If you just want to search for bugs in Bugzilla, it’s (a bit?) painful: start the browser, type in the URL, insert your login and password and try to find out where to go. There is an easier way to do: pybugz for commandline lovers!

Thanks to Peter Poeml, get this very useful Python script from here. After you have installed it you need only two steps to configure it:

1. Create a file ~/.bzuser and insert your Bugzilla login.

2. Login into Bugzilla and insert your password. This creates the file ~/.bugz_cookie:

   $ /usr/bin/bugz-login

The script knows several subcommands, its interface is similar to CVS or Subversion. You can search, get, post, modify, attach and download an attachment, all with this utility. For example, if you want all bugs about “XML”, regardless of the product or component, you just type:

$ bugz search xml

That gives the following output:

 * Using https://bugzilla.novell.com/
 * Searching for 'XML'
 [ deleted a lot of lines ]

Maybe you want to narrow your search for KDE and specific products? No problem, here is an example:

$ bugz search KDE --product="openSUSE 11.0"
 * Using https://bugzilla.novell.com/
 * Searching for 'KDE' with the following options:
 * product = ['openSUSE 11.0']
113512 kde-maintainers Firefox in KDE - Only Uses GNOME Programs
170055 dmueller Firefox sets desktop background for Gnome under KDE
176179 kde-maintainers User can’t edit properties for default notifications under KDE Storage Media and entries disepeared !
203548 sbrabec workrave-kde is an empty applet by default
[... and many more ...]

Of course, if you know the bug number you can retrieve it with:

$ bugz get 378240

and it will list all the details of the bug. Very useful! I haven’t tried the other subcommands yet, but I think they are also very convenient.

There are many more things to discover. So, when was your last time searching for bugs?

Steffen announced today that as of openSUSE 11.0 beta2, the graphical bootloader (the one on the installation media) supports speech output via the pc-speaker - reading out all menu items, he says:

This feature is mainly there to aid visual impaired people.

It’s still experimental and I’d like to get your feedback whether it works or not on your machine.

To try it, simply press F9. (In the worst case, your machine will freeze at this point.)

I gave it a try and it worked fine. I just missed the German translations!

Great work, Steffen!