How to install Bugzilla?

This setup guide is aimed at helping users install and configure Bugzilla on Fedora or RedHat
Enterprise Linux (RHEL) platform.

Introduction
Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracker and testing tool originally developed and used by
the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Released as open source software
by Netscape Communications in 1998, it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a
defect tracker for both free software and proprietary products. (Source: Wikipedia)

Prerequisites
• Perl (5.8.1 or above)
• Database Engine (MySQL or Oracle or PostgreSQL)
• Webserver (Apache, IIS)
• Required Perl Modules
• Mail Transfer Agent (Sendmail 8.7 or above)

In this tutorial, we will be using a Fedora system with MySQL as the database server, apache as the
webserver and Sendmail as the MTA. To install all of these prerequisites, you can issue the following
command on the terminal as a root user:

bash# yum ­y install perl httpd sendmail mod_perl MySQL MySQL­server 
MySQL­libs MySQL­connector­odbc MySQLclient* perl­Class­DBI­MySQL 
libcgi perl­DateManip perl­DateTime­Format­Builder libdbi libdbi­
dbd­MySQL libdbi­drivers libdbi­devel perl­CGI­Untaint­email perl­
CPAN perl­libxml­perl 

Obtaining Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a free software and you can download it from Bugzilla website. To download the recent
stable release, follow this link.

Installation of Prerequisites
• Be sure you've installed all the prerequisites as discussed above.
• Download the Bugzilla recent stable release tarball.
• Copy the tarball to the httpd's DocumentRoot (i.e. /var/www/html/):

bash# cp bugzilla­*.*.*.tar.gz /var/www/html/
 • Extract the tarball:

bash# cd /var/www/html/
bash# tar ­zxvf bugzilla­*.*.*.tar.gz

• The previous command shall create a folder named bugzilla-*.*. Now, you can safely remove
the tarball.

bash# rm bugzilla­*.*.*.tar.gz

• Now we need to check the installed Perl modules and find a list of all the Perl modules to be
installed.

bash# cd bugzilla­*.*
bash# ./checksetup.pl ­­check­modules

• Next step is to install the required Perl modules (this assumes that you have CPAN installed in
your computer). The following command will use CPAN LWP agent and install all the required
modules.

bash# perl install­module.pl ­­all

Configuration
After the installation of all the prerequisites has successfully been done, we configure and tune the
installation.
• Move inside the bugzilla directory (/var/www/bugzilla-*.*) if you are not already inside it

bash# cd /var/www/html/bugzilla­*.*

• Now run the check setup perl script to begin configuration.

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'. Since we are
using MySQL, the $db_driver variable should be set to 'MySQL'.
• Set the $db_driver variable to 'MySQL'.

$db_driver  =  'MySQL';

• Set $db_host to the hostname or ip of the myql server. The preferred value is 'localhost', since
the same machine is also to be configured as a database server.

$db_host = 'localhost';

• Set the $db_name as 'bugs' and $db_user as 'bugs'.

$db_name = 'bugs';
$db_user = 'bugs';

• Set $db_pass to the password of the 'bugs' database user in MySQL. Let's assume that password
is bugs123#.

$db_pass = 'bugs123#';

Note: You are encouraged to use your own strong password. This password has just been used
as a reference. Remember, the same password needs to be used while creating a MySQL user
for Bugzilla.

• After setting all the above variables, just save the file and exit the editor.
• Now we need to tune and configure MySQL to allow easy access to Bugzilla and its
components. To do so edit the MySQL configuration file (generally /etc/my.cnf on Linux
systems) and follow the following procedure:
◦ Under the [mysqld] section inside that file, add directive to allow MySQL insert data bigger
than 64K (default), since Bugzilla needs to insert data more than the default size. Bugzilla
needs to use large attachments.

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

◦ Also, Bugzilla requires small words to be indexed in full-text search which is not enabled by
default. Hence we need to add a directive to allow indexing of even small words in full-text
search.

[mysqld]
 # Allow small words in full­text 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.
 ◦ Now we add a database user defined by the variable $db_user (i.e. bugs) and set the
password to $db_pass (i.e. bugs123#), though you are encouraged to use your own
password. Further we set this user to have all sort of privileges over the $db_name (i.e.
bugs) database.

