I've started getting involved with triaging bugs. Three of the first four bugs I looked at were about Hardy (8.04).
What should I do to help triage bugs for versions of Ubuntu that are no longer supported? Should I just set them to 'invalid'?
I am a member of Bug Control (one of the higher-privileges bug triager groups) and the Bug Squad. We have specific guidelines for triage of old bugs (excluding atypical, special guidelines bugs which have special nonstandard workflows)
TL;DR: The status we set on EOL bugs is dependent on multiple factors.
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER A BUG STATUS IF IT IS "Fix Released", "Invalid", or "Won't Fix" already!!! These bugs are already considered 'closed' and you should NOT mess with them!
If the bug is 'Fix Committed' then it depends on what you do there - either try and see if a fix was ever committed, or mark "Won't Fix", since EOL release. Be careful here. Sometimes a release isn't really fully EOL so you have to keep that in mind (10.04 Server for example).
If the bug is known to be fixed AFTER the EOL release is out we Won't Fix the EOL release's bug.
If the bug is not confirmed fixed, we mark Incomplete and ask for people with the oldest supported release and other supported releases to try and replicate the bug, and report back. If nobody can confirm we can either leave Incomplete until the bug autoexpires or Won't Fix the bug (usually the former if nobody responds back, or the latter if people report back and can't replicate the bug).
If the bug is solely affecting Hardy and no other releases then we Won't Fix the bug.
In any case that we mark the bug Wont Fix we always comment explaining why and that they should change the status to New (if no other release series is on the bug) if they find the bug or reproduce in a supported release.
In any case we mark incomplete we comment why we did and ask for additional tasks or info and mention the bug will autoclose and expire after some period of inactivity.
Invalid only makes sense if we have a new bug filed on the EOL release, then we can mark it 'Invalid' or 'Won't Fix'. We typically reserve 'Invalid' for "Not a Bug" bugs, or bugs which are against nonexistent packages or things not in the repositories (such as PPA versions and such instead of the versions in the repositories.)
Your best bet is to follow the triage guide and stop by the #ubuntu-bugs channel on Freenode IRC and ask for per-bug guidelines and tips and suggestions from other bug squaders and also bug control members.
(This has been on my radar for some time... I am going to go through the EOL-release-series-targeted bugs by script and automatically close them all via the Launchpad API in a few days after checking with other bug controllers and the security team and other teams to make sure it won't impinge on their processes or cause mayhem)
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