[Bug 729099] Re: System state for crashes is sometimes collected too late

[Marcus Tomlinson]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If
this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us
know.

** Changed in: apport (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Incomplete

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Title:
  System state for crashes is sometimes collected too late

Status in apport package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apport

  This is sort of a reconsideration of bug 62542, wherein much of the
  work of collecting system state for crashes was moved to the frontend.
  This gave us some benefits:

  - The user isn't unexpectedly subjected to lots of random I/O (and thus an unresponsive system)
  - We have the opportunity to interact with the user while collecting system state (including running sudo)
  - We don't waste time collecting data which won't be used for a bug report

  However, it also created a problem: the system state may change
  between the time when the crash happens, and the time when the
  frontend is run. This period can be days or weeks. System updates may
  be installed. The system may be rebooted. Hardware may be added or
  removed. These can all lead to incorrect data in bug reports.

  This issue applies to data collected by apport itself (such as package
  versions) as well as by hooks (such as log files).

  In my view, the closer the system state to the time of the crash, the
  more useful it will be in processing bug reports, especially with
  automated tools which need to rely on accurate data for things like
  package versions.

  I don't know how big a problem this is in practice, but I often think
  about it when I'm filing a bug and I *know* the system state is wrong.
  :-/

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: apport 1.19-0ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-4.31-generic 2.6.38-rc5
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-4-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  CrashReports:
   600:0:0:362548:2011-03-04 13:45:13.000000000 +0000:2011-03-04 13:45:13.000000000 +0000:/var/crash/sysvinit-utils.0.crash
   600:1000:1000:7462257:2011-02-24 21:31:17.000000000 +0000:2011-02-24 21:51:52.000000000 +0000:/var/crash/_usr_bin_nautilus.1000.crash
   600:0:0:362566:2011-03-04 13:45:13.000000000 +0000:2011-03-04 13:45:12.000000000 +0000:/var/crash/keyboard-configuration.0.crash
  Date: Fri Mar  4 14:09:43 2011
  PackageArchitecture: all
  SourcePackage: apport
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-02-10 (21 days ago)

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