Translation(s): English - Español - Français - Italiano - Português (Brasil) - Українська

Contents

  1. Usage
  2. Configuration
    1. Using your regular mail client
    2. Using a specific mail client
    3. Using the Debian bug report SMTP server
    4. Using a custom SMTP server
  3. Troubleshooting
  4. See also
  5. External Links

The tool reportbug is designed to make the reporting of bug(s) in Debian and its derived distributions, relatively painless. Beside its command line interface, it also offers a graphical user interface.

This package provides access to the Debian Bug Tracking System, which can be used for both reporting, and researching bugs, by a number of interfaces, including email, web, and command-line utilities.

Usage

Configuration

Using your regular mail client

Ensure you have configured your desired email client as your default email application in your desktop preferences. Install the xdg-utils package to make the xdg-email command available.

Set the mua option in your ~/.reportbugrc file to xdg-email. 

mua xdg-email

The result of this option is that, whenever you report a bug using reportbug, a bug report template will open in the in compose windows of your default email client.

Using a specific mail client

To setup an explicit mail client, replace the string xdg-email in ~/.reportbugrc with the mail client name of your desire. Also refer to the previous section if you haven't read it yet.

The currently available settings for the mua option in ~/.reportbugrc include: mutt, neomutt, mh, nmh, gnus, claws-mail, alpine, pine, evolution, kmail, thunderbird, sylpheed, xdg-email, xdg-email. To find out which values are supported by your version of reportbug, run this command in a terminal: 

sed -n '/^MUA/,/^]/p' /usr/lib/python*/*/reportbug/mailer.py

Using the Debian bug report SMTP server

/!\ The Debian bug report mail server should only be used in certain situations since it has some limitations. Please read the documentation before using this option.

reportbug is often used on systems with an installed Mail Transport Agent (MTA), like exim, or sendmail; however, you can edit the configuration file; and send reports using the Debian bug report mail server instead.

  1. Run reportbug --configure as your normal user. This creates a ~/.reportbugrc file that stores all the configurations.

  2. Follow the instructions and when asked Do you have a 'mail transport agent' (MTA) configured, choose No

  3. Then enter nothing for the SMTP host; reportbug will configure the Debian bug report mail server (reportbug.debian.org) as your SMTP host.

Using a custom SMTP server

reportbug is often used on systems with an installed Mail Transport Agent (MTA), like exim, or sendmail; however, you can edit the configuration file; and send reports using any available mail server. Here, is an example using a GMail account:

  1. Run reportbug --configure as your normal user. This creates a ~/.reportbugrc file that stores all the configurations.

  2. Follow the instructions and when asked Do you have a 'mail transport agent' (MTA) configured, choose No

  3. Then enter the SMTP host for gmail: smtp.gmail.com:587

  4. For the user name enter: <username>@gmail.com

  5. For the question Does your SMTP host require TLS authentication?, choose Yes

If you have set up Google's two-factor authentication for your GMail account, you can create an application-specific password to use with reportbug.

Warning: The submit@bugs.debian.org procmail has a rule that silently discards emails from postmaster@<domain>. Combined with the fact that Google G-Suite changes the MAIL FROM address to postmaster@<domain> when the original MAIL FROM is from outside your domain makes your bugs to be silently discarded.

Troubleshooting

Warning: unsupported locale setting: This error relates to Locale configuration. To workaround this problem, invoke the program as LANG=C reportbug

See also

CategoryBugs | CategorySoftware