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Bugzilla è il principale canale di comunicazione usato dal Fedora Project per ricevere feedback, da utenti e sviluppatori sui bug e le relative proposte di soluzione.

Spesso, alcune segnalazioni sono prive di informazione, inaccurate o inesatte, e tutto ciò consuma tempo prezioso, alla persona che ha riportato il problema, ed allo sviluppatore che è costretto a dedicare più tempo alla sua risoluzione, con il rischio magari che il bug venga trascurato o addirittura ignorato. Questa pagina vuole essere un aiuto su come compilare un bug-report di qualità, fornendo alcuni suggerimenti.

Idea.png
Commonly Reported Bugs
La pagina, Fedora common bugs spiega come risolvere alcuni problemi comuni di installazione, upgrade o di HW/SW, noti.

Il Processo

Occorre davvero inviare un bug-report?

Il bug va riportato nel caso in cui, non sia

  • presente in Bugzilla
  • menzionato nelle Release Notes o altro documento ufficiale (vedi http://docs.fedoraproject.org/),
  • già in discussione in mailing-list
  • elencato in common bugs page
  • elencato come un problema di dipendenza, nel Rawhide Report, giornaliero

Non si presuma che anche ogni altro utente abbia lo stesso identico problema: molti bug sono causati da hardware specifici, configurazioni HW/SW particolari e da abitudini/operazioni dell'utente. Discutere il problema su IRC o in fedora-test mailing list, può aiutare a diagnosticare la causa del problema, ed a coordinarsi con altri utenti per la sua risoluzione, ma non basta per essere sicuri di aver segnalato il bug. Esso deve essere riportato in Bugzilla, solo così il problema può essere correttamente tracciato, osservato nella sua evoluzione senza il rischio di venir perso di vista, così come sarebbe nel rumore di fondo della mailing-list.

Una buona pratica dovrebbe essere quella di inviare prima un bug-report in Bugzilla, poi inviare in mailing-list, una richiesta di assistenza con un link al bug-report.
(Molti bug non vengono annunciati in mailing-ist, per cui conviene sempre cercare in Bugzilla).

Il flusso in Bugzilla

Un bug in Fedora segue un suo ciclo di vita: per una panomarica, vedi flusso dei bug in Fedora.

E' molto semplice iniziare!

Per accedere a Bugzilla, occorre avere un account: è un'operazione molto rapida, basta fornire solo un indirizzo e-mail valido.
Quindi non esitare a registrare un account. Per conoscere i dettagli sul processo di creazione dell'account, puoi consultare la bugzilla documentation.

La Cultura Bugzilla

Sapere come gli altri generalmente usano Bugzilla può servire a presentare meglio un probelma, a rendere gli altri più interessati a risolvere il proprio problema ed a rendere il servizio più piacevole per tutti. Se non si è mai usato Bugzilla, prima, o si è alla prima esperienza con l'invio di un bug-report, allora può essere d'aiuto leggere le seguenti pagine:

Se un particolare pacchetto ha una grande diffusione, è molto probabile che ci siano più utenti che segnalino bug e/o suggerimenti per il suo miglioramento, sneza che ciò significhi che il pacchetto sia più difettoso o pieno di bug, di altri, magari meno diffusi.

BugZappers/UnderstandingBugzilla contiene una serie di note tecniche che possono aiutare a chiarire il senso e il funzionamento di Bugzilla.

Search for Duplicates

Very common known bugs are listed at Bugs/Common.

It's important to search Bugzilla to make sure your bug hasn't already been reported. The easiest way is to do a keyword search. Or you can use the Advanced Form. Or you can use https://bugz.fedoraproject.org/packagename to look for specific bugs for a package (replace 'packagename' with the name of the package you are checking).

It's not generally useful to file "I'm experiencing this bug, too" comments, unless there are specific details which might be helpful in tracking down the cause (e.g. you have more detailed debugging information, or a different hardware or software configuration which means a hardware-specific or configuration-specific bug is more widespread than previously thought).

If you are experiencing the bug in a more recent version of Fedora than reported in the bug, this is useful to mention.

See BugZappers/FindingDuplicates for more details.

Gather Helpful Information

See "Tips by type of bug" below for specific guidance.

It is always useful to check /var/log/messages (for everyone) and ~/.xsession-errors (for desktop users) to see if there are any errors or warnings related to your problem. Some programs also have dedicated files or directories in /var/log which are worth checking.

Start Filing the Bug

You can enter a new bug here, or if you know what the package name is you can go to https://bugz.fedoraproject.org/packagename (replace 'packagename' with the name of the package) and click on 'Report a new bug against this package' link.

Read the report template carefully and provide all the requested information, as best you can.

Please try to stick to clearly explaining the bug and all necessary information. Adding comments such as "this needs to be fixed immediately!" or "this is unacceptable!" is not a good idea: it's only likely to make the maintainers feel as if you are attacking them, and this doesn't help them to fix the problem.

Finding the Right Component

When reporting a bug, it is helpful if you select the right Product, Version and Components. By doing so, you reach the developer/maintainer of the affected software package, which helps resolve the bugs faster. If you assign it to the wrong component, it can be reassigned to the correct one, so never skip filing a bug report just because you couldn't figure out which component to assign it to.

