I mailed Brian Murray (the Ubuntu bugmaster) about this:
Thanks for bringing this up. Its news to me and I'm not really happy
with the user experience here. Digging into it this is actually the
Xorg package hook for apport so using ubuntu-bug with an Xorg package
will provide essentially the same experience. Maybe we should sit down
with Bryce next week and discuss it?
Maybe a good start here would be to file a bug on the xorg package about the apport hook. I'll follow up at UDS and update this answer.
(Nice catch by the way!)
Determining Where Failure Occurs
If your system fails to shut down, and the last text you see tells you that it is trying to unload a particular kernel module (or perform any other particular task), and there is no indication to the right of it, on the same line, that it succeeded or failed, then the problem is almost certainly with that specific action, and not with whatever comes next. In this situation, you can report a bug documenting the failure of the kernel module to unload.
Reporting a Bug Affecting a Kernel Module
If you have a bug that is due kernel modules provided by a particular, non-kernel package, you can report the bug against that package. If there is actually a kernel service running (ps ax shows kernel threads as well as normal processes) for the module, which you believe is causing the problem, then you can run ubuntu-bug with its PID if you can run ubuntu-bug at all.
Since you likely cannot run any commands in this situation, and since there is often no running process that is clearly responsible, after rebooting, you should instead run:
ubuntu-bug packagename
Here, that's somewhat difficult--the VirtualBox userspace program is provided by virtualbox. VirtualBox kernel modules for virtualization hosts are typically built from source, which is provided by virtualbox-dkms.
I would report this bug against virtualbox-dkms (assuming VirtualBox compiled and installed kernel modules on your machine). The technical details of the bug would likely indicate what package is best, and it is not always practical to determine what package a bug is best considered to affect, before reporting the bug. So you do your best. It can always be changed later on Launchpad, either by you or by someone else (usually a triager or developer).
If you wanted to report a bug against a kernel module that ships with the kernel, you could report it against linux:
ubuntu-bug linux
Best Answer
ubuntu-bugandapport-bugare actually the same package Apport. When you initiateubuntu-bugorapport-bugwithout any additional parameters, one of the following Apport user-interfaces is called, depending on the desktop environment:Apport User interfaces for filing bugs
apport-gtk- GTK GUI for reporting crash-type bugs in Unity and GNOME.apport-kde- KDE GUI for reporting crash-type bugs in KDE.apport-cli- command-line front-end for reporting crashes and is intended for use on servers. You can also use it to report bugs if the crash happens offline.Do note that Apport is NOT enabled by default. You have to manually enable it in order to report crash-type bugs:
You can also report issues other than application crashes using any of the above tools with an additional parameter
-f. It is not necessary to enable Apport for reporting non-crash issues. See manual page forapport-clifor more information.Other Apport utilities
apport-collect- Used to collect and attach essential debugging data to an existing bug report. Generally used in case of bugs filed against Linux kernels. You should not be using this unless you are the original bug reporter or one of the kernel developers explicitly asks you to do so. See manual page forapport-collectfor more information.Whoopsie service
All 12.04 systems, including desktop and server, have an "Ubuntu Error Reporting" daemon called whoopsie. It, along with apport, is part of the Ubuntu error tracker project. While it isn't one of the tools that allow you to report bugs, it is part of the system that processes the bug reports.
See also:
Debian bug reporting tools
There also exists
reportbugwhich helps you file bug directly in Debian bug tracker from an Ubuntu system. However,reportbugis not installed by default in Ubuntu and can be installed by issuing this command in a terminal: