Bugzilla Tip: Watch Another User

Did you know you can track the emails another Bugzilla user receives?

If you are part of a team which uses Bugzilla, and (for instance) another Bugzilla user on your team goes on a vacation, you can see the emails Bugzilla sends to that team member.. You can “watch” other user’s Bug Mail.

Bugzilla’s “User Watching” feature controls this.

In order to watch others, do this…

Preferences -> Email Preferences

Scroll down to the “User Watching” section.

In the User Watching section you see a field with all user email addresses. Select the email addresses of the users you want to watch. (Use Ctrl-left click to select more than one user email address.) Click the Submit Changes button. Another field appears which displays the users you now watch.

You will receive a copy of all the email those users are sent. Any event that would trigger an email to them triggers an email to you.

Note that the user you are watching can see that you are watching them.

How do I “unwatch” a user?

In the “User Watching” section, look for “You are watching everyone in the following list:”. The field below this lists the users you watch. Select the users you no longer want to watch. (Ctrl-left click to select more than one.) Check “Remove selected users from my watch list” then click “Submit Changes”.

Subversion tip: Update works, but commit fails

You use devZing Subversion hosting for your project. The time comes to sync your file(s) and a problem arises when you do so. I mean, the update worked. But it fails to actually commit. The error message “Authorization failed” appears. What is going on? How can there be an authorization failure?

Well, the problem is simple and the solution is simple, too.

Here’s the problem: Subversion has a quirk. It lies in the commit process.

When you create a working copy, you can accidentally put in a technically incorrect URL and it still works. The checkout allows the case of the characters to not match the “official” URL. Because the update command is case in-sensitive, whereas the commit command is case sensitive, Subversion allows the error. For example, your original (and “official”) URL may be “svn://svn.devzing.com/Me/MyRepo1“. But when you enter the URL in the checkout command, the command which creates the working copy, you accidentally enter everything lowercase. You put in “svn://svn.devzing.com/me/myrepo1“. That’s easy enough to do.

But the commit doesn’t recognize this URL and rejects it with an “Authorization failed” message. It only accepts the exact original.

So check your original repository URL.

 

 

Make sure everything is exactly as it shows in the URL column.

The solution is simple indeed. Just check the URL of your working copy.

Subversion Tip: Fix Missing Date and Author in Svn Log

If you are trying to use the svn log command and the output is missing the author and date fields like the following example:

c:working> svn log
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r8 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r7 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r6 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r5 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r4 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r2 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1 | (no author) | (no date) | 1 line
------------------------------------------------------------------------

More than likely your Anonomous Access is set to Read.

Change this to None to prevent this problem.

If you are using a client like TortoiseSVN you may need to clear any cached logs.

In TortoiseSVN go to the settings screen and look for the Cached Repositories node. Then select and delete the repository you just fixed.

Be sure and check out our subversion hosting service.

Avoid Spam: Make Bugzilla Private

Bugzilla is a great bug tracking system. But when you open an account, it doesn’t automatically have your privacy in mind. In fact without taking a couple short steps, your email addresses will actually be visible to the public. This is an open invitation to spam.

Consider what the Privacy Notice email says:

PRIVACY NOTICE: Bugzilla is an open bug tracking system. Activity on most bugs, including email addresses, will be visible to the public. We recommend using a secondary account or free web email service (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or similar) to avoid receiving spam at your primary email address.

Yikes! Why use the software at all? I have to set up new email accounts just to accommodate all the spam I’ll get?

Don’t despair. There are only a couple steps you need to take to make your Bugzilla private.

From the Bugzilla Main Page, follow this..

Administration -> Parameters -> User Authentication

Scroll down the page to this field:

Hit the “ON” button. (You want to turn on the requirelogin feature.)

Next find this field:

Delete the contents of the field. (Delete the “ .* “)

There you go! Two easy steps.

Spam can be a headache. As an administrator you want to keep all activity on Bugzilla private, for yourself and all involved with your project. Take these two steps first.

 

devZing Internship 1.0

I’m excited to announce that devZing is looking for its first intern. If you aren’t aware devZing is an up and coming hosted development tools service provider. We provide hosted Bugzilla, MantisBT and Subversion for teams that need a hosted solution.

We are growing quickly and could use some help in areas like: website design, SEO/SEM, screen casts and Ad Words. I know there are smart people out there who know this stuff but need a little more solid experience on their resume and I’d like to help. If you are in school and have a formal internship program and you are seleted I’ll do my best to figure out a way to get you credits.

I’m not limiting the internship to just these areas. If you have a great idea go ahead and pitch it to me.

Ready to find out more? Either use the contact link or send me an email at intern@devzing.com.

Subversion Hooks – Workflow for your code

Subversion hooks are processes that run when certian events happen while using Subversion.
We have implemented two hooks for subverion.
The first is the clasic “require commit message” This hook allows you to require you users to provide a subversion commit message when they try to commit. And it won’t let them commit if they don’t provide a message.
The second is “email on commit” which allows you to provide one or more email addresses that have notifications sent to them every time someone commits a change.

Why not try out our Subversion Hosting?

Bugzilla Hosting: All Instances Upgraded to 3.6.4

All Bugzilla hosting customers have been upgraded to Bugzilla 3.6.4. You can read more about the release at the Bugzilla site.

Some highlights:

  • When replying to a comment with a link like “attachment 1234 [details]”, the “[details]” link will no longer be duplicated in your reply. (Bug 474766)
  • Using Quicksearch no longer requires that the List::MoreUtils module be installed. (Bug 611129)
  • When using config.cgi?ctype=rdf, information about products now includesallows_unconfirmed. (Bug 610217)
  • When using tabular reports, any value whose name started with a period or an underscore wasn’t being displayed. (Bug 617684)

A number of changes were also release to address this security advisory:

  • A weakness in Bugzilla could allow a user to gain unauthorized access  to another Bugzilla account.
  • If you put a harmful “javascript:” or “data:” URL into Bugzilla’s “URL” field, then there are multiple situations in which Bugzilla will unintentionally make that link clickable.
  • Various pages lack protection against cross-site request forgeries.

devZing – Instant Bugzilla Hosting

 

Bugzilla Problem: Bugzilla Always Prompting to Login

Having a probem where you can’t log in to your Bugzilla because it keeps asking you to log in? Your user name and password are correct because it dosen’t tell you that they are wrong, it just won’t let you in.

The most likely reason is that your ssl_redirect parameter is On, but your sslbase parameter is blank.

To test this try typing in the https version of your url e.g. https://app.devzing.com/demo/bugzilla/ and try logging on. If you are sucessful you will be able to navigate to the Administration page where you can either:

  • set the ssl_redirect parameter to Off, or
  • correctly fill out your sslbase parameter

Either will work, it just depends on whether you want a secure connection to your Bugzilla server.