Crash report cannot be processed due to outdated debug packages on daily-live

[Peter Hurley]

Debug symbol packages are outdated on latest Live CD 22/03/12 - apport cannot generated useful stack trace. See bug# 962455.

[Peter Hurley (phurley)]

Just for quick reference, here's the test from Apport retracing service:

Thank you for your report!

However, processing it in order to get sufficient information for the
developers failed (it does not generate a useful symbolic stack trace). This
might be caused by some outdated packages which were installed on your system
at the time of the report:

libssl1.0.0 version 1.0.0g-1ubuntu1 required, but 1.0.1-2ubuntu1 is available
ubiquity version 2.9.33 required, but 2.10.0 is available
outdated debug symbol package for ubiquity: package version 2.10.0 dbgsym version 2.9.33
libdrm-intel1 version 2.4.30-1ubuntu1 required, but 2.4.32-1ubuntu1 is available
outdated debug symbol package for dmidecode: package version 2.11-4 dbgsym version 2.9-1.2build1
outdated debug symbol package for cryptsetup: package version 2:1.4.1-2ubuntu2 dbgsym version 2:1.1.3-4ubuntu2
libdrm-radeon1 version 2.4.30-1ubuntu1 required, but 2.4.32-1ubuntu1 is available
libdrm-nouveau1a version 2.4.30-1ubuntu1 required, but 2.4.32-1ubuntu1 is available
libdrm2 version 2.4.30-1ubuntu1 required, but 2.4.32-1ubuntu1 is available

Please upgrade your system to the latest package versions. If you still
encounter the crash, please file a new report.

Thank you for your understanding, and sorry for the inconvenience!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

dbgsym packages aren't actually shipped on the live CD at all - they're fetched from the archive. Reassigning one of the tasks to apport in case this is something Martin can figure out, since it does look a bit odd that they're *older* than the packages on the live CD.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

It's not an Apport bug, so closing. Daily CDs grow old quickly, during the development release you have to upgrade to the latest packages every day if you want to be able to submit crash reports, I'm afraid.

[Peter Hurley (phurley)]

Hi Martin,

This isn't from updating but rather installing from *that day's daily-live iso*.

Daily CDs grow old *so quickly* that downloading that day's Live iso and installing immediately is not fast enough to have matching debug symbols because some packages have already changed.

I've done this on 3 separate occasions hoping to catch this crashing ubiquity/parted-server bug in action (bug# 962455, bug# 965719, bug# 973450).

Is there an archive of all packages associated with latest daily-live? If so, maybe apport retracing should search against that too.

[Peter Hurley (phurley)]

Hi Martin,

Wait -- this situation makes no sense.

Look at the debug symbol packages it's complaining about: they're not old by 1 version, but instead really old. Since the dbgsyms are on your side, how can upgrading to the latest binary packages impact the dbgsym archive??

For example, here's what apport retracing had to say regarding bug # 973450:

  Thank you for your report!

  However, processing it in order to get sufficient information for the
  developers failed (it does not generate a useful symbolic stack trace). This
  might be caused by some outdated packages which were installed on your system
  at the time of the report:

  outdated debug symbol package for dmidecode: package version 2.11-4 dbgsym version 2.9-1.2build1
  outdated debug symbol package for cryptsetup: package version 2:1.4.1-2ubuntu2 dbgsym version 2:1.1.3-4ubuntu2

Look carefully; dmidecode is still at 2.11-4 !!

[Peter Hurley (phurley)]

After debugging the original problem myself, it turns out the the apport retracing message is just a red herring.

The inability to get a stack backtrace for the original bug has nothing to do with "outdated debug symbol packages". It's because parted_server (a binary from the ubiquity package) does not have debug symbols or a debug symbol package.