Reporting bugs into bugzilla of RedHat

ilja · #1 11th March 2005, 10:00 AM

As indirectly requested in a thread I want to write a howto on reporting bugs into the bugzilla of Red Hat Inc. At the first sight it looks very complicated, but it isn't.
I don't think that this howto is perfect, as I am not a professional on enter bugs into bugzilla, but I gave my best. If you have a better link or something to improve, please post it here.

What is a bug?
This word is best described here :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bug
So to help to improve the little or big failures there is a system called bugzilla which takes care of the management of the entries of different bugs. The developers are very busy people, so it is always better to add information to an already opened bug, then to open a new one.
Where is bugzilla of Red Hat?
It can be found there:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/
Look around firs, just to get a feeling for it.

To insert a bug go to:
"NEW" (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/beta/easy_enter_bug.cgi)
(the link might change)

In the text you can find the link for:
CREATE ACCOUNT
If you do not own an account create one, with an existing e-mail adress.

Now search, whether the bug is already known. There are two possibilities
first: Only Look in Summary Fields
then : Look in both Summary and Description Fields
I search for hwclock and don't find anything interesting.
I you have found something that looks like you bug, please just add your information to the already opened bug!
If nothing interesting found: Continue

Login

Choose the right product. It can be Fedora Core for the basic packages. It could be Fedora Extras, for the Fedora Extras packages, or it could be Fedora Legacy for packages, that comes from the Fedora Legacy Project.
I choose:
Fedora Core

Continue
Find out which package the bug is.
The easiest way is to find out the binary file and its location

Code:

[ilja@josephine ~]$ whereis hwclock
hwclock: /sbin/hwclock /usr/sbin/hwclock /usr/share/man/man8/hwclock.8.gz

So in our case it is /bin/hwclock. Now to find out which package it belongs to with the help of RPM

Code:

[ilja@josephine ~]$  rpm -qif  /sbin/hwclock
Name        : util-linux                   Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.12a                             Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.
Release     : 16                            Build Date: Do 14 Okt 2004 20:04:43 CEST

there is also other information, but only this is important. If the Vendor is not Red Hat, then it might be a third party package and you are reporting to the wrong place. But the most important information we have:
Name : util-linux
Version : 2.12a

Continue
Now choose your version of Fedora.
In my case it is fc3
Now choose your architecture. If not sure it is i386. If you have an AMD64 processor, then it is x86_64. If you have any other architecture choose it.

Continue

Now there comes the hardest part:
URL: you can add the fedoraforum thread where the error is described.
Version-Release of Selected Component: do a rpm -q on the package e.g.

Code:

[ilja@josephine ~]$ rpm -q util-linux
util-linux-2.12a-16

Description : Maybe the hardest part of the hard part

A very good description. There are bad and good desprictions given. I think the first post of pigpen would be a perfect instruction : http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=46764
Reproducibility : The developers should be able to see, how the things work on their computers and if this was only one time case or not. So first select the Reproducibility of the bug. (Does it appear every time you start hwclock or did it appeared only once? Or only some circumstances?
For this case I would choose: Every time. And the steps:
1. become root
2. execute hwclock
Actual Results : What happened after doing the above steps:
e.g. I got the message :
select() to /dev/rtc to wait for clock tick timed out
Expected Results : the results you expected after doing the steps.
I would expect the hardware time

Code:

 
[ilja@josephine ~]$ /sbin/hwclock
Fr 11 Mär 2005 10:15:38 CET  -0.446296 Sekunden

Additional Information : Add any additional informations. E.g.
When I run 'system-config-time' to change time zones etc. and click "OK", this happens:

[root@pc54122 ~]# system-config-time
select() to /dev/rtc to wait for clock tick timed out

Severity : Now you can choose the level of importance for the bug. I think it is self-explanatory. Here is is normal

Now check one more time all the infos you gave and click
Submit Bug to Bugzilla.