11.5 How do I report a bug in Debian?
If you have found a bug in Debian, please read the instructions for reporting a
bug in Debian. These instructions can be obtained in one of several ways:
-
By anonymous FTP. Debian mirror sites contain the instructions in the file
doc/bug-reporting.txt.
-
On any Debian system with the
doc-debian package installed. The
instructions are in the file
/usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt.
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 e-mail program, send a message to
[email protected]. 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 command 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.
