How to report a bug in Debian

Send mail to debian-bugs@pixar.com, as described below.

Please don't report several unrelated bugs in one message. Lists of currently-outstanding bugs are available - see another document for details.

You should put a pseudo-header at the start of the body of the message, with the Package: and Version: lines giving the name and version of the Debian package which has the buggy program. See the example below for the exact format.

Please include:

Exactly what you typed or did to demonstrate the problem.
A description of the incorrect behaviour: exactly what behaviour you were expecting, and what you observed. A transcript of an example session is a good way of showing this.
The exact and complete text of any error messages printed or logged.
A suggested fix, or even a patch, if you have one.
Details of the configuration of the program with the problem. Include the complete text of its configuration files.
The version of the whole Debian system you are using.
What kernel version you're using (type uname -a).
What shared C library you're using (type ls -l /lib/lic.so.4).
Any other details of your Linux system, if it seems appropriate. For example, if you had a problem with a Debian Perl script, you would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary (perl -v).
Appropriate details of the hardware in your system. If you're reporting a problem with a device driver please list all the hardware in your system, as problems are often caused by IRQ and I/O address conflicts.

Include any detail that seems relevant - you are in very little danger of making your report too long by including too much information. If they are small please include in your report any files you were using to reproduce the problem (uuencoding them if they may contain odd characters etc.).

Example

A bug report, with mail header, looks something like this:

  To: debian-bugs@pixar.com
  From: diligent@testing.linux.org
  Subject: Hello says `goodbye'

  Package: hello
  Version: 1.3-2

  When I invoke `hello' without arguments from an ordinary shell
  prompt it prints `goodbye', rather than the expected `hello, world'.
  Here is a transcript:

  $ hello
  goodbye
  $ /usr/bin/hello
  goodbye
  $

  I suggest that the output string, in hello.c, be corrected.

  I am using Debian 0.93R1 alpha, kernel version 1.1.99.15z
  and libc 4.5.26.

Other pages:

Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk. 2nd May 1995.