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Bug Search Tool Help

Bug Search Service (BSS) Help & FAQ

You have reached the Help and FAQ page for Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST). For more assistance with Cisco.com, refer to global help. In order to visit the Japanese translation of the FAQ, refer to our Japanese version of the Help page.

Contents

Introduction to Bug Search

Search for Bugs

Sort and Filter Search Results

View Bug Details

Introduction

The Cisco bug tracking system maintains a comprehensive list of defects and vulnerabilities in Cisco products and software. Bug Search is a web-based tool that acts as a gateway to the bug tracking system and provides you with detailed defect information about your products and software.

Each bug has a unique identifier (ID). Cisco bug IDs use a pattern of CSCxxNNNNN, where x is any letter (a-z) and N is any number (0-9). These bug IDs are referenced in Software Release Notes, Security Advisories, Field Notices and other Cisco support documents. Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineers or other Cisco staff can also provide you with bug IDs.

Benefits of Bug Search

Bug Search can assist you with:

Risk Management

Access bug information conveyed through PSIRT Advisories, Security alerts, and so on
Research potential bugs and vulnerabilities before software upgrades

Product Maintenance/Operation

Monitor existing or known bugs for updates
Search for bugs in production software releases on Cisco products

Troubleshooting

Diagnose and troubleshoot issues you encounter and find resolutions

Access Bug Search

Anyone who has a valid Cisco.com account can access Bug Search online, but only customers and partners can utilize its advanced features. Registered users can view up to 200 bugs per month without a service contract using a Bug ID. Customers and partners who have a valid service contract can leverage advance features like Product, keyword, and release-based searches.

Note: If you do not have a profile on Cisco.com, you can obtain a login and create a user profile at the Cisco.com Registration page. After you register a Cisco.com account, you must associate a Service Contract to your Cisco.com login profile.

Bug Search Feedback

The feedback link is located in the upper right-hand corner of Bug Search. This form allows you to report general feedback or problems with Bug Search. Every feedback submission is reviewed by the Bug Search Support Team. If you provide your contact information, we can reach out to you about the feedback submission.

Search for Bugs

There are four main search options available in Bug Search:

Bug ID Search - Search for a specific bug by its ID.
Keyword Search - Search for bugs that contain specific keywords.
Product Based Search - Search the database for all bugs related to a specific product.
Release Version Search - Search based on a specific release version.

Bug ID Search

When to Use

You have one or more Cisco bug IDs and want to obtain details on those bugs.

How to Use

Follow these steps:

Enter a specific bug ID into the basic search box. Currently, multiple bugs as search input is not supported.

Press Enter on your keyboard or leave the field.

Keyword Search

When to Use

You experience a specific problem or issue and want to look for known bugs and fixes related to it.

How to Use

Follow these steps:

Enter a keyword o rmultiple keywords into the search field.

The system scans the bug headline, bug Release-note Enclosure (RNE) details, and other key bug data elements (such as product, software, and so on) and provides matching results for keywords entered.
Press Enter on your keyboard or leave the field.

Search Syntax Options

In order to increase your search relevancy, Bug Search supports these Search Syntax options.

Type	Example	Results
Implicit synonym support	Crash	Matches any bug with crash, crashed, or crashing
Support for multiple strings	Ethernet interface	Matches anything that has keyword Ethernet or interface
Search for exact string match	"Ethernet interface"	Matches anything that has the exact phrase Ethernet interface

Product Based Search

When to Use

You have a product that runs specific software and want to research the bugs related to that device.

h4>How to Use

Choose based on Series/Model or Product ID from the 'Product' drop-down list. You can select from the list of autosuggest options for the Series/Model based search. Alternatively, you can also choose to navigate the tree and perform a selection using the "Select from List" option.

Choose a Release (as shown here) in order to further refine your search.

Note: Bugs at Cisco are not always tracked at the Cisco product model level. In these instances, all bugs at the series level impact all the models in the series.

Release Version Search

In order to further refine your search, you can also choose a Release based on whether a bug is affecting/fixed-in a specific release. The release search has autosuggest options and also allows free-form searching (that is, you can type your own version number there).

Standalone release search is also supported. This means a search can be performed with only the release name and without a keyword or product selection (as shown here).

Note: By default, your search results include bugs with all severity levels and statuses, and bugs that were modified any time in the bug life cycle. After you perform a search, you can filter your search results in order to display those with a particular Status, Severity, etc.

Sort and Filter Search Results

After you perform a search, the search results are listed below your search criteria. A preview of the bug information is shown and you can mouse over bugs to see more content about a specific bug.

You can click on any one bug title to open the Bug Details page for that bug. Before you choose the bug or bugs you want to view, there are multiple options available to browse and filter your search results table.

