.TH apport\-bug 1 "September 08, 2009" "Martin Pitt"

.SH NAME

apport\-bug, apport\-collect \- file a bug report using Apport, or update an existing report

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B apport\-bug

.B apport\-bug
.I symptom \fR|\fI pid \fR|\fI package \fR|\fI program path \fR|\fI .apport/.crash file

.B apport\-collect
.I report-number

.SH DESCRIPTION

.B apport\-bug
reports problems to your distribution's bug tracking system,
using Apport to collect a lot of local information about your system to help
the developers to fix the problem and avoid unnecessary question/answer
turnarounds.

You should always start with running
.B apport\-bug
without arguments, which will present a list of known symptoms. This will
generate the most useful bug reports.

If there is no matching symptom, you need to determine the affected program or
package yourself. You can provide a package name or program name to
.B apport\-bug\fR,
e. g.:

.RS 4
.nf
apport\-bug firefox
apport\-bug /usr/bin/unzip
.fi
.RE

In order to add more information to the bug report that could
help the developers to fix the problem, you can also specify a process
ID instead:

.RS 4
.nf
$ pidof gnome-terminal
5139
$ apport\-bug 5139
.fi
.RE

As a special case, to report a bug against the Linux kernel, you do not need to
use the full package name (such as linux-image-2.6.28-4-generic); you can just use

.RS 4
.nf
apport\-bug linux
.fi
.RE

to report a bug against the currently running kernel.

Finally, you can use this program to report a previously stored crash or bug report:

.RS 4
.nf
apport\-bug /var/crash/_bin_bash.1000.crash
apport\-bug /tmp/apport.firefox.332G9t.apport
.fi
.RE

Bug reports can be written to a file by using the
.B \-\-save
option  or by using
.B apport\-cli\fR.

.B apport\-bug
detects whether KDE or Gnome is running and calls
.B apport\-gtk
or 
.B apport\-kde
accordingly. If neither is available, or the session does not run
under X11, it calls
.B apport\-cli
for a command-line client.

.SH UPDATING EXISTING REPORTS

.B apport\-collect
collects the same information as apport\-bug, but adds it to an already
reported problem you have submitted. This is useful if the report was
not originally filed through Apport, and the developers ask you to attach
information from your system.

.SH OPTIONS
Please see the 
.BR apport\-cli(1)
manpage for possible options.

.SH ENVIRONMENT

.TP
.B APPORT_IGNORE_OBSOLETE_PACKAGES
Apport refuses to create bug reports if the package or any dependency is not
current. If this environment variable is set, this check is waived. Experts who
will thoroughly check the situation before filing a bug report can define this
in their
.B ~/.bashrc
or temporarily on the command line when calling
.B apport\-bug\fR.

.SH FILES
apport crash files are written in to 
.B /var/crash
by default, named uniquely per binary name and user id.  They are not deleted
after being sent to the bug tracker (but from cron when they get older than 7
days). You can extract the core file (if any) and other information using 
.B apport-unpack.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR apport\-cli (1),
.BR apport\-unpack (1)

.SH AUTHOR
.B apport
and the accompanying tools are developed by Martin Pitt
<martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>.