Introduction to Apport Retracing Service

Apport Retracing Service (ARS) is a Launchpad bot which automatically provides symbolic stack traces to Launchpad crash reports.

When a Ubuntu Community member submits a crash report to Launchpad, a variety of files are attached, one of which is the CoreDump.gz file. Typically, after ARS processes this file, it removes it, and then the report Status or Importance is changed, dependent on the outcome of how ARS processed the file.

ARS Messages

outdated debug symbol package

An example ARS report comment:

Apport retracing service (apport) wrote on 2012-09-21: Crash report cannot be processed.

Thank you for your report!

However, processing it in order to get sufficient information for the
developers failed (it does not generate a useful symbolic stack trace). This
might be caused by some outdated packages which were installed on your system
at the time of the report:

outdated debug symbol package for libfribidi0: package version 0.19.2-3 dbgsym version 0.19.2-1

Please upgrade your system to the latest package versions. If you still
encounter the crash, please file a new report.

Thank you for your understanding, and sorry for the inconvenience!

The package version the user has installed, 0.19.2-3, is newer than the one ARS has (0.19.2-1). This message could mean that the libfribidi0 package version 0.19.2-3 is unable to be processed by ARS because it cannot find the debug symbols for 0.19.2-3, it only has 0.19.2-1. In this case, this would not be something you did wrong or did not install, but a current limitation in ARS.

no debug symbol package found

Apport retracing service (apport) wrote on 2016-01-25: Crash report cannot be processed

Thank you for your report!

However, processing it in order to get sufficient information for the
developers failed (it does not generate a useful symbolic stack trace). This
might be caused by some outdated packages which were installed on your system
at the time of the report:

no debug symbol package found for libflac8

Please upgrade your system to the latest package versions. If you still
encounter the crash, please file a new report.

Thank you for your understanding, and sorry for the inconvenience!

ARS doesn't have a debug symbol for this package. In this case, this would not be something you did wrong or did not install, but a current limitation in ARS.

Version available

An example ARS report comment:

Apport retracing service (apport) wrote on 2012-10-06: Crash report cannot be processed

Thank you for your report!

However, processing it in order to get sufficient information for the
developers failed (it does not generate a useful symbolic stack trace). This
might be caused by some outdated packages which were installed on your system
at the time of the report:

libreoffice-core version 1:3.6.1~rc2-1ubuntu5 required, but 1:3.6.2~rc2-0ubuntu1 is available

Please upgrade your system to the latest package versions. If you still
encounter the crash, please file a new report.

Thank you for your understanding, and sorry for the inconvenience!

Here the user has libreoffice-core version 1:3.6.1~rc2-1ubuntu5 installed, but 1:3.6.2~rc2-0ubuntu1 is available from the -Proposed repository. In this case, one would want to enable the -Proposed repository, and if reproducible, file another crash report.