From Fedora Project Wiki
DATE TIME WHERE
2009-08-20 From 12:00 to 21:00 UTC (8am - 5pm EDT, 14:00 - 23:00 CET) #fedora-test-day (webirc)


What to test?

Today's installment of Fedora Test Day will focus on Automated Bug Reporting Tool (ABRT). This tool should help non-power users with bug reporting, making it as easy as a few mouse clicks. ABRT is a daemon that watches for application crashes. When a crash occurs, it collects the crash data (core file, application's command line etc.) and takes action according to the type of application that crashed and according to the configuration in the abrt.conf configuration file. Bottom line: do not hunt the bugs with a pitchforks, rather use bugzappers/big light source to draw them from the dark and kill them easily at close range.

ABRT should be easy for users and very useful for developers and admins. Ease of crash/bug reporting and quick response from maintainers based on info from ABRT should make Fedora more stable and thus more attractive for users.

Who's available

The following people will be available for testing, workarounds, bug fixes, and general discussion:

What's needed to be able to test

  • A system with some kind of network connection
  • Fully updated Rawhide or Fedora 11 installation with ABRT installed or special ABRT TestDay Live image (i686 or x86_64)

How to install ABRT

If you do not use the provided LiveCD, but you use your own Fedora 11 or Rawhide installation, you need to install latest ABRT packages by running following commands:

First add correct repository:

  • Fedora 11:
wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/abrt.repo  http://jmoskovc.fedorapeople.org/abrt.repo
  • Rawhide:
wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/abrt-rawhide.repo  http://jmoskovc.fedorapeople.org/abrt-rawhide.repo

Now install/update ABRT:

su
rm -f /var/cache/abrt/abrt-db
yum remove kerneloops 
yum install abrt-desktop
reboot

Please do not forget to reboot. It's needed after installing ABRT.

ABRT packages were updated
Latest package version for Fedora 11 is 0.0.7.2, for Rawhide and LiveCD it is 0.0.7.1. If yum doesn't see the update, you have to yum clean all.

Live Image

Optionally, you may download a non-destructive rawhide live image for your architecture with latest ABRT pre-installed. Tips on using a live image are available at FedoraLiveCD. For Fedora on USB flash disk consult FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo.

Architecture SHA256
i686 635e295f50abf3fc7fc765c658ce68e86428c5812f3ca0e648fa26d33f90cd86
x86_64 542047d8d09a4bd2ec9a8da7e2ac3b17e862ba88e4014aa00c153c7d6ea86622
Check if you have latest images
There were older images available for some time, but when they have been updated with newer ABRT version, we produced new ones. Please make sure you have the latest image by verifying the checksum (run sha256sum testday-20090820*.iso ). Thanks.

How to test

Test Cases

Follow each of following ABRT Test Cases and sum up the results in the tables below. Report your findings also in Bugzilla or ABRT Trac (enter FAS username/password). Please provide links to bugreports in results table.

  1. QA:Testcase_ABRT - default crash report
  2. QA:Testcase_ABRT_Logger - Logger plugin
  3. QA:Testcase_ABRT_Bugzilla - Bugzilla plugin
  4. QA:Testcase_ABRT_Mailx - Mailx plugin
  5. QA:TestCase ABRT BlackList - package blacklist
  6. QA:Testcase ABRT GPG check - reporting crashes of signed packages only
  7. QA:TestCase ABRT GPG Keys - additional keys for signing packages
  8. QA:Testcase ABRT Actions and Reporters - testing of action/reporting plugins
  9. QA:Testcase ABRT Cron - periodical plugins using Cron
  10. QA:Testcase ABRT Plugins - configuring plugins
  11. QA:Testcase ABRT CLI - CLI interface
  12. QA:Testcase ABRT kernel - kernel oops
  13. QA:Testcase ABRT python - python tracebacks

Known issues

Consult list of active tickets before reporting an issue. The most common issues are listed below:

  • Applet (or other icons) in notification area is not visible - that's a known bug in Rawhide, please try to run killall notification-area-applet and reload it a few times, it may help
  • Recreate report for same crash - if you want to recreate a report of same crash, you have to delete it using button in GUI and make a crash gain
  • Nothing happened? - if it seems to do nothing, try to disable PGP checking and restart daemon
  • Graphical warnings - gui writes some gtk warnings (it's gtk's fault)
  • rpm %requires - it needs rpm >= 4.7.0-1
  • bug-buddy or other crash catching tools might take precedence over ABRT if you are using them. ABRT will catch only crashes which are not caught by other tools.
  • Cannot catch OpenOffice.org, KDE and Java - these applications have a built-in method for capturing failures so it is the same as with BugBuddy etc.
  • if you're updating from version <= 0.0.5-6 - make sure you remove /var/cache/abrt/abrt-db (we've changed the db format and not yet implemented automatic updating mechanism)
  • GUI doesn't inform you about success of failure of a reporting. - But you can find results in ABRT's db (default path /var/cache/abrt, it is sqlite3 db, table name is "abrt") - it should be fixed, but in case it's not try to look for these files

Test Results

Issues that were identified

Don't report duplicates, thanks :) Just write a comment to the bugzilla that you have also noticed the bug.

Tester Description Bug references BZ status
User:kparal Right click on applet hides the applet but does nothing RHBZ #518386
User:guaneryu OpenGPGCheck option takes no effect RHBZ #518396
User:czhang testcase #1: no item can be selected after clicked abrt-gui icon if other user's application crashes. RHBZ #518409 CLOSED NOTABUG
User:mhlavink continuous reporting of one kernel oops RHBZ #518413
User:mhlavink ordinary user's applet shows up for root owned crashes RHBZ #518420
User:mhlavink abrt silently starts when plugin is configured but not installed RHBZ #518422
User:hdong testcase #8: CCpp:<APPNAME> doesn't work RHBZ #518414
User:azelinka report window larger that screen (no horizontal scrolling) RHBZ #518425
User:azelinka bugzilla plugin can't detect correct component for a bug RHBZ #518438
User:tpelka RunApp do not work - abrt-plugin-runapp installed RHBZ #518465
User:tpelka cannot use # in bugzilla password RHBZ #518459
User:dpravec it would be nice for some admins to be able to catch and process crashes of theirs own compiled (unpackaged, unsigned) applications. Not for Bugzilla plugin, but for some custom reporting/actions. Trac#73
User:dpravec when abrt is upgrading from older version, the old database is making it confused. Dont force users to rm the file manually, detect this during upgrade and migrate the database, or just backup it. Trac#74
User:tpelka Wouldn't be cool use keyring except plaintext passwords? TBD
User:azelinka user configuration of plugins doesn't survive service restart RHBZ #518457

Things that work alright

Tester Description
User:guaneryu
  • 1. Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 2. Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 3. Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 4. Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 5. Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 9. Followed the testcase description, added "5 = Logger" at the [cron] section, got expected result from "abrt -d" output
  • 10.Followed the testcase description, changed "MaxCrashReportsSize" to 0 and no crash could be detected
  • 11.Followed the testcase description, got the expected result
  • 12.Followed the testcase description, got the expected result from command line, and abrt-applet popped up a notification but no items listed in abrt-gui
User:kparal testcase #1 worked ok
User:hdong
  • 1.Testcase_ABRT get expected results, but some crashed process icon miss in abrt-gui item list, others show
  • 2.Testcase_ABRT_Logger PASS
  • 3.Testcase_ABRT_Bugzilla PASS
  • 4.Testcase_ABRT_Mailx PASS
  • 5.TestCase ABRT BlackList PASS
  • 9.Testcase ABRT Cron PASS
  • 10.Testcase ABRT Plugins get expected results, set MaxCrashReportsSize to 0,no crash could be detected
  • 11.Testcase ABRT CLI PASS
  • 12.Testcase ABRT kernel get expected results, abrt-applet poped up the notification but no items listed in abrt-gui
User:czhang testcase #2~#5, #9~#12 work as what expected.
User:twaugh Catching Python traceback