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Re: Apport needs to be disabled by default, or to be "silent"

 

I believe the problem lies in if you upgraded from a alpha/beta.
I have 2 systems with 12.04, one I was testing since beta and it stills shows the error messages/crashes almost daily. I don't know why it still shows them...
The other one I downloaded the stable 32bit and had almost no messages/crash popups.
So in order to not get the popups I suggest reinstalling and seeing if that works.

> Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 15:20:05 +0100
> From: mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> CC: unity-design@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; evan.dandrea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Unity-design] Apport needs to be disabled by default, or to be "silent"
> 
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> Ted Gould wrote on 05/07/12 14:26:
> > 
> > On Wed, 2012-07-04 at 12:55 -0400, Brandon Watkins wrote:
> >> 
> >> I've noticed with ubuntu 12.04 apport is enabled by default. Now
> >> I see the value in having a larger base of users reporting crash
> >> data, but this can really make ubuntu seem unstable and buggy to
> >> a new user, definitely not a good impression if ubuntu wants
> >> more mainstream usage. I get these damn popups every few days,
> >> and they are always tiny crashes that don't have any real-world
> >> effect on my system, and they are always bugs that are already
> >> reported.
> >> 
> >> I think apport should either be disabled by default, or have an 
> >> opt-in option (maybe an option that shows up during the install?)
> >> to silently report crash data in the background if the bug is
> >> already reported.
> > ... So I believe the default setting should be that the crashes
> > will be grabbed but only have the signature checked by default.  So
> > there is no dialog.  There was a bug that was causing some systems
> > to show the dialog, but I can't seem to find it.  I'm cc'ing Evan
> > as I'm sure he'll know, perhaps you can contribute to that bug so
> > that we can get this fixed.
> 
> (I'm replying on Evan's behalf.)
> 
> Every version of Ubuntu, until 12.04, had a small but silly design
> flaw: when anything crashed, there was no explanation of what had
> happened. A window could disappear, or a service could stop working,
> without any explanation at all.
> 
> The primary purpose of Apport's new error alerts is to fix that
> problem. They explain what has gone wrong, and what you might do about
> it -- for example, offering to relaunch an application that has crashed.
> 
> If your admin allows it, the alerts *also* let you report each error,
> but that is a secondary function.
> 
> Now, the tradeoff is that Apport has no way of telling the difference
> between "tiny crashes that don't have any real-world effect" and
> errors that do. We believe it's a reasonable position that most
> crashes do have a real-world effect. And this will become more true
> over time, as common but previously-ignored errors are fixed because
> the error tracker is reporting them as common.
> 
> We can, and will, fine-tune the wording of the error messages. But
> when programs crash, blaming the *error messages* for a poor
> mainstream impression is shooting the messenger.
> 
> Finally, this is not related to Unity in particular, so unity-design@
> is not a good place to discuss it. I suggest ubuntu-desktop@ instead.
> 
> Cheers
> - -- 
> mpt
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