using reportbug & reportbug-ng for reporting bugs upstream to debian

[shirish]

Hi all,
     I've been reporting bugs for a while & reporting upstream bugs at
times when it was necessary. Sometime back I was introduced to
reprortbug & although it is a very good tool it seems something is
amiss. So lemme make some points & please lemme know how we can
contribute to having things done in a better way.  The idea is also to
make a help document after I get all the answers.
      Now like some users I don't want to use an  MTA  to send &
receive bug -reports.  I am using gutsy & reportbug v. 3.38ubuntu2

Now the configuration file at /etc/reportbug.conf is something very
interesting & I am sure has the answers to quite few questions.

# You can also specify a port other than 25
smtphost fiordland.ubuntu.com

# Username and password for SMTP
# smtpuser bob
# smtppasswd XXX

# Use TLS encryption.
# smtptls

 Lemme mention that Ms. Sarah Hobbes had been very helpful in her own
capacity to help me & did the update but some things are still
missing.

Now while the smtphost thing is cool, what would be the username &
password, does it need any filling in.

Below is a conversation between reportbug & me. Help me if we can find
a suitable way to successfully send it to its home doing a cc at
bugs at launchpad.net (don't know if filing bugs through email is yet
possible or its a todo thing? )

 reportbug
Please enter the name of the package in which you have found a problem.
> pidgin
*** Welcome to reportbug.  Use ? for help at prompts. ***
Detected character set: UTF-8
Please change your locale if this is incorrect.

Using 'shirishag75 <shirishag75 at ubuntu.com>' as your from address.

 Now is this correct or not? https://launchpad.net/~shirishag75  that's me.

Getting status for pidgin...
Verifying package integrity...
Will send report to Ubuntu (per request).
Maintainer for pidgin is 'Ubuntu Core Developers
<ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>'.
Looking up dependencies of pidgin...

Please briefly describe your problem (you can elaborate in a moment; an empty
response will stop reportbug). This should be a concise summary of what is
wrong with the package, for example, "fails to send email" or "does not start
with -q option specified."
> doesn't like me
Rewriting subject to 'pidgin: doesn't like me'
How would you rate the severity of this problem or report?

1 critical        makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system)
                  break, or causes serious data loss, or introduces a security
                  hole on systems where you install the package.
2 grave           makes the package in question unusable by most or all users,
                  or causes data loss, or introduces a security hole allowing
                  access to the accounts of users who use the package.
3 serious         is a severe violation of Debian policy (that is, the problem
                  is a violation of a 'must' or 'required' directive); may or
                  may not affect the usability of the package. Note that non-
                  severe policy violations may be 'normal,' 'minor,' or
                  'wishlist' bugs. (Package maintainers may also designate
                  other bugs as 'serious' and thus release-critical; however,
                  end users should not do so.)
4 important       a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a package,
                  without rendering it completely unusable to everyone.
5 does-not-build  a bug that stops the package from being built from source.
                  (This is a 'virtual severity'.)
6 normal          a bug that does not undermine the usability of the whole
                  package; for example, a problem with a particular option or
                  menu item.
7 minor           things like spelling mistakes and other minor cosmetic errors
                  that do not affect the core functionality of the package.
8 wishlist        suggestions and requests for new features.

Please select a severity level: [normal] 8
Do any of the following apply to this report?

1 l10n      This bug reports a localization/internationalization issue.

2 patch     You are including a patch to fix this problem.

3 none

Please select tags: (one at a time) [none]
Spawning sensible-editor...
Report will be sent to "Ubuntu Bug Tracking System"
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
Submit this report on pidgin (e to edit) [Y|n|a|c|e|i|l|m|p|q|?]? Y
Connecting to bugs.debian.org via SMTP...
SMTP send failure: {'ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com': (550, 'relay not
permitted')}
Wrote bug report to /tmp/reportbug-pidgin-20070616-5078-jgeAxU

Ok I remember something of this sort also happening an another time.
Can this be fixed in a short time? The other way is just to use
reportbug to make a nice bug-report & then use gmail to send it.

Another thing, there is also a better-looking tool called
reportbug-ng, the only thing is it has a very sparse configuration
file known as .reportbugng

Now are there any options or stuff we want by default to be there, I
have opened a bug-report  at
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=429235 , if anything
comes to your mind which would improve our communication with them
using the tool please do so either there or on the mailing list or
off-list, either way is preferable to me.

Looking forward to your valuable inputs on this.
-- 
          Shirish Agarwal
  This email is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

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