How to report a bug in Debian
Send mail to submit@bugs.debian.org, as described below.
Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in
different packages - in one message. Also, please don't mail your bug
report to any mailing lists or recipients other than submit@bugs (for
details of how to do this right, see below).
Lists of currently-outstanding bugs are available on the World Wide
Web and elsewhere - see other documents for details.
You should put a pseudo-header at the start of the body of the
message, with the Package: and Version: lines giving the name and
version of the Debian package which has the buggy program. (You can
get these using dpkg --search and dpkg --list; see dpkg --help.) _See
below for further requirements_.
There are some pseudo-packages available for putting in the Package
line when reporting a bug in something other than an actual Debian
software package. There is a list of these on the bugs WWW pages.
Example
A bug report, with mail header, looks something like this:
To: submit@bugs.debian.org
From: diligent@testing.linux.org
Subject: Hello says `goodbye'
Package: hello
Version: 1.3-2
When I invoke `hello' without arguments from an ordinary shell
prompt it prints `goodbye', rather than the expected `hello, world'.
Here is a transcript:
$ hello
goodbye
$ /usr/bin/hello
goodbye
$
I suggest that the output string, in hello.c, be corrected.
I am using Debian 1.1, kernel version 1.3.99.15z
and libc 5.2.18.3.2.1.3-beta.
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.
* The version of the whole Debian system you are using.
* What kernel version you're using (type uname -a).
* What shared C library you're using (type ls -l /lib/libc.so.5).
* Any other details of your Linux system, if it seems appropriate.
For example, if you had a problem with a Debian Perl script, you
would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary (perl -v).
* Appropriate details of the hardware in your system. If you're
reporting a problem with a device driver please list _all_ the
hardware in your system, as problems are often caused by IRQ and
I/O address conflicts.
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.).
Sending copies of bug reports to other addresses
Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to somewhere
else besides debian-devel 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 submit@bugs.debian.org 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-Debian-CC header. Add a
line like this to your message's mail header (not to the psuedo header
with the Package field):
X-Debian-CC: other-list@cosmic.edu
This will cause the bug tracking system to send a copy of your report
to the address(es) in the X-Debian-CC line as well as to debian-devel.
This feature can often be combined usefully with mailing quiet@bugs -
see below.
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 maintonly@bugs or quiet@bugs. 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.
Unknown packages or bugs with no Package key
If the bug tracking system doesn't know who the maintainer of the
relevant package is it'll forward the report to debian-devel even if
maintonly was used.
When sending to maintonly@bugs or nnn-maintonly@bugs 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 control@bugs service to (re)assign the report
appropriately first if it isn't correct already.
Using dpkg to find the package and version for the report
If you are reporting a bug in a command, you can find out which
package installed it by using dpkg --search. You can find out which
version of a package you have installed by using dpkg --list or dpkg
--status.
For example:
$ which dpkg
/usr/bin/dpkg
$ type dpkg
dpkg is hashed (/usr/bin/dpkg)
$ dpkg --search /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
$ dpkg --search '*/dpkg'
dpkg: /usr/doc/copyright/dpkg
dpkg: /var/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/doc/dpkg
$ dpkg --list dpkg
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-===============-==============-============================================
ii dpkg 1.2.9elf Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
$ dpkg --status dpkg
Package: dpkg
Essential: yes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: base
Maintainer: Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>
Version: 1.2.9elf
Replaces: dpkgname
Pre-Depends: libc5 (>= 5.2.18-2), ncurses3.0
Conflicts: dpkgname
Description: Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
This package contains the programs which handle the installation and
removal of packages on your system.
.
The primary interface for the dpkg suite is the `dselect' program;
a more low-level and less user-friendly interface is available in
the form of the `dpkg' command.
$
_________________________________________________________________
Ian Jackson / owner@bugs.debian.org. 3rd July 1996.