBD::mysql (v1.2209)

    7. DBI (v1.13)

    8. Date::Parse (any)

    9. CGI::Carp (any)

    and, optionally:

    1. GD (v1.19) for bug charting

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

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

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

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

Warning

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

Note

Linux-Mandrake 8.0 includes every required and optional library for Bugzilla. The easiest way to install them is by using the urpmi utility. If you follow these commands, you should have everything you need for Bugzilla, and checksetup.pl should not complain about any missing libraries. You may already have some of these installed.

bash# urpmi perl-mysql
bash# urpmi perl-chart
bash# urpmi perl-gd
bash# urpmi perl-MailTools (for Bugzilla email integration)
bash# urpmi apache-modules

4.1.3. MySQL

Visit the MySQL homepage at www.mysql.com to grab and install the latest stable release of the server.

Note

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

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

Change your init script to start mysqld with the ability to accept large packets. By default, mysqld only accepts packets up to 64K long. This limits the size of attachments you may put on bugs. If you add -O max_allowed_packet=1M to the command that starts mysqld (or safe_mysqld), then you will be able to have attachments up to about 1 megabyte. There is a Bugzilla parameter for maximum attachment size; you should configure it to match the value you choose here.

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

4.1.4. Perl

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

Tip

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

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

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

4.1.5. Perl Modules

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

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

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

To do it the hard way:

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

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

  1. bash# perl Makefile.PL

  2. bash# make

  3. bash# make test

  4. bash# make install

Warning

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

4.1.5.1. DBI

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

4.1.5.2. Data::Dumper

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

4.1.5.3. MySQL-related modules

The Perl/MySQL interface requires a few mutually-dependent Perl modules. These modules are grouped together into the the Msql-Mysql-modules package.

The MakeMaker process will ask you a few questions about the desired compilation target and your MySQL installation. For most of the questions the provided default will be adequate, but when asked if your desired target is the MySQL or mSQL packages, you should select the MySQL related ones. Later you will be asked if you wish to provide backwards compatibility with the older MySQL packages; you should answer YES to this question. The default is NO.

A host of 'localhost' should be fine and a testing user of 'test' with a null password should find itself with sufficient access to run tests on the 'test' database which MySQL created upon installation.

4.1.5.4. TimeDate modules

Many of the more common date/time/calendar related Perl modules have been grouped into a bundle similar to the MySQL modules bundle. This bundle is stored on the CPAN under the name TimeDate. The component module we're most interested in is the Date::Format module, but installing all of them is probably a good idea anyway.

4.1.5.5. GD (optional)

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

Note

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

4.1.5.6. Chart::Base (optional)

The Chart module provides Bugzilla with on-the-fly charting abilities. It can be installed in the usual fashion after it has been fetched from CPAN. Note that earlier versions that 0.99c used GIFs, which are no longer supported by the latest versions of GD.

4.1.5.7. Template Toolkit

When you install Template Toolkit, you'll get asked various questions about features to enable. The defaults are fine, except that it is recommended you use the high speed XS Stash of the Template Toolkit, in order to achieve best performance. However, there are known problems with XS Stash and Perl 5.005_02 and lower. If you wish to use these older versions of Perl, please use the regular stash.

4.1.6. HTTP Server

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

Note

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

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

With Apache you'll also want to make sure that within the httpd.conf file the line: 
Options ExecCGI AllowOverride Limit
is in the stanza that covers the directories into which you intend to put the bugzilla .html and .cgi files.

Note

AllowOverride Limit allows the use of a Deny statement in the .htaccess file generated by checksetup.pl

Users of older versions of Apache may find the above lines in the srm.conf and access.conf files, respecitvely.

Warning

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

4.1.7. Bugzilla

You should untar the Bugzilla files into a directory that you're willing to make writable by the default web server user (probably "nobody"). You may decide to put the files in the main web space for your web server or perhaps in /usr/local with a symbolic link in the web space that points to the Bugzilla directory.

Tip

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

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

Lastly, you'll need to set up a symbolic link to /usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl for the correct location of your Perl executable (probably /usr/bin/perl). Otherwise you must hack all the .cgi files to change where they look for Perl. This can be done using the following Perl one-liner, but I suggest using the symlink approach to avoid upgrade hassles. 

perl -pi -e
        's@#\!/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl@#\!/usr/bin/perl@' *cgi *pl Bug.pm
        processmail syncshadowdb
Change /usr/bin/perl to match the location of Perl on your machine.

