aptdaemon doesn't check if apport is enabled

[Brian Murray]

Binary package hint: aptdaemon

aptdaemon has its own crash handler and it does not check to see if apport is enabled before writing a crash report. Subsequently, we are receiving lots of crash reports regarding aptdaemon on natty which are duplicates and wasteful. Instead aptdaemon should check to see if apport is enabled before writing a crash report.

TEST CASE:
1) Verify that apport is disabled:
   enabled=0 in /etc/default/apport
2) Make aptdaemon crash with an uncaught exception [*]
3) Observe an apport crash reporting dialog

After installing the package from -proposed
1) Make aptdaemon crash with an uncaught exception [*]
2) Observer there is not an apport crash reporting dialog

[*] How to make aptdaemon crash
1. Copy an uninstalled .deb file to your local folder
2. Run the following command in a terminal (remember to revert to +x after the test)
  $ sudo chmod -x /usr/bin/lintian
3. Open a file browser and double-click on the deb file to open it in software-center
4. Click on install
=> aptdaemon will crash with a "permission denied" error (which is a bug BTW)

[Chris Halse Rogers (raof)]

Hello Brian, or anyone else affected,

Accepted aptdaemon into natty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

SRU verification for Natty:
I have reproduced the problem with aptdaemon 0.41+bzr646-0ubuntu2 in natty and have verified that the version of aptdaemon 0.41+bzr646-0ubuntu2.1 in -proposed fixes the issue.

Marking as verification-done

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package aptdaemon - 0.41+bzr646-0ubuntu2.1

---------------
aptdaemon (0.41+bzr646-0ubuntu2.1) natty-proposed; urgency=low

  * Check if apport is enabled before writing a crash report (LP: #797847)
 -- Brian Murray <email address hidden> Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:12:44 -0700

[Tuomas Heino (iheino+ub)]

Minor note related to the test case & implementation:

AFAIK apport.packaging.enabled() checks /etc/default/apport file contents for '^\s*enabled\s*=\s*0\s*$' regexp.
Meanwhile default contents of that file (on natty) are as follows:

# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
# you can temporarily override this with
# sudo service apport start force_start=1
enabled=0

Should that "temporarily override" part be removed altogether or changed to mention limits of such?
Or does that comment mean apport.packaging.enabled() should check such overrides as well?

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Yes, it would make sense if apport.packaging.enabled() were to also check and see if the apport service were running as there is a use case for somebody wanting to report a crash about aptdaemon on a non-development release of Ubuntu and manually starting apport to be able to report the crash. Tuomas could you please report a bug about apport about this? Thanks in advance.