Presenting "Unhandlable error" isn't useful to users or developers

Bug #1079898 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
12
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Aptdaemon
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned
aptdaemon (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

When aptdaemon has an exception, the aptdaemon client presents an "unhandlable error" <http://imgur.com/I97mZ> to the user, who probably can't do anything about it. Meanwhile, the error isn't reported to Ubuntu developers, who probably can do something about it.

If an exception results in aptdaemon triggering Apport in Ubuntu 12.04 and later, the "unhandlable error" alert should be retired altogether, as it is now redundant.

If an exception doesn't result in aptdaemon triggering Apport, it should be converted to a RecoverableError that does.

Revision history for this message
Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor) wrote : Re: [Bug 1079898] [NEW] Presenting "Unhandlable error" isn't useful to users or developers

Am Freitag, den 16.11.2012, 21:51 +0000 schrieb Matthew Paul Thomas:
> Public bug reported:
>
> When aptdaemon has an exception, the aptdaemon client presents an
> "unhandlable error" <http://imgur.com/I97mZ> to the user, who probably
> can't do anything about it. Meanwhile, the error isn't reported to
> Ubuntu developers, who probably can do something about it.

> If an exception results in aptdaemon triggering Apport in Ubuntu 12.04
> and later, the "unhandlable error" alert should be retired altogether,
> as it is now redundant.

It is the job of the client to decide on how to handle the unhandlable
error. Basically the error message informs the client that the
transaction failed in a way that we haven't yet thought about and that
we cannot name exactly. Software center could just ignore it. But how
should the user be notified that the installation of an app failed?
Letting software center crash doesn't seem to be a good idea. :)

Furthermore aptdaemon should already trigger an apport report in this
case. But you will only get a system service crashed report that isn't
connected with the transaction in an obvious way.

What should we do in such a case? Should we improve the apport report?
E.g. "Installing software failed" and don't show any error in the client
(software-center). It will be quite tricky to get application names into
the apport error message but it could be doable.

todaioan (alan-ar06)
Changed in aptdaemon:
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in aptdaemon (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in aptdaemon (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
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