apport script crashes - IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/kern.log'

[Michal Suchanek]

TEST CASE:
1. Create a user who is not part of the group 'adm'
2. Login as this user
3. In a terminal run the following command:
  $ ubuntu-bug evince

Result:
The following error is displayed:

"""
ERROR: hook /usr/share/apport/package-hooks//source_evince.py crashed:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/report.py", line 661, in add_hooks_info
    symb['add_info'](self)
  File "/usr/share/apport/package-hooks//source_evince.py", line 54, in add_info
    report['KernLog'] = recent_kernlog(sec_re)
  File "/usr/share/apport/package-hooks//source_evince.py", line 24, in recent_kernlog
    for line in open(file):
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/kern.log'
"""

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: evince 3.0.2-0ubuntu2 [modified: usr/share/doc/evince/changelog.Debian.gz]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0-1.2-generic 3.0.0-rc3
Uname: Linux 3.0-1-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jun 18 22:34:05 2011
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 3.0-1.2-generic 3.0.0-rc3
SourcePackage: evince
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for your report. Marking as triaged/low because it is a non fatal error.

[era (era)]

The trivial fix is to fail gracefully if the user cannot read this log file. It should hardly prevent you from reporting bugs!

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for apport (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]