Admin FAQ

Yes, the newest version of BugPort can, but you must change the zend.ze1_compatibility_mode variable to 'On' in the php.ini file. For Windows, this file is often in c:\windows. The variable entry should look like: zend.ze1_compatibility_mode = On

The only issue truly needing command line access is the password file generation step. This is where you need to run apache's htpasswd binary to provide authentication information. There are a few possible solutions. You could either download apache for windows or make temporary use of a linux box with apache installed. Keep in mind that your server host will have to be running apache in order to use the file generated by htpasswd. In addition, your server apache will have to be setup to allow .htaccess files to function. Your server admin can help you with that if it is not already setup that way.

You will need to turn on basic authentication using the Internet Information Services GUI interface. After you create your bugport directory within your web documents directory, right click on it in this GUI and choose "properties". Then, under the Directory Security tab, press the "Edit..." button for "Anonymous access and authentication control". Configure "basic" authentication here.

Make sure that each BugPort username has a corresponding account on your server/domain. Also, make sure that the users can login to your server. If you experience a problem where the web browser asks you to login three times in a row and then presents a failure message, and you are sure you typed in the right username and password, then you authentication is not working. If you are using a Windows Domain, you could try to login using a username like this: DOMAINNAME\username

For the most part, running BugPort on Windows with IIS is no harder than running it on linux. However, there is a PHP issue to lookout for (this was addressed 4.3.6). You need to double-check the php.ini file's setting for the session.save_path variable, as it may not have a good default value. This needs to point to a directory that can be written to by your web server user.

Try this (using the path to your Apache installation):

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin>htpasswd

Problem: Every time I try a htpasswd command, I see output that looks like this:

Usage:
htpasswd [-cmdpsD] passwordfile username
htpasswd -b[cmdpsD] passwordfile username password

htpasswd -n[mdps] username
htpasswd -nb[mdps] username password
-c  Create a new file.
-n  Don't update file; display results on stdout.
-m  Force MD5 encryption of the password (default).
-d  Force CRYPT encryption of the password.
-p  Do not encrypt the password (plaintext).
-s  Force SHA encryption of the password.
-b  Use the password from the command line rather than prompting for it.
-D  Delete the specified user.

On Windows, NetWare and TPF systems the '-m' flag is used by default. On all other systems, the '-p' flag will probably not work.

First, make sure that your syntax is correct. As an example, did you include the flag in your command? Is there a space in the path to the password file? Did you try putting quotes around the path?

Second, try using relative path for the password file instead of an absolute path. Instead of a command like:

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin>htpasswd -c C:\Program Files\Apache
Group\Apache2\bugport.users joeUser

Try using a relative path:

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin>htpasswd -c ..\bugport.users joeUser

Apache2triad 1.4+ will install PHP5 as well as MySQL and a number of other opensource programs. It can be a handy way to get BugPort running on a Windows machine. Because BugPort does not support PHP5, you will need to follow the instructions about using BugPort under that PHP version (see PHP 5 question in this document). You can setup your authentication using the htpasswd.exe command like sown below. ONLY use the -c flag for the first user (it will create the .bugport_pass file for you when the -c flag is used).

C:\apache2triad\bin>htpasswd.exe -c .bugport_pass bp_user_name
Automatically using MD5 format.
New password: *******
Re-type new password: *******
Adding password for user bp_user_name
  

Your .htaccess file that you create in the bugport home directory will point to that .bugport_pass file (see authentication questions for more info).

Since BugPort uses the web server's authentication for user logins, you can alter the RSS URL you wish to receive from BugPort by adding in your login information. This is NOT A SAFE thing to do from a public machine as your password will be in plain sight within the URL!

Make your BugPort RSS URL look something like this:

http://user:pass@www.yours.com/bugport/index.php?view=RssView&where=state_id%3D%3F&binds%5B0%
5D=220

The only change that needs to be made to your URL is adding the 'user:pass@' part.

Make sure that the $home variable in config.conf is correct. It should be the directory that contains the bugport "php" and "php_classes" folders.

BugPort uses web-server based authentication. Ensure that you webserver is forcing you to login to access the BugPort site, and that the user you login as has a corresponding entry in BugPort (that username is in BugPort's iuser table). If your web browser forces you to login to view the BugPort site and you still see this error, make sure that you are using PHP in "module install mode", not CGI (this only applies for Apache).

BugPort uses PHP's built-in mail() function to send email. You need to ensure that this is working. Please see the PHP documentation here - this mail() function will work on both unix or windows machines, provided PHP has been properly configured.

Make sure that your BugPort iuser table has the new isAdmin column (see UPDATE.txt) and that the column is set to 1 or 0 for all users (not null). Set it to 1 for users that can act as BugPort admins.

BugPort's conf/config.conf is run through PHP's eval to load the configuration values. This eval is called in conf/configuration.php which defines a series of constants based on the variables defined in conf/config.conf.

So, your conf/config.conf needs to be valid PHP, but without the usual <?php and ?> to begin and end your PHP file. Make sure that all variable assignments have proper quotes and end with semi-colons. For example, this line is OK:

$db_type = "mysql";

But this line is not OK:

$db_type = mysql

Unfortunately, the web-based administration remains unfinished. To solve this problem, after you add a user with that tool, you will still need to manually enter a valid project_id (pulled from the project table) in the currentProject_id of the iuser table.

The currentProject_id field stores the current ID of the project a user is (or last was) viewing in the BugPort interface. A user maps to multiple projects via the user_project_usertype mapping table (usertype is what defines a user's permissions).

Unfortunately, the web-based administration is unfinished in this project. We would love some help coding that stuff up. You have to edit the project table manually and then clear out the table_caching table so your changes will be visible in the web interface.

Edit the row in the project database table to change the name. Then rename the project subdirectory in your BugPort attachments directory to match the new name, replacing any space characters with underscores. Don't forget to empty the table_caching table so that your changes to the database will take effect in BugPort.

First of all, know that the BugPort team will be glad to help you out. But in order to maximize the effectiveness of the help it would be nice to take a few initial debug steps. The first is to be sure your PHP setup is OK. There are a variety of PHP ini variables that can adversely affect BugPort when incorrectly configured. This is the phpInfo() output for INCOGEN's internal BugPort system. In order to see your server's configuration, make a simple script like this and point to it via your web browser:

<?php
      phpInfo();
?>

Please check your output against INCOGEN's in case there are some variables that might not match. Of course, variables containing file paths and so forth will not likely match, which is OK, but some of the simple and/or boolean variables may need to match. INCOGEN can use the information in your phpInfo() output in order to learn more about your setup (you can filter this output to avoid sending out sensitive information). Please consult the PHP.com documentation site for info about the specific 'ini' variables.

Please also make sure that the database user you have setup BugPort to use has full permissions on your BugPort schema/database ('create tables', 'insert'/'update', etc.).