All the apport crash reports are now "*** Error: Invalid problem report" - TypeError: startswith first arg must be bytes or a tuple of bytes, not str

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I got the same crashed when appport triggered automatically after a dkms crash caused by virtualbox module failing to build.

Screenshot of the dialog in attachment.

Example crash file.

Thanks, can reproduce with that .crash file.

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 2.2.4-0ubuntu1

---------------
apport (2.2.4-0ubuntu1) quantal; urgency=low

  * debian/tests/control: Simplify Depends: line by using "@" and dropping
    packages which are already dependencies of apport's packages.
  * debian/tests/control: Drop undefined "no-build-needed" feature.
  * New upstream bug fix release. Changes since our previous trunk snapshot:
    - apport-cli: Unbreak "keep" option. (LP: #1007826)
    - launchpad.py: Fix str vs. bytes crash for already known bugs.
      (LP: #1015788)
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:13:56 +0200

I am still seeing this issue, attached is the .crash file.

Thanks.

It does work for me with both apport-cli and apport-gtk with both Jean-Baptiste's and your .crash file with 2.2.4. I could reproduce the crash with 2.2.3 with both .crash files. So I cannot replicate this any more. Can you please give me the exact steps that you took to get this apport crash? With python-apport 2.2.4 installed, can you please run

  apport-bug /var/crash/_usr_share_apport_package-hooks_dkms_packages.py.0.crash

and see if it crashes?

Discussed in IRC, seems fixed for Dave as well.

It can still reproduce this defect with apport 2.2.4-0ubuntu1 and the following steps:

0. Remove all the crash files from /var/crash
1. Install and start accerciser. It will crash with LP:1010535
2. Run apport-cli against accerciser's crash file:
 $ apport-cli /var/crash/_usr_bin_accerciser.1000.crash
3. Select 'View report'

At least here apport-cli -c <whatever.crash> does now work (S), with one exception. A browser window must be already open. Otherwise -
*** Error: Network problem

Cannot connect to crash database, please check your Internet connection.

slice indices must be integers or None or have an __index__ method

apport-gtk continues to crash, could file report on??
The initial browser line is -
"apport-gtk crashed with configparser.InterpolationSyntaxError "

And in xsession-errors -
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 529, in <module>
    app.run_argv()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 569, in run_argv
    self.run_crash(self.options.crash_file, False)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 231, in run_crash
    response = self.ui_present_report_details(allowed_to_report)
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 221, in ui_present_report_details
    self.desktop_info = self.get_desktop_entry()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 1152, in get_desktop_entry
    result = dict(cp.items('Desktop Entry'))
  File "/usr/lib/python3.2/configparser.py", line 853, in items
    return [(option, value_getter(option)) for option in d.keys()]
  File "/usr/lib/python3.2/configparser.py", line 853, in <listcomp>
    return [(option, value_getter(option)) for option in d.keys()]
  File "/usr/lib/python3.2/configparser.py", line 850, in <lambda>
    section, option, d[option], d)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.2/configparser.py", line 391, in before_get
    self._interpolate_some(parser, option, L, value, section, defaults, 1)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.2/configparser.py", line 440, in _interpolate_some
    "found: %r" % (rest,))
configparser.InterpolationSyntaxError: '%' must be followed by '%' or '(', found: '%F'

Ah, I found what I did wrong in testing, sorry about that. Fixed properly in trunk now.

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 2.2.5-0ubuntu1

---------------
apport (2.2.5-0ubuntu1) quantal; urgency=low

  * New upstream bug fix release:
    - launchpad.py: Fix str vs. bytes crash for already known bugs, take 2.
       (LP: #1015788)
    - apport/ui.py, get_desktop_entry(): Disable interpolation, to correctly
      read desktop files with % signs. (LP: #1014341)
    - apport/ui.py: Fix rare crash if a report is already being updated in the
      background when the UI tries to update a previous version. (LP: #949196)
    - GTK and KDE UI tests: Avoid eternal hangs due to "this is not a distro
      package" error messages.
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:15:20 +0200