Why don't we ask for kern.log?

[Steven]

Thanks JFo, great response as always :)

My main question was whether there was a specific reason for me *not* to ask
for kern.log, such as personal info or other rules it would break or
problems it would cause. Good to know that's not the case.

I work triaging xserver-xorg-video-intel bugs, so when X freezes, you
usually can't switch to another VT, so the only way to get dmesg is to ask
the reporter to SSH in, which requires another computer and a good deal of
technical know-how. Thus I find it easier to just ask for kern.log after
they recover.

Technically I guess I could ask for dmesg.0 instead, but drm.debug makes
this so verbose that it fills the buffer too quickly and only contains the
boot info, so we usually lose the dmesg for the actual error, since it
usually occurs after the buffer's already filled up. So asking for kern.log
is rather foolproof in these cases.

Thanks again for the detailed response.

-Steven


On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 6:37 AM, Jeremy Foshee
<jeremy.foshee at canonical.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 09, 2010 at 01:37:25PM -0700, Brian Murray wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 10:27:48PM -0400, Steven wrote:
> > > Hi, I was curious why I haven't seen anyone ask for kern.log,
> especially for
> > > kernel or graphics bugs. Is there sensitive information in there? Is
> the
> > > computer name too private?
> > >
> > > It seems much easier to ask for kern.log than dmesg, since:
> > > 1) If the system freezes and you have to reboot, dmesg and
> /var/log/dmesg
> > > aren't relevant anymore, so uploading kern.log guarantees you have the
> > > correct dmesg for the bug.
> > > 2) The timestamps make it very easy to pinpoint where the error should
> be
> > > and lessen the chance to misinterpret irrelevant messages as messages
> that
> > > are related to the bug.
> >
> > This is a great question and hopefully Jeremy, who I am cc'ing, can shed
> > some light on it.
> >
> So, I took some time to talk to the team face-to-face on this. Apologies
> for the delay that caused. :)
>
> The long answer is that we generally get what we need from dmesg. Even
> given your argument that kern.log is persistent when the system crashes,
> the consensus is that we would not really get anything useful from
> kern.log in those cases. As to the timestamps, we ask that the
> collection occur at the time of the error in most cases. This allows us
> to have the current information in a much smaller log to review.
> At some point in the recent past, the logging that we requested was
> discussed and the most useful logs were selected
> for inclusion in bugs for the apport-collect command to gather. We
> periodically review this listing, much like we have just done as a
> result of this query :).
>
> I hope this information is useful. I've written this rather quickly, so
> please feel free to let me know if it isn't making sense somewhere. :-)
>
> ~JFo
> > --
> > Brian Murray
> > Ubuntu Bug Master
>
>
>
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