Crashes of tainted kernels

[Chris Murphy]

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 8:14 PM, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 2015-03-17 at 14:51 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> If you know the site already, why not just file the bug directly on
>> that bugzilla? Why does it need to be automated?
>
> As a general response, I'd say that:
>
> People are more likely to make a bug report if it's not a protracted
> exercise for them to do so.  And, if it's properly automated (actually
> sends all the required data to be useful), the report might be much more
> useful than some people would, otherwise, provide.

I'm not arguing against this. I'm saying in my experience with not
tainted kernel problems, ABRT does not file anything except dmesg. So
if the idea is that ABRT needs to collect more, there's bigger changes
necessary than just pointing ABRT to some other bugzilla.

And that's fine, it's just not going to magically happen by pointing
at it though.

I've got a 2.5 year old bug with a working tested patch filed against
grubby and there's no movement on it. Not a great example, it's
probably an outlier, but nevertheless, getting things done on Fedora
is far from automatic. It basically requires first and foremost and
advocate, not just someone who points fingers. Next, that advocate
builds a relationship with the package maintainer to find out how to
get them the things they need to realize a feature. And they might
redirect this to upstream but now you have two advocates, which would
also include the Fedora packager.

>
> Having to find the right bugzilla, having to sign up, having to figure
> out what to report on (which is horrible on an extremely slow website),
> to look for possible existing bug reports the same as their own, trying
> to work out if theirs is different or the same.  Having to work out how
> to provide useful debugging information.  Making your PC more painful to
> use by installing debugging packages...

Haha ok that's a lot to chew off. In reverse order:

1. Painful to use by installing debug packages  - that is a
prerequisite to file something more substantial than dmesg.

2. how to provide useful debugging info - if the user will not test a
non-tainted kernel I see no possible way for an automated system to
know where to file the bug

3. Signing up for multiple bugzillas is basically a given because we
live in the f'n Pleistocene where each upstream has their own bug
reporters, and Fedora is their downstream. This complaint comes up on
devel@ roughly once a year how to get RHBZ to file bugs upstream
automagically. Meanwhile upstreams have no universal agreement that
they want downstream injecting bug reports into their bug reporter
when they haven't been vetted by a human first. *shrug*


> Making manual bugzilla reports has been such a bastard that I'm loath to
> ever go through it again.  Not to mention the experience of a fault
> being reported, and being ignored.  In this (*) case, the fault was
> observable by everyone, existed across several releases of Fedora, and
> no effort could be observed into resolving it.

If the context is still 3rd party, out of tree kernel modules, this is
expected. I'm not saying I approve or that it's ideal. But it's the
reality. The bug has to go into the bug reporting system that's
accountable for fixing the bug. And the only practical way to know
which bug reporting system the oops goes into is to determine if it
happens with a not-tainted kernel as well. If the user is unwilling to
do this, I don't see a way forward.


> * I reported that if you tried to adjust sound volume with the mouse
> wheel over a horizontally oriented slider, the sound went down when you
> scrolled up, and vice versa.  As opposed to working in the way that you
> expected, and how it worked if you were to use the mouse wheel over the
> top of a vertically oriented slider.  That fault sat for YEARS, and I
> saw no activity on the bug report other than a few other "me toos," and
> automated responses after a prolonged time (e.g. when new Fedora
> releases came out) that the matter would be closed if nobody responded
> saying the fault still existed.

Sounds like a UI bug. Are you talking about tainted kernels (3rd
party, out of tree kernel modules)? Or are you talking about something
completely different?


> Yes, I'd made reports, before, that had had action taken.  But the utter
> apathy about doing anything on this report, and seeing other people make
> similar criticisms, just makes one think, "why bother?"

Right. Well when enough people throw in the towel, then it's game
over, so consider that. There's no chance of fixes if there are no bug
reports, even if bug reports don't guarantee fixes. Including pattern
information, when a bug does and does not happen, is very important
information.


-- 
Chris Murphy