How to Remove Spam Bugs From Bugzilla
Our Bugzilla instance does not enable a feature to allow one to delete a bug that has been submitted. However there is an indirect way for someone with Administrator access to delete bugs, by 1) creating a new Component for the Spamassassin project; 2) changing the component of the bugs to be deleted; 3) deleting the component, which will also delete all bugs that are set to be in that component.
Before going through the procedure to delete the spam bug reports, first disable the user from logging in and from receiving mail that will result from the changes you make when deleting the bug reports:
- In the Administration page, click on Users
- Search using the login email address of the user.
- Click on the found user to edit their account.
- There, type some brief explanation such as "spammer" in the Disabled Text box. Any text in the box will disable their login. Also make sure the checkbox to disable Bugzilla mail is selected.
- Save the changes, then proceed with deleting the bugs they have entered.
- Deleting a bug that is spam can only be done by someone who has Administrator access to our Bugzilla.
Steps to delete such bugs:
- Click on the Administration menu item, then the components link under Products, then select the spamassassin product.
- On the resulting components page add a new component with a name such as Trash, anything in the Description field, and your email address as the default assignee.
- Do a search for the email address that submitted the spam bug, using advanced search to set the Status query to select all the values and set Reporter to the email address. Alternatively use the User item in the Administration menu, search for the email address that submitted the spam bug, and try to delete the user. That will refuse to delete it because of existing bugs and comments, giving you a link to a search results page that shows all of those bugs.
- If there is only one such bug you can click on it to edit it, otherwise near the bottom search results page click on the Change Several Bugs at Once button.
- If changing several bugs at once, select all of the spam bugs, and make the following changes near the bottom of the page. If editing a single bug, the fields are near the top.
- Change the Component to the new one you created, e.g., Trash
- Change the assignee to your email address.
- If editing a single bug, In the CC list to the right, click on "edit", select all the existing addresses and select the checkbox "Remove selected CCs".
- If it was a security bug be sure to unselect the Security Team checkbox near the bottom of the page (editing a single bug), or if changing several bugs at once select the checkbox "Remove bugs from this group" for Security Team.
- Submit (Save) the changes.
- Then back at the Components administration page, delete the Trash component you just made, which after confirmation will also delete the bugs you just moved to it.
Leave the user disabled instead of deleting, so they can't use the same email to register again.