The Bugzilla Guide - 3.2rc2 Development Release

The Bugzilla Team

2008-11-06

This is the documentation for Bugzilla, a bug-tracking system from mozilla.org. Bugzilla is an enterprise-class piece of software that tracks millions of bugs and issues for hundreds of organizations around the world.

The most current version of this document can always be found on the Bugzilla Documentation Page.

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. Installing Bugzilla

2.1. Installation
2.2. Configuration
2.3. Optional Additional Configuration
2.4. Multiple Bugzilla databases with a single installation
2.5. OS-Specific Installation Notes
2.6. UNIX (non-root) Installation Notes
2.7. Upgrading to New Releases

3. Administering Bugzilla

3.1. Bugzilla Configuration
3.2. User Administration
3.3. Classifications
3.4. Products
3.5. Components
3.6. Versions
3.7. Milestones
3.8. Flags
3.9. Keywords
3.10. Custom Fields
3.11. Legal Values
3.12. Bug Status Workflow
3.13. Voting
3.14. Quips
3.15. Groups and Group Security
3.16. Checking and Maintaining Database Integrity

4. Bugzilla Security

4.1. Operating System
4.2. MySQL
4.3. Web server
4.4. Bugzilla

5. Using Bugzilla

5.1. Introduction
5.2. Create a Bugzilla Account
5.3. Anatomy of a Bug
5.4. Life Cycle of a Bug
5.5. Searching for Bugs
5.6. Filing Bugs
5.7. Attachments
5.8. Hints and Tips
5.9. Time Tracking Information
5.10. User Preferences
5.11. Reports and Charts
5.12. Flags
5.13. Whining

6. Customizing Bugzilla

6.1. Custom Skins
6.2. Template Customization
6.3. The Bugzilla Extension Mechanism
6.4. Customizing Who Can Change What
6.5. Integrating Bugzilla with Third-Party Tools

A. Troubleshooting

A.1. General Advice
A.2. The Apache web server is not serving Bugzilla pages
A.3. I installed a Perl module, but checksetup.pl claims it's not installed!
A.4. DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed
A.5. cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)
A.6. Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin
A.7. Some users are constantly being forced to relogin
A.8. index.cgi doesn't show up unless specified in the URL
A.9. checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server..."

B. Contrib

B.1. Command-line Search Interface
B.2. Command-line 'Send Unsent Bug-mail' tool

C. Manual Installation of Perl Modules

C.1. Instructions
C.2. Download Locations
C.3. Optional Modules

D. GNU Free Documentation License

0. Preamble
1. Applicability and Definition
2. Verbatim Copying
3. Copying in Quantity
4. Modifications
5. Combining Documents
6. Collections of Documents
7. Aggregation with Independent Works
8. Translation
9. Termination
10. Future Revisions of this License
How to use this License for your documents

Glossary

List of Figures
5-1. Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug

List of Examples
4-1. Assigning the MySQL "root" User a Password
4-2. Disabling the MySQL "anonymous" User
4-3. Disabling Networking in MySQL
A-1. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies
A-2. Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login cookie