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I installed an application from the developer's website and it was crashing.

I tried using this form of apport-retrace to get a report I could email to the dev myself:

apport-retrace --confirm --gdb --sandbox system --verbose --cache /my/path/cache/apport-retrace --output /mypath/apport-retrace/appname.1000.crash /var/crash/_usr_bin_appname.1000.crash

The error is:

ERROR: report file does not contain one of the required fields: CoreDump DistroRelease Package ExecutablePath

I checked the crash file and the missing field is "Package." However, the application does not come from a Debian package. Is there a way I can tell apport-retrace to ignore this field and generate the best report it can?

EDIT: I am not trying to report the bug to Ubuntu. I'm also not seeking to submit a bug report to any bug tracker. My goal is to read the crash report myself. That's really my only goal. Once I read the crash report in this particular case I'll email the dev. But in general, I want a tool that will let me read the crash reports generated by the standard tools installed on Ubuntu.

Thanks.

2 Answers 2

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This is not the answer to the OP's question. He already figured out that if you know the package name you can simply add it see

In my /var/crash directory I found a _usr_bin_gconftool-2.0.crash crash file and wanted to find out more details with:

 apport-retrace -g _usr_bin_gconftool-2.0.crash

I got the error message:

ERROR: report file does not contain one of the required fields: CoreDump DistroRelease Package ExecutablePath

Since searching the web pointed me to this question I got all confused about the long discussion which distracted me from the simple solution.

Just adding

Package: gconftool-2

at the start of the file allowed me to get:

...
Core was generated by `gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility'.
Program terminated with signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
#0  0x00007f5032236428 in __GI_raise (sig=sig@entry=6)
    at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:54
54  ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c: No such file or directory.

Please do not downvote this answer only since it is not a about the original questions. This is specifically for people who got here with the "normal" problem of having a crash dump from a standard package where the package name is simply missing.

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    This was my exact problem, which landed me here from a web search, and your solution is on target. Others may disagree but it fit my needs so I upvoted. Thanks
    – Mike Hardy
    Jan 30, 2019 at 22:28
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    The linked SO-question mentions the following argument in my opinion worth noting here as well: -R, --rebuild-package-info manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/cosmic/man1/… Apr 12, 2019 at 13:39
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Apport only works for packages installed from the official Ubuntu repositories. You should report the bug in the developers bug tracker if they have any as how to reproduce it.

I am not trying to report the bug to Ubuntu. I'm also not seeking to submit a bug report to any bug tracker. My goal is to read the crash report myself. That's really my only goal. Once I read the crash report in this particular case I'll email the dev. But in general, I want a tool that will let me read the crash reports generated by the standard tools installed on Ubuntu.

Again, if the program isn't in the repositories, Ubuntu won't generate any crash report. The only way to view them is using the terminal, ftrace, gdb, etc. You should attach a debugger to the program in case of binaries (C/C++, etc) or reading the trace error in case of interpreters (Python, Perl, etc.). apport ignores any crash if the binaries don't comes from the repositories. But, Ubuntu will alert you that a program crashed whenever it comes from repos or you build it yourself.

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    Hi. I edited my question. I am not seeking to report the bug (and the dev in this case doesn't have a bug tracker). I just want to read the crash reports. apport-retrace seemed to be a tool that would let me do this. Is there an alternative? Thanks
    – MountainX
    Sep 24, 2013 at 20:03
  • Updated my answer. BTW, if you don't tell what application are you trying to debug obviously I will continue to tell you that is not possible.
    – Braiam
    Sep 24, 2013 at 20:12
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    You said, "if the program isn't in the repositories, Ubuntu won't generate any crash report." Are you sure? I actually do see a crash report file at /var/crash/_usr_bin_simplescreenrecorder.1000.crash. I installed the app from here: github.com/MaartenBaert/ssr. I am alerted when it crashes, as you said. But I can read the resulting crash report file in a text editor (although the core dump is in hex I guess). Since the crash report is there, including the core dump, I want to do what apport-retrace claims to do: "regenerate the stack traces ... from the included core dump."
    – MountainX
    Sep 24, 2013 at 20:43
  • Did you compile it with debugging symbols? If you didn't probably it won't have anything inside. Also, what is the type of the file file /var/crash/_usr_bin_simplescreenrecorder.1000.crash. Also, can you run with the -v option for more verbosity?
    – Braiam
    Sep 24, 2013 at 21:46
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    This is indeed totally confusing. I had to read the manual several times until I got aware that --output does NOT mean "write to arbitrary output file from scratch", as if doing a --log output.log. It just does not work that way. So in my desperation, I just decided to omit the --output option altogether, stripping files my way (sed, head/tail, awk...) and things worked as they should. What a horror. Jan 23, 2015 at 8:50

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