HOW-TO:Submit a bug report

IMPORTANT!

1. The normal XBMC log IS NOT a debug log, to enable debug logging press X+Y during startup or toggle it on in System Settings
2. Please do not paste logs to the XBMC forums, use a specially designed place like pastebin.ca instead

"“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 know before you report a bug

For starters, make sure you use the lastest possible XBMC (SVN) version you can get. The last possible XBMC version is the one that you build (compile) yourself from 'todays' SVN, building (compiling) XBMC yourself from the SVN can be 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 be 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' SVN 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 see if this bug has been reported and verified before. If it already has been reported, then you have a choice of either waiting to see if it gets fixed/solved, or post a reply-message in the same bug-report to confirm the issue and possibly add additional information (like a debug-log, step-by-step replications instructions and/or a audio/video sample if needed). You can also post that reply in the forum-thread regarding the bug if there is a discussion link to the forum thread concerning this bug.
• 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 accurate 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.

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.

Related information that should be in a bug report

• Most important is to provide a very clear and detailed problem description together with step-by-step instructions how others can replicate the problem you see, (so that Team-XBMC and others can replicate it on their own Xbox).
• Which primary 'bootup' dashboard you use, XBMC or other (like EvoX or Avalaunch, etc.).
• What Xbox™ version you got and what kind of mod (modchip or softmod) and BIOS.
• DVD-ROM manufacturer and date of manufacturing (if it has problem read CD/DVD media).
• XBMC debug-log file (see the "Logs and debug-log files" section futher down in this article).
• Did you build/compile XBMC yourself (from SVN) or did you download it?, or...?
• The XBMC 'version' you are using when seeing the bug (ie. the exact build date).
• Video output mode/settings/adapter (output resolution, normal aspect-ratio or widescreen, PAL-50/60 or NTSC-M/J, 720p or 1080i HDTV.
• Audio output mode/settings/adapter (analog stereo, passthrough, ...in XBMC and Microsoft dashboard).
• The amount of free memory in XBMC, (see the "Logs and debug-log files" section below on how to enable free memory display)!:
  • The amount of free memory before seeing the problem.
  • The amount of free memory during the problem.
  • The amount of free memory ffter the problem (if XBMC did not crash/freeze).
• Other information you think that might be relevant, like for example:
  • When you have streaming problem with need to know OS and Service Pack of the server.
  • If streaming video/audio stutters or end what kind of network (and configuration).
    
    

Note! If you have problem when playing a media file over the network or from the DVD-ROM (CD/DVD media), then you need to at least need to try copying that exact same file to the Xbox's built-in harddisk-drive and test playing or viewing it from there to see if the problem is the same from there as well, (this will narrow down the problem a lot when dealing with audio and video files that will not play).

Logs and debug-log files

XBMC is able to create a log file that can provide Team-XBMc and others with a lot of useful information when trying to locate bug or narrow down the cause of a problem. However, the normal log-file that XBMC creates every time you run XBMC does not contain that 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 create was is refered to as a debug log. 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 on your screen when XBMC is running, and if you look in the log-file that is created when is in this mode you will see a lot of "DEBUG" entry items. The logfile can be found in the directory where XBMC is installed under. The name of the log-file is "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/freeze) then you will probably need to have "xbmc_old.log" instead. Make sure you have the correct log-file by looking at its contents, the information can be read in any text-editor (like Notepad in Micosoft Windows).

Your debug-log file can be made public in a few ways:

• Use pastebin.com and provide the link in your forum-post and/or bug-report.
• You can ZIP it and upload it together with your bug-report to sourceforge.net.
• Cut and paste just the 'relative parts' taken from a debug-log in your post on XBMC's Bug-Discussion Forum or in the bug-report on the official bug-tracker (on sourceforge.net), (please read the log file and post only the parts you think are relative and usefull, for example the first part is logging every setting which most of the time is not useful).
  
  

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

Screenshots (a picture is worth a thousand words)

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 think it will help then you can edit your screenshot in a photo-editor (like Paint in Windows) to add text, arrows or drawings in the screenshot-picture to explains things that might not otherwise be selfunderstod from the screenshot, this is especially usefull in GUI (or OSD) and interface issues.

Audio or Video (and subtitle) playback problems

If you are having problem playing a audio/music or video (or DVD-Video) please also follow these instruction in addition to the general bug-reporting instructions above.

• First of all, if you have problem when playing a media file over the network or from the Xbox DVD-ROM drive (CD/DVD media), then you need to first test it from the Xbox's built-in harddisk-drive, so copy that exact same file to the Xbox's built-in harddisk-drive (via FTP or XBMC's File-Manager) and then try playing or viewing it from there, to see if the problem is the same when playing/viewing it from there as well or not, (this will narrow down the problem a lot when dealing with audio and video files that will not play over a network, which can often be a bandwidth or configuration error done by the user).
• If the problem media file is a a file-based video-file (like AVI, MKV, OGM or MPG, etc.) then try to play the same file in MPlayer for Windows on Windows-computer, (that is "MPlayer" from www.mplayerhq.hu and not "Windows Media Player" from Microsoft that comes with Windows). You see, the main video-player in XBMC is a port of MPlayer, which originally is a command-line based video-player for Linux and Windows), (XBMC uses this MPlayer 'core' to playback all video files, with the exception of DVD-Video movies which uses our own dedicated DVDPlayer). If your playback problem (bug) of your video-file can be seen in MPlayer for Windows then the bug is with MPlayer and not XBMC (or the XBMC port of MPlayer), thus you report this bug/issue/problem to the developers over at www.mplayerhq.hu (instead of to Team-XBMC or The XBMC Project). The MPlayer developers have their own bug-tracker (they also use a dev mailing-list instead of a forum, to which after you registered can send an e-mail to informing them about any bug-report you post on their bug-tracker), but before you post your bug-report to MPlayer's bug-tracker or their mailing-list you must make sure you followed MPlayer's bug-reporting guide-lines in the MPlayer documentation. Note! Please respect that it is not enough that you see the bug/issue/problem in XBMC, (in fact you should not even mention XBMC in a MPlayer bug-report!).
  
  

However if you have problem with a video file not playing correctly in XBMC but it plays fine in MPlayer for Windows (see above) then please use the program GPspot to find out which codecs it needs and format it uses, (alternativly use YAAI, or a other similar tool to get this info). Also if possible provide a small sample to that the developers on Team-XBMC can test it themself on their own Xbox, see bellow.

Providing a sample

While it sometimes can be complicated to provide us with samples, it is usually worth the effort if you are having problems with one or more types of media (audio/video/image) files. With samples that show the problem Team-XBMC are able to fix bugs much easier and quicker, this is 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). 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 source, (since it is not of much use otherwise).

DVD-Video samples

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 to do with the main movie, the only thing left to do 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 source, (since it is not of much use otherwise).