getting supybot to announce new bugzilla bugs

getting supybot to announce new bugzilla bugs - I've just put here the key non-obvious things that tripped me up when trying to set this up.

All done on Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS

Install supybot and the supybot bugzilla plugin.

Create a system group (supybot) and user (bugbot) to run supybot as.

Set up your supybot configuration file as desired.

Getting supybot to start at startup:
http://www.schwer.us/journal/2005/04/17/supybot-init-script-for-debian/

Here's my modified init script

$ cat /etc/init.d/bugbot
#! /bin/sh
#
# supybot init script
# http://www.schwer.us/journal/2005/04/17/supybot-init-script-for-debian/
#

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/bin/supybot
NAME=supybot
DESC=supybot

test -f $DAEMON || exit 0

set -e

case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
--chuid bugbot --exec $DAEMON -- --daemon /etc/supybot/bugbot.conf
echo "$NAME."
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet \
--oknodo --exec /usr/bin/python
echo "$NAME."
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac

exit 0

Set up bugzilla to send a copy of all bugmail to a local address (eg bugbot@localhost), and configure exim4 to accept local mail (as well as smart host delivery), using the mbox format.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Start a conversation with bugbot, get it to identify you, then set the required configuration by sending it messages (you can also set these in the supybot .conf file for your bot):

• config plugins.Bugzilla.mbox /var/mail/bugbot


• config plugins.Bugzilla.bugzillas.your-bugzilla-name.watchedItems.all True
  which will turn on the announcements (i had to read the code to find that one!)

Note that supybot doesn't immediately write config changes to disc.

bugzilla upgrades and user tokens

It's bugzilla upgrade time for my private install, and I have for the second time run into a strange issue with the tokens system. Since this is the second time and I know how to fix it, here it is for the record.

I have upgrade from v3.0.4 to 3.4.3.

Once the site was up again, saving the site parameters (editparams.cgi) showed a big red warning:

It looks like you didn't come from the right page (you have no valid token for the edit_parameters action while processing the 'editparams.cgi' script). The reason could be one of:

• You clicked the "Back" button of your web browser after having successfully submitted changes, which is generally not a good idea (but harmless).
• You entered the URL in the address bar of your web browser directly, which should be safe.
• You clicked on a URL which redirected you here without your consent, in which case this action is much more critical.

Are you sure you want to commit these changes anyway? This may result in unexpected and undesired results.

[Confirm Changes]

Or throw away these changes and go back to editparams.cgi.

Pushing the button doesn't work (same page shows again).

After much digging last time I discovered that the tokens it refers to are stored in table bugs.tokens, and that the size of the field is wrong in my installation after the upgrade (again).

mysql> use bugs;
mysql> describe tokens;
+-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| userid | mediumint(9) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| issuedate | datetime | NO | | NULL | |
| token | varchar(5) | NO | PRI | NULL | |
| tokentype | varchar(8) | YES | | NULL | |
| eventdata | tinytext | YES | | NULL | |
+-----------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
5 rows in set (0.02 sec)

According to the published schema, token should be varchar(16). http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/p4dti/tool/cgi/bugzilla-schema/index.cgi?action=single&version=3.4.2&view=View+schema#table-tokens

To fix the problem I modified the data type as follows:


mysql> alter table tokens modify column token varchar(16) not null;
Query OK, 20 rows affected (0.32 sec)
Records: 20 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0


And then I was able to change my parameters.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527780

reseting home folder permissions in ubuntu linux

If you are like me and my coworkers, you often end up running stuff as root in your home folder and end up not able to access your own files.

For the record, here's the commands to reset the permissions (leaving all execute flags off, which may not be what you want).

Warning, this could have undesired side effects. If you have executable files in your home folder that you actually want to be executable, you will have to manually mark them as executable again.

# Become root (as you don't currently have permissions to modify your own files)
sudo -i

# Reset ownership & group to yourself
chown -R tim:tim /home/tim

# give yourself the default read-write permissions, set group and other to read only
chmod -R 644 /home/tim

# re-apply excecute permissions on all the directories
find /home/tim -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -II chmod 755 'I'

# Don't leave your private keys showing:
chmod -R 700 /home/tim/.ssh

My latest use for this was after extracting files from my p910i with p3nfs, which as with so many desktop/device tasks needed root to work.

You could do this slightly more neatly if you know what permissions you have ended up with by using chmod u+w etc so you don't have to re-apply directory permissions, but I wanted to easily guarantee permissions are right regardless of what state they have ended up in.

It occurs to me it might be sensible to set the sticky bit on the home folders so that anything added by root stays owned by the user. (chmod u+s g+s /home/tim)

Nightly Shutdown, a new product from Proven Works

Congratulations to Joel Mansford, a good friend of mine, and his company Proven Works on getting the first release of Nightly Shutdown out of the door.

This looks to be a great product and hopefully will make system administrators' lives easier and greener. It's a utility for ensuring that the computers are off when you want them to be, and can be deployed through active directory making the sys admin's life easier. There's a 10 PC free trial available, so check it out at the download page.

Without even looking I know this will be a good product and fantastically well supported. Best of luck to all at Proven Works, and to all the potential users and buyers out there, don't forget to check it out and provide any feedback you can.