[Bug 1821412] Re: "System program problem" report button does nothing

[Dan Bungert]

Hi Bryan,                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                         
I advise against SRUing the current patch to focal, based on the following:                                              
1) I have not been able to reproduce the original problem on focal - but could                                           
see it on disco                                                                                                          
2) The changelog for the fix states                                                                                      
  - Wrap pkexec call in /bin/sh to workaround requirement                                                                
    that PPID not be 1. (LP: #1821412)                                                                                     
  - Don't use G_SPAWN_DO_NOT_REAP_CHILD in order to avoid                                                                
    zombie processes.                                                                                                    
3) PPID == 1 is a valid concern, given this code from polkit-1 pkexec.c:                                                   /* Figure out the parent process */                                                                                      pid_of_caller = getppid ();                                                                                              if (pid_of_caller == 1)                                                                                                
    {                                                                                                                    
      /* getppid() can return 1 if the parent died (meaning that we are reaped                                           
       * by /sbin/init); In that case we simpy bail.                                                                     
       */                                                                                                                      
      g_printerr ("Refusing to render service to dead parents.\n");                                                      
      goto out;                                                                                                          
    }                                                                                                                    
4) Without the patch, ppid is the systemd pid (not 1)                                                                    
5) With the patch, ppid is still systemd (and still not 1), which suggests that                                          
the change doesn't make the situation any better - and extracting the                                                    
before/after usage of g_spawn_async into a test program provides equivalent                                              
results.                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                         
Let's discuss further if you have any concerns.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1821412

Title:
  "System program problem" report button does nothing

Status in update-notifier package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in update-notifier source package in Eoan:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Test Case
  ---------
  sudo xeyes &
  sudo kill -11 $PID from above
  receive crash notification
  click "Report problem..."
  Observe nothing happen

  Research
  --------
  crash.c calls the following '/usr/bin/pkexec /usr/share/apport/apport-gtk' and this works if I call it manually so something must be awry in crash.c.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04
  Package: update-notifier 3.192.14
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-7.8-generic 5.0.0
  Uname: Linux 5.0.0-7-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu23
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: MATE
  Date: Fri Mar 22 13:46:38 2019
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-10 (223 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
  SourcePackage: update-notifier
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to disco on 2019-02-28 (21 days ago)

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