Reporting Bugs

First, please look at the list of PackageKit bugs and to that of gnome-PackageKit bugs, so that you are sure the bug you are reporting isn't a duplicate bug that someone else has fixed or reported. If not present, then please create a new bug attaching all the information to this new bug:

If the bug affects the GNOME GUI, please report it here.
On the other hand, report it here if you suspect it affects the underlying PackageKit backend.

Please do not email individual developers with bug reports, as the volume of email we get is already huge. Bugzilla lets us keep it all the information in one place, so we don't loose track!

General Bugs

When PackageKit doesn't work, there is lots that could be wrong. To help us diagnose the problem, please supply the following information:

The version of packagekit installed
The version of gnome-packagekit installed
The installation method you used (i.e. FC8 RPM, tarball)
Your distribution and version
The verbose trace from packagekitd
Any other information that may be relevant

packagekitd Verbose Trace

This will turn on verbose debugging for the PackageKit daemon that will be useful when debugging problems.

sudo killall packagekitd
sudo /usr/libexec/packagekitd --verbose

GConf session settings

This will display your session user settings for the GNOME PackageKit Tools.

gconftool-2 -R /apps/gnome-packagekit

Segfaults or random crashes

We would really appreciate it if you could send us more information about the crash, specifically a backtrace with gdb. Make sure you have the packagekit-debuginfo or packagekit-gdb package installed, else the reports from gdb won't mean much to any of us.

gdb /usr/libexec/packagekitd

The GNU debugger (gdb) will start and put you at a prompt:

(gdb) _

Then type the following.

(gdb) run --verbose

In another command window, you may have to exeute the action that is crashing the daemon, for instance:

pkcon get updates

You should be back in the gdb shell if the daemon has crashed. Then type bt at the prompt and send us all the output that follows. This will tell us exactly what the program was doing when it crashed.

This link will give you more information.

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