
About This Guide
****************


Introduction
============

This is the documentation for version 4.5 of 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.


Copyright Information
=====================

This document is copyright (c) 2000-2014 by the various Bugzilla
contributors who wrote it.

   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 in *GNU
   Free Documentation License*.

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


Disclaimer
==========

No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Follow
the instructions herein 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.

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; it is an extremely
versatile, stable, and robust operating system that offers an ideal
operating environment for Bugzilla.

Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to ensure
that all exploitable bugs have been fixed, security holes surely exist
in any piece of code. Great care should be taken both in the
installation and usage of this software. The Bugzilla development team
members assume no liability for your use of Bugzilla. You have the
source code, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to ensure
your security needs are met.


New Versions
============

This is version 4.5 of The Bugzilla Guide. It is so named to match the
current version of Bugzilla.

The latest version of this guide can always be found at
http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/. However, you should read the version
which came with the Bugzilla release you are using.

In addition, there are Bugzilla template localization projects in
several languages. They may have translated documentation available.
If you would like to volunteer to translate the Guide into additional
languages, please visit the Bugzilla L10n team page.


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 mbarnson@sisna.com
   for the Herculean task of pulling together the Bugzilla Guide and
   shepherding it to 2.14.

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

Tara Hernandez tara@tequilarists.org
   for keeping Bugzilla development going strong after Terry left
   mozilla.org and for running landfill.

Dave Lawrence dkl@redhat.com
   for providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's
   customized Bugzilla.

Dawn Endico endico@mozilla.org
   for being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with Matthew's
   incessant questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in
   #mozwebtools

Jacob Steenhagen jake@bugzilla.org
   for taking over documentation during the 2.17 development period.

Dave Miller justdave@bugzilla.org
   for taking over as project lead when Tara stepped down and
   continually pushing for the documentation to be the best it can be.

Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions
to this documentation: Kevin Brannen, Vlad Dascalu, Ben FrantzDale,
Eric Hanson, Zach Lipton, Gervase Markham, Andrew Pearson, Joe Robins,
Spencer Smith, Ron Teitelbaum, Shane Travis, Martin Wulffeld.

Also, thanks are due to the members of the mozilla.support.bugzilla
newsgroup (and its predecessor, netscape.public.mozilla.webtools).
Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this
could never have happened.


Document Conventions
====================

This document uses the following conventions:

Warning: This is a warning - something you should be aware of.

Note: This is just a note, for your information.

A filename or a path to a filename is displayed like this:
"/path/to/filename.ext"

A command to type in the shell is displayed like this: **command
--arguments**

bash$ represents a normal user's prompt under bash shell

bash# represents a root user's prompt under bash shell

A sample of code is illustrated like this:

   First Line of Code
   Second Line of Code
   ...

This documentation is maintained in reStructured Text format. Changes
are best submitted as diffs, attached to a bug filed in the Bugzilla
Documentation component.
