3.7. Essential Post-Installation Configuration

Bugzilla is configured in the Administration Parameters. Log in with the administrator account you defined in the last checksetup.pl run, then click Administration in the header, and then Parameters. You will see the different parameter sections down the left hand side of the page.

3.7.1. Parameters

There are a few parameters which it is very important to define (or explicitly decide not to change).

The first set of these are in the Required Settings section.

  • urlbase: this is the URL by which people should access Bugzilla’s front page.

  • sslbase: if you have configured SSL on your Bugzilla server, this is the SSL URL by which people should access Bugzilla’s front page.

  • ssl_redirect: Set this if you want everyone to be redirected to use the SSL version. Recommended if you have set up SSL.

  • cookiepath: Bugzilla uses cookies to remember who each user is. In order to set those cookies in the correct scope, you may need to set a cookiepath. If your Bugzilla is at the root of your domain, you don’t need to change the default value.

You may want to put your email address in the maintainer parameter in the General section. This will then let people know who to contact if they see problems or hit errors.

If you don’t want just anyone able to read your Bugzilla, set the requirelogin parameter in the User Authentication section, and change or clear the createemailregexp parameter.

3.7.2. Email

Bugzilla requires the ability to set up email. You have a number of choices here. The simplest is to get Gmail or some other email provider to do the work for you, but you can also hand the mail off to a local email server, or run one yourself on the Bugzilla machine.

Bugzilla’s approach to email is configured in the Email section of the Parameters.

3.7.2.1. Use Another Mail Server

This section corresponds to choosing a mail_delivery_method of SMTP.

This method passes the email off to an existing mail server. Your organization may well already have one running for their internal email, and may prefer to use it for confidentiality reasons. If so, you need the following information about it:

  • The domain name of the server (Parameter: smtpserver)

  • The username and password to use (Parameters: smtp_username and smtp_password)

  • Whether the server uses SSL (Parameter: smtp_ssl)

  • The address you should be sending mail ‘From’ (Parameter: mailfrom)

If your organization does not run its own mail server, you can use the services of one of any number of popular email providers.

Gmail

Visit https://gmail.com and create a new Gmail account for your Bugzilla to use. Then, set the following parameter values in the “Email” section:

  • mail_delivery_method: SMTP

  • mailfrom: new_gmail_address@gmail.com

  • smtpserver: smtp.gmail.com:465

  • smtp_username: new_gmail_address@gmail.com

  • smtp_password: new_gmail_password

  • smtp_ssl: On

3.7.2.2. Run Your Own Mail Server

This section corresponds to choosing a mail_delivery_method of Sendmail.

Unless you know what you are doing, and can deal with the possible problems of spam, bounces and blacklists, it is probably unwise to set up your own mail server just for Bugzilla. However, if you wish to do so, some guidance follows.

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 compatible with at least version 8.7 of Sendmail.

On Mac OS X 10.3 and later, Postfix is used as the built-in email server. Postfix provides an executable that mimics sendmail enough to satisfy Bugzilla.

On Windows, if you find yourself unable to use Bugzilla’s built-in SMTP support (e.g. because the necessary Perl modules are not available), you can use Sendmail with a little application called sendmail.exe, which provides sendmail-compatible calling conventions and encapsulates the SMTP communication to another mail server. Like Bugzilla, sendmail.exe can be configured to log SMTP communication to a file in case of problems.

Detailed information on configuring an MTA is outside the scope of this document. 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.

3.7.2.3. Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble, check that any configured SMTP server can be reached from your Bugzilla server and that any given authentication credentials are valid. If these things seem correct and your mails are still not sending, check if your OS uses SELinux or AppArmor. Either of these may prevent your web server from sending email. The SELinux boolean httpd_can_sendmail may need to be set to True.

If all those things don’t help, activate the smtp_debug parameter and check your webserver logs.

3.7.3. Products, Components, Versions and Milestones

Bugs in Bugzilla are categorised into Products and, inside those Products, Components (and, optionally, if you turn on the useclassifications parameter, Classifications as a level above Products).

Bugzilla comes with a single Product, called “TestProduct”, which contains a single component, imaginatively called “TestComponent”. You will want to create your own Products and their Components. It’s OK to have just one Component inside a Product. Products have Versions (which represents the version of the software in which a bug was found) and Target Milestones (which represent the future version of the product in which the bug is hopefully to be fixed - or, for RESOLVED bugs, was fixed. You may also want to add some of those.

Once you’ve created your own, you will want to delete TestProduct (which will delete TestComponent automatically). Note that if you’ve filed a bug in TestProduct to try Bugzilla out, you’ll need to move it elsewhere before it’s possible to delete TestProduct.

Now, you may want to do some of the Optional Post-Install Configuration.

This documentation undoubtedly has bugs; if you find some, please file them here.