Show kernel oops before asking questions

[sam tygier]

Binary package hint: apport

This is a follow on from Bug #528175

The oops should be shown before questions about if this is a regression, and has it been reproduced in upstream.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I've just encountered this issue, and I consider it much worse than "wishlist". apport gives me an icon which I obligingly click on, then asks me a series of questions which *I cannot possibly know the answers to* because it hasn't told me which line from dmesg it's treating as a crash! (Since this was not a kernel oops, it was not at all obvious from context) Only after answering all the questions randomly does it finally show me the line that it thinks was a problem, at which point I decided not to file the bug.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

To solve this properly I think kernel_oops should write the summary that Leann is creating in the linux package hook to the apport report so it can be used my multiple things like the linux package hook and ui_present_kernel_error.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

apport (1.20.1-0ubuntu2) natty; urgency=low

  [ Brad Figg ]
  * The kernel team has decided that asking the user for a bunch of
    information which they may not be able to answer is the wrong thing to do.
    Therefore, all the propmpting of the user for said information has been
    removed. Also removed is the tagging of "needs-upstream-testing".

looks like it might solve this whole issue. is there a way to trigger a kernel oops to see what the new apport looks like.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Looking at the package hook the question is still there:

            if ui.yesno("This report may also be submitted to "
                "http://kerneloops.org/ in order to help collect aggregate "
                "information about kernel problems. This aids in identifying "
                "widespread issues and problematic areas. A condensed "
                "summary of the Oops is shown below. Would you like to submit "
                "information about this crash to kerneloops.org ?"
                "\n\n%s" % oops):
                text = report['OopsText']
                proc = subprocess.Popen(SUBMIT_SCRIPT, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
                proc.communicate(text)

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Well at least one questions is still there.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

that is an easy question. if thats the only one left then i am happy to call this fixed.

the ones like 'is this a regression', 'which subsystem is this in, audio, graphics, network ...' are impossible to answer without seeing the oops text.

[Marco Scannadinari (zheoffec)]

If of any use, there is a package called linux-crashdump which automatically logs the kernel_oops to the /var/crash directory.
You can install it through this method:

sudo apt-get install linux-crashdump
sudo reboot

https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/kernel-crash-dump.html