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I apologize if this is a meta question. Also, if there is a duplicate of this please mark it so.

Pretty much anyone who has installed Ubuntu in the last decade is familiar with the error message: "Ubuntu has experience and internal error." The source of the error seems well understood (at least by some). From what I understand it's basically reporting a backlog of non-uploaded kernel dumps resulting from crashes. e.g. My /var/crash directory contains some series of foo.crash, foo.upload, foo.uploaded files, presumable indicating that apport caught a crash, scheduled an upload, and uploaded the kernel dump. But there are some files that are missing the .upload and .uploaded version. It seems that apport messed up and failed to upload these crashes, thereby constantly generating "internal errors."

Question: How has this gone unfixed for so long?! Every solution I've found just says to disable apport even though it's not recommended. Is there a better solution?

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The apport error reporting system works fine. Most people misunderstand what it's trying to tell them. Disabling apport is NOT a good solution.

First, if you receive a "Ubuntu has experienced an internal error", or some such, you have an option to send in an error report, or not. Most important here is that you click the Continue button, and NOT click the x (close) button. Otherwise you'll keep getting the same report after every reboot. It's also important that you click on the Details button to try and review/understand what you can about the crash.

Second, in terminal type ls -alt /var/crash and you'll see a list of recently crashed applications or system programs. If you see the same name more than once, then that application/program is a big problem. So, fix the problem that causes the crashes. Temporarily disable your Startup Applications. Note if the problem occurs when running a particular application. Got a ton of indicator apps running in the top panel? Disable them and see if the problem is gone. Etc.

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  • This is the best answer I've seen to date. Is there a way to tell apport to go through current errors that haven't been sent and ask again? Or simply tell it to report all of them all the time?
    – medley56
    Sep 18, 2017 at 15:35
  • @medley56 Thanks for the kind words. Changing the reporting... not that I'm aware of. It'll ask you every time. And there may be times where you don't want to send in a report... like you've already sent one for the same problem... or you know what caused the problem... or there's some other software that's causing the problem... etc.
    – heynnema
    Sep 18, 2017 at 15:39
  • So, if I receive an error for which I've already submitted a report, I shouldn't send it. But you indicated that if I don't send it I'll continue getting the notification on boot. What's the correct course of action for a crash that has already been reported? I suppose I can just rm /var/crash/* but that seems clunky.
    – medley56
    Sep 18, 2017 at 15:44
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    @medley56 you can send a report, or not, but the trick is to use the Continue button either way, else you'll see the same report again. If you keep seeing the same crash over and over, I'd send the error report only once, and then see if I can figure out why that app is crashing... ie: do you have a Firefox extension that's actually causing the crash? Etc. You don't have to worry about /var/crash... it'll take care of itself. Make more sense now?
    – heynnema
    Sep 18, 2017 at 16:21

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