Apport-bug could suggest a package instead of complaining about the program not being installed

[Martin Constantino–Bodin]

I typed “apport-bug ifconfig” because ifconfig was wrongly behaving. Apport told me that ifconfig was not installed. But it was! So I restarted my computer, just in case, but the bug is still there. And for all programs that it tried. Including Apport itself.

Currently, when I type “apport-bug apport-bug”, I get a window “Problem in apport-bug” with the following message: “The problem cannot be reported: This report is about a package that is not installed.” (See screenshot here-attached.)

The error message is clearly wrong: apport-bug must be installed to be able to display this window.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportLog:
 ERROR: apport (pid 7467) Thu Dec 12 23:14:13 2019: called for pid 7431, signal 6, core limit 0, dump mode 1
 ERROR: apport (pid 7467) Thu Dec 12 23:14:13 2019: executable: /home/martin/.steam/ubuntu12_64/vulkandriverquery (command line "/home/martin/.steam/ubuntu12_32/../ubuntu12_64/vulkandriverquery")
 ERROR: apport (pid 7467) Thu Dec 12 23:14:13 2019: executable does not belong to a package, ignoring
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.9
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is the distribution channel descriptor for the OEM CDs
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-bionic-amd64-20180608-47+berlinetta-cfl-r+X77
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-08-28 (105 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20180608-09:38
Package: apport 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.9
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-1065.75-oem 4.15.18
Tags: bionic
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-1065-oem x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
_MarkForUpload: True

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

apport information

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

apport information

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

Update: I’ve just typed “apport-collect 1856255” in a terminal.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

There is no package named `ifconfig` so you cannot file a bug against a non-existent package.

Your "Apport told me that ifconfig was not installed. But it was!" is incorrect as apport deals with packages not commands. I have `ifconfig` installed on my box too, and a `dpkg -S /sbin/ifconfig` reports "net-tools: /sbin/ifconfig" ie. the command `ifconfig` is found in the "net-tools" package and that is what you should use with appport.

Reading your report it appears you are mostly after support.

This bug report can be converted to a question (aimed at support, bug reports are aimed and finding problems and fixing so subsequent users won't stumble with the same issue).

You can also find help with your problem in the support forum of your local Ubuntu community http://loco.ubuntu.com/ or asking at https://askubuntu.com or https://ubuntuforums.org, or for more support options please look at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/community-support/709

I'm going to mark this report "incomplete" as it appears to be about support issues. If you believe I'm in error, please respond saying so in comment, and then the Status can be returned to "New".

Thanks again for helping make Ubuntu better.

[Martin Constantino–Bodin (martin-bodin)]

Hi,

You are correct: now that I checked, “apport-bug apport” and “apport-bug net-tools” works fine. I agree that this is not a bug.

It can however be rephrased as an enhancement: I believe that most people think of programs, not packages (at least I do ☺). So if there is a bug with a program, I just call “apport-bug” followed by the program name (which most of the case actually corresponds to the package name, but as instanced here, not always).

When typing a non-existent command in the shell, I usually get a message “try installing this package”: do you think that it would be easy to add a feature of Apport such that if the package is non-installed, but that there is a command with this name, it suggests a package name instead? I think that this would greatly help getting useful bug reports ☺ Maybe the code from gnome-terminal that looks for such package can be reused?

Have a nice day,
Martin.