apport\-bug

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: September 08, 2009
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NAME

apport-bug, apport-collect - file a bug report using Apport, or update an existing report

SYNOPSIS

apport-bug

apport-bug symptom | pid | package | program path | .apport/.crash file

apport-collect report-number

DESCRIPTION

apport-bug reports problems to your distribution's bug tracking system, using Apport to collect a lot of local information about your system to help the developers to fix the problem and avoid unnecessary question/answer turnarounds.

You should always start with running apport-bug without arguments, which will present a list of known symptoms. This will generate the most useful bug reports.

If there is no matching symptom, you need to determine the affected program or package yourself. You can provide a package name or program name to apport-bug, e. g.:

apport-bug firefox
apport-bug /usr/bin/unzip

In order to add more information to the bug report that could help the developers to fix the problem, you can also specify a process ID instead:

$ pidof gnome-terminal
5139
$ apport-bug 5139

As a special case, to report a bug against the Linux kernel, you do not need to use the full package name (such as linux-image-2.6.28-4-generic); you can just use

apport-bug linux

to report a bug against the currently running kernel.

Finally, you can use this program to report a previously stored crash or bug report:

apport-bug /var/crash/_bin_bash.1000.crash
apport-bug /tmp/apport.firefox.332G9t.apport

Bug reports can be written to a file by using the --save option or by using apport-cli.

apport-bug detects whether KDE or Gnome is running and calls apport-gtk or apport-kde accordingly. If neither is available, or the session does not run under X11, it calls apport-cli for a command-line client.

UPDATING EXISTING REPORTS

apport-collect collects the same information as apport-bug, but adds it to an already reported problem you have submitted. This is useful if the report was not originally filed through Apport, and the developers ask you to attach information from your system.

OPTIONS

Please see the apport-cli(1) manpage for possible options.

ENVIRONMENT

APPORT_IGNORE_OBSOLETE_PACKAGES: Apport refuses to create bug reports if the package or any dependency is not current. If this environment variable is set, this check is waived. Experts who will thoroughly check the situation before filing a bug report can define this in their ~/.bashrc or temporarily on the command line when calling apport-bug.

FILES

apport crash files are written in to /var/crash by default, named uniquely per binary name and user id. They are not deleted after being sent to the bug tracker (but from cron when they get older than 7 days). You can extract the core file (if any) and other information using apport-unpack.

AUTHOR

apport and the accompanying tools are developed by Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.