Chapter 11. Getting support for Debian GNU/Linux
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You can use the package
reportbug
that will guide you through the reporting process and
mail the message to the proper address, with some extra details about your system added
automatically. It will also show you a list of bugs already reported to the package you are
reporting against in case your bug has been reported previously, so that you can additional
information to the existing bug report.
If you want to mail the report with an email program, send a message to
debian.org>
. The message's first line must be similar to
Package: package name
(replace package name with the name of the package). The next line should relate the package
version number in a similar way:
Version: version number
The version number for any package installed on your system can be obtained using the com
mand line
dpkg s
package name
This section is referred to as the pseudo header. The rest of the message should contain the
description of the bug (please make it moderately detailed), the Debian release you are using,
and versions of other relevant packages. The Debian release number will be displayed by the
command
cat /etc/debian_version
Expect to get an automatic acknowledgement of your bug report. It will also be automatically
given a bug tracking number, entered into the bug log and forwarded to the debian bugs dist
mailing list.
If you identify a bug that is common to many programs, then rather than entering dozens of
very similar bug reports, you might prefer to send individual bugs to
debian.org>
(instead of the submit@. . . address) to reach only the respective package main
tainers, and then send a summary report to debian devel and/or debian bugs dist mailing
lists.
Additionally, there exists a Debian package checker, called Lintian (
http://www.debian.
org/lintian/
), which is designed to mechanically check Debian packages for policy viola
tions and common packaging errors. Thus, if you detect a bug in a package which is likely to
appear in other packages too, it might be better to get in contact with the Lintian maintainers at
so that a new check is written for Lintian instead of report
ing the bug directly. This will most likely prevent the bug from appearing in future versions of
the package again, or in any other package of the distribution.
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