[karmic] in KDE apport does not open the browser to report a bug

I was wondering why my system was starting to swap.... and discovered that I have 112 of these processes running,
each consuming between 1MB and 25MB of memory (over 2GB in total.) No on screen notifications, and nothing in the task bar.

Also running Karmic alpha 3. Not sure what bugs is causing the apports to be generated, but apport itself seems like a bigger bug at the moment.

apport-kde as it is today in Karmic is useless, as it is not possible to report a bug and we are loosing bug reports due to this.

I had to install apport-gtk in order to be able to report bugs again. This really needs to be addressed before Karmic beta if we want to collect feedback from our users.

I am tempted to close this bug because the bad behavior of apport has changed. The situation described in this bug happens no more, instead I get Bug #417688.

Bug #417688 is gone. Now the situation is back the same as in the description of this bug.

Now bug reporting seems to be perfectly fine. I am closing this bug.

Unfortunately, apport in KDE again fails to open the browser.

I am seeing this problem today.

This problem seems to occur if I use ubuntu-bug in the command line or with the majority of instances where apport catches a crash. However, one time when VLC crashed, it did work, but as I mentioned, in the majority of cases, it fails to open in a browser to report a bug.

I can confirm this on Karmic -- running ubuntu-bug to start ubuntu-kde and clicking send, apport just hangs.

Tried to find out a little more regarding this.

ubuntu-bug just spawns an ubuntu-kde process, as it should; when killing ubuntu-bug ubuntu-kde stays in the system, so that's not the problem.

The problem is that ubuntu-kde, after trying to send, seems to freeze/halt in a poll():

poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 4, 18779) = 1 ([{fd=8, revents=POLLIN}])
read(8, "\34\257\311 \247\1\0\0\325\1\0\0\237\337\340\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0P\317)\1\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 4, 18726) = 1 ([{fd=8, revents=POLLIN}])
read(8, "\34K\311 \247\1\0\0\333\1\0\0\271\337\340\0\0\320)\1\0\0\0\0P\317)\1\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
read(8, 0x29f25e4, 4096) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=9, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN}], 4, 18699^C <unfinished ...>
Process 2869 detached

This last poll() never finishes, probably because it waits for GUI input when all windows are gone. During this, apport-bug just stays around wait()ing for the apport-kde process.

This happens after apport-kde just sent the bug report; the next step would be opening the browser, which apport-cli perfectly succeeds to do.

Do you get the sending progress dialog? The problem I am seeing is that it never gets that far. In part this is because an incorrect result is returned from apport-kde when submitting a non-crash bug -- fixing that makes things work (patch attached) but it shouldn't be hanging as is anyway.

I can confirm this.

To reproduce:
/usr/share/apport/apport-kde apport-kde

Nothing happens after clicking "Send", only the process stays around:
user 21714 8.1 2.0 138584 64264 pts/2 S+ 17:28 0:03 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/apport/apport-kde apport-kde

I think I have a fix for this, but now I'm running into bug 403361.

Committed Yuriy's fix to apport trunk r1608, thank you! Works fine here.

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 1.9.1-0ubuntu2

---------------
apport (1.9.1-0ubuntu2) karmic; urgency=low

  * kde/bugreport.ui: Select "complete report" option by default, to actually
    be able to file bugs if the options are not shown. Thanks to Yuriy Kozlov!
    Fix cherrypicked from trunk. (LP: #405378)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:18:28 +0200

Just submitted my first bug with apport-kde and it works! Yuriy, thanks for fixing this important bug!

I have succeeded in reporting bugs with apport (with Karmic beta) but the process itself keeps spawning!
Also tried killing all instances but one, but some seconds later it started running again (several times).
Any clues?

The hang is not fixed, I'm a bit stumped on how to make it neither hang or crash without rewriting a lot and possibly changing the UI. So that's why you get the leftover process. Why it respawns when you kill it, I don't know. Apport gets disabled post-release so it shouldn't be *too* big a deal and we'll fix for Lucid.

Please do. :D