Running apport-retrace in chroot

Bug #86938 reported by David Farning
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
apport (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Martin Pitt

Bug Description

Binary package hint: apport

One of the challenges faced by the mozillateam is that the same versions of packages must be installed on the system running -retrace as on the original reporters system. One method around this problem is to run -retrace in a chroot.

I have found that it works pretty well to run -retrace via pbuilder. Kind of a kludge, but it works. Unless you have a better solution. I think pbuilder can be hacked enough to make it work.

Thanks
David Farning

Revision history for this message
Kees Cook (kees) wrote : Re: [Bug 86938] Running apport-retrace in chroot

I've found schroot on LVM snapshots[1] much easier to use than pbuilder
for doing my retraces. However, I know pitti has been working on
incorporating support for fakechroot, which will be very cool. :)

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SbuildLVMHowto

Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

In fact I am already working on tools that provide apport-retrace in chroots (also with fakeroot/fakechroot, so that we can run it in the data center without any root privileges).

Changed in apport:
assignee: nobody → pitti
status: Unconfirmed → In Progress
Revision history for this message
David Farning (dfarning) wrote : Re: [Bug 86938] Re: Running apport-retrace in chroot

Very nice
--
David Farning <email address hidden>

Revision history for this message
Martin Pitt (pitti) wrote :

apport (0.63) feisty; urgency=low

  New feature: fakechroot support for apport-retrace

  * bin/apport-retrace:
    - Simplify program design and throw away the complicated debug symbol
      sandbox generation, along with the -d and -C options. Instead, directly
      install the missing packages and ddebs with apt. This makes the tool more
      suitable for running in chroots and has often been requested anyway.
    - Add option -u/--unpack-only which causes additionally installed packages
      to be unpacked without being configured and purged again after
      retracing. This allows apport-retrace to work under fakechroot and has
      the nice side effect of speeding up package installation (we do not care
      about configuration for retracing anyway).
  * man/apport-retrace.1: Update description for the new behaviour, drop
    documentation of the -d and -C options, and add documentation of -u.
  * Add apport/chroot.py: Class for representing and working with chroots;
    this uses the fakeroot and fakechroot libraries when being called as
    non-root.
  * Add bin/apport-chroot: CLI frontend for doing various things with
    chroots (including fakeroot/fakechroot support from the Chroot class). For
    now, this implements:
    - create a chroot (tarball or directory)
    - dist-upgrade a particular or all chroots
    - apport-retrace a bug or Apport report file
  * setup.py: Ship apport-chroot in scripts directory.
  * Add a new package apport-retrace which ships apport-retrace and
    apport-chroot and carries all the heavier dependencies (binutils,
    python-launchpad-bugs, python-apt, etc.). Drop the latter two dependencies
    from the apport package. This allows us to install the apport-retrace
    package in fakechroots (not possible with apport itself) and avoid
    unnecessary dependencies on normal desktop installations.

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 5 Mar 2007 11:20:36 +0100

Changed in apport:
status: In Progress → Fix Released
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