# Troubleshooting

This section gives solutions to common Bugzilla installation problems. If none of the section headings seems to match your problem, read the general advice.

## General Advice

If you can't get `checksetup.pl` to run to completion, it normally explains what's wrong and how to fix it. If you can't work it out, or if it's being uncommunicative, post the errors in the mozilla.support.bugzilla newsgroup.

If you have made it all the way through (Installation) and (Configuration) but accessing the Bugzilla URL doesn't work, the first thing to do is to check your web server error log. For Apache, this is often located at `/etc/logs/httpd/error_log`. The error messages you see may be self-explanatory enough to enable you to diagnose and fix the problem. If not, see below for some commonly-encountered errors. If that doesn't help, post the errors to the newsgroup.

Bugzilla can also log all user-based errors (and many code-based errors) that occur, without polluting the web server's error log. To enable Bugzilla error logging, create a file that Bugzilla can write to, named `errorlog`, in the Bugzilla `data` directory. Errors will be logged as they occur, and will include the type of the error, the IP address and username (if available) of the user who triggered the error, and the values of all environment variables; if a form was being submitted, the data in the form will also be included. To disable error logging, delete or rename the `errorlog` file.

## The Apache web server is not serving Bugzilla pages

After you have run `checksetup.pl` twice, run `testserver.pl http://yoursite.yourdomain/yoururl` to confirm that your web server is configured properly for Bugzilla.

    bash$ ./testserver.pl http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip
    TEST-OK Webserver is running under group id in $webservergroup.
    TEST-OK Got ant picture.
    TEST-OK Webserver is executing CGIs.
    TEST-OK Webserver is preventing fetch of http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/localconfig.

## I installed a Perl module, but `checksetup.pl` claims it's not installed!

This could be caused by one of two things:

1. You have two versions of Perl on your machine. You are installing modules into one, and Bugzilla is using the other. Rerun the CPAN commands (or manual compile) using the full path to Perl from the top of `checksetup.pl`. This will make sure you are installing the modules in the right place.

2. The permissions on your library directories are set incorrectly. They must, at the very least, be readable by the web server user or group. It is recommended that they be world readable.

## DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed

The following error message may appear due to a bug in DBD::mysql (over which the Bugzilla team have no control):

     DBD::Sponge::db prepare failed: Cannot determine NUM_OF_FIELDS at D:/Perl/site/lib/DBD/mysql.pm line 248.
      SV = NULL(0x0) at 0x20fc444
      REFCNT = 1
      FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY)

To fix this, go to `<path-to-perl>/lib/DBD/sponge.pm` in your Perl installation and replace

     my $numFields;
     if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
         $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
     } elsif ($attribs->{'NAME'}) {
         $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAME}};

with

     my $numFields;
     if ($attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}) {
         $numFields = $attribs->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'};
     } elsif ($attribs->{'NAMES'}) {
         $numFields = @{$attribs->{NAMES}};

(note the S added to NAME.)

## cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue)

If you are installing Bugzilla on SuSE Linux, or some other distributions with paranoid security options, it is possible that the checksetup.pl script may fail with the error:

    cannot chdir(/var/spool/mqueue): Permission denied

This is because your `/var/spool/mqueue` directory has a mode of `drwx------`. Type `chmod 755 `/var/spool/mqueue`` as root to fix this problem. This will allow any process running on your machine the ability to read the `/var/spool/mqueue` directory.

## Everybody is constantly being forced to relogin

The most-likely cause is that the cookiepath parameter is not set correctly in the Bugzilla configuration. You can change this (if you're a Bugzilla administrator) from the editparams.cgi page via the web interface.

The value of the cookiepath parameter should be the actual directory containing your Bugzilla installation, as seen by the end-user's web browser. Leading and trailing slashes are mandatory. You can also set the cookiepath to any directory which is a parent of the Bugzilla directory (such as '/', the root directory). But you can't put something that isn't at least a partial match or it won't work. What you're actually doing is restricting the end-user's browser to sending the cookies back only to that directory.

How do you know if you want your specific Bugzilla directory or the whole site?

If you have only one Bugzilla running on the server, and you don't mind having other applications on the same server with it being able to see the cookies (you might be doing this on purpose if you have other things on your site that share authentication with Bugzilla), then you'll want to have the cookiepath set to "/", or to a sufficiently-high enough directory that all of the involved apps can see the cookies.

Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs for sharing login cookies

>     urlbase is http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/
>     cookiepath is /

>     urlbase is http://tools.mysite.tld/bugzilla/
>             but you have http://tools.mysite.tld/someotherapp/ which shares
>             authentication with your Bugzilla
>     cookiepath is /

On the other hand, if you have more than one Bugzilla running on the server (some people do - we do on landfill) then you need to have the cookiepath restricted enough so that the different Bugzillas don't confuse their cookies with one another.

Examples of urlbase/cookiepath pairs to restrict the login cookie

>     urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-tip/
>     cookiepath is /bugzilla-tip/

>     urlbase is http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-4.0-branch/
>     cookiepath is /bugzilla-4.0-branch/

If you had cookiepath set to / at any point in the past and need to set it to something more restrictive (i.e. /bugzilla/), you can safely do this without requiring users to delete their Bugzilla-related cookies in their browser (this is true starting with Bugzilla 2.18 and Bugzilla 2.16.5).

## `index.cgi` doesn't show up unless specified in the URL

You probably need to set up your web server in such a way that it will serve the index.cgi page as an index page.

If you are using Apache, you can do this by adding `index.cgi` to the end of the `DirectoryIndex` line as mentioned in .

## checksetup.pl reports "Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server..."

This error is occurring because you are using the new password encryption that comes with MySQL 4.1, while your `DBD::mysql` module was compiled against an older version of MySQL. If you recompile `DBD::mysql` against the current MySQL libraries (or just obtain a newer version of this module) then the error may go away.

If that does not fix the problem, or if you cannot recompile the existing module (e.g. you're running Windows) and/or don't want to replace it (e.g. you want to keep using a packaged version), then a workaround is available from the MySQL docs: