System program problem detected?

Question

I keep getting, since several days, "System program problem detected" error message:

I always clicked on Report problem button but nothing happens.

I also run update and upgrade everyday.

What causes this ? How to get rid of it ?

Answer 1

What causes this ?

See the crash report that is dumped on your disk. The directory you want is /var/crash/ and it will contain several files pointing you to the package it is about and what the crash is.

This directory is described as:

/var/crash : System crash dumps (optional)

This directory holds system crash dumps. As of the date of this release of the standard, system crash dumps were not supported under Linux but may be supported by other systems which may comply with the FHS.

Ubuntu releases use this (optional) directory to dump crashes and the package that does that is called apport (and whoopsie). The link has a detailed description and also has a PDF that describes the crash report data format.

If you want really detailed reports on a crash install GDB: The GNU Project Debugger with sudo apt-get install gdb.

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How to get rid of it ?

Depends on what you call "get rid". The ideal fix would be to check what is inside the reports, and try and find a fix for it. If the package it is about is unneeded or benign you could also purge it. Most times it is a core functionality though.

If you can not understand those crash reports most times you can google the error notice (there will always be one in there). Or drop a message in chat. Generally crashes are off topic on AU as those are bugs and would need to be reported (through this service ;) ).

You can pick any of these to remove the crash report up to actually removing the package (would be rather ironic if the error comes from apport itself):

• sudo rm /var/crash/* will delete old crashes and stop informing you about them until some package crashes again.

• You can stop the service with sudo systemctl disable apport (and enable it again with sudo systemctl enable apport)

• If you do not want to see crash reports you can disable it by doing sudo vim /etc/default/apport and changingenabled=1 to enabled=0. (or sudo nano /etc/default/apport). Editing it in reverse will enable it again.

• You can delete the service with sudo apt purge apport (and install it again with sudo apt install apport)

• And there is also a desktop method (option "problem reporting":

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how to read and use crash reports? has some interesting answers. It has an example crash report and a method to retrace crashes.

Answer 2

Apport is an ubuntu functionality which reports errors in ubuntu.

it is non-critical and can be safely disabled without any adverse effects.

it's purpose is to aid Ubuntu devs in identifing issues as they occur on user's PCs

How to disable apport:

you must edit a file:

sudo nano /etc/default/apport

and replace the 1 with a 0

like so :

then Ctrl+X and Y to save.

If you don't want to reboot to apply you can disable it on the spot:

sudo systemctl disable apport

You may also completely uninstall apport:

sudo apt purge apport

After that you will no longer see this window.

More usefull information can be found here :https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/disable-apport-error-reporting-ubuntu-16-04-lts

Answer 3

What I suggest is that you delete these crash reports. Open a terminal and use the following command:

sudo rm /var/crash/*

Answer 4

I'm on Ubuntu 20.04.5 with Mate 1.24.0.

I was getting this message on every boot. I installed apport and apport-retrace and applied apport-retrace to the crash files I found in /var/crash. However, in all cases the program complained that something was missing. In most cases this was just "Package", and did not reveal anything else. I suspect that this is why "Report Problem" is unresponsive.

Since I couldn't get any information from the crash files, I examined /var/log/dmesg and found two boot errors. The first being ...

Unable to communicate with TPM chip

This is potentially the most serious. In the BIOS, I hid the chip. On reboot the message ...

System program problem detected

... appeared, but dmesg showed a more benign warning about being unable to find a TPM device.

To test whether the problem was in going to X, I deleted /var/log/dmesg, /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/Xorg.0.log and then rebooted the display manager using sudo systemctl restart display-manager. No new syslog was produced and the new dmesg and Xorg.0 logs only showed minor warnings.

I then deleted all of the /var/crash files and rebooted. This time the "System program problem detected" was not reported. Obviously, this message is inspired by old crash files even if they are no longer relevant.

My conclusion is use this message to alert you that there may be a boot problem but immediately delete the /var/crash/ files and try to fix serious errors you find in /var/log/dmesg, as well as potentially syslog and Xorg.0.