How to report a bug in Debian Send mail to submit@bugs.debian.org, as described below. Please don't report several unrelated bugs - especially ones in different packages - in one message. Also, please don't mail your bug report to any mailing lists or recipients other than submit@bugs (for details of how to do this right, see below). Lists of currently-outstanding bugs are available on the World Wide Web and elsewhere - see other documents 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 package which has the bug. (The pseudo-header fields must start at the very start of their lines, and the bug system does not currently understand them if they're buried in MIMEd or PGPd mail.) (You can get these using dpkg --search and dpkg --list; see dpkg --help. See below for further requirements. There are some pseudo-packages available for putting in the Package line when reporting a bug in something other than an actual Debian software package. There is a list of these on the bugs WWW pages. Example A bug report, with mail header, looks something like this: To: submit@bugs.debian.org 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 1.1, kernel version 1.3.99.15z and libc 5.2.18.3.2.1.3-beta. Please include in your report: * The exact and complete text of any error messages printed or logged. This is very important! * 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. * 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 versions of any packages on which the buggy package depends. * What kernel version you're using (type uname -a). * What shared C library you're using (type ls -l /lib/libc.so.6). * 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.). Of course, like any email, you should include a clear, descriptive Subject line in your main mail header. The subject you give will be used as the initial bug title in the tracking system, so please try to make it informative ! Sending copies of bug reports to other addresses Sometimes it is necessary to send a copy of a bug report to somewhere else besides debian-bugs-dist and the package maintainer, which is where they are normally sent. You could do this by CC'ing your bug report to the other address(es), but then the other copies would not have the bug report number put in the Reply-To field and the Subject line. When the recipients reply they will probably preserve the submit@bugs.debian.org entry in the header and have their message fi