CommonTasks
Forwarding bugs upstream
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Finding Duplicates
Finding Duplicates of bugs is a very valuable contribution in the Bug community. Users sometimes don't know, how to check if the same bug was already filed, and sometimes don't care. To weed out simple ME TOO messages and aggregate information in one place is crucial in the process of fixing a bug.
There are quite some measures you can take to help out with this specifically.
Look up bugs for the same component. Try to rephrase your search concentrate on actions an words that describe the items involved to reproduce this crash.
Examples:
- Easy ones:
[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18808 DAAP support] is a duplicate of
[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18733 please enable daap]
- Hard ones:
[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17858 plug:spdif on emu10k1 gone after breezy upgrade] is a duplicate of
[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15585 Muted sound after dist-upgrade from Hoary to Breezy]
If you can't find it in the list of open bugs, you could try to find it in the list of closed ones. Don't feel discouraged, if you don't find duplicates fast in the beginning, after some time you will know the usual suspects.