Bugzilla Help

Chapter 8. Bug Tracker

Find, report and fix bugs here http://bugs.contribs.org/

You don't have to be a programmer to help or use the bug tracker. Bugs also include fixing things and making suggestions on documentation, translations and the SME Server web sites.

General Instructions for using the bug Tracker are here Using Bugzilla

Searching for bugs

To help find bugs, some prepared searches have been added in page headers, with more BugzillaReports here

1. Simple search
At the top of the search page choose 'Find a specific bug'
Select a Status and a Product category and enter your search term

2. Advanced search
At the top of the search page choose 'Advanced search'

You can restrict searches by using a selection or multiple selections of a category
Use Control Click to select/deselect from selection sets, if none are selected all are.

typically you may restrict Product to use '7.x/Future/Documentation'
and enter a search term into either 'Summary' or 'A Comment'

eg. Status = CLOSED, Resolution = WONTFIX, Summary = yum
will return about 7 bugs

eg. Status = CLOSED, Resolution = WONTFIX, A Comment = yum
will return about 17 bugs

• Modifying your search

- Click on the hyperlinked headers to sort your list

- Click 'Edit Search' near the page footer

• you can adjust your selection sets
• add a search tern in the summary or comments fields
• restrict the dates, eg between 365d and Now the last year, 60d and 7d from 2months ago but not the last week
• bugs you are working on or watching, add you email address to the left field in email and numbering and check cc:, commenter, etc

- If you have a favourite search,

• when the bug list is displaying, add a name in the Remember field, these will show in your footer
• add the search to the BugzillaReports page

Reporting Bugs

Please help us to make our software as reliable as possible. Your role in that is to report possible bugs only via the bug tracker, and to encourage others to do the same. Thanks.

[Reporting a New Bug] If you have searched the Manual and Bug Tracker and not found an answer or someone else's report that matches yours, you should register on the Bug Tracker and enter a new bug. The debugging process of any issue requires active participation on the part of the reporter, providing further information and clarification of the problem.

• So how do I know it is a bug?

You don't need to. If there's any chance that it is a bug, please report to the bug tracker. It doesn't matter whether anyone else has seen it. It doesn't matter whether anyone else has a theory as to what is happening. You have noticed something that doesn't seem to work right, so just report it. Please.

To enter a bug choose a category, component, fill in the details of the bug, and commit. Please use a descriptive Summary, as most of the header searches just show the Summary

• 'panel errors' is not helpful, what panel, what errors ?
• 'Add option to limit mailman web access ' explains the topic very well

Anyone reporting problems, ask yourself these important questions, so that you know what to tell the developers in the bug report:

1. What version am I using and are there any contribs installed or other customisations?
2. What did I do?
3. What did I expect to happen?
4. What happened?
5. What do the logs say?

Bug and New Feature Verification

If you find a bug you can work on, please do so.

As an example, the documentation section, only requires you to take the answer determined in the bug and copy the information onto the wiki. There are likely to be a lot of these as they were generated before the wiki was in place.

In this example of adding documentation,

• find a bug where you understand the problem resolved
• update the wiki, information will go in a manual, be added to the FAQ or a howto, or create a new howto
• return to the bug post brief details of the fix, and how to verify it, eg 'updated wiki re: passwords' and give the URL
• then change the Status to 'Resolved - Fixed'.
• let someone else verify, or verify someone else's work

At the appropriate stage change the Status to 'Resolved - Fixed' or 'Resolved - Verified'

Bug Tracker Administrators Close bugs in SME Current or SME Future, but the reporter or maintainer can close in other sections.

Bug Status

[Lifecycle of a Bug]

Resolution statuses:

• UNCONFIRMED

New bugs submitted by ordinary users are created in this state. Note. Project Developers tend not to look at unconfirmed bugs as they only have so much time, so it's important regular users check each others bugs.

• NEW

Once bugs are confirmed, by anyone, change status to new,

• FIXED

Set to fixed after the problem has been solved for others, eg a new rpm is available, documentation has been added, etc.

• INVALID

If you see that a bug and are able to pinpoint the error a user made and there is in fact nothing wrong.

• WONTFIX

The problem should be solved elsewhere, eg an rpm maintained elsewhere, such as Horde webmail.

• LATER

Leave the bug for later, eg in case another bug will fix a related issue.

• REMIND

Close until the reporter can provide the requested feedback.

• WORKSFORME

• DUPLICATE

For when the reporter didn't find the related bug.

• VERIFIED

• CLOSED

Bug Tracker Administrators Close bugs in SME Current or SME Future, but the reporter or maintainer can close in other sections.