/usr/share/apport/apport:AttributeError:/usr/share/apport/apport@531:parse_arguments:print_usage:_print_message

[errors.ubuntu.com bug bridge]

Impact
------

As it can be seen in https://errors.ubuntu.com/problem/e714f8181c0785693f3a66969c594a3b19bcab2b there are thousands of crashes of this type (and multiple duplicate bug reports for it). Instead of apport logging a failure in /var/log/apport.log, it crashes. Fixing this bug also fixes the issue with logging failures in the socket path (for handling crashes in containers).

Test Case
---------

There should be no instances of
https://errors.ubuntu.com/problem/e714f8181c0785693f3a66969c594a3b19bcab2b
for the fixed version.

Where problems could occur
--------------------------

The apport binary is called by the kernel when a process crashes. Worst case scenarios include breaking the apport binary and no problem report is generated any more (or apport uses too much resources). Since all the desired logs are now logged, it could increase the amount of logs that are written (apport has some flood detection in case a process dies constantly).

Original Description
--------------------

The Ubuntu Error Tracker has been receiving reports about a problem regarding apport. This problem was most recently seen with package version 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1, the problem page at https://errors.ubuntu.com/problem/e714f8181c0785693f3a66969c594a3b19bcab2b contains more details, including versions of packages affected, stacktrace or traceback, and individual crash reports.
If you do not have access to the Ubuntu Error Tracker and are a software developer, you can request it at http://forms.canonical.com/reports/.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport", line 531, in <module>
    options = parse_arguments()
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport", line 463, in parse_arguments
    parser.print_usage()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/argparse.py", line 2562, in print_usage
    self._print_message(self.format_usage(), file)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/argparse.py", line 2573, in _print_message
    file.write(message)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'write'

This bug can be reproduced by configuring the previously supported parameters to Apport and then let a process crash (e.g. call divide-by-zero):

```
echo "|/usr/share/apport/apport %p %s %c %d %P %E" | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
```

So this bug is a regression of commit c320e910a516 ("Switch to using non-positional arguments") which is a fix for CVE-2022-28658 and CVE-2021-3899.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Fixed: https://github.com/canonical/apport/commit/6bdf31767f9ddcfc47f1c975ac3c54a8f695ae08

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 2.22.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
apport (2.22.0-0ubuntu1) kinetic; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release:
    - Replace `ProblemReport.get_date` by `ProblemReport.get_timestamp`, fixes
      regression in 2.21.0 (LP: #1978487)
    - apport-gtk: Exclude trailing dot from URL links (LP: #1978301)
    - Fix `AttributeError`: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'write', fixes
      regression in 2.21.0 (LP: #1979211)
    - apport_python_hook: Properly handle missing modules (LP: #1774843)
    - apport_python_hook: Fix FileNotFoundError if the current directory was
      deleted (LP: #1979637)
    - apport_python_hook: Fix crash if os.getcwd() fails (LP: #1977954)
    - Replace deprecated 'imp' module (LP: #1947425)
    - whoopsie-upload-all: Fix 'EOFError' object has no attribute 'errno',
      fixes regression in 2.21.0 (LP: #1979681)
  * Fix KeyError: 'CasperMD5json'

 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Mon, 27 Jun 2022 12:03:00 +0200

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Since Ubuntu 21.10 (impish) will be end of life soon, we won't prepare a SRU for it.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

An upload of apport to jammy-proposed has been rejected from the upload queue for the following reason: "contains bugfixes without bug references or test cases, does not meet SRU policy".

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

This crash has been fixed as drive-by fix for bug #1982555 in apport 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.25 (focal) and apport 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.2 (jammy).