A thought on abrt

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Fri, 2010-01-22 at 16:24 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
> > Given that abrt is designed to make bug-reporting easier for the
> average
> > user, I suspect a lot of b/w is being consumed by these downloads
> that
> > would not otherwise be the case. Would it not be an idea to rethink
> how
> > this is handled? By definition abrt already knows exactly which
> packages
> > are involved in the problem, so it could simply report what they are
> and
> > add the coredumps/logs/whatever.

> Ah, but which version of the program were you running when abrt kicked
> in?  To diagnose a failure, the maintainers need as much info as then
> can get about the specifics of the program that failed (what files had
> been loaded, where the program pooped, what was the status of the
> stack, lots of things).

That's all in the coredump, which as I said would still be added to the
report. If abrt knows enough to download debuginfo packages, it follows
that it knows enough to give a list of what's needed without having to
download them.

> Ideally, yes, abrt could report the version of the program and make
> the maintainers go and get the debug info, but there would be big
> holes in their visibility as to what made YOUR instance crap out.

Apart from the coredump, logs and my description of what happened, there
is absolutely nothing that I can send them that they can't in principle
get for themselves.

poc