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28.4.9. Configuring Automatic Reporting

ABRT can be configured to use μReports. This additional type of bug report has these advantages:
  • Once enabled, μReports are sent automatically, without user interaction. In contrast, the normal reports are not sent until manually triggered by the user.
  • μReports are anonymous and do not contain sensitive information. This eliminates the risk that unwanted data will be submitted automatically.
  • A μReport represents the detected problem as a JSON object. Therefore, it is machine-readable and can be created and processed automatically.
  • μReports are smaller than full bug reports.
  • μReports do not require downloading large amounts of debugging information.
μReports serve several goals. They help to prevent duplicate customer cases that might get created because of multiple occurences of the same bug. Additionally, μReports enable gathering statistics of bug occurences and finding known bugs across different systems. Finally, if authenticated μReports are enabled as described at the end of this section, ABRT can automatically present instant solutions to the customers. However, μReports do not necessarily provide engineers with enough information to fix the bug, for which a full bug report may be necessary.
A μReport generally contains the following information:
  • a call stack trace of a program without any variables, or, in case of multi-threaded C, C++, and Java programs, multiple stack traces
  • which operating system is used
  • versions of the RPM packages involved in the crash
  • whether the program ran under the root user
  • for kernel oops, possibly information about host hardware

    Warning

    Do not enable μReports if you do not want to share information about your hardware with Red Hat.
For μReport examples, see the Examples of μReports article.
With μReports enabled, the following happens by default when a crash is detected:
  1. ABRT submits a μReport with basic information about the problem to Red Hat's ABRT server.
  2. The server determines whether the problem is already in the bug database.
  3. If it is, the server returns a short description of the problem along with a URL of the reported case.
    If not, the server invites the user to submit a full problem report.
To enable μReports for all users, run as root: 
~]# abrt-auto-reporting enabled
or add the following line to the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf file: 
AutoreportingEnabled = yes
User-specific configuration is located in the $USER/.config/abrt/ directory. It overrides the system-wide configuration.
To apply the new configuration, restart the ABRT services by running: 
~]# service abrtd restart
The default autoreporting behavior - sending μReports - can be changed. To do that, assign a different ABRT event to the AutoreportingEvent directive in the /etc/abrt/abrt.conf configuration file. See Section 28.4.2, “Standard ABRT Installation Supported Events” for an overview of the standard events.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 and later, customers can also send authenticated μReports, which contain more information: hostname, machine-id (taken from the /etc/machine-id file), and RHN account number. The advantage of authenticated μReports is that they go directly to the Red Hat Customer Portal, and not only to Red Hat's private crash-report server, as the regular μReports do. This enables Red Hat to provide customers with instant solutions to crashes.
To turn the authenticated automatic reporting on, run the following command as root: 
~]# abrt-auto-reporting enabled -u RHN_username
Replace RHN_username with your Red Hat Network username. This command will ask for your password and save it in plain text into the /etc/libreport/plugins/rhtsupport.conf file.