                         How to report a bug in Debian

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

   Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in
   different packages - in one message. Also, please don't mail your bug
   report to any mailing lists or recipients other than submit@bugs (for
   details of how to do this right, see below).

   Lists of currently-outstanding bugs are available on the World Wide
   Web and elsewhere - see other documents for details.

   You should put a pseudo-header at the start of the body of the
   message, with the Package: and Version: lines giving the name and
   version of the package which has the bug. (The pseudo-header fields
   must start at the very start of their lines, and the bug system does
   not currently understand them if they're buried in MIMEd or PGPd
   mail.) (You can get these using dpkg --search and dpkg --list; see
   dpkg --help. See below for further requirements.

   There are some pseudo-packages available for putting in the Package
   line when reporting a bug in something other than an actual Debian
   software package. There is a list of these on the bugs WWW pages.

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: 1.3-2

  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 1.1, kernel version 1.3.99.15z
  and libc 5.2.18.3.2.1.3-beta.

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).
     * What shared C library you're using (type ls -l /lib/libc.so.6).
     * Any other details of your Linux system, if it seems appropriate.
       For example, if you had a problem with a Debian Perl script, you
       would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary (perl -v).
     * 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.).

   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 !

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 Severity: severity line in the
   pseudo-header, together with Package and Version. The severity levels
   available are described in the developers' documentation.

Not forwarding to the mailing list - minor bug reports

   If a bug report is minor (for example, a documentation typo or other
   trivial build problem), or you're submitting many reports at once,
   send them to maintonly@bugs or quiet@bugs. maintonly will send the
   report on to the package maintainer (provided you supply a correct
   Package line in the pseudo-header and the maintainer is known), and
   quiet will not forward it anywhere at all but only file it as a bug
   (useful if, for example, you are submitting many similar bugs and want
   to post only a summary).

   If you do this the bug system will set the Reply-To of any forwarded
   message so that replies will by default be processed in the same way
   as the original report.

  Unknown packages or bugs with no Package key

   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 dpkg
/usr/bin/dpkg
$ type dpkg
dpkg is hashed (/usr/bin/dpkg)
$ dpkg --search /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
$ dpkg --search '*/dpkg'
dpkg: /usr/doc/copyright/dpkg
dpkg: /var/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/bin/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/lib/dpkg
dpkg: /usr/doc/dpkg
$ dpkg --list dpkg
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| 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  dpkg            1.2.9elf       Package maintenance system for Debian GNU/Li
nux
$ dpkg --status dpkg
Package: dpkg
Essential: yes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: base
Maintainer: Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>
Version: 1.2.9elf
Replaces: dpkgname
Pre-Depends: libc5 (>= 5.2.18-2), ncurses3.0
Conflicts: dpkgname
Description: Package maintenance system for Debian GNU/Linux
 This package contains the programs which handle the installation and
 removal of packages on your system.
 .
 The primary interface for the dpkg suite is the `dselect' program;
 a more low-level and less user-friendly interface is available in
 the form of the `dpkg' command.

$
     _________________________________________________________________

    Darren Benham / owner@bugs.debian.org. 12 Sep 1999.
    Debian bug tracking system
    copyright 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1994-7 Ian Jackson, 1997 nCipher
    Corporation Ltd, 1995 Steven Brenner.
    Available under the GPL.
     _________________________________________________________________

