Lair of the Wolf

Firebot, The #firefox Bug Bot and More...

Firebot is a copy of Mozbot 2.5, which includes a custom module, bzbot.bm, based on Dave Miller's BZBot 1.3. Firebot runs in many channels on irc.mozilla.org. Starting originally in the #firefox and #thunderbird channels.

The purpose of firebot is to aid Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Developers, QA, testers, and users alike with informational bug announcements about the status of bugs that affect the products, as well as tinderbox status changes, a growing knowledge base of helpful tips for fixing frequently encountered problems and more.

Helpful Scripts for IRC Clients

Since only Chatzilla by default linkifies Bug #s to bugzilla, several people have written scripts for various IRC clients to provide bug links, and other useful modifications.

• Jesse's mIRC scripts for irc.mozilla.org - includes making bug numbers clickable, and colorizes firebot's text to be easily distinguishable from the rest of the channel text.
• Tim's bugchaser.pl X-Chat script - Linkifies bug numbers.

Got a script you think belongs here? Let me know about it, and i'll add it to the page. :-)

Frequently Asked Questions:

• What does "from the wind" mean on flag requests?
  
  It means that a flag has been set as ? without being targeted at a specific bugzilla user. For Blocking/approval flags, this is normal. For review flags, it isn't.
• What types of announcements does the bot do?
  
  The types of announcements the bot does are as follows:
  
  • New Bugs
  • Bug Status/Resolution Changes (I.E. From Assigned to Resolved Fixed) (Excluding to Verified)
  • New Attachments
  • Review, Blocking, Approval Flag requests/denials/approvals.
  • Product Changes (I.E. Firefox to Core)
  • Target Milestone Changes (I.E. From Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 2.0)

Known Issues:

• Bug 292492 officially integrated bzbot's bug announcment functionality into bugzilla.bm. Unfortunately, due to Bug 293985, firebot cannot yet use this code. Firebot announces the same bug changes to multiple channels, and gets affected badly by this bug. Therefore, firebot uses its own bzbot.bm module still, which predates the integrated functionality, but doesn't include some of the newer features, notably the configurablity of the type of announcements per channel, etc.

What bugs are reported where?

Listed by Channel => Bugzilla Products

• #firefox   =>   Firefox, Toolkit, AUS
• #thunderbird   =>   Thunderbird, Toolkit
• #umo   =>   Update, AUS
• #bugs   =>   mozilla.org, Firefox, Toolkit, Thunderbird, Update, Other Applications, Core, Mozilla Application Suite, Calendar, Camino, AUS
• #firebot   =>   mozilla.org, Firefox, Toolkit, Thunderbird, Update, Other Applications, Core, Mozilla Application Suite, Calendar, Camino, AUS

What's New?

11/4/2005:

• Updated the Firebot page, finally...

3/7/2005:

• Firebot is now based on Mozbot 2.5.
• Bzbot functions merged into bzbot.bm.

1/26/2005:

• Added kick handling, auto-rejoins channel when kicked.
• Added invite handling, bot can join a channel when invited.
• Added ping to test if hte bot is alive. just say firebot: ping
• Added per-channel op lists. in addition to the global list, so
• cleaned up a few hacks I threw into an otherwise clean codebase, restoring channel op speed to original.

10/29/2004:

• Fixed Firebot to be more https friendly now that bugzilla.mozilla.org is all https.
  
• Added Component Information to the New Bug Announcment.
     "<firebot> New Firefox - Extension/Theme Manager bug 250000 filed by firebot@psychoticwolf.net."
  

Technical Details

Firebot runs Mozbot 2.5 (CVS-Head) via Cygwin Perl 5.8.7 on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 Contrary to popular belief, (and the install instructions included with mozbot, mozbot will run successfully under cygwin on win32. Though, if you experience a crash when the bot attempts to fork() for wget for tinderbox, rdf, etc, and it complains about the memory address of a cygwin dll, running rebase (rebaseall) on the \cygwin\bin directory should fix it. Though I make no guarantees, ymmw.

Firebot receives details on bug changes via bugmail from Bugzilla. It watches most of the QA/Default Assignees for the Core, Firefox, Thunderbird Calendar, mozilla.org, Update, Other Applications and Toolkit products. If you notice an user the bot should be watching and isn't, please let me know.

The mail server is located on the same machine as firebot is hosted, which runs Ipswitch IMail 8. Mail is piped to the bzbot-based, bugmail.pl, which has been modified over time from the version included with 1.3. Bugmail.pl is parsed with ActiveState ActivePerl 5.8.7 (Build 813, at time of writing), rather than Cygwin Perl for improved performance under heavy load. Bug info is then written to bug.log on disk and parsed by the bot for announcement.