Keeping Track

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Introducing GNATS
  • The database paradigm
  • Flowchart of GNATS activities
  • States of Problem Reports
  • Problem Report format
    • Field datatypes reference
    • Mail header fields
    • Problem Report fields
• The GNATS User Tools
  • Environment variables and GNATS tools
  • Submitting Problem Reports
    • Invoking send-pr from the shell
    • Using send-pr from within Emacs
    • The Problem Report template
    • Submitting a Problem Report via direct e-mail
    • Helpful hints
  • Editing existing Problem Reports
    • Invoking edit-pr from the shell
  • Querying the database
    • Invoking query-pr
    • Formatting query-pr output
    • Query expressions
    • Example queries
  • The Emacs interface to GNATS
    • Viewing Problem Reports
    • Querying Problem Reports
    • Submitting new Problem Reports
    • Editing Problem Reports
    • The Problem Report editing buffer
    • Changing the database
    • dbconfig mode
    • Other commands
    • Customization
• Installing GNATS
  • Configuring and compiling the software
  • Installing the utilities
  • Installing the default database
  • Setting up periodic jobs
  • Setting up mail aliases
  • Installing the daemon
  • Installing the user tools
    • User tools on a local network
    • User tools for remote users
  • Upgrading from older versions
    • Overview
    • Upgrading
• GNATS Administration
  • Overview of GNATS configuration
  • The databases file
  • The dbconfig file
    • Overall database configuration
    • Individual field configuration
    • Field datatypes
    • Edit controls
    • Named query definitions
    • Audit-trail formats
    • Outgoing email formats
    • Index file description
    • Initial PR input fields
  • Other database-specific config files
    • The categories file
    • The responsible file
    • The submitters file
    • The states file
    • The addresses file
    • The classes file
  • The send-pr.conf file
  • Administrative data files
    • The index file
    • The current file
  • Administrative utilities
    • Adding another database
    • Adding a problem category
    • Removing a problem category
    • Regenerating the index
    • Checking database health
    • Managing user passwords
  • Internal utilities
    • Handling incoming traffic
    • Processing incoming traffic
    • Timely reminders
    • The edit-pr driver
    • The diff-prs tool
    • The pr-age tool
• Where GNATS lives
  • prefix
  • exec-prefix
  • The gnats-adm directory
  • Default installation locations
• The GNATS network server - gnatsd
  • Description of gnatsd
  • gnatsd options
  • gnatsd command protocol
  • gnatsd commands
  • gnatsd environment variables
• Controlling access to databases
  • Overview
  • Overall gnatsd access level
  • Overall access levels per host
  • Access levels per user
  • Privileged gnatsd commands
• Querying using regular expressions
• dbconfig recipes
• GNATS support
• Index

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Overview

This manual documents GNATS, the GNU Problem Report Management System, version 4.0-prebeta2. GNATS is a bug-tracking tool designed for use at a central Support Site. Users who experience problems use electronic mail, web-based or other clients communicating with the GNATS network daemon running at the support site or direct database submissions to communicate these problems to maintainers at that Support Site. GNATS partially automates the tracking of these Problem Reports (PRs) by:

• organizing problem reports into a database and notifying responsible parties of suspected bugs;
• allowing support personnel and their managers to edit and query accumulated bugs; and
• providing a reliable archive of problems (and their subsequent solutions) with a given program.

GNATS offers many of the same features offered by more generalized databases, including editing, querying, and basic reporting. The GNATS database itself is an ordered repository for problem reports; each PR receives a unique, incremental PR number which identifies it throughout its lifetime. For a discussion on the working system adopted by GNATS, see The database paradigm.

You can access the submitting, editing, and querying functions of GNATS from within GNU Emacs. See The GNATS user tools.

Note on this version of the manual

This manual is in the process of being revised for version 4 of GNATS. The status of the different sections is as follows:

• Chapter 1 Introducing GNATS
  Version 4 complete.
• Chapter 2 The GNATS User Tools
  Version 4 complete.
• Chapter 3 Installing GNATS
  Version 4 complete.
• Chapter 4 GNATS Administration
  Version 4 complete.
• Appendix A Where GNATS lives
  Version 4 complete.
• Appendix B The GNATS network server - gnatsd
  Version 4 complete.
• Appendix C Controlling access to databases
  Version 4 complete.
• Appendix D Querying using regular expressions
  Version 4 complete.
• Appendixes E and F were written specifically for GNATS 4.

• Introduction: Introducing GNATS.
• GNATS user tools: The GNATS user tools.
• Installation: Installing GNATS.
• Management: GNATS Administration.
• Locations: Where GNATS lives.
• gnatsd: The GNATS network server.
• Access Control: Controlling access to GNATS databases.
• Regexps: Querying using regular expressions.
• dbconfig recipes: Useful dbconfig tricks.
• Support: GNATS related sites and mailing lists.
• Index: