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How do I diagnose a persistent "System Problem" in Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS? I report the problem but get no response.

System Problem Popup

blogman
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Look for a .crash file in /var/crash. It's a text file, you can open it and read it. It will have lots of technical detail about what went wrong.

When you "report the problem", the whoopsie service on your system sends that .crash report to the daisy server at Canonical. No personal information or contact information is in the crash report.

You won't receive a response when you send a problem report. Daisy has no idea who you are or how to reach you (and doesn't want to know). Crash reports are summarized at http://errors.ubuntu.com -- take a look.

Crashes are considered bugs, so your crash report likely has a corresponding bug report on the Ubuntu Bug Tracker, located at launchpad.net. That bug report may be private, so you might not see it (remember, your name isn't on the bug report!)

As bugs get fixed, those bugfixes go into the next release of Ubuntu (rarely the current release). The time between your report and the fix that cures the crash may be days...but it also may be months or years. Some bugs are really hard to duplicate in a test environment.

user535733
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  • Are there any system diagnostic utilities that can be run? – blogman Jun 23 '20 at 18:53
  • The results of all diagnostics are already in the .crash report. Stack trace, memory map, etc. Running random system checks later is a bit like looking for your car keys under the street lamp instead of down the block where you dropped them in the dark. The .crash file tells us exactly what happened, and usually offers plenty of clues about 'why'. – user535733 Jun 23 '20 at 18:55
  • Your next question is likely along the lines of "how do I read the .crash file?" That's not a simple question - it's a dump of all kinds of data from various sources. There is no single, simple tutorial. It's designed to be ready be machines and by experienced engineers. Some are easy to read, some are hard. I understand almost half the .crash reports I see. – user535733 Jun 23 '20 at 19:02