HOW-TO:Submit a bug report

“I found a bug... which i want fixed. Where can i report this...”

The reason this page is written is that there are often faulty, vague or even double bug-reports posted on the forum. The information below is to streamline this a bit.

To start, make sure you use the last possible XBMC version. The last possible XBMC version is the one you build yourself. This is quite technical and most users will never attempt to do this. Most of you get XBMC from P2P networks. There is always a date added to these builds. Please use a RECENT build, a recent build is never more then a few days old! Here you can check the Changelog since XBMC version 1.0. Maybe your bug has been fixed in the last few hours?

The bug is still in the “latest” version? read on...

• First search the sourceforge bugtracker if this bug has been reported before. If so, all you can do is wait or post a message in the forum thread regarding this bug.
• The next thing you should do, if there is no bug report, use the search function in the forum.

Make sure you search in the bug report section! At the bottom of the page is also the timeframe you set to not limit your search within the last 30 days. Some bug reports are more then 30 days old. Set the timeframe to a year.

Posting the bug

You should first report the bug on the forum, after this (and it is confirmed by others) you can do an official bug report on the sourceforge bugtracker.

Rules of posting a bug report – the short version

• Make sure you are the first to report it.
• Make separate threads for each bug (if you have found more) (for easier manageability)
• Give a good overview.

Useful info for bug reports, for use on the forum (debug log, screenshot, codec)

XBMC is able to create a log file that provides us with a lot of useful information when trying to locate a bug. However, the normal log-file that XBMC creates everytime you run XBMC does not contain much information by default, therefore you must start XBMC in debug-mode so that a maximum amount of information is written to the log file. To start XBMC in debug-mode simply hold X+Y on startup of XBMC, you will know that XBMC is in debug-mode when you see a free memory indicator in the upper left corner of the screen when XBMC is running and if you look in the log-file you will see a lot of “DEBUG” items. The logfile can be found in the directory where XBMC is installed under the name "xbmc.log" or "xbmc_old.log", in general you only need the "xbmc.log" file but if you are running XBMC as dashboard and you have to restart your Xbox (because of a crash/hang) then you probably need to have "xbmc_old.log" instead. Make sure you have the correct logfile by looking at its contents, the information can be read in any text-editor (like Notepad in Micosoft Windows).

Note! Only log-files made in debug-mode are useful to Team-XBMC (developers and technical-support mods)!, see above.

You can post *parts* of the log on the forum as it might help developers pin-point the problem. Please read the log file and post only the parts you think are usefull. The first part is logging every setting which most of the time is not useful.

If you think you need to make a screenshot of XBMC to show on the forum you can do so by pressing the left thumb stick.

If you have trouble with a video file playing please use the program gspot to find out which codecs it needs.

What Information Should Be Included with Bug Reports

You need to provide all relevant information about your setup and the bug/problem, if you do not know if something is relative or not then incude that information just in case. Information such as kind of what TV you have PAL-50/60 or NTSC-M/J or HDTV and if you have a 16:9 Widescreen or normal 4:3 etc. What Xbox™ you got (modchip, BIOS it’s using, what DVD-ROM it has and if it can read CD-R or not), which primary dashboard you use, which build version of XBMC and XStream you’re using, if you’re running XBMC from the hard drive or of a CD-R/RW/DVD-R/RW+R/RW? (inc. file structure) and if you’re playing the media file of DVD-ROM, Hard Drive or XStream (setup & version), if streaming file what kind of network you have. Most importantly you need to provide a very detailed problem description together with step-by-step instructions how others can replicate the problem you see. You may also have to post the contents of some of your xml files. Provide detailed info of the media file (use Gspot, YAAI or similar tool to get this info). For media bugs you also need to provide a URL where the developers can download a sample of the file (AVI,MPG,MP3,JPG …etc.) that show the problem, see how-to create a sample here. Note! If you have problem when playing a file over the network or from the DVD-ROM you need to at least test to play or view the exact same file from the Xbox Hard Drive to see if the problem is the same from there.
PS! You must check that the bug exist in the very latest XBMC latest CVS code/build before.
Note! Do not e-mail or PM us directly to report a bug, we do not do personal 1 to 1 handling.