• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Geek Diary

HowTos | Basics | Concepts

  • Solaris
    • Solaris 11
    • SVM
    • ZFS
    • Zones
    • LDOMs
    • Hardware
  • Linux
    • CentOS/RHEL 7
    • RHCSA notes
    • SuSE Linux Enterprise
    • Linux Services
  • VCS
    • VxVM
  • Interview Questions
  • oracle
    • ASM
    • mysql
    • RAC
    • oracle 12c
    • Data Guard
  • DevOps
    • Docker
    • Shell Scripting
  • Hadoop
    • Hortonworks HDP
      • HDPCA
    • Cloudera
      • CCA 131

How to install and configure ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool) in CentOS/RHEL

By admin

ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool), is a set of tools that help users detect and analyze application crashes. ABRT features additional type of lightweight bug report that can be used to report software crashes to Red Hat. These reports, called uReports, are designed to contain no potentially sensitive information and do not require you to download a potentially large amount of debugging information. They will allow Red Hat to keep track of bug occurrences while not necessarily providing enough information for their engineers to fix the bug. For that, you still may have to send a full bug report.

ABRT currently supports the detection of crashes in applications written in the C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby programming languages, as well as X.Org crashes, kernel oopses, and kernel panics.

What exactly does a uReport contain?

ABRT supports uReports for four types of crashes: crashes of C/C++ programs that result in a core dump, uncaught Python exceptions, uncaught Java exceptions and kernel oopses. Each uReport generally contains a stack trace, or multiple stack traces in the case of multi-threaded C/C++ and Java programs. The stack trace only describes the call stack of the program at the time of the crash and does not contain contents of any variables.

Every uReport also contains identification of the operating system, versions of the RPM packages involved in the crash, and whether the program ran under a root user. There are also items specific to each crash type:

  • for C/C++ crashes, these are: path to the executable and signal delivered to the program
  • for Python exceptions, there is the type of the exception (without the error message, which may contain sensitive data)
  • for kernel oopses, these are: list of loaded kernel modules, list of taint flags, and full text of the kernel oops

Installing ABRT

1. First, we’ll install the necessary packages to start using the ABRT tools and utilities. Install the abrt daemon and tools via the following command line:

# yum install abrt-cli

2. Enable and start the abrt daemon with the systemct command.

# systemctl enable abrtd
# systemctl start abrtd

For CentOS/RHEL 6 and below, use:

# chkconfig abrtd on
# service abrtd start

3. Verify the status of the service.

# systemctl status abrtd
● abrtd.service - ABRT Automated Bug Reporting Tool
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/abrtd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-06-05 15:17:50 UTC; 15s ago
 Main PID: 2071 (abrtd)
    Tasks: 1
   CGroup: /system.slice/abrtd.service
           └─2071 /usr/sbin/abrtd -d -s

Jun 05 15:17:50 user.geeklab.com systemd[1]: Started ABRT Automated Bug Reporting Tool.
Jun 05 15:17:50 user.geeklab.com systemd[1]: Starting ABRT Automated Bug Reporting Tool...
Jun 05 15:17:50 user.geeklab.com abrtd[2071]: Init complete, entering main loop

Using abrt-cli

1. You may need to first enable the autoerporting feature, otherwise you would get an error when you execute the “abrt-cli list” command as shown below.

# abrt-cli list
The Autoreporting feature is disabled. Please consider enabling it by issuing
'abrt-auto-reporting enabled' as a user with root privileges

2. As suggested in the error message above enable the Autoreporting feature first using the below command.

# abrt-auto-reporting enabled

Enabling micro-reporting allows Red Hat to keep track of bug occurrences and potentially provide fixes even without the need to open a support case.

3. Once installed, ABRT will start catching crashes. When a crash occurs ABRT creates a sosreport and gathers all the necessary data for engineers to fix the crash. To list crashes caught by ABRT do:

# abrt-cli list

or use the desktop application (gnome-abrt on CentOS/RHEL 7, abrt-gui on CentOS/RHEL 6). ABRT will guide you through the reporting process. Please review the report so that it doesn’t contain any sensitive data.

4. The output from the above command can be used to get all the information about the segmentation fault. You can also report the issue to RedHat support with the “abrt-cli report” command. The sytax of the command is :

# abrt-cli report
Usage: abrt-cli report [options] DIR...

    -v, --verbose               Be verbose
    -d, --delete                Remove PROBLEM_DIR after reporting
    -u, --unsafe                Ignore security checks to be able to report all problems

Enabling automatic reporting

You can turn the automatic reporting on by running “abrt-auto-reporting” enabled as root or by making sure that /etc/abrt/abrt.conf contains the following line:

# vi /etc/abrt/abrt.conf
AutoreportingEnabled = yes

If you prefer to use command-line tools you can use the abrt-cli program to send the bug report manually to the RedHat support team.

How to disable ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool) in RHEL

Filed Under: CentOS/RHEL 6, CentOS/RHEL 7, Linux

Some more articles you might also be interested in …

  1. How to Back Up and Restore XFS File Systems (xfsdump / xfsrestore)
  2. Why CentOS / RHEL 7 have many tmpfs (6 tmpfs filesystem), and what is their purpose
  3. CentOS / RHEL 6 : How to add/remove additional IP addresses to a network interface
  4. CentOS / RHEL : How to configure vsftpd to use ports other than the default ports 20 and 21
  5. How to enable IPv6 on CentOS / RHEL 6
  6. How to Connect Remote Host Using the ssh Command
  7. How to disable the Out of memory or oom-killer in CentOS/RHEL 4
  8. How to configure MariaDB database to use Active Directory for user authentication in CentOS/RHEL 7
  9. CentOS / RHEL 5,6 : How to Change the timezone
  10. Understanding Failover in a Pacemaker Cluster

You May Also Like

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • How to set the order to load certain modules in CentOS/RHEL 7 and 8
  • How to configure initrd / initramfs to including kernel modules in CentOS/RHEL
  • How to configure systemd.path to trigger an event when any changes made to a directory
  • Script to monitor RMAN Backup and Restore Operations
  • Oracle RMAN Backup Shell Script Example
  • Archives
  • Contact Us
  • Copyright

© 2019 · The Geek Diary