4.1.8. Setting Up the MySQL Database

After you've gotten all the software installed and working you're ready to start preparing the database for its life as the back end to a high quality bug tracker.

First, you'll want to fix MySQL permissions to allow access from Bugzilla. For the purpose of this Installation section, the Bugzilla username will be "bugs", and will have minimal permissions.

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

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

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

Next, we use an SQL GRANT command to create a "bugs" user, and grant sufficient permissions for checksetup.pl, which we'll use later, to work its magic. This also restricts the "bugs" user to operations within a database called "bugs", and only allows the account to connect from "localhost". Modify it to reflect your setup if you will be connecting from another machine or as a different user.

Remember to set <bugs_password> to some unique password.

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

4.1.9. checksetup.pl

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

bash# ./checksetup.pl

The first time you run it, it will create a file called localconfig.

This file contains a variety of settings you may need to tweak including how Bugzilla should connect to the MySQL database.

The connection settings include:

  1. server's host: just use "localhost" if the MySQL server is local

  2. database name: "bugs" if you're following these directions

  3. MySQL username: "bugs" if you're following these directions

  4. Password for the "bugs" MySQL account; (<bugs_password>) above

Once you are happy with the settings, su to the user your web server runs as, and re-run checksetup.pl. (Note: on some security-conscious systems, you may need to change the login shell for the webserver account before you can do this.) On this second run, it will create the database and an administrator account for which you will be prompted to provide information.

Note

The checksetup.pl script is designed so that you can run it at any time without causing harm. You should run it after any upgrade to Bugzilla.

4.1.10. Securing MySQL

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

Most MySQL installs have "interesting" default security parameters:

mysqld defaults to running as root
it defaults to allowing external network connections
it has a known port number, and is easy to detect
it defaults to no passwords whatsoever
it defaults to allowing "File_Priv"

This means anyone from anywhere on the internet can not only drop the database with one SQL command, and they can write as root to the system.

To see your permissions do:

bash# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> show tables;
mysql> select * from user;
mysql> select * from db;

To fix the gaping holes:

DELETE FROM user WHERE User='';
UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('new_password') WHERE user='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

If you're not running "mit-pthreads" you can use:

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@localhost;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

With "mit-pthreads" you'll need to modify the "globals.pl" Mysql->Connect line to specify a specific host name instead of "localhost", and accept external connections:

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
GRANT ALL ON bugs.* TO bugs@bounce.hop.com;
REVOKE DROP ON bugs.* FROM bugs@bounce.hop.com;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Consider also:

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

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

  3. running MySQL in a chroot jail

  4. running the httpd in a chroot jail

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

  6. running MySQL on a separate untrusted machine

  7. making backups ;-)

4.1.11. Configuring Bugzilla

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

4.2. Optional Additional Configuration

4.2.1. Dependency Charts

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

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

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

  3. A blank value will disable dependency graphing.

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

4.2.2. Bug Graphs

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

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

bash# crontab -e
5 0 * * * cd <your-bugzilla-directory> ; ./collectstats.pl

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

4.2.3. The Whining Cron

By now you have a fully functional Bugzilla, but what good are bugs if they're not annoying? To help make those bugs more annoying you can set up Bugzilla's automatic whining system to complain at engineers which leave their bugs in the NEW state without triaging them.

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

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

Tip

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

4.2.4. LDAP Authentication

Warning

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

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

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

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

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

4.2.5. Preventing untrusted Bugzilla content from executing malicious Javascript code

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

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

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

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

4.2.6. .htaccess files and security

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

Note

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

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


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

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

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

4.2.7. mod_throttle and Security

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

4.3. Win32 Installation Notes

This section covers installation on Microsoft Windows. Bugzilla has been made to work on Win32 platforms, but the Bugzilla team wish to emphasise that The easiest way to install Bugzilla on Intel-archiecture machines is to install some variant of GNU/Linux, then follow the UNIX installation instructions in this Guide. If you have any influence in the platform choice for running this system, please choose GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft Windows.

Warning

After that warning, here's the situation for 2.16 and Windows. It doesn't work at all out of the box. You are almost certainly better off getting the 2.17 version from CVS (after consultation with the Bugzilla Team to make sure you are pulling on a stable day) because we'll be doing a load of work to make the Win32 experience more pleasant than it is now.

