(usability) Don't prompt with support questions for auto-collected crash bugs

[Benjamin Bach]

Hey there!

This is roughly how the flow went as something unknown in my system just crashed:

1) "System crash detected"
2) I say that I want to report it and to know the details.
3) Apport says that "precise" is no longer in development, and therefore I have to choose between 5 options.

Now, one could object to these options being difficult to distinguish between - but that is NOT what this is about.

It's even more fundamental: Even as a tech user, I am not prepared to answer the question, because Apport still hasn't told me anything about the error.

Is it just the same usual error? Is it a program that I know how to debug?

Users need to see the problem and the debug output before deciding what to do.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This sounds like a bug with xdiagnose which asks specific questions for X related crashes.

[Benjamin Bach (benjaoming)]

@brian-murray: But the window in the screenshot is called "Apport"? Are you sure?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

You say the issue here is not to do with the questions themselves but that the user needs to be given more information prior to seeing these questions. Could you elaborate on what that information should comprise?

For example, would it be sufficient to simply say, "Compiz has crashed"? Or would you want to see the detailed stack trace and so on?

(I'm concerned there may be a chicken-and-egg problem in solving this, but want to better understand your concern first.)

(Also, if you have suggestions on improving the phrasing of the five questions, I'm open to feedback on that.)

[Benjamin Bach (benjaoming)]

This is the current flow

Crash -> Ask user the above dialog -> Show info about crash

It should be

Crash -> Show info about crash -> Ask the user about what to do

Do you have a quick shortcut for a (preferably harmless) crash that will trigger Apport so I can click around and get to terms with the current setup?

[Edward Donovan (edward.donovan)]

Hi, Benjamin -

> But the window in the screenshot is called "Apport"? Are you sure?

Yeah, fair question. The apport bug reporting program lets packages provide custom scripts that help handle bug reports in their area. You can see them under /usr/share/apport/package-hooks . Brian's referring to /usr/share/apport/package-hooks/source_xorg.py , which is provided by xdiagnose, and used by many X-related packages. As you can see by the many symlinks to it in that directory!

> Do you have a quick shortcut for a (preferably harmless) crash that will trigger Apport so I can click around and get to terms with the current setup?

You can start a program, then kill it with a signal 11, to make it segfault, from a terminal. Like, in a terminal:

  $ xterm &
  [2] 10169
  $ kill -11 %2

When you run it in the background, with '&' after the command, bash shows you its job id, 2 in this case, and the system PID, 10169. Bash's builtin 'kill' interprets a plain number as a pid, and %number as a job id. So

  kill -11 10169

would have been the same in this case.

Hope some of this info can help you keep digging. Thanks.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package xdiagnose - 3.2

---------------
xdiagnose (3.2) quantal; urgency=low

  * bin/*: When run within trunk, use trunk modules
  * failsafe-x: Remove the (obsolete) archive generation functionality.
    Users should use `ubuntu-bug xorg` instead in this case.
    (LP: #1036211)
  * control: Depend on python3-apport since apport hooks have been
    converted to python3.
    (LP: #1056837)
  * apport/source_xorg.py: Don't prompt with support questions for
    auto-collected crash bugs.
    (LP: #1036114)
 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:16:30 -0700

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

Is there any time-scale on when this will be released to Precise?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The Precise Pangolin has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that release