crashes when trying to show details with very large attachments

[Joshua Nekl]

Binary package hint: gcalctool

When I tried to submit a bug report, the apport tool crashed. I went to the apport details and tried expanding the XSessionErrors entry. The apport-gtk took up 100% cpu utilization and the memory usage increased for about 30 seconds or so until memory was exhausted and the system killed it. The apport window was locked up during this time.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Nov 20 20:14:43 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gcalctool
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gcalctool 5.28.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: gcalctool
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I suppose this happened with an exceptionally large .xsession-errors?

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

I ran into this trying to report a eucalyptus bug using apport. It attaches several log files that will easily be dozens of megabytes. I chatted with pitti some at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/03/18/%23ubuntu-devel.html .

There are 2 issues here
a.) apport creates a string the size of all combined fields before the user responds that they want to see the report
b.) there is no max size to be displayed. It is highly unlikely that a user wants to view all of a log file megabytes in length in 'sensible-pager'.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I applied your patch to trunk (r1734) with two tiny stylistic corrections, thanks a lot!

Thus I couldn't technically merge your branch, since it's not mergeable to trunk.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

@Martin thanks for taking on trunk. Sorry about getting the wrong branch, I had pulled from the lucid branch.

If you think this is reasonable, could you accept nomination for Lucid ?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Sure, I'll upload it shortly after beta-1 release anyway :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 1.13.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
apport (1.13.1-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * New upstream bug fix release:
    - Update parse-segv to handle gdb 7.1 output.
    - Enhance test suite to work with gdb 7.1 as well, and catch future
      outputs.
    - UI: Add exception string to the "network error" dialog, to better tell
      what the problem is.
    - UI: Add back -p option to apport-collect/apport-update-bug (regression
      from 1.13). (LP: #538944)
    - launchpad.py: Add yet another workaround for LP#336866. (LP: #516381)
    - launchpad.py, download(): Ignore attachments with invalid key names.
    - Fix regression from 1.10 which made it impossible for a package hook to
      set a third-party crash database for non-native packages. (LP: #517272)
    - apport-cli: Create the 'details' string only if user wants to view
      details, and do not show files larger than 1MB. Thanks Scott Moser!
      (LP: #486122)
    - packaging-apt-dpkg.py: Silence apt.Cache() spewage to stdout with newer
      python-apt versions. (LP: #531518)
    - unkillable_shutdown: Add list of running processes and blacklisted pids
      to report. (LP: #537262)
    - Sort the report by key in the details view. (LP: #519416)

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Move ubiquity's package-hook into apport, so that it can be used
    from the installed system to grab the logs in /var/log/installer.
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:28:44 +0100