Search Results

The initial set of 25 search results is shown in the bottom pane. Drag the scroll bar and the next set of 25 results will automatically get loaded. Pagination of search results is not supported currently. This functionality will be available in a future release. Note - because pagination is not supported, sometimes table refresh rates can be slower if the scroll bar is adjusted too quickly.

View Key Bug Details

Before you click a specific bug ID to view the Bug Details Page, you can view key bug details on the Search Results page itself. Roll your mouse over a specific bug to see more information about that bug.

Default Sort Order

The default sort order for your search results is dependent upon the search method you use. By default, the bugs are displayed in the order most closely related to your search criteria.

Change Sort Order

In order to change the order your results are sorted, choose a value in the Sort by drop-down list as shown here.

Apply and Remove Filters

Bug Search offers powerful filtering options. You can filter your search results based on Bug Severity, Bug Status, Bug Rating, Bug Modified Date, and number of support cases.

Applying Filters

Choose an appropriate value from the drop-down list by choosing either one Filter or multiple filters from the available categories.
After each selection, the results page will automatically load under the filters pane. If you select multiple filters, it behaves like an AND condition.

For example, this filter selection would load all bugs that contain the keyword "router crash" which are fixed and have a severity of 1.

Removing Filters

To remove a particular filter, simply click the appropriate filter and choose the empty box from the drop-down list as shown:

Export Results to Excel

You can export all the bug details from your search to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet so you can view them later at your convenience. Presently, up to 10,000 bugs can be exported at a time to an Excel spreadsheet.

View Bug Details

When you click a linked bug ID in your search results list, you are taken to the Bug Details page for that bug. The Bug Details page contains information in detail about the bug.

Details Section

The details section contains information related to the bug status, severity, product, fixed/affected releases of the bug, option to download software for the fixed release, and the number of support cases associated with the bug.

You can also view the current community discussions on that bug or have an option to initiate a new discussion.

Severity

Bug Severity is usually defined from the development managers' point of view and gives the product teams ways to focus on bug fixes for their next releases. Severity is also impacted by customer priority and other details not displayed within Bug Search. This table defines bug severity levels.

Bug Severity Level		Description
1	Catastrophic	Reasonably common circumstances cause the entire system to fail, or a major subsystem to stop working, or other devices on the network to be disrupted. There is no workaround. Example: Router crashes when you enter the isdn bind-l3 iua-backhaul dpnss command.
2	Severe	Important functions are unusable, and there is no workaround, but the other functions and the rest of the network operates normally. Example: IP helper addresses are ignored.
3	Moderate	Things fail under unusual circumstances, or minor features do not work at all, or things fail but there is a low-impact workaround. This is the highest level for documentation bugs. Example: LAT does not work unless you have an IP address on the interface.
4	Minor	Things fail under very unusual circumstances, but operation essentially recovers without intervention. Users do not need to install any workarounds, and performance impact is tolerable. Example: The first segment for each TCP connection is always retransmitted.
5	Cosmetic	The defect causes no real detrimental effect on system functionality. Example: The word "connection" is incorrectly spelled "conection" in a display.
6	Enhancement	This represents a request for new functionality or for an improvement to a feature that is currently offered.

Status

Important Note: Status can change frequently throughout the lifecycle of a bug. For example, if the status is Fixed, the bug is most likely fixed in a new release of the software, as represented in the Known fixed Releases.

Status	Description
Open	The bug has not been fixed.
Fixed	The bug has been fixed.
Other	The bug is a duplicate of another bug.
Terminated	A decision was made not to fix the bug.

Last Modified

This field displays the last time the bug details were changed.

Product

This represents the Cisco Product name or Software in which the bug occurs.

Known affected releases

This field displays the software releases known to be impacted by this bug.

Known fixed releases

This field displays the software releases known to contain a fix for this bug.

Bug Description Content Quality Ratings

In order to assist in improving the bug description of individual bugs, Bug Search has a provision for quality ratings. Each bug will be associated with content quality information which will be an average of all rating information provided by customers. Cisco recommends that our customers provide ratings for all the bugs viewed based on bug description (for example, symptom, condition, and workaround). Bug Quality ratings are tracked at five different levels:

One star rating: Poor (1)
Two star rating: Moderate (2)
Three star rating: Medium (3)
Four star rating: Good (4)
Five star rating: Excellent (5)

Content quality information is available in the search results table and also in the Bug Details page below the description of the bug. On the bug details page, along with overall average quality information, the number of users who submitted the feedback is made available next to the rating within parenthesis. For example, in the case below, two users have rated the bug based on bug description details. You can select the star rating and provide any optional comments before you submit ratings information.