See BugZappers/CorrectComponent for details on how to determine the correct component if you aren't sure.

After Your Bug is Filed

  • Developers do not normally acknowledge bug reports or offer comments unless they have substantial feedback or require more information from you. It does not mean that your bug reports have not been valuable. Keep them coming!
  • After reporting a bug, you might get feedback from other users, or the developer may change the status and/or resolution of the bug report. For an explanation of the various statuses and resolutions, see this page.
  • Please keep your report focused on the original issue that was reported. Adding discussions of slightly related (or even entirely unrelated) will only cause the report to become confused and difficult to follow. If you notice a different problem, or when the initial problem is fixed you notice another problem that it was hiding, please file a new report rather than appending comments to the first report.
  • If you file a bug against a version of Fedora and it is not fixed or otherwise resolved before the version reaches its End of Life (EOL), someone will need to test a more recent version of Fedora to see if the bug persists, and update the Version field if so. Otherwise, your bug will be closed. You will get an e-mail notification if this is the case. Many bugs are fixed or made obsolete when software is incorporated into new versions of Fedora from upstream programmers. Older bugs remain in the system for future reference, but re-testing will keep the bug open and "on the radar" for Fedora developers. See BugZappers/HouseKeeping for more process information.

Command-line interface

If you need a command-line or programmatic interface to Bugzilla, try: "yum install python-bugzilla" and see the included documentation. This provides the command "bugzilla".

Things Every Bug Should Have

  • Version number: The exact version number of the problem RPM (or a list of suspicious RPMs). The number in the Version selector field is the version of the Fedora distribution as a whole (9, 10, Rawhide); the RPM version number for a specific component within the distribution will change as updates are released.
  • Clear description: Reporting as much as possible about what was happening at the time of the incident, or exact steps about how to reproduce the bug. Explanation of how what happened differs from what should happen, if it's not obvious.
  • Diagnostic info: Any relevant warnings printed on screen, excerpt from system logs around the time of the problem, any troubleshooting dumps available.
  • Context: For example, if this is a window manager problem, is it happening under GNOME or KDE? If this is a network problem, what does the network setup look like? If an application is being run in an unusual way (emulation, remotely), this should be mentioned. What related items on the system have been customized? Use your good judgment and common sense.

Additional information may be requested out of course, depending on the type of bug and affected component. See "Tips by Type of Bug" below.

Tips by Type of Bug

Crashes

If you have experienced a program crash, it will almost certainly be necessary to include a stack trace with your bug report. Crashes are often difficult to reproduce and even more difficult to fix, so the more information you can provide, the better. You will probably need to install -debuginfo RPMs so your stack trace will have useful debugging symbols. See the following pages for more information:

Wedges, Seizures, and Panics

If the entire machine locks up, and complete error output recorded in logfiles or on the screen, try some of the suggestions for diagnosing machine lockups and kernel crashes and hangs.

Hardware-Specific Bugs

If you suspect your bug has something to do with the specific hardware you have, attach or include a link to your Smolt profile in the bug. You can dump it to /tmp/smoltprofile.txt with the command: smoltSendProfile -p > /tmp/smoltprofile.txt (But see Bug 575524.)

Run yum install smolt if you don't already have Smolt installed.

A strong indication of a hardware-specific bug is that other people with different hardware should be able to reproduce the bug, but can't. They also usually involve code that specifically interacts with a peripheral, such a webcam, video card, printer, or sound card (so for instance, it is uncommon for bugs affecting the user interface of a word processor or desktop calculator to be hardware-specific).

Enhancement Requests

  • When filing an enhancement request in Bugzilla, add the keyword FutureFeature to the report. Make sure you supply enough information and rationale for your enhancement requests to be considered.
  • The Fedora Project has the objective to be a platform built exclusively from free and open-source software. Suggestions to include support for proprietary or other legally encumbered software is not constructive. See the list of forbidden items page for details about this.
  • If you want to make a new feature happen on your own create a wiki page for your feature and get it accepted. See more on the Feature Process at Features/Policy.
  • Requests for new packages to be added to Fedora should not be added to Bugzilla. Please add them to the wiki instead, on the Package maintainers wishlist.

Security-Sensitive

We pay special attention to security-sensitive bugs. Read the Security Bugs page to understand the special process.

Graphical User Interfaces

If you are having trouble with a graphical user interface (GUI), it is often helpful to include a screenshot showing the bug in action. This helps developers find the exact place in the code which is causing the bug, and helps communicate what is going wrong when it is difficult to reproduce (for example, machine-specific layout problems).

  • To take a screenshot, hit the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard, or in from the GNOME menu select: Applications -> Accessories -> Take Screenshot
  • To get video of your screen (a "screencast"), you can use Istanbul. "yum install istanbul" on the command line, then run "istanbul". It will also appear on the GNOME menu under: Applications -> Sound & Video -> Istanbul Desktop Session Recorder

Information required for bugs in specific components

Filing bugs for multiple releases

If your bug is present in more than one Fedora release, you can clone it by clicking Clone This Bug in the top-right corner of the bug report and then assign a different version number in the newly created report.

Help Wanted

  • The Fedora Bug Triaging team is actively soliciting new volunteers. If you are interested, Please see the BugZappers page.
  • Quality Assurance also welcomes new volunteers; see QA.