HOW-TO:Submit a bug report

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Revision as of 13:56, 19 September 2006 by >Gamester17
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"“I found a bug/problem/issue in XBMC which I want fixed, where can i report this..." is a question we get a lot, and the reason for this "HOW-TO Submit a Proper Bug Report" article is that there are often faulty, vague or even double bug-reports posted on the bug-discussion forum and/or to our official bug-tracker (on sourceforge.net). The information provided below is to help streamline this process a bit to make it more efficient. Please follow the instructions to the best of your abilities, as the better your bug-report is, the sooner the issue can be fixed/solved.

What you should now before you report a bug

For starters, make sure you use the lastest possible XBMC (CVS) version you can get. The last possible XBMC version is the one that you build (compile) yourself from 'todays' CVS, builing (compiling) XBMC yourself from the CVS can quite technical and most users will never attempt to do this. Most of you 'XBMC end-users' download pre-compiled XBMC builds from peer-to-peer networks, or some private FTP-site or web-page. There is always a date added to those pre-compiled XBMC builds, please use a RECENT build when testing bugs before reporting them, a recent build should never more then a few days old!

You must then also check the public Changelog.txt file (which lists all bug-fixes) and compare that to the Changelog.txt that came with your build of XBMC, maybe your bug has been fixed in the last few hours? Only if bug is still in the 'latest' CVS version of XBMC should you continue with reporting the problem!

Known Bugs (existing XBMC issues and problems)

Before posting your bug-report in the bug-discussion forum and/or the official bug-tracker (on sourceforge.net) is to check/search if someone else have already reported the problem before you.

  • First browse through our official bug-tracker (on sourceforge.net) to if this bug has been reported and verified before. If it alaready has so, then you have a choise of either wait to see if it gets fixed/solved, or post a reply-message in the same bug-report to confirm the issue and possible add additional information (like a debug-log, step-by-step replications instructions and a audio/video sample if needed). You can also post that reply in the forum-thread regarding this bug if it is linked to from the bug-report.
  • Next thing you should do, if there is no bug-report on the official bug-tracker (on sourceforge).net, is to use the search function in the public XBMC-forum, please try search with different 'keywords' and select to search both the "Bug Discussion" and the "XBMC Support (Help)" forum as many issues first get posted into the support/help forum before moved to the bug-discussion forum. Note! The forum search function requires that all keywords are at least four characters or longer, you cannot use symbol-charaters like "." or "-" in a search-word, and to get a more acurate result you may search using multiple keywords by using "AND" or "OR" between the keywords.

Rules of posting a bug-report

  • As above; make sure you searched both the official bug-tracker plus the "Bug Discussion" and the "XBMC Support (Help)" forum.
  • Use a clear self-understod topic summery like "Thumbnails over UPnP do not work", do not use a summery like "I found a bug!".
  • Make separate topic-threads for each bug (if you have found more problem/issue), this is for easier manageability purposes.
  • Give a good basic overview, and provide a step-by-step instruction on how anyone can replicate the issue on their own Xbox.
    • The more information YOU provide the easier it will to replicate/verify and thus most of the times quicker to fix/solve.
  • Provide a full debug-log (see bellow) or just paste in the 'relative parts' taken from a debug-log.
    • Please do not cut and paste a whole debug-log into a bug-report/forum post body, instead attatch it and give us a URL link.

NOTE! A bug is only ever a bug if the XBMC was designed on purpose to do something and that thing does not work, like example; XBMC hangs/freezes when you press a button, a audio-file stops in the middle while playing, video produces garbled output, or you see different navigation-menu behaviour on a DVD-Video movie compared to a normal standalone DVD-player, (or WinDVD/PowerDVD on a PC, or the original DVD-Player of the Xbox). If XBMC was not designed on purpose to do something, and it is a not a pre-existing feature/function, then it is not a bug, and you can instead post a feature suggestion/request for that.


