man sendbug (1): send problem report (PR) to a central support site

Other Alias

send-pr

SYNOPSIS

send-pr [ site ] [ -f problem-report ] [ -t mail-address ]
[ -P ] [ -L ] [ -s severity ] [ -V ]
[ --version ] [ -c address ] [ -a file ]

DESCRIPTION

send-pr is a tool used to submit problem reports (PRs) to a central support site. In most cases the correct site will be the default. This argument indicates the support site which is responsible for the category of problem involved. Some sites may use a local address as a default. site values are defined by using the aliases(5).

send-pr invokes an editor on a problem report template (after trying to fill in some fields with reasonable default values). When you exit the editor, send-pr sends the completed form to the Problem Report Management System (GNATS) at a central support site. At the support site, the PR is assigned a unique number and is stored in the GNATS database according to its category and submitter-id. GNATS automatically replies with an acknowledgement, citing the category and the PR number.

To ensure that a PR is handled promptly, it should contain one of the available categories to identify the problem area. (Use `send-pr -L' to see a list of categories.)

The more precise your problem description and the more complete your information, the faster your support team can solve your problems.

send-pr depends on a correctly configured mail submission system to work correctly. If, for any reason, sending mail is not working, problem reports can be submitted over the web, through:

: http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html

OPTIONS

-f problem-report: specify a file (problem-report) which already contains a complete problem report. send-pr sends the contents of the file without invoking the editor. If the value for problem-report is `-', then send-pr reads from standard input.
-s severity: Give the problem report the severity severity.
-t mail-address: Change mail address at the support site for problem reports. The default mail-address is the address used for the default site. Use the site argument rather than this option in nearly all cases.
-c address: Put address in the Cc: header of the message.
-a file: Copy the specified file into the Fix: section. Binary files are uuencoded.
-P: print the form specified by the environment variable PR_FORM on standard output. If PR_FORM is not set, print the standard blank PR template. No mail is sent.
-L: print the list of available categories. No mail is sent.
-V: Display the send-pr version number. This may also be specified as --version.

Note: use send-pr to submit problem reports rather than mailing them directly. Using both the template and send-pr itself will help ensure all necessary information will reach the support site.

FREEBSD CATEGORIES

advocacy: This used to be for the advocacy WWW pages. Now deprecated in favour of the www category, relevant alternative use of this category is encouraged.
alpha: Alpha processor specific problems.
amd64: AMD64 processor specific problems.
arm: ARM processor specific problems.
bin: Corrections or enhancements to system executables.
conf: Corrections or enhancements to the system configuration files.
docs: Corrections or enhancements to the manpages or other documentation.
gnu: Corrections or enhancements to the GNU contributed software.
i386: Intel x86 processor specific problems.
ia64: Intel ia64 processor specific problems.
java: Problems related to Java.
kern: Changes or enhancements to the architecture independent kernel sources.
misc: Problems that do not fit into any of the other categories.
ports: Corrections or enhancements (including new ports) to the ports collection.
powerpc: PowerPC processor specific problems.
sparc64: SPARC processor specific problems.
standards: Standards conformance issues.
sun4v: Problems specific to the SPARC sun4v architecture and processors.
threads: Problems related to threading on FreeBSD.
usb: Problems related to the USB subsystem.
www: Changes or enhancements to the FreeBSD website.

ENVIRONMENT

The environment variable EDITOR specifies the editor to invoke on the template.
default: vi

If the environment variable MAIL_AGENT is set, its value is used as the path + command line arguments of the executable to be invoked for sending the problem report (which will be provided via standard input).
This can be useful if you either use a MTA other than sendmail or need to provide additional parameters, such as the envelope sender on machines without a valid FQDN.
Default value: /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t

If the environment variable PR_FORM is set, then its value is used as the file name of the template for your problem-report editing session. You can use this to start with a partially completed form (for example, a form with the identification fields already completed).

HOW TO FILL OUT A PROBLEM REPORT

Problem reports have to be in a particular form so that a program can easily manage them. Please remember the following guidelines:

describe only one problem with each problem report.
For follow-up mail, use the same subject line as the one in the automatic acknowledgement. It consists of category, PR number and the original synopsis line. This allows the support site to relate several mail messages to a particular PR and to record them automatically.
Please try to be as accurate as possible in the subject and/or synopsis line.
The subject and the synopsis line are not confidential. This is because open-bugs lists are compiled from them. Avoid confidential information there.

See the GNU Info file send-pr.info or the document Reporting Problems With send-pr for detailed information on reporting problems

HOW TO SUBMIT TEST CASES, CODE, ETC.

Submit small code samples with the PR. Contact the support site for instructions on submitting larger test cases and problematic source code.

FILES

/tmp/pf.XXXXXXXX    copy of PR used in editing session

/tmp/pf.XXXXXXXX   copy of empty PR form, for testing purposes

/tmp/pr.XXXXXXXX   copy of filled PR form, created on interrupt

/tmp/pbad.XXXXXXXX file for rejected PRs

EMACS USER INTERFACE

An Emacs user interface for send-pr with completion of field values is part of the send-pr distribution (invoked with M-x send-pr). See the file send-pr.info or the ASCII file INSTALL in the top level directory of the distribution for configuration and installation information. The Emacs LISP template file is send-pr-el.in and is installed as send-pr.el.

INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION

See send-pr.info or INSTALL for installation instructions.

AUTHORS

Jeffrey Osier, Brendan Kehoe, Jason Merrill, Heinz G. Seidl (Cygnus Support)

COPYING

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be included in translations approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original English.