Tab completion warnings with ubuntu-bug when using alias for ls

Thank you for your bug report, the issue doesn't seem to happen on a new 19.10 installation though.
The file listed is part of apport-symptoms which should be installed by default, but even without it the tab completion works

apport-symptoms is installed, but this keeps happening:

# dpkg -l apport-symptoms
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-===============-============-============-=================================
ii apport-symptoms 0.22 all symptom scripts for apport

Weird, what's the output of
- ls -l /usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py
(it should be part of the binary)

# ls -l /usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 May 17 16:32 /usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py -> ubuntu-release-upgrader.py

What about
-ls -l /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py
-dpkg -S /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py
-debsums apport-symptoms

The file should be there...

# ls -l /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 214 May 17 16:32 /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py

# dpkg -S /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py
apport-symptoms: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py

# debsums apport-symptoms
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/_audio_checks.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/_audio_data.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/_audio_mixercontrol.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/audio.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/display.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/security.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/storage.py OK
/usr/share/apport/symptoms/ubuntu-release-upgrader.py OK
/usr/share/doc/apport-symptoms/changelog.gz OK
/usr/share/doc/apport-symptoms/copyright OK

Can you sudo apt install --reinstall apport-symptoms and see if that fixes the issue?

Still the same, unfortunately.

This also happens on 20.04. It now gives:

/usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/installation.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/release-upgrade.py: No such file or directory

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

ubuntu-bug actually greps output of ls
I have an alias for ls: ls -la
I can see output like this:
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/-rw-r--r--: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/1: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/root: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/root: No such file or directory

I may be wrong but I think at the very least ubuntu-bug should call /usr/bin/ls and not just ls
Depending on user preferences, ubuntu-bug may even execute random software!

This still happens after upgrading to Ubuntu 20.10:

grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/installation.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/release-upgrade.py: No such file or directory
qgrep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/dist-upgrade.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/installation.py: No such file or directory
grep: /usr/share/apport/symptoms/release-upgrade.py: No such file or directory

Note that that I have the following alias set for ls:

alias ls='ls -N --color=yes --time-style=long-iso'

This still happens after upgrading to Ubuntu 21.10. Is there any news on fixing it?

Is there any news on this? The problem still happens after upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04. There don't appear to have been updates since I last reported this for 21.10.

This is still happening after upgrading to 23.10.

I can confirm the behavior by setting the ls alias. Unsetting the alias will solve the issue. So apport should be made more robust against the alias.

Fix for it: https://github.com/canonical/apport/pull/222

You can apply the fix manually be editing /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/apport-bug and changing the function to:

_apport_symptoms ()
{
    local filename path symptoms
    for path in /usr/share/apport/symptoms/*; do
        [[ -e "$path" ]] || continue
        filename="${path##*/}"
        # hide utility files and symptoms that don't have a run() function
        [[ ! "$filename" =~ ^_.* ]] || continue
        grep -Eq "^def run\s*\(.*\):" "$path" || continue
        symptoms+=("${filename%.py}")
    done
    echo "${symptoms[*]}"
}

This bug was fixed in the package apport - 2.27.0-0ubuntu3

---------------
apport (2.27.0-0ubuntu3) mantic; urgency=medium

  * fix: raise "gdb not found" as soon as detected (LP: #2031919)
  * bash-completion: Do not use ls in completion (LP: #1850804)

 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Fri, 29 Sep 2023 01:03:44 +0200