Bugs

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'''Launchpad:''' [https://launchpad.net/people/micah-cowan] '''Launchpad:''' [https://launchpad.net/~micah-cowan]

MicahCowan

Blog: [http://micah.cowan.name/]

Email: micah@cowan.name

Launchpad: [https://launchpad.net/~micah-cowan]

IRC: micahcowan

Activity

My activity in Ubuntu has been mostly bug triaging, bug-solution hunting, and bug fixing. I am also on IRC with fluctuating consistency. I sometimes lurk on #ubuntu and #ubuntu+1 and give support when I can.

Bugs I've Worked on

Below are some of the major bugs I've worked on: triaging, reporting, solving. I've actually worked on triaging or supporting many bugs that are not listed below, but am not currently subscribed to, and have no direct way to find or query. For a full list of bugs related to me (which generally means that I've done something with them), you can check [https://bugs.launchpad.net/~micah-cowan/ my launchpad page]. I try to make it a current practice to subscribe to any bug I touch in a significant way, but this can lead to clutter, so I'm not certain whether I will maintain this practice.

[+] = I submitted this bug

[d] = I provided a patch for this bug

38538

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/38538 man pages suggest info pages that don't exist.]

[d]

45930

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/joystick/+bug/45930 jstest SEGFAULTs with usb joystick]

[d]

49097

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/tuxpaint/+bug/49079 Tuxpaint prints garbage to postscript printer (Brother HL 2700 CN)]

[d]

55932

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/55932 Can't edit the time in clock-applet]

[+]

55988

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/55988 clock-panel no longer installs NTP support]

[+]

55991

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/55991 Ugly, redundant and confusing regular expression in chmod manpage]

[+d]

56590

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/56590 time-admin crashes on time field edit.]

[+]

56592

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/language-pack-gnome-es-base/+bug/56592 Wrong Spanish translations]

56734

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/readline5/+bug/56734 Cannot bind "\M-o" to a new function]

57753

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/57753 Vfat and NTFS partitions in edgy get two icons on the GNOME Desktop]

57842

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xchat/+bug/57842 Segfault on opening file browser dialog]

[+]

58083

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/58083 No keyboard previews]

[+]

58103

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/less/+bug/58103 /etc/skel/.bashrc - lesspipe problem]

58256

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gawk/+bug/58256 length() memory error]

[d]

58915

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/python-central/+bug/58915 Python upgrade errors]

61335

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/opie/+bug/61335 opieinfo isn't setuid, whilst opiepasswd is]

[+]

61503

[https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/61503 Dapper: Nautilus crashes when deleting a folder from the side-pane]

75574

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/75574 cp dumps core when copying >4GB files to a VFAT filesystem]

[d]

104359

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/104359 FTBFS on Feisty, "`build-aux/ylwrap' not found"]

[+]

Showcases

  • Helped LinuxProbie get his wireless card up and running.

    LinuxProbie gave me shell access to his box (which was connected to net via Ethernet), and also admin access (though I strongly advised against it). I walked him through setting up a multiuser screen program, so he could watch me input commands and see what their output was. We also used screen to chat during the process, by using it in split-screen mode to view a terminal with just "cat > /dev/null" running (similar to old-style Unix talk program). He was attempting to use ndiswrapper to support his Brother wireless card (the model escapes me). He had a ubuntuforums.com page that described how to disable the Free driver and enable the Windows driver in ndiswrapper. It appeared that he had followed all the instructions; however, the device was not being recognized. Through a good deal of toying around, it was discovered that:

    1. ndiswrapper does not work together with the specific driver that he was attempting to use (his was a Dell laptop, so he was using Dell-provided drivers; ndiswrapper, however, desired ones provided by HP/Compaq).
    2. ndiswrapper may have been of a too-old version, so we upgraded to a different version of ndiswrapper.

    The user was very happy to have his wireless card working properly, after we sorted these out. Smile :)

  • [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/joystick/+bug/45930 Bug 45930]

    This was the first bug I dealt with. I was trying to run the jstest program on my USB joystick, but it wanted to segfault on a regular basis. My first response was to get a backtrace in gdb, but I noticed the backtrace happened during an attempt to print a string, obtained from an array. A little investigation revealed that an invalid index was being used into that array. I fixed the problem in the code and generated a debdiff. I'd found an already reported bug that fit my description, so I added some discussion, along with my patch, to the report. This patch went into the next version of the joystick package.

  • [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/tuxpaint/+bug/49079 Bug 49079]

    I happened across this bug by accident. I don't have access to the printer for which this bug was reported, and despite the fact that the guy who wrote the TuxPaint program is a friend of mine, I'm not a regular user of the program. I am, however, pretty proficient with the PostScript language, and since I was somewhat familiar with TuxPaint, my curiosity was piqued. I went ahead and looked into the code, and found a few points of interest that I thought might be contributing to the problems. I contacted the author of TuxPaint, and when I found out he didn't have much to do with the PostScript code in the program, I joined TuxPaint's development mailing list to discuss the problem and possible solutions. This resulted in a few possibilities, which I then submitted to the bug report for the reporting user to examine. Unfortunately, we haven't heard back from the user in order to verify whether the modifications have produced a solution. [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=30198556&forum_id=44504 Discussion on TuxPaint development list].

  • [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/38538 Bug 38538] This is a relatively minor problem, but it's liable to bite many users (man pages say to try, e.g., "info ls", but only "info coreutils ls" will work). There is a quick-and-easy, but wrong, fix (to fix the man pages to refer to "info coreutils ls"), and there is a right, but fairly involved, fix, which requires modifications to the dpkg package (which includes install-info, wherein lies the bug). I'm not yet ready to put the time involved into doing the thing proper and right, but apparently nobody else really is, either. I had some brief interaction with the dpkg folks about it, and at some point will probably get back to looking into what would need to be done

  • [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gawk/+bug/58256 Bug 58256]

    Unaware that this had actually been addressed by this point in CVS (I didn't know where to find the current development version), I hunted down and found this multiple-free() bug over a weekend. When I pointed it out to the developers, along with a request for help as to approach for the fix, they responded that [http://www.nabble.com/multiple-frees-in-awk%2C-sometimes-leading-to-crash-tf3536179.html it had already been addressed in CVS]... :/ ...so I found the fix and submitted a debdiff to address the problem in the currently available package.

  • [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/75574 Bug 75574] I worked with the GNU coreutils folks, and then the linux kernel developers, to determine the proper fix and wherein lay the responsibility to fix, reviewing material from relevant standards. I then crafted a patch, tested it, and submitted it to both the linux-kernel mailing list and the Ubuntu kernel team (not all of what I just said has been completed, will remove this remark when I have).

To Infinity... and BEYOND!

I'm committed to Ubuntu as my main Desktop. Because of this, I'd like to do what I can to continually improve it. At the moment I'm aiming at eventually becoming a ["MOTU"].


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MicahCowan/Bugs (last edited 2008-08-06 16:34:39 by localhost)