BUGFILER(8)

NAME
bugfiler - file bug reports in folders automatically

SYNOPSIS
bugfiler [-ar] [-v version]

DESCRIPTION
Bugfiler is a program to automatically intercept, acknowledge, redistribute and store bug reports. Bugfiler is normally invoked by the mail delivery program with a line similar to the following in /etc/aliases.

    bugs:	"|bugfiler"

It should be noted that the login “bugs” must exist for the bugfiler to run. Unless otherwise noted all paths used by bugfiler are relative to the home directory of this login. Bugfiler also expects all of its files and directories to be owned by “bugs”.

Available options.

-a  Do not send automatic mail acknowledgement to the bug report filer. (The default is to send the acknowledgement with the file ~bugs/version/bug:ack appended).

-r  Do not redistribute.

-v version
    Override the version provided within the bug report itself.

For the bug report to be correctly filed, it must contain a line in the following format:

Index: | folder | version

The directories ~bugs/version and ~bugs/version/folder must exist before bugfiler attempts to store the bug report. Bug reports will be stored in files named by the concatenation of version, folder, and sequential numbers, i.e. if version is “4.3 BSD” and folder is “ucb” the first bug report will be placed in ~bugs/4.3BSD/ucb/1. If folder contains more than one component only the first one will be used, e.g. if folder is “bin/from.c” or “bin/adb/con.c” it will be treated as if it were simply “bin”.

If the -r flag is not supplied, redistribution of the bug reports is done as specified in the file ~bugs/version/bug:redist. This file is in the format of the aliases(5) file, including comments and entries requiring multiple lines, with the single exception that the folder component of the “Index:” line replaces the name to alias. The special folder “all:” receives a redistribution of all bug reports sent to this version. For example, the bug:redist file

    #	bigbug gets a copy of everything
    all:	bigbug
    #	ucb folder redistribution list
    ucb:	karels, kjd@coke.berkeley.edu
    	ra@beno.css.gov

will send copies of all bug reports with “ucb” as the folder to bigbug, karels, kjd, and ra.

Reports that cannot be filed, due to an invalid “Index:” line or some other error, are placed in the directory ~bugs/errors. The bugfiler maintainer should correct these bug reports and then run bugfiler, with the corrected report as its standard input, as bug reports with errors are neither acknowledged or redistributed. All reports that bugfiler handles are logged in ~bugs/log.

Valid bugs are also logged in the file ~bugs/version/summary. This file has an entry for each bug report for version in the format:

    Filename	Date
         Subject:
         Index:
         Owner:	Bugs Bunny
         Status:	Received

Filename is the concatenation of version, folder, and a number as described above. Date is the date as reported by the system clock, using ctime(3). The Subject: and Index: lines are copies of the “Subject:” and “index:” lines contained in the bug report. The Owner and Status fields are intended to provide a rudimentary method of tracking the status of bug reports.

The file ~bugs/bug:lock is the focus of all locking for bugfiler. If you wish to manipulate any of the log or error files, rename or remove it and bugfiler will treat all bug reports that it receives as if they were incorrectly formatted, i.e. it will place them in the directory ~bugs/errors, for later recovery by the bugfiler maintainer. Obviously, this file must be created when you first install bugfiler.

All errors that occur before ~bugs/log is found are logged into the system log file, using syslog(8).

FILES
~bugs/bug:ack
    the acknowledgement message
~bugs/bug:redist
    the redistribution list
~bugs/bug:lock
    the locking file
~bugs/errors/BUG_??????
    bug reports with format errors
~bugs/log
    the log file
~bugs/folder/summary
    the summary files
/usr/sbin/sendmail
    the mail delivery program
/usr/share/misc/bugformat
    a sample bug report format

SEE ALSO
sendbug(1), aliases(5), syslog(8)

BUGS
Since mail can be forwarded in a number of different ways, bugfiler does not recognize forwarded mail and will acknowledge to the forwarder instead of the original sender unless there is a “Reply-To” field in the header.

This version of bugfiler is not compatible with the version released with 4.3BSD in that it doesn't complain to the sender about incorrectly formatted bug reports. Frankly, we got tired of the profanity, not to mention the extended conversations bugfiler was holding with vacation(1).

HISTORY
The bugfiler command appeared in 4.2BSD.