Arch Linux

ScottTFrazer

Member

Registered: 2004-10-20

Posts: 47

How to submit a bug?

I've seen references several times in the forums where people have suggested the poster submit a bug report, but I've been unable to find any guidelines on where or how this is done.

Lest you think I'm a complete idiot, I've found the Bug Tracker section and created an account, but I've got a few questions before I start throwing what could be useless information at the developers.

We've seen several reports of the latest version of groupadd now requesting a password when run.  If you provide it with the root password, it then prompts you to enter and confirm a new password, doing so changes the root password.  So I'll use this as a basis for my questions.

1) It appears the method to submit a bug is to "Add a new task" after you've logged into the bug tracker.   Is this the correct way?

2) The Bug Tracker wants to know what package the bug is in...  How can I find out which package it belongs to?  I did:

pacman -Qi | pacman -Ql $1 | grep groupadd

and it returned "shadow" as the package.  Was this the best way to do it?

3) How do I know this is a bug for the Arch folks and not a bug introduced upstream?  Should I even worry about that?

Sorry if this is completely obvious to everyone, but this is the first time I've ever tried to submit a bug for ANY software, not just Arch, but I really am having such a good time with this distribution that I'd like to help make it better whereever possible.

apeiro

Daddy

From: Victoria, BC, Canada

Registered: 2002-08-12

Posts: 771

Website

Re: How to submit a bug?

We've seen several reports of the latest version of groupadd now requesting a password when run.  If you provide it with the root password, it then prompts you to enter and confirm a new password, doing so changes the root password.  So I'll use this as a basis for my questions.

Sure.  But don't bother creating one for this specific bug.  Someone has already done so, and it's been fixed.

1) It appears the method to submit a bug is to "Add a new task" after you've logged into the bug tracker.   Is this the correct way?

Yes.

2) The Bug Tracker wants to know what package the bug is in...  How can I find out which package it belongs to?  I did:

pacman -Qi | pacman -Ql $1 | grep groupadd

and it returned "shadow" as the package.  Was this the best way to do it?

Certainly.  In fact, that's more thorough than most reporters are.  You could then select the "Packages: Current" category for your bug, as the shadow package belongs in Current.

For this specific bug example, you could also classify it as "System", as the groupadd utility is really ubiquitous and important enough to be considered part of the underlying system itself.

3) How do I know this is a bug for the Arch folks and not a bug introduced upstream?  Should I even worry about that?

No, you don't typically have to worry about that.  If you're sure the problem is upstream and the developers can't do anything about it, then perhaps a bug report isn't necessary.  But if you're unsure, go ahead and create a bug report.  Worst-case scenario, the maintainer tells you in a surly tone that it's an upstream problem and closes the bug report. 

Sorry if this is completely obvious to everyone, but this is the first time I've ever tried to submit a bug for ANY software, not just Arch, but I really am having such a good time with this distribution that I'd like to help make it better whereever possible.

Good bug reporters are worth their weight in gold.

Well, maybe not the really really fat bug reporters.  That's a lot of gold.