Getting Started with Anthill

For brevity, I will assume that you have the following setup:

The name of your machine is ``www.example.com''.
The location where the Anthill source files have been installed is /var/www/perl/Anthill/, which is accessible through both HTTP and HTTPS at www.example.com/perl/Anthill.
The location where the Anthill HTML/Image files have been installed is /var/www/html/Anthill, which is accessible via both HTTP and HTTPS at www.example.com/Anthill.

The very first thing that you will want to do after installing Anthill is to verify that your installation proceeded successfully. To do this, make sure that your web server and database server have been started, and go to https://www.example.com/perl/Anthill/admin/login.pl and attempt to log in with a username of ``BugMaster'' and the password that you specified for the database user with non-restrictive access. If you get an error message, look at the section entitled Server Errors.

You will then want to change the BugMaster's password. If you followed the directions well, you will realize the necessity of this, as the password that you specified at install time should have been hideously complicated. Since the password may contain spaces, a wide variety of options are available. If you do not want to type an entire sentence, then often the first characters of each word in the sentence will make a password that is reasonably safe. For example, the sentence ``A penguin that can't fly is dancing in my back yard.'' becomes ``aptcfidimby''. Addition of numbers and capitalizations makes it look like something straight out of a random password generator: ``AptCFid1mby''. If you get an error doing this, then it is very likely that you set up the database incorrectly. The error message will point you in the right direction to fix the problem.

Once you have changed the password, you should start adding developers and projects to the database. Use the options ``New Project'' and ``New Developer'' in the left frame to add projects and developers to the database. Projects should be entire programs or subsections of code that are likely to contain a reasonable number of bugs. Developer logins, on the other hand, should correspond to individual programmers and QA personnel. Each developer may be given different privileges and be assigned to work on different bugs.

Once you have created the initial projects and developers, you may begin using Anthill for bug management. See the other sections in the Index for more information on how to do this.

Errors

These are the possible errors that you can encounter by following the steps above. Consult these if you are having problems getting started with Anthill before sending an e-mail message to the authors.

Server Errors

These are all errors that fall under the area of ``Not Anthill's Fault''. If you did not get a login screen when you went to https://www.example.com/perl/Anthill/admin/login.pl, or failed to log in, there could be a number of different reasons. Depending on the type of error message that you see, there can be different solutions that are appropriate:

You get a 404, ``Page not found'', or ``Page inaccessible'' error:: This is most likely a problem related to your web server. Check to make sure that your web server is running, and that you have indeed correctly located the Anthill installation. Other problems may exist if you took this document too literally and used www.example.com or HTTPS as the target when you shouldn't have. If your web server does not support HTTPS, then use HTTP instead (http://www.example.com/perl/Anthill/admin/login.pl). HTTPS is preferred because of enhanced security, but you may not have that resource available to you.
You get a 500-level error like ``An internal server error occurred'':: This means (usually) that the web server found the Anthill installation but simply could not handle serving it. A more informative error message is likely to be found in your server error logs, which, for the www.example.com server at least, would likely be located in /var/log/http/ssl-error_log. Once you have located the appropriate error message, it will probably give you enough information to fix the installation, for that is almost certainly what is at fault. Of course, we could also be at fault, but that is very unlikely if you are running Linux/x86, Linux/ppc, or Microsoft Windows.
You get an error without an associated number that begins ``The server ..., which is a file manipulation error ...'':: This error message means that the web server cannot write to the state file directory, which, on the www.example.com web server would be at /var/www/perl/Anthill/admin/states. You should change the permissions manually for this directory so that only the web server has access to it.
You get an error that says ``The database server is down...'':: Check to make sure that your database is running and properly configured for access from Anthill. If you gave Anthill misleading information (such as a bad user name and password), then it will not be able to connect to the database to perform authentication or bug management.
You get an error that says ``Incorrect Login'':: Check to make sure that the username and password that you provided are correct, both in content and in capitalization. The password for the BugMaster is initially set to be the password for the non-restricted database user (i.e. the password you provided for the ``bugs'' user if you kept with the default options). If you did not correctly set up the ``developers'' table, then you may also get this error.

Note

Wherever the name ``Anthill'' is mentioned in this document, it refers to the Anthill Bug Manager. If other projects, things, or people coincidentally bear the name ``Anthill'', it is assumed that the reader can divine from the context of this document that only the Anthill Bug Manager is being referred to. If not, that is what this note is for.