How to report a bug in Devuan

Important things to note before sending

Please don't report multiple unrelated bugs - especially ones in different packages - in a single bug report. It makes our lives much easier if you send separate reports.

You should check if your bug report has already been filed by someone else before submitting it. Lists of currently outstanding bugs are available on the World Wide Web and elsewhere - see other documents for details. You can submit your comments to an existing bug report #<number> by sending e-mail to <number>@bugs.devuan.org

Also remember that bugs in unforked packages (those that Devuan uses directly from Debian) should usually be reported to Debian's BTS unless you think you have found a Devuan specific problem.

If you can't seem to determine which package contains the problem, please send e-mail to the [email protected] asking for advice.

If you'd like to send a copy of your bug report to additional recipients (such as mailing lists), you shouldn't use the usual e-mail headers, but a different method, described below.

Sending the bug report using an automatic bug report tool

There is a program that was developed in Debian to help reporting bug reports, it's called reportbug. It will guide you through the bug reporting process step by step, and probably ease filing bugs that way.

reportbug can also be used to report bugs in unforked packages directly to Debian's BTS. See the --bts option. If you don't have an SMTP smarthost available, you may also need the --smtphost option.

Emacs users can also use the debian-bug command provided by the debian-el or elpa-debian-el packages. When called with M-x debian-bug, it will ask for all necessary information in a similar way to reportbug.

Sending the bug report via e-mail

Send mail to [email protected], as described below.

Of course, like with any email, you should include a clear, descriptive Subject line in your main mail header. The subject you give will be used as the initial bug title in the tracking system, so please try to make it informative!

You need to put a pseudo-header at the start of the body of the message. That means that the first line of the message body should say:

Package: <something>

Replace <something> with the name of the package which has the bug.

The second line of the message should say:

Version: <something>

Replace <something> with the version of the package. Please don't include any text here other than the version itself, as the bug tracking system relies on this field to work out which releases are affected by the bug.

You need to supply a correct Package line in the pseudo-header in order for the bug tracking system to deliver the message to the package's maintainer.

The pseudo-header fields should start at the very start of their lines.

Please include in your report:

The exact and complete text of any error messages printed or logged. This is very important!
Exactly what you typed or did to demonstrate the problem.
A description of the incorrect behaviour: exactly what behaviour you were expecting, and what you observed. A transcript of an example session is a good way of showing this.
A suggested fix, or even a patch, if you have one.
Details of the configuration of the program with the problem. Include the complete text of its configuration files.

Include any detail that seems relevant - you are in very little danger of making your report too long by including too much information. If they are small please include in your report any files you were using to reproduce the problem (uuencoding them if they may contain odd characters etc.).

Example

A bug report, with mail header, looks something like this:

  To: [email protected]
  From: [email protected]
  Subject: Hello says `goodbye'

  Package: hello
  Version: 1.3-16

  When I invoke `hello' without arguments from an ordinary shell
  prompt it prints `goodbye', rather than the expected `hello, world'.
  Here is a transcript:

  goodbye

usr/bin/hello
  goodbye
   suggest that the output string, in hello.c, be corrected.

  I am using Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, kernel 2.2.17-pre-patch-13
  and libc6 2.1.3-10.

Sending copies of bug reports to other addresses

Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to somewhere else besides the mailing list and the package maintainer, which is where they are normally sent.

You could do this by CC'ing your bug report to the other address(es), but then the other copies would not have the bug report number put in the Reply-To field and the Subject line. When the recipients reply they will probably preserve the [email protected] entry in the header and have their message filed as a new bug report. This leads to many duplicated reports.

The right way to do this is to use the X-Debbugs-CC header. Add a line like this to your message's mail header (not to the pseudo header with the Package field):

  X-Debbugs-CC: [email protected]

This will cause the bug tracking system to send a copy of your report to the address(es) in the X-Debbugs-CC line as well as to any mailing list.

Avoid sending such copies to the addresses of other bug reports, as they will be caught by the checks that prevent mail loops. There is relatively little point in using X-Debbugs-CC for this anyway, as the bug number added by that mechanism will just be replaced by a new one; use an ordinary CC header instead.

This feature can often be combined usefully with mailing quiet - see below.

Severity levels

If a report is of a particularly serious bug, or is merely a feature request that, you can set the severity level of the bug as you report it. This is not required, however, and the developers will assign an appropriate severity level to your report if you do not.

To assign a severity level, put a line like this one in the pseudo-header:

Severity: <severity>

Replace <severity> with one of the available severity levels, as described in the developers' documentation.

Assigning tags

You can set tags on a bug as you are reporting it. For example, if you are including a patch with your bug report, you may wish to set the patch tag. This is not required, and the developers will set tags on your report as and when it is appropriate.

To set tags, put a line like this one in the pseudo-header:

Tags: <tags>

Replace <tags> with one or more of the available tags, as described in the developers' documentation. Separate multiple tags with commas, spaces, or both.

User: <username>
Usertags: <usertags>

Replace <usertags> with one or more usertags. Separate multiple tags with commas, spaces, or both. If you specify a username, that users tags will be set. Otherwise, the email address of the sender will be used as the username

Not forwarding to the mailing list - minor bug reports

If a bug report is minor (for example, a documentation typo or other trivial build problem), or you're submitting many reports at once, send them to [email protected] or [email protected]. maintonly will send the report on to the package maintainer (provided you supply a correct Package line in the pseudo-header and the maintainer is known), and quiet will not forward it anywhere at all but only file it as a bug (useful if, for example, you are submitting many similar bugs and want to post only a summary).

If you do this the bug system will set the Reply-To of any forwarded message so that replies will by default be processed in the same way as the original report.

Acknowledgements

Normally, the bug system will return an acknowledgement to you by e-mail when you report a new bug or submit additional information to an existing bug. If you want to suppress this acknowledgement, include an X-Debbugs-No-Ack header in your e-mail (the contents of this header do not matter; however, it must be in the mail header and not in the pseudo-header with the Package field). If you report a new bug with this header, you will need to check the web interface yourself to find the bug number.

Note that this header will not suppress acknowledgements from the [email protected] mailserver, since those acknowledgements may contain error messages which should be read and acted upon.

bug reports against unknown packages

If the bug tracking system doesn't know who the maintainer of the relevant package is it'll forward the report to the mailing list even if maintonly was used.

When sending to [email protected] or nnn[email protected] you should make sure that the bug report is assigned to the right package, by putting a correct Package at the top of an original submission of a report, or by using the [email protected] service to (re)assign the report appropriately first if it isn't correct already.

Other pages: