                         How to report a bug in Debian

Important things to note before sending

   Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in
   different packages - in a single bug report.

   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.debian.org

   If you can't seem to determine which package contains the problem,
   please send e-mail to the Debian user mailing list asking for advice.
   If your problem doesn't relate just to one package but some general
   Debian service, there are several pseudo-packages or even mailing
   lists that you can use to relay your message to us instead.

   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 are two programs that we have developed in Debian to help
   reporting bug reports, they're called bug and reportbug. Both of them
   will guide you through the bug reporting process step by step, and
   probably ease filing bugs that way.

Sending the bug report via e-mail

   Send email to submit@bugs.debian.org, as described below.

   Of course, like 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 lines 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.

   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. See this example for information on how to find
   this information.

   The pseudo-header fields should start at the very start of their
   lines. The bug system does not currently understand MIME or PGP mail
   properly and may fail to recognise the pseudo-headers in such mail.

   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 versions of any packages on which the buggy package depends.
     * What kernel version you're using (type uname -a), your shared C
       library (type ls -l /lib/libc.so.6 or dpkg -s libc6 | grep
       ^Version), and any other details about your Debian system, if it
       seems appropriate. For example, if you had a problem with a Perl
       script, you would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary
       (type perl -v or dpkg -s perl-5.005 | grep ^Version:).
     * 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.).

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: 1.3-16

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

  $ hello
  goodbye
  $ /usr/bin/hello
  goodbye
  $

  I 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 debian-bugs-dist 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-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: 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-Debbugs-CC line as well as to
   debian-bugs-dist.

   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.

Different submission addresses (minor or mass bug reports)

   If a bug report is minor, for example, a documentation typo or a
   trivial build problem, please adjust the severity appropriately and
   send it to maintonly@bugs instead of submit@bugs. maintonly will
   forward the report to the package maintainer only, it won't forward it
   to the BTS mailing lists.

   If you're submitting many reports at once, you should definitely use
   maintonly@bugs so that you don't cause too much redundant traffic on
   the BTS mailing lists. Before submitting many similar bugs you may
   also want to post a summary on debian-bugs-dist.

   If wish to report a bug to the bug tracking system that's already been
   sent to the maintainer, you can use quiet@bugs. Bugs sent to
   quiet@bugs will not be forward anywhere, only filed.

   When you use different submission addresses, the bug tracking system
   will set the Reply-To of any forwarded message so that the replies
   will by default be processed in the same way as the original report.
   That means that, for example, replies to maintonly will go to
   nnn-maintonly@bugs instead of nnn@bugs, unless of course one overrides
   this manually.

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 debian-bugs-dist 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 apt-get
/usr/bin/apt-get
$ type apt-get
apt-get is /usr/bin/apt-get
$ dpkg --search /usr/bin/apt-get
apt: /usr/bin/apt-get
$ dpkg --list apt
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| 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  apt            0.3.19         Advanced front-end for dpkg
$ dpkg --status apt
Package: apt
Status: install ok installed
Priority: standard
Section: base
Installed-Size: 1391
Maintainer: APT Development Team <deity@lists.debian.org>
Version: 0.3.19
Replaces: deity, libapt-pkg-doc (<< 0.3.7), libapt-pkg-dev (<< 0.3.7)
Provides: libapt-pkg2.7
Depends: libapt-pkg2.7, libc6 (>= 2.1.2), libstdc++2.10
Suggests: dpkg-dev
Conflicts: deity
Description: Advanced front-end for dpkg
 This is Debian's next generation front-end for the dpkg package manager.
 It provides the apt-get utility and APT dselect method that provides a
 simpler, safer way to install and upgrade packages.
 .
 APT features complete installation ordering, multiple source capability
 and several other unique features, see the Users Guide in
 /usr/doc/apt/guide.text.gz
     _________________________________________________________________

    Debian BTS administrators <owner@bugs.debian.org>
    Debian bug tracking system
    Copyright © 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1994-97 Ian Jackson, 1997 nCipher
    Corporation Ltd, 1995 Steven Brenner.
   ______________________________________________________________________

