4.2. User Administration
User administration is one of the easiest parts of Bugzilla. Keeping it from getting out of hand, however, can become a challenge.
4.2.1. Creating the Default User
When you first run checksetup.pl after installing Bugzilla, it will prompt you for the administrative username (email address) and password for this "super user". If for some reason you were to delete the "super user" account, re-running checksetup.pl will again prompt you for this username and password.
 | If you wish to add more administrative users, you must use the MySQL interface. Run "mysql" from the command line, and use these commands ("mysql>" denotes the mysql prompt, not something you should type in): mysql> use bugs; mysql> update profiles set groupset=0x7ffffffffffffff where login_name = "(user's login name)"; Yes, that is fourteen "f"'s. A whole lot of f-ing going on if you want to create a new administator. |
4.2.2. Managing Other Users
4.2.2.1. Logging In
Open the index.html page for your Bugzilla installation in your browser window.
Click the "Query Existing Bug Reports" link.
Click the "Log In" link at the foot of the page.
Type your email address, and the password which was emailed to you when you created your Bugzilla account, into the spaces provided.
Congratulations, you are logged in!
4.2.2.2. Creating new users
Your users can create their own user accounts by clicking the "New Account" link at the bottom of each page. However, should you desire to create user accounts ahead of time, here is how you do it.
After logging in, click the "Users" link at the footer of the query page.
To see a specific user, type a portion of their login name in the box provided and click "submit". To see all users, simply click the "submit" button. You must click "submit" here to be able to add a new user.
More functionality is available via the list on the right-hand side of the text entry box. You can match what you type as a case-insensitive substring (the default) of all users on your system, a case-sensitive regular expression (please see the man regexp manual page for details on regular expression syntax), or a reverse regular expression match, where every user name which does NOT match the regular expression is selected.
Click the "Add New User" link at the bottom of the user list
Fill out the form presented. This page is self-explanatory. When done, click "submit".
Adding a user this way will not send an email informing them of their username and password. While useful for creating dummy accounts (watchers which shuttle mail to another system, for instance, or email addresses which are a mailing list), in general it is preferable to log out and use the "New Account" button to create users, as it will pre-populate all the required fields and also notify the user of her account name and password.
4.2.2.3. Disabling Users
I bet you noticed that big "Disabled Text" entry box available from the "Add New User" screen, when you edit an account? By entering any text in this box and selecting "submit", you have prevented the user from using Bugzilla via the web interface. Your explanation, written in this text box, will be presented to the user the next time she attempts to use the system.
 | Don't disable your own administrative account, or you will hate life! At this time, "Disabled Text" does not prevent a user from using the email interface. If you have the email interface enabled, they can still continue to submit bugs and comments that way. We need a patch to fix this. |
4.2.2.4. Modifying Users
Here I will attempt to describe the function of each option on the Edit User screen.
Login Name: This is generally the user's email address. However, if you have edited your system parameters, this may just be the user's login name or some other identifier.
For compatability reasons, you should probably stick with email addresses as user login names. It will make your life easier.
Real Name: Duh!
Password: You can change the user password here. It is normal to only see asterisks.
Disable Text: If you type anything in this box, including just a space, the user account is disabled from making any changes to bugs via the web interface, and what you type in this box is presented as the reason.
Don't disable the administrator account!
As of this writing, the user can still submit bugs via the e-mail gateway, if you set it up, despite the disabled text field. The e-mail gateway should not be enabled for secure installations of Bugzilla.
CanConfirm: This field is only used if you have enabled "unconfirmed" status in your parameters screen. If you enable this for a user, that user can then move bugs from "Unconfirmed" to "Confirmed" status (e.g.: "New" status). Be judicious about allowing users to turn this bit on for other users.
Creategroups: This option will allow a user to create and destroy groups in Bugzilla. Unless you are using the Bugzilla GroupSentry security option "usebuggroupsentry" in your parameters, this setting has no effect.
Editbugs: Unless a user has this bit set, they can only edit those bugs for which they are the assignee or the reporter.
Leaving this option unchecked does not prevent users from adding comments to a bug! They simply cannot change a bug priority, severity, etc. unless they are the assignee or reporter.
Editcomponents: This flag allows a user to create new products and components, as well as modify and destroy those that have no bugs associated with them. If a product or component has bugs associated with it, those bugs must be moved to a different product or component before Bugzilla will allow them to be destroyed. The name of a product or component can be changed without affecting the associated bugs, but it tends to annoy the hell out of your users when these change a lot.
Editkeywords: If you use Bugzilla's keyword functionality, enabling this feature allows a user can create and destroy keywords. As always, the keywords for existing bugs containing the keyword the user wishes to destroy must be changed before Bugzilla will allow it to die. You must be very careful about creating too many new keywords if you run a very large Bugzilla installation; keywords are global variables across products, and you can often run into a phenomenon called "keyword bloat". This confuses users, and then the feature goes unused.
Editusers: This flag allows a user do what you're doing right now: edit other users. This will allow those with the right to do so to remove administrator privileges from other users or grant them to themselves. Enable with care.
PRODUCT: PRODUCT bugs access. This allows an administrator, with product-level granularity, to specify in which products a user can edit bugs. The user must still have the "editbugs" privelege to edit bugs in this area; this simply restricts them from even seeing bugs outside these boundaries if the administrator has enabled the group sentry parameter "usebuggroupsentry". Unless you are using bug groups, this option has no effect.