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Chapter 21. ABRT

21.1. Overview
21.2. Installing and Running ABRT
21.3. ABRT Plugins
21.3.1. Analyzer Plugins
21.3.2. Reporter Plugins
21.3.3. Plugin Configuration in the GUI
21.4. Generating Backtraces
21.4.1. Troubleshooting Backtrace Generation
21.5. Using the Command Line Interface
21.5.1. Viewing Crashes
21.5.2. Reporting Crashes
21.5.3. Deleting Crashes
21.6. Configuring ABRT
21.7. Configuring Centralized Crash Collection
21.7.1. Testing ABRT's Crash Detection
21.7.2. Testing the Upload Method

21.1. Overview

ABRT is the Automatic Bug-Reporting Tool. ABRT consists of a daemon that runs silently in the background most of the time. It springs into action when an application crashes. It then collects the relevant crash data such as a core file if there is one, the crashing application's command line parameters, and other contextual puzzle pieces of forensic utility. Finally, ABRT is capable of reporting crash data to a relevant issue tracker, such as RHTSupport. Reporting crash data to a relevant issue tracker can be configured to happen automatically at every detected crash, or crash dumps can be stored locally, reviewed, reported, and deleted manually by a user. ABRT's various plugins analyze crash data from applications written in the C, C++ and Python language, as well as report crashes to relevant issue trackers.
The ABRT package consists of:
  • abrtd, the system service
  • abrt-applet, which runs in the user's Notification Area
  • abrt-gui, the GUI application that shows collected crash dumps and allows you to edit, report, and delete them
  • abrt-cli, the command line interface with functionality similar to abrt-gui.
You can open the ABRT GUI application by clicking ApplicationsSystem ToolsAutomatic Bug Reporting Tool.
Automatic Bug Reporting Tool Main Window
A number of additional packages can be installed to provide ABRT plugins and addons. To view all the available ABRT packages, type the following command:
~]$ yum list all | grep abrt