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If you want to report a bug (this can be a bug in any part of the Debian GNU/Linux system, e.g. in a document or a package), please send a mail to [email protected].
The bug report will be automatically processed by a program, postet to the debian-bugs-dist mailing list (you can prevent this, see below), and forwarded to the responsible maintainer. Therefore, the bug report should have a pseudo-header at the top so that the bug tracking system can assign the bug to the specified package and can determine the maintainer.
The pseudo-header for a bug report against the package foo with version 1.0-1 would look like this:
Package: foo
Version: 1.0-1
As it's called `header' it has to be placed at the top of the email. (Note, that the bug tracking system does not handle MIME emails correct currently. For example, you should not sign your bug report with PGP as the PGP separator line would be treated as a malformed header.)
The bug tracking system knows several pseudo packages for non-package parts of Debian. These are:
General bugs in the base system
Bugs in the bootdisk
Bugs in the rootdisk
The bug tracking system, @bugs.debian.org
Problems with the FTP site
Problems with the non-US FTP site
Problems with the WWW site
Problems related to Project administration
General problems (e.g., that many manpages are mode 755)
Problems with the Linux kernel, or that shipped with Debian
The mailing lists, debian-*@lists.debian.org.
(An up-to-date list of supported pseudo packages can be found at the WWW interface of the bug tracking system.)
If you have a buggy program you want to report a bug against then you'll have to determine the package name and version for the program first. You can get these using dpkg --search and dpkg --list; see dpkg --help for a further explanation.
Your bug report should contain the following pieces of information:
The exact and complete text of any error messages printed or logged. This is very important!
Exactly what you typed or did to demonstrate the problem.
A description of the incorrect behaviour: exactly what behaviour you were expecting, and what you observed. A transcript of an example session is a good way of showing this.
A suggested fix, or even a patch, if you have one.
Details of the configuration of the program with the problem. Include the complete text of its configuration files.
The version of the whole Debian system you are using.
What kernel version you're using (type uname -a).
What shared C library you're using (type ls -l /lib/libc.so.5).
Any other details of your Linux system, if it seems appropriate. For example, if you had a problem with a Debian Perl script, you would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary (perl -v).
Appropriate details of the hardware in your system. If you're reporting a problem with a device driver please list all the hardware in your system, as problems are often caused by IRQ and I/O address conflicts.
Include any detail that seems relevant - you are in very little danger of making your report too long by including too much information. If they are small please include in your report any files you were using to reproduce the problem (uuencoding them if they may contain odd characters etc.).
Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in different packages - in one message. Also, please don't mail your bug report to any mailing lists or recipients other than [email protected].
A bug report, with mail header, looks something like this:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hello says `goodbye'
Package: hello
Version: 1.3-2
When I invoke `hello' without arguments from an ordinary shell
prompt it prints `goodbye', rather than the expected `hello, world'.
Here is a transcript:
$ hello
goodbye
$ /usr/bin/hello
goodbye
$
I suggest that the output string, in hello.c, be corrected.
I am using Debian 1.1, kernel version 1.3.99.15z
and libc 5.2.18.3.2.1.3-beta.
If you are reporting a bug in a command, you can find out which package installed it by using dpkg --search. You can find out which version of a package you have installed by using dpkg --list or dpkg --status.
For example:
$ which dpkg
/usr/bin/dpkg
$ type dpkg
dpkg is hashed (/usr/bin/dpkg)
$ dpkg --search /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
$ dpkg --search '*/dpkg'
dpkg: /usr/doc/copyright/dpkg
dpkg: /var/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/doc/dpkg
$ dpkg --list dpkg
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-===============-==============-============================================
ii dpkg 1.2.9elf Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
$ dpkg --status dpkg
Package: dpkg
Essential: yes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: base
Maintainer: Ian Jackson <[email protected]>
Version: 1.2.9elf
Replaces: dpkgname
Pre-Depends: libc5 (>= 5.2.18-2), ncurses3.0
Conflicts: dpkgname
Description: Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
This package contains the programs which handle the installation and
removal of packages on your system.
.
The primary interface for the dpkg suite is the `dselect' program;
a more low-level and less user-friendly interface is available in
the form of the `dpkg' command.
$
If a bug report is minor (for example, a documentation typo or other trivial build problem), or you're submitting many reports at once, send them to [email protected] or [email protected]. maintonly will send the report on to the package maintainer (provided you supply a correct Package line in the pseudo-header and the maintainer is known), and quiet will not forward it anywhere at all but only file it as a bug (useful if, for example, you are submitting many similar bugs and want to post only a summary).
If you do this the bug system will set the Reply-To of any forwarded message so that replies will by default be processed in the same way as the original report.
Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to somewhere else besides the debian-devel mailing list and the package maintainer, which is where they are normally sent.
You could do this by CC'ing your bug report to the other address(es), but then the other copies would not have the bug report number put in the Reply-To field and the Subject line of the mail header. When the recipients reply they will probably preserve the [email protected] entry in the header and have their message filed as a new bug report. This leads to many duplicated reports.
The right way to do this is to use the X-Debian-CC header. Add a line like this to your message's mail header (not to the pseudo header with the Package field):
X-Debian-CC: [email protected]
This will cause the bug tracking system to send a copy of your report to the address(es) specified in the X-Debian-CC line as well as to the debian-devel mailing list.
This feature can often be combined usefully with mailing [email protected] - see above.
If the bug tracking system doesn't know who the maintainer of the relevant package is it'll forward the report to the debian-devel mailing list, even if maintonly was used.
When sending to [email protected] or to [email protected] you should make sure that the bug report is assigned to the right package, by putting a correct Package at the top of an original submission of a report, or by using the [email protected] service to (re)assign the report appropriately first if it isn't correct already (see below).
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Debian's Bug Tracking System
[email protected][email protected]