If you still want to try this, to have any hope of getting it to work, you'll need to apply the mail patch from bug 124174. After that, you'll need to read the (outdated) installation instructions below, some (probably a lot better) more recent ones kindly provided by Toms Baugis and Jean-Sebastien Guay, and also check the Bugzilla 2.16 Win32 update page . If we get time, we'll write some better installation instructions for 2.16 and put them up there. But no promises.

4.3.1. Win32 Installation: Step-by-step

Note

You should be familiar with, and cross-reference, the rest of the Bugzilla Installation section while performing your Win32 installation.

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

  1. Install Apache Web Server for Windows, and copy the Bugzilla files somewhere Apache can serve them. Please follow all the instructions referenced in Bugzilla Installation regarding your Apache configuration, particularly instructions regarding the "AddHandler" parameter and "ExecCGI" .

    Note

    You may also use Internet Information Server or Personal Web Server for this purpose. However, setup is quite different. If ActivePerl doesn't seem to handle your file associations correctly (for .cgi and .pl files), please consult Appendix A .

    If you are going to use IIS, if on Windows NT you must be updated to at least Service Pack 4. Windows 2000 ships with a sufficient version of IIS.

  2. Install ActivePerl for Windows. Check http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl for a current compiled binary.

    Please also check the following links to fully understand the status of ActivePerl on Win32: Perl Porting , and Perl on Win32 FAQ

  3. Use ppm from your perl\bin directory to install the following packs: DBI, DBD-Mysql, TimeDate, Chart, Date-Calc, Date-Manip, GD, AppConfig, and Template. You may need to extract them from .zip format using Winzip or other unzip program first. Most of these additional ppm modules can be downloaded from ActiveState, but AppConfig and Template should be obtained from OpenInteract using the instructions on the Template Toolkit web site .

    Note

    You can find a list of modules at http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/5xx-builds-only/ or http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus

    The syntax for ppm is: C:> ppm <modulename>

    Example 4-1. Installing ActivePerl ppd Modules on Microsoft Windows

    C:> ppm DBD-Mysql

    Watch your capitalization!

    ActiveState's 5.6Plus directory also contains an AppConfig ppm, so you might see the following error when trying to install the version at OpenInteract:

    Error installing package 'AppConfig': Read a PPD for 'AppConfig', but it is not intended for this build of Perl (MSWin32-x86-multi-thread)

    If so, download both the tarball and the ppd directly from OpenInteract, then run ppm from within the same directory to which you downloaded those files and install the package by referencing the ppd file explicitly via in the install command, f.e.:

    Example 4-2. Installing OpenInteract ppd Modules manually on Microsoft Windows

    install C:\AppConfig.ppd

  4. Install MySQL for NT.

    Note

    You can download MySQL for Windows NT from MySQL.com . Some find it helpful to use the WinMySqlAdmin utility, included with the download, to set up the database.

  5. Setup MySQL

    1. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysql -u root mysql

    2. mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='';

    3. mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD ('new_password') WHERE user='root';

      "new_password" , above, indicates whatever password you wish to use for your "root" user.

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

      "bugs_password" , above, indicates whatever password you wish to use for your "bugs" user.

    5. mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

    6. mysql> create database bugs;

    7. mysql> exit;

    8. C:> C:\mysql\bin\mysqladmin -u root -p reload

  6. Edit checksetup.pl in your Bugzilla directory. Change this line:

    my $webservergid =
            getgrnam($my_webservergroup);

    to

    my $webservergid =
          $my_webservergroup;
    or the name of the group you wish to own the files explicitly: 
    my $webservergid =
          'Administrators'

  7. Run checksetup.pl from the Bugzilla directory.

  8. Edit localconfig to suit your requirements. Set $db_pass to your "bugs_password" from step 5.d , and $webservergroup to "8" .

    Note

    Not sure on the "8" for $webservergroup above. If it's wrong, please send corrections.

  9. Edit defparams.pl to suit your requirements. Particularly, set DefParam("maintainer") and DefParam("urlbase") to match your install.

    Note

    This is yet another step I'm not sure of, since the maintainer of this documentation does not maintain Bugzilla on NT. If you can confirm or deny that this step is required, please let me know.

  10. Note

    There are several alternatives to Sendmail that will work on Win32. The one mentioned here is a suggestion , not a requirement. Some other mail packages that can work include BLAT , Windmail , Mercury Sendmail , and the CPAN Net::SMTP Perl module (available in .ppm). Every option requires some hacking of the Perl scripts for Bugzilla to make it work. The option here simply requires the least.