MySQL> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, INDEX, ALTER, 
CREATE, LOCK TABLES, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DROP, 
REFERENCES ON bugs.* TO bugs@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 
'bugs123#';
MySQL> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Note: Please use the same password that you specified in the localconfig file identified by
the variable $db_pass.

◦ Next we allow MySQL to have attachment tables to grow beyond 4 GB (the default
maximum limit is just 4 GB and Bugzilla might require more space). Although this step
forms a part of database configuration, we will postpone this step until the rest part of the
configuration is complete.

MySQL> use bugs
MySQL> ALTER TABLE attachments AVG_ROW_LENGTH=1000000, 
MAX_ROWS=20000;

This command sets MySQL to let the attachment table grow up to 20 GB.

• Now after the local configuration file (i.e. localconfig) has been edited and all the other
necessary configuration has been made, we again rerun the script to make Bugzilla bind to the
configuration and create necessary files and setting parameters. Running the script 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.

bash# ./checksetup.pl

• Next comes the configuration of the web-server to correctly display the Bugzilla pages and
apply appropriate permissions to the Bugzilla installation base directory. Since we are using
Apache web-server, we have two options to run Bugzilla. Bugzilla is written using Perl CGI,
and hence two apache modules are available to run and show CGI scripts. You can choose any
one of them (remember to install the required apache module before performing this step).
Using mod_cgi is preferred.
◦ Apache httpd with mod_cgi
▪ Open the httpd configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf).
▪ Now we add a <directory> directive to the configuration file to permit fine-grained
 permission setting over the Bugzilla installation base.

Alias /bugzilla/ /var/www/html/bugzilla­*.*/

<Directory "/var/www/html/bugzilla­*.*"> 
AddHandler cgi­script cgi 
DirectoryIndex index.cgi 
Options +Indexes +ExecCGI ­MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch 
+FollowSymLinks 
AllowOverride None 
Order allow,deny 
Allow from all 
</Directory> 

<Directory "/var/www/html/bugzilla­*.*/data"> 
Options FollowSymLinks 
AllowOverride None 
Order allow,deny 
Allow from all 
</Directory> 

▪ Save the configuration file and exit the editor.

▪ Run the checksetup.pl script to complete the configuration.

◦ Apache httpd with mod_perl

▪ Open the httpd configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf).
▪ Add the following directive in the http configuration file before any other mod_perl
directives:

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

▪ Save the file and exit the editor.

▪ Run the checksetup.pl script to complete the configuration.

• Now restart the httpd daemon to apply the settings.

bash# /sbin/service httpd restart

• Now, you can point your browser at http://localhost/bugzilla/ to open the Bugzilla page.
• At this point, you are required to login with the administrator account which you created while
running the checksetup.pl script. Generally the user name is the email address that you
provided while running the script.
 • After logging in to the Bugzilla system, you are required to edit some key parameters. To edit
the parameters, follow the “Administration” link on the top navigation bar, and from the page
that opens, you can follow the “Parameters” link. Alternatively, you can point your browser to
http://localhost/bugzilla/editparams.cgi.
◦ Set the maintainer parameter to your email address <yourname@yourdomain.tld>.
◦ Set the urlbase parameter to http://<hostname>/bugzilla/. Remember to replace the
<hostname> with the appropriate hostname of the bugzilla server machine and don't use
“localhost” for this parameter.
◦ Save the parameters by clicking on the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.

• On the Parameters page, there is a vertical navigation bar on the left most part. The navigation
bar contains links to various settings that you might want to change according to your need.
After editing any of the parameters, don't forget to save the changes. Unless the changes are
saved, they are not applied to the Bugzilla system.
• Next you need to add products, components, versions, and milestones. For this purpose follow
the “Administration” link on the top navigation bar and then follow the appropriate links. By
default a test product and a test component is already added. You can edit those and replace by
your own. The administration page also contains other link to other settings, you can choose to
change them according to your need.
• From the administration page, follow the “Users” link and add new user and/or edit existing
users.
• To change the preferences of the currently logged in user, follow the “Preferences” link at the
bottom or top navigation bar, alternatively, you can point your browser to
http://localhost/bugzilla/userprefs.cgi.
• You can file a new bug by following the “New” link on the navigation bar, alternatively you
can point your browser to http://localhost/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi.
• You can use the “Search” or the “Reports” features to get information about the bugs that have
been filed by various users of the system.

Enjoy a robust bugtracker and testing platform.