My purchase/install failed. How can I get more detail about the error?

If you would like to get more information about exactly what failed during a purchase or installation, or if you would like to provide more details for a bug report or support ticket, this explains how. These techniques should provide plenty of detail for a developer to diagnose and fix the issue.

Reproducible errors

To see live data on what Software Center is doing, try running it from a terminal. Open up a terminal application then run software-center . It should display a running log of its warnings and errors in the terminal window.

When requesting help, it can be very useful to copy and paste the history of Software Center's parent window into your request. This can give us details which aren't saved to the log. However, you should also include the log as explained below.

Getting details after an error happened

If an error only occurred once or you otherwise cannot make it happen again, this is the best way to get data on what happened:

• Run Software Center.
• Attempt to install the failing package in Software Center. Write down each action you take during this process, so there will be enough information to duplicate your steps exactly.
• As soon as the install fails, quit from Software Center.

• Create a bug or support request with a description of what you were trying to do, the details of each step you took, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead.

• Attach ~/.cache/software-center/software-center.log to your bug report or support request.

• Attach a copy of your receipt(s) or purchase history to your bug or support request.

Additional data

For almost all support requests, it is helpful to include your payment IDs and subscription IDs. This allows us to look up a lot more detail on your transactions.