crash in search_bug_patterns()

hum, I was going to upload the crash file for Fireforox that was generated just before apport-gtk crashed, but I now realized it is about 27Mb big, not sure it is a good idea to send it.
My CPU is having a hard time feeding gedit to let me look at it right now.

The actual crash happens in apport.Report.search_bug_patterns(), but that exception is not propagated to the frontend. Instead of ignoring it, I'd rather like to see the actual exception. In the development version I fixed this to show the actual exception in the thread.

Paul, can you please copy the current firefox crash report to a place in your home directory, so that you can re-try this with a newer apport version that shows the actual error? After I uploaded a new version I'll give you more instructions. Thank you in advance!

This version should give a better error message:

 apport (0.36) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * gtk/apport-gtk.glade: Restore pulse step of progress bar (this apparently
     got destroyed when saving with Glade 3).
   * gtk/apport-gtk{,.glade}: Terminate the program properly when closing the
     progress dialog instead of exiting with an exception.
   * gtk/apport-gtk: Defer opening of the bug reporting window a bit so that
     it appears on top of the browser window. Also enable the task bar blinking
     for it when it is in the background.
   * gtk/apport-gtk.glade: Restore vertical padding of bug report dialog labels
     (another Glade 3 transition regression).
   * bin/apport-retrace, apport/report.py: Call gdb on InterpreterPath if
     present; calling it on a script does not yield anything useful. Add a test
     case to report.py.
   * debian/apport.init: Use mkdir -p instead of install -d, since install is
     not in /bin. Thanks to Kees Cook for catching this.
   * debian/control: Add missing python-apport dependency 'python-apt', which
     is not caught by ${python:Depends}.
   * gtk/apport-gtk: Catch MemoryError when loading a report and display an
     error dialog instead of just crashing. Closes: LP#76235
   * gtk/apport-gtk: Properly catch exceptions from the bug pattern check
     thread to avoid useless backtraces like in bug #75160.
   * gtk/apport-gtk: Catch exceptions from decoding of damaged reports and
     display an error message instead of crashing. Closes: LP#77149
   * apport/report.py: Add missing import of 'time' to test suite.

Paul, please install this version and then do

  touch /var/crash/*

in a terminal. This should re-raise apport-gtk for the crash report that caused apport-gtk to crash. Can you please attach the new apport-gtk crash report?

after sudo touch /var/crash/*
hum, I did it a bit wrongly I suppose, I clicked "report a bug" on
apport first. This cause it to make:
/var/crash/_usr_share_apport_apport-gtk.1000.crash (25.4 kb).

Then I clicked "report a bug" on firefox. And then a new crash on gtk-apport have happen, that seems to have overwrite the previous one:
/var/crash/_usr_share_apport_apport-gtk.1000.crash (26.0 kb).

Thanks for the new report, it's exactly what I was looking for.

Fixed in bzr head.

 apport (0.42) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   New feature: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ApportImprovements (kernel interface
   change):
 .
   * bin/apport: Support calling without arguments, to support new semantics
     agreed in the ApportImprovements spec: macro values (in particular, pid
     and signal number) are passed as environment variables.
   * preloadlib/libapport.c: Simulate new kernel behaviour described above.
   * debian/apport.init: Set the kernel's core_pattern sysctl to pipe to apport
     if the edgy-style 'crashdump-helper' sysctl helper does not exist.
 .
   Bug fixes:
 .
   * bin/apport-retrace: Beautify error message when report file is not
     accessible. Closes: LP#79568
   * apport/ui.py: Fix crash in the bug pattern search thread if we could
     not determine a package name. Closes: LP#77872
   * bin/apport: Only unlink the core dump if it still exists. Closes: LP#80866
   * gtk/apport-gtk.glade: Fix expand/fill attributes so that the expander gets
     all the space when resizing the window. Closes: LP#80987
   * problem_report.py, write_mime(): Make sure that multi-line values that go
     to the summary are terminated with a newline.
   * apport/ui.py: Fix error message invocation for reporting cloakroom upload
     failure.
   * problem_report.py, write_mime(): Fix off-by-one comparison of the 'inline
     text' treshold, so that apport's StacktraceTop field appears in bug
     summaries. Also fix a corner case in CR line ending handling. Check both
     things in the test suite.
   * gtk/apport-gtk: Add missing 'import subprocess.'. Closes: LP#81007
   * debian/control: Bump apport's and apport-gtk's dependency to python-apport
     to make sure that apport.ui is available. Closes: LP#81019
   * apport/ui.py: Add missing 'import pwd'. Closes: LP#81033
 .
   Minor improvements:
 .
   * apport/ui.py: Get the cloakroom ticket number from the
     X-Launchpad-Blob-Token HTTP header instead of parsing the resulting page.