FindRightPackage

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Finding the right source package for a bug, when submitting or triaging, is essential to ensure that the right people will see the bug. These tricks won't necessarily work in all cases, but will help you most of the time.

A short introductory video, naratted by Dereck Wonnacott.

  • warning: this video advises triagers to assign bugs to the acpi-support package. This is wrong! Recent versions of Ubuntu use pm-utils for suspend-resume, acpi-support is not involved in this process. Do not assign bugs to this package, they will only have to be triaged again by a much smaller group of developers. Help is needed to get the above video updated.

You can help right away with the bugs with no home. Most simply need to be associated with the appropriate package.

When installing Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu or Xubuntu

If you encounter a bug when booting the Live CD or the alternate installer, then the bug should be filed about the kernel. The "Kernel related bugs" section contains information on where to file the bug.

If you encounter a bug when installing Ubuntu from the Live CD the package used for the bug report should be ubiquity. A bug can be filled from your live system using the command:

ubuntu-bug -p ubiquity

and existing bug reports can be found in Launchpad. You can learn more about the proper way to submit a bug about ubiquity by reading debugging ubiquity.

If you encounter a bug when installing from the Alternate or Server CDs the package used for the bug should be debian-installer.

Boot process before login screen

When your system is booting, before you are presented with a login screen, and shutting down you may see a static image and messages about the process. This application is called usplash and bugs regarding it should be filed using the command:

ubuntu-bug -p usplash

Login Screen

The login screen, provided by the display manager, is where you enter your username and password. If you are using Ubuntu the default display manager is gdm and bugs should be filed using the command:

ubuntu-bug -p gdm

If you are using Kubuntu the default display manager is kdm and bugs should be filed using the command:

ubuntu-bug -p kdm

Graphic Environment

The X Window system provides the underlying graphic environment of your desktop. It ensures that your video card and monitor work and provides a basis for GNOME or KDE to run on. You can learn more about troubleshooting a bug regarding the graphic environment, your video card or monitor by reading Debugging X. These bugs should be filed using the command:

ubuntu-bug -p xorg

Printing System

The printing system used in Ubuntu is the Common UNIX Printing System (or CUPS). If you encounter a bug dealing with printing it should be filed using the cups package. You can learn more about the proper way to submit a bug regarding CUPS by reading debugging printing problems.

Sound

If you encounter a situation where your sound does not work, is muted, or your headphone jack does not work as expected the correct package depends on the version of the kernel you are using. If you do not know what version of the kernel you are running the command uname -r will return the kernel release. The "Kernel related bugs" section contains information on where to file the bug. You can learn more about the proper way to submit a bug regarding sound by reading debugging sound problems.

The correct package for bugs in the Linux kernel is dependent upon the release of Ubuntu being used. In the event that you do not know what kernel version you are running the command uname -r will return the kernel release. You can learn about the kernel team's bug policies and information they need to troubleshoot your bug. Note that it is best to verify if your bug exists against the most recently released kernel and file your bug accordingly.

  • For Dapper (6.06) the correct package is linux-source-2.6.15.

  • For Jaunty (9.04), Intrepid (8.10) and Hardy (8.04) the correct package is linux.

Suspend / Hibernate

Problems with suspend/hibernate/resume on Ubuntu are generally the result of bugs in one of three main components. There is the desktop component (gnome-power-manager in the case of Ubuntu), responsible for setting policy on when the system should be suspended or resumed and signalling the system to do so; pm-utils, which is responsible for getting the system into a state where it can be suspended or hibernated, and handling any cleanup after resume; and the linux kernel, which implements the actual suspending and resuming and is generally the responsible package when there are any hardware-related failures after resume.

Find the program executable

Sometimes it is not so clear the name of the program or process running, for instance if you start the program through a menu. There are a few ways to try and figure out what it is:

  • Launch the program from the menu and in a terminal execute xprop WM_CLASS. This will present you with a crosshair cursor with which you should click on the running program. In the terminal you will see a message like M_CLASS(STRING) = "konsole", "Konsole" from which you can determine the program is konsole.

  • Launch the program from the menu and in a terminal window use the command ps ax or ps aux to display all processes running. You can also run top which by default displays the process using the CPU the most at the top. It is possible to change the order in which processes are displayed, for example pressing "Shift+m" will display the process using the most memory at the top.

If you are not sure you have found the right process, try using top and ps before and after starting the program, and see what new processes have appeared.

  • apropos <keyword> and apt-cache search <keyword> may also give some clues.

    Example: you have problems with System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution. The process name is gnome-display-properties.

Getting more information

Sometimes it is possible for an application to silently fail when launched from the program menu. One example of this is VMware Player. If you launch it from the menu and do not have the module versions for your currently running kernel the application will silently fail. However, if you execute 'vmplayer' in a terminal you will receive a more informative error message saying that 'vmware is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured for this system' followed by steps to fix it. Once you have discovered the program executable name (by following the steps above) try executing it in a terminal to see if you get more information that can help debug your issue.

Some programs also leave error messages in ~/.xsession-errors. Take a look there and see if there is something that can help debug your issue.

Find the binary package

Once you have identified the process name you can try type <process_name> or which <process_name> or locate <process_name> to get the full path of the program.

Then run dpkg -S <full path of the program> to see which binary package it belongs to.

  • Example: locate gnome-display-properties

    dpkg -S /usr/bin/gnome-display-properties

Another useful way to find out what package an application or even a file belongs to is to use packages.ubuntu.com. There you can search for files that are parts of packages. This can be very helpful when triaging where you may not have the particular package installed.

Find the source package

Go to https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+search where you can search for the source package from which the binary package is compiled. The source package is the package you should select when filing a bug.

  • Example: gnome-control-center belongs to the gnome-system-tools source package


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Bugs/FindRightPackage (last edited 2022-11-17 15:07:29 by paulw2u)