apport-bug(1)

💖 apport-bug(1) — the general commands manual bestie edition 💖

okay so you're reading the manual page for apport-bug (and its little sibling apport-collect), living in the General Commands Manual section. it's giving "your system has a problem and we're gonna tell the devs about it, cutely." let's go 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

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

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

apport-bug

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

apport-collect report-number

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

apport-bug reports problems to your distribution's bug tracking system, using Apport to collect a lot of local information about your system. why? so the developers can actually fix the problem and we can skip all those unnecessary question/answer turnarounds. no cap, it just hands them the receipts 📋

you should always start with running apport-bug with no arguments at all — that presents a list of known symptoms, and it will generate the most useful bug reports. this is the main character move. do this first. periodt ✨

if there's no matching symptom, you gotta figure out the affected program or package yourself 😭. you can hand apport-bug a package name or a program name, like:

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

and if you wanna add even more info to the bug report — stuff that could help the devs fix it — you can also specify a process ID instead:

$ pidof gnome-terminal
5139
$ apport-bug 5139

now, as a special case 👑, to report a bug against the Linux kernel you do not need the full package name (like linux-image-2.6.28-4-generic). you can literally just use

apport-bug linux

to report a bug against the currently running kernel. iconic, honestly.

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. vibe check passed either way 🌈

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🦋 UPDATING EXISTING REPORTS 🦋

apport-collect collects the same information as apport-bug, but it adds it to a problem you've already reported. this is useful if the report wasn't originally filed through Apport, and the developers ask you to attach information from your system. like "bestie can you send more info" and you're like say less 💜

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⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

please see the apport-cli(1) manpage for possible options. that's where the options live, i don't make the rules 🙈

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🎀 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. > ⚠️ lowkey this is the "i know what i'm doing" switch — don't just set it and forget it bestie 💀
• APPORT_LAUNCHPAD_INSTANCE — use the given Launchpad instance instead of production. the supported instances are defined by python-launchpadlib. for example: production (for https://launchpad.net/), qastaging (for https://qastaging.launchpad.net/), or staging (for https://staging.launchpad.net/).

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🍓 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. so yeah, they pile up, but the cron job is the cleanup fairy 🧚

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

apport-cli(1), apport-unpack(1)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

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

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and that's the whole thing, bestie 💖 this page came to you from the General Commands Manual side of town, with the author credit going to Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com> and a date stamp of September 08, 2009 — yes, 2009, she's a vintage icon and she still slays 🎀✨