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Each message received at or sent by the bug processing system is logged and made available in a number of ways.
Copies of the logs are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/debian/Bugs/ and http://www.debian.org/Bugs/.
The HTML files containing the bug report logs are available in the WebPages subdirectory of the Debian FTP archive, and will be available on mirror sites that haven't explicitly removed them from their mirror configuration. A web server which is configured to serve this part of the FTP area as a webtree will provide a local copy of the pages.
There is a mailserver which can send bug reports as plain text on request. To use it send the word help as the sole contents of an email to [email protected] (the `Subject' of the message is ignored), or read the instructions on the World Wide Web or in this document.
There is a mailserver which can send the bug reports and indices as plain text on request.
To use it you send a mail message to [email protected]. The `Subject' of the message is ignored, except for generating the `Subject' of the reply.
The body you send should be a series of commands, one per line. You'll receive a reply which looks like a transcript of your message being interpreted, with a response to each command. No notifications are sent to anyone for most commands; however, the messages are logged and made available in the WWW pages.
Any text on a line starting with a hash sign `#' is ignored; the server will stop processing when it finds a line starting with quit, stop, thank or two hyphens (to avoid parsing a signature). It will also stop if it encounters too many unrecognised or badly-formatted commands. If no commands are successfully handled it will send the help text for the server.
Here is a list of available commands:
Requests the transcript for the bug report in question. send-detail sends all of the `boring' messages in the transcript, such as the various auto-acks (you should usually use send as well, as the interesting messages are not sent by send-detail).
Request the full index (with full details, and including done and forwarded reports), or the summary sorted by package or by number, respectively.
Requests the index page giving the list of maintainers with bugs (open and recently-closed) in the tracking sytem.
Requests the index pages of bugs in the system for all maintainers containing the string maintainer. The search term is a case insensitive substring. The bug index for each matching maintainer will be sent in a separate message.
Requests logs of messages not matched to a particular bug report, for this week, last week and the week before. (Each week ends on a Wednesday.)
Request a file containing information about package(s) and or maintainer(s) - the files available are: maintainers The unified list of packages' maintainers, as used by the tracking system. This is derived from information in the Packages files, override files and pseudo-packages files. override.stable override.development override.contrib override.non-free override.experimental override.codeword Information about the priorities and sections of packages and overriding values for the maintainers. This information is used by the process which generates the Packages files in the FTP archive. Information is available for each of the main distribution trees available; the current stable and development trees are available by their codewords as well as by their release status. pseudo-packages.description pseudo-packages.maintainers List of descriptions and maintainers respectively for pseudo-packages.
Requests that the mailservers' reference card be sent in plain ASCII.
Requests that this help document be sent by email in plain ASCII.
Stops processing at this point of the message. After this you may include any text you like, and it will be ignored. You can use this to include longer comments than are suitable for #, for example for the benefit of human readers of your message (reading it via the tracking system logs or due to a CC or BCC).
One-line comment. The # must be at the start of the line.
Sets the debugging level to level, which should be a nonnegative integer. 0 is no debugging; 1 is usually sufficient. The debugging output appears in the transcript. It is not likely to be useful to general users of the bug system.
There is a reference card for the mailservers, available via the WWW, in bug-mailserver-refcard.txt or by email using the refcard command (see above).
If you wish to manipulate bug reports you should use the [email protected] address, which understands a superset of the commands listed above. This is described in The mail control interface, Chapter 5 or by sending help to control@bugs.
In case you are reading this as a plain text file or via email: an HTML version is available via the bug system main contents page http://www.debian.org/Bugs/.
Suggestions for future additions are welcome. Please mail [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected].
Every Friday a list of outstanding bug reports is posted to debian-devel, sorted by age of report; every Tuesday a list of bug reports that have gone unanswered too long is posted, sorted by package maintainer.
If the maintainer of a package is listed incorrectly this is usually because the maintainer has changed recently, and the new maintainer hasn't yet uploaded a new version of the package with a changed `Maintainer' control file field. This will be fixed when the package is uploaded; alternatively, there is an override file which the distribution maintainers can edit to record the change in maintainer, for example if a rebuild and reupload of the package is not expected to be needed soon. Contact [email protected] for changes to the override file.
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Debian's Bug Tracking System
[email protected][email protected]