apport-unpack crashed with ValueError in extract_keys(): ['ProcEnviron'] has no binary content

[Nathaniel Beaver]

Sometimes apport creates a crash file with an empty field for 'ProcEnviron'. In that situation, I want to be able to continue extracting fields from the crash file rather than aborting.

Workaround is to add some made up values for ProcEnviron in the crash file, such as " LANG=en_US.UTF-8
".

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: apport 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-23.25-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportLog:

ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Tue Jul 10 08:02:35 2018
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/apport-unpack
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-04-27 (73 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python3.6
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/apport-unpack /var/crash/_usr_bin_kdeinit5.1000.crash crash_files/
Python3Details: /usr/bin/python3.6, Python 3.6.5, python3-minimal, 3.6.5-3
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/apport-unpack', '/var/crash/_usr_bin_kdeinit5.1000.crash', 'crash_files/']
PythonDetails: /usr/bin/python2.7, Python 2.7.15rc1, python-minimal, 2.7.15~rc1-1
SourcePackage: apport
Title: apport-unpack crashed with ValueError in extract_keys(): ['ProcEnviron'] has no binary content
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm audio bluetooth cdrom dialout dip floppy lpadmin netdev plugdev sambashare scanner sudo systemd-journal tty vboxusers video wireshark
modified.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.apport.crashdb.conf: 2018-05-18T07:41:41.681859

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Tom Reynolds (tomreyn)]

$ apport-unpack _usr_bin_gjs-console.1000.crash Guest79
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/apport-unpack", line 74, in <module>
    pr.extract_keys(f, bin_keys, dir)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/problem_report.py", line 270, in extract_keys
    [item for item, element in b64_block.items() if element is False])
ValueError: ['separator'] has no binary content

... is what brought me here.

This is the kind of bug I do not understand why it does not get higher priority.
It is a - seemingly easy to fix - bug in a core Ubuntu utility, which is relevant for bug reporting and analysis, thus a tool with a potential to improve the distributions' quality on a relevant scale. It would seem like it should be of central interest to Canonical that these tools receive much development attention and are of high quality.

To the contrary, apport is in a sad state (see its bug tracker), and has been for a decade, and unless it gets serious quality time, it seems wrong to continue to waste massive (scale) CPU cycles and prompt users about (not) reporting crashes and bugs at all.

Sorry for using this bug tracker as a means of providing generic software quality feedback - I know I should not, but I also know other places would not get developer attention, or feedback would be treated more in a PR (and I do not mean pull request) way, while here, there is at least a bit of a chance for quality feedback.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Hi Tom, thanks you for the report. This bug is a(nother) duplicate of bug #1889443 which is fixed in Ubuntu >= 22.04 (jammy). The fix is being backported to Ubuntu 20.04 and I also plan to backport it to 18.04.

Apport did not get much attention in the last years (probably mostly due to a lack of manpower), but I started working on it several month ago. I tried to address the top occurring bugs (see https://github.com/canonical/apport/blob/main/NEWS.md how many bugs were fixed). Please report any remaining bugs with Apport that you find.