    1. Download NTsendmail, available from www.ntsendmail.com . You must have a "real" mail server which allows you to relay off it in your $ENV{"NTsendmail"} (which you should probably place in globals.pl)

    2. Put ntsendmail.pm into your .\perl\lib directory.

    3. Add to globals.pl:

      # these settings configure the NTsendmail
              process use NTsendmail;
              $ENV{"NTsendmail"}="your.smtpserver.box";
              $ENV{"NTsendmail_debug"}=1;
              $ENV{"NTsendmail_max_tries"}=5;

      Note

      Some mention to also edit $db_pass in globals.pl to be your "bugs_password" . Although this may get you around some problem authenticating to your database, since globals.pl is not normally restricted by .htaccess , your database password is exposed to whoever uses your web server.

    4. Find and comment out all occurences of " open(SENDMAIL " in your Bugzilla directory. Then replace them with: 
      # new sendmail functionality my $mail=new
              NTsendmail; my $from="bugzilla\@your.machine.name.tld"; my
              $to=$login; my $subject=$urlbase;
              $mail->send($from,$to,$subject,$msg);

      Note

      Some have found success using the commercial product, Windmail . You could try replacing your sendmail calls with: 
      open SENDMAIL,
                "|\"C:/General/Web/tools/Windmail 4.0 Beta/windmail\" -t >
                mail.log";
      or something to that effect.

  11. Change all references in all files from processmail to processmail.pl , and rename processmail to processmail.pl .

    Note

    Many think this may be a change we want to make for main-tree Bugzilla. It's painless for the UNIX folks, and will make the Win32 people happier.

    Note

    Some people have suggested using the Net::SMTP Perl module instead of NTsendmail or the other options listed here. You can change processmail.pl to make this work. 
    

my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server>');   #connect to SMTP server
$smtp->mail('<your name>@<you smpt server>');# use the sender's adress here
$smtp->to($tolist); # recipient's address
$smtp->data();  # Start the mail
$smtp->datasend($msg);
$smtp->dataend();   # Finish sending the mail
$smtp->quit;    # Close the SMTP connection
$logstr = "$logstr; mail sent to $tolist $cclist";
}
    here is a test mail program for Net::SMTP: 
    

use Net::SMTP;
 my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new('<Name of your SMTP server', Timeout => 30, Debug
=> 1, ); # connect to SMTP server
                 $smtp->auth;
                $smtp->mail('you@yourcompany.com');# use the sender's adress
here
                $smtp->to('someotherAddress@someotherdomain.com'); #
recipient's address
                $smtp->data();  # Start the mail
                $smtp->datasend('test');
                $smtp->dataend();   # Finish sending the mail
                $smtp->quit;    # Close the SMTP connection
exit;

  12. Note

    This step is optional if you are using IIS or another web server which only decides on an interpreter based upon the file extension (.pl), rather than the "shebang" line (#/usr/bonsaitools/bin/perl)

    Modify the path to perl on the first line (#!) of all files to point to your Perl installation, and add "perl" to the beginning of all Perl system calls that use a perl script as an argument. This may take you a while. There is a "setperl.csh" utility to speed part of this procedure, available in the Useful Patches and Utilities for Bugzilla section of The Bugzilla Guide. However, it requires the Cygwin GNU-compatible environment for Win32 be set up in order to work. See http://www.cygwin.com/ for details on obtaining Cygwin.

  13. Modify the invocation of all system() calls in all perl scripts in your Bugzilla directory. You should specify the full path to perl for each system() call. For instance, change this line in processmail: 
    
 
system ("./processmail",@ARGLIST); 
        </programlisting> to
        <programlisting> 
system ("C:\\perl\\bin\\perl", "processmail", @ARGLIST);

  14. Add binmode() calls so attachments will work ( bug 62000 ).

    Because Microsoft Windows based systems handle binary files different than Unix based systems, you need to add the following lines to createattachment.cgi and showattachment.cgi before the require 'CGI.pl'; line.

    
binmode(STDIN);
binmode(STDOUT);

    Note

    According to bug 62000 , the perl documentation says that you should always use binmode() when dealing with binary files, but never when dealing with text files. That seems to suggest that rather than arbitrarily putting binmode() at the beginning of the attachment files, there should be logic to determine if binmode()