ubuntu-bug wish: allow to just point at the window of a buggy application

Bug #357847 reported by Oliver Gerlich
28
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
apport (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Wishlist
Abhinav Upadhyay

Bug Description

Binary package hint: apport

It would be nice if the ubuntu-bug command would allow the user to point at a window and file a bug against the window's application.
Currently I run xprop, point at the window, and look at the _NET_WM_PID value of the window to find the PID; and then can file a bug against that PID. Maybe ubuntu-bug could offer this functionality on its own?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: apport 1.0-0ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: apport
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Similar to bug 85170, but not quite the same.

Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

Matt Zimmerman came up with this idea as well, he made a quick sketch how it could look like:

------------------ 8< ------------------
zenity --title="Select window" --question --text="Please click on the window where you see the problem." &
zenity_pid=$!

window_pid=$(xprop _NET_WM_PID |cut -d= -f2)

kill $zenity_pid

if [ -z "$window_pid" ]; then
        echo "Sorry." >&2
        exit 1
fi

exec ubuntu-bug $window_pid

Revision history for this message
Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich) wrote :

> Similar to bug 85170, but not quite the same.

Actually, I think this xprop feature mainly could be useful for apps which don't have a "Report a bug" menu entry, like the Gnome Mouse Properties dialog.

> Matt Zimmerman came up with this idea as well, he made a quick sketch how it could look like:

Looks good to me!

Martin Pitt (pitti)
tags: added: bitesize
Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote :

It was suggested in a UDS session today that a good addition to this feature would be to grab a screenshot of the window. I don't think this is trivial with gnome-screenshot, but it should be possible to add the needed functionality

Revision history for this message
Robert Roth (evfool) wrote :

@Matt Zimmerman: Wouldn't this cause data privacy problems? The current window, thus the screenshot could contain sensitive information.

Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote : Re: [Bug 357847] Re: ubuntu-bug wish: allow to just point at the window of a buggy application

On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 11:57:27PM -0000, Robert Roth wrote:
> @Matt Zimmerman: Wouldn't this cause data privacy problems? The current
> window, thus the screenshot could contain sensitive information.

So long as the user knows what's happening and consents, I don't see a
problem.

--
 - mdz

Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

I added support for -x (for xprop ?) option to the bin/apport-bug script, which will enable user to point at the problematic window and generate a crash report for that application.

I used Matt Zimmerman's idea of implementation in the code as discussed above

However, the idea of adding ability for taking screenshot is still left as gnome-screenshot does not provide any straight forward functionality to do this. It would require the user to select the window twice, (first time for xprops, and 2nd time for gnome-screenshot). I think doing this will cross the scope of a bitesize bug :-).

tags: added: patch
Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → In Progress
assignee: nobody → Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay)
Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

Here is the updated patch as Martin had suggested that changes be made in apport/ui.py rather than in the shell wraper.

Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
status: In Progress → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

As far as taking screenshot is concerned, how about this ?

import -window `xwininfo |grep 'Window id:' |cut -d" " -f4` screenshot.jpg

Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

Wow, that's really cool! However, import is provided by imagemagick which isn't included by default with most Ubuntu installations.

Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

Thanks :)

Another option is to use xwd and xwdtopnm utilities but it doesn't work the way it should.

However, there is a screenshot taking application Shutter, it also provides the capability of pointing at a window and taking its screenshot. Its written in Perl and I cannot read Perl code :)

It would be interesting to ask the developer of Shutter how it achieves this functionality.

Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

I received a reply from the author of Shutter. He gave me a sample perl script which allows to take screenshot of a window. But it requires libgnome2-wnck-perl (if using the perl script) or libwnck (if writing code in C).

I wonder if these libraries are included with Ubuntu when shipping ?

Revision history for this message
Abhinav Upadhyay (er-abhinav-upadhyay) wrote :

I have filed a new bug report for the screenshot feature.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/772336

I have also implemented a working prototype of the feature which is attached in the comments. It would be great to get some feedback before I start integrating it in apport.

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.