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MountainX
Asked: 2013-09-23 09:38:17 +0800 CST

apport-retrace fails with error: report file does not contain one of the required fields

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I installed an application from the developer's website and it was crashing.

I tried using this form of apport-retrace to get a report I could email to the dev myself:

apport-retrace --confirm --gdb --sandbox system --verbose --cache /my/path/cache/apport-retrace --output /mypath/apport-retrace/appname.1000.crash /var/crash/_usr_bin_appname.1000.crash

The error is:

ERROR: report file does not contain one of the required fields: CoreDump DistroRelease Package ExecutablePath

I checked the crash file and the missing field is "Package." However, the application does not come from a Debian package. Is there a way I can tell apport-retrace to ignore this field and generate the best report it can?

EDIT: I am not trying to report the bug to Ubuntu. I'm also not seeking to submit a bug report to any bug tracker. My goal is to read the crash report myself. That's really my only goal. Once I read the crash report in this particular case I'll email the dev. But in general, I want a tool that will let me read the crash reports generated by the standard tools installed on Ubuntu.

Thanks.

package-management

2 Answers

  1. This is not the answer to the OP's question. He already figured out that if you know the package name you can simply add it see

    In my /var/crash directory I found a _usr_bin_gconftool-2.0.crash crash file and wanted to find out more details with:

     apport-retrace -g _usr_bin_gconftool-2.0.crash

    I got the error message:

    ERROR: report file does not contain one of the required fields: CoreDump DistroRelease Package ExecutablePath

    Since searching the web pointed me to this question I got all confused about the long discussion which distracted me from the simple solution.

    Just adding

    Package: gconftool-2

    at the start of the file allowed me to get:

    ...
Core was generated by `gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility'.
Program terminated with signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
#0  0x00007f5032236428 in __GI_raise (sig=sig@entry=6)
    at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:54
54  ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c: No such file or directory.

    Please do not downvote this answer only since it is not a about the original questions. This is specifically for people who got here with the "normal" problem of having a crash dump from a standard package where the package name is simply missing.

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  2. Apport only works for packages installed from the official Ubuntu repositories. You should report the bug in the developers bug tracker if they have any as how to reproduce it.

    I am not trying to report the bug to Ubuntu. I'm also not seeking to submit a bug report to any bug tracker. My goal is to read the crash report myself. That's really my only goal. Once I read the crash report in this particular case I'll email the dev. But in general, I want a tool that will let me read the crash reports generated by the standard tools installed on Ubuntu.

    Again, if the program isn't in the repositories, Ubuntu won't generate any crash report. The only way to view them is using the terminal, ftrace, gdb, etc. You should attach a debugger to the program in case of binaries (C/C++, etc) or reading the trace error in case of interpreters (Python, Perl, etc.). apport ignores any crash if the binaries don't comes from the repositories. But, Ubuntu will alert you that a program crashed whenever it comes from repos or you build it yourself.

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