Posting the bug-report

After you searched for known-bugs and you have found out that your bug/issue/problem has not been reported before (to make sure you are not posting a duplicate bug report), there are a few additional things that you should keep in mind before posting; All verified bug-report should evenually be posted on XBMC's official bug-tracker (on sourceforge.net), that way Team-XBMC are able to track all confirmed bugs on one tracker which makes our lifes a lot easier. However, before posting a bug-report there, please make sure it really is a valid bug-report and not a feature-request or something that is your own fault (ie. user-error). To do that you should start a new seperate topic-thread on the XBMC bug-discussion forum to get it verifed with others XBMC users, (others should be able to replicate your problem on their own Xbox). Now, when reporting a bug there are a few things we will need, if these things are not provided, it will be much harder (and many times impossible) to replicate the problem and find the bug. In the case of an invalid bug-report the report will be closed without us even looking at it. Please follow the "Rules of posting a bug-report" in the previous section.

Information that should be in a bug report

  • A clear description of the problem and what you did (step-by-step) to see it so that Team-XBMC and others can replicate it on their own Xbox.
  • A debug-log file (see the "Logs and debug-log files" section below).
  • The XBMC 'version' you are using when seeing the bug (ie. the exact build date).
  • Did you build/compile XBMC yourself (from CVS) or did you download it?, or...?
  • Video output mode/settings/adapter (output resolution, PAL or NTSC, HDTV, 720p, 1080i...).
  • Audio output mode/settings/adapter (analog stereo, passthrough, ...in XBMC and Microsoft dashboard).
  • The amount of free memory! See the "Logs and debug-log files" section below on how to enable free memory display!
    • Before seeing the problem.
    • During the problem.
    • After the problem (if XBMC did not crash and just went back to the normal GUI)
  • Other information you think that might be relevant

Note! Duplicate reports/posts of the same bug make it much harder for us to keep track of all the bug-reports/posts, by carefully searching to make sure the issue has not been uncovered before you save us a lot of time and frustration.


Logs and debug-log files

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.

The logfile can be found in the directory where XBMC is installed under the name 'xbmc.log' or 'xbmc_old.log'. In general you need xbmc.log, but if you are running xbmc as dash and you have to restart your xbox (because of a crash) you probably need to have xbmc_old.log. Make sure you have the correct logfile by looking at its contents!.

This log file can be made public in a few ways:

  • You zip it and upload it together with the bug-report to sourceforge.net.
  • Post parts of the logfile in the bug report itself on sourceforge.net or the XBMC Bug-Discussion Forum.
  • Use pastebin and provide the link in your bug-report.
  • 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).

Sample

While it sometimes can be complicated to provide us with samples, it is usually worth the effort. With samples that show the problem we are able to fix bugs much easier and quicker, because with a sample we can very simply replicate the bug ourselves in our own debug enviroment, and most of the time these bugs can be fixed the same day if there is a developer with some free time available and willing. Without a sample, it will take much longer because we cannot replicate the bug ourselves and we will have to try a lot of things (which can break the current working version again).

Simplest is to just to snail-mail one of the developers a 1:1 copy of the DVD-disc (or the original DVD-disc if the bug has something todo with encryption problems), you can create a such 1:1 copy on your PC using softwares like “DVDDecrypter”. Another possibility is to compress (ZIP/RAR) the sample and send it over the internet, (since most DVDs are a bit to big to send over the internet you can try to strip unneeded data out of it (read the section below about “DVD-menu related problems”). If you have the possibility to either snail-mail the disc (shipping the actual disc) or send a sample over the internet please post so in your bug-repost. Note! Please understand that if you send in a DVD-disc (copy or original) we can not send it back!

For DVD-menu related problems, the next can be done:

strip all non-menu related vob files.
These files take up most of the space. What is needed are the ifo and bup files, together with all menu vobs. If you are lucky the DVD has a few 1GB big vob files (these are probably the main movie and thus not needed) and one or two small vob files. These small vob files are needed. RAR or ZIP those vobs together with the ifo and bug files and provide them to us. Upload them to XBMC Upload Site maximum 25MB or find another way (like posting them on your own website or creating a torrent).

If the problem has something todo with the main movie, the only thing left todo is to take the problematic vob file and to strip it as much as is possible.

In all cases you must first test the sample yourself before you send it to the XBMC developer/team, the sample needs to have the same problem as the original DVD, (since it is not of much use otherwise).


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.

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