With the 12.04 release of Ubuntu and afterward, your system enables the Apport Error Reporting service by default on boot. This means that time to time a large number of internal errors pop up n your Ubuntu screen. These pop-ups are a feature of the internal debugger that automatically generates reports for all your system packages that have crashed.
The issue with these error pop-ups is that considering that there are a large number of Ubuntu users out there, there are high chances that the error has already been reported. It is also highly probable that the files for your error report have already been sent by some. Also, as a Ubuntu pro, you might already know how to fix the problem by yourself. Your focus then is to fix the problem rather than sending the report to Canonical. In these situations, where these reports are just a nuisance to you, we recommend that you safely turn them off. Moreover, crashes and bugs may sound like big problems but in actual, they are mostly minor operating system glitches and you may encounter several of them daily. It almost never means that your system is broken or it is ready to crash right then.
In this article, we will describe how you can configure the Apport service to manage the error report pop-up on Ubuntu Desktop. We will describe how you can enable/disable the Apport utility both through the command line and the Ubuntu graphical user interface.
We have run the commands and procedures mentioned in this article on a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS system.
How does Apport work?
The purpose of the Apport error reporting is to:
- Gauge the system crashes as and when they happen
- Gather information about the crash and the operating system state for report submission
- Report unhandled exceptions in other programming languages such as Python
- Report some other problems that can be automatically detected such as package installation and upgrade failures
- Generate a pop up on UI for the user, for each crash, and guide the user how to report it
- File non-crash error reports about software to developers so that they can gather information about operating system and package versions being used by a Ubuntu user
Disable Error Reporting through the Command Line
If you are a Terminal-savvy person, you can configure the Apport service in the following ways to disable error reporting:
Note: You can open the Terminal application either through the system Dash or the Ctrl+alt+T shortcut.
Stop Apport
The Apport service is in running or active state by default when you install Ubuntu 18.04. You can stop this service by running the following command as sudo:
$ sudo service apport stop
The service will silently stop without giving any notification. Now your system will not send any error reports during the current log in section. The service will, however, start again when you boot your system next time.
Disable Apport at Boot
In order to permanently disable the Apport service, you need to configure it to be disabled automatically at boot. For this, you need to make some changes in the Apport configuration file. Open the file in any of your favorite editors. We are using the Nano editor to open the file as sudo:
$ sudo nano /etc/default/apport
In the apport file, look up for a line that has the enabled value ‘1’ by default. Change this value to 0 so that the system does not start the apport service at boot.Advertisement
Press Ctrl+X, Y and then hit Enter to save the changes to this file.
Uninstall Apport
Another simple, but less recommended way is to completely remove the apport service with all its configurations from your system. You can do this by purging Apport through the following command as sudo:
$ sudo apt-get purge apport
Please note that only an authorized user can add/remove and configure software on Ubuntu.
Now the Apport service is completely removed from your system and you do not need to worry about any error reports being sent from your Ubuntu system.
Enable Error Reporting through Command Line
If you ever want to enable the Apport service again, you can install the service by running the following command as sudo:
$ sudo apt install apport
You can then manually start the service by running the following command:
$ sudo systemctl start apport
After this, make sure that the apport configuration file is set up properly to start the apport service at boot.
$ sudo nano /etc/default/apport
Please ensure that the value of enabled is set to 1 in this configuration file. Press Ctrl+X, Y and then hit Enter to save the changes to this file.
Enable/Disable Error Reporting through the UI
If you prefer using the GUI for performing simple administrative tasks, you can make of the graphical Settings utility.
The Settings can be accessed either through the system Dash or by accessing it as follows:
Click on the downward arrow located at the top-right corner of your Ubuntu desktop and then click the settings icon from the following view:
The Settings utility opens in the WiFi tab by default. You need to click on the Privacy tab in order to configure problem reporting.
Alternatively, you can enter privacy in the Dash search to open the Privacy settings directly.
In the right pane, look up for the Problem Reporting feature, whose value is ‘Automatic’ by default.
Here you can switch off the “Send error reports to Canonical”button in order to disable error reporting altogether. Or you can select if you want the system to automatically send error reports or else to show a dialog for each error before sending its report to Canonical.
As soon as you make the required settings, they take effect and will also retain the value on your next system boot.
Now you have a way out for disabling unwanted error pop-ups, which might otherwise distract you from the actual task at hand. It also saves system resources that it was previously using to start the Apport service, check for bugs and crashes, and then for the UI notifications and further reporting procedures.
