One of my Ubuntu systems would pop up the following message multiple times after logging in:
System program problem detected
Do you want to report the problem now?
It was really annoying as simply closing the messages would cause them to return after a reboot.
This was happening due to a number of files in the /var/crash/ directory. After removing these, the problem went away. I did so from the command line as follows:
[chris@home ~]$ sudo rm /var/crash/* [chris@home ~]$
While the idea of a crash report helping fix problems is nice, I really question whether they are that valuable. Personally, I’d rather never have to deal with them.
To ensure that I never have to deal with them again, I disabled the apport service that is responsible for generating these crash reports.
To disable the service, first edit the /etc/default/apport file:
[chris@home ~]$ gksu gedit /etc/default/apport
# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it # you can temporarily override this with # sudo service apport start force_start=1 enabled=1
Then change enabled=1 to enabled=0:
# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it # you can temporarily override this with # sudo service apport start force_start=1 enabled=0
Save and close the file.
Finally, stop the still-running apport service:
[chris@home ~]$ sudo stop apport apport stop/waiting [chris@home ~]$
Did I help you?
Just did all of this, hopefully it works out. Thanks for the write up!
I was having the same issue. Thank you very much for explaining how to fix it! And I agree to you about being useless (well… At least for me, because I`m a newbie and I really don`t see a reason to care all that much, since it does not seem to really matter – my Ubuntu distros work as if I hadn`t any problem at all). I`m getting this problem only when I use my Ubuntu from pendrive – no problem report is shown when I boot my Ubuntu from HD.
Thanks that helped… new one.
I saw it for the first time today, quite unexpected. I just dismissed it, and fretted for a while that it might be malware fishing for my credentials.
Thanks for the explanation. I feel much better now.
I’d say a more detailed message should be provided, and should include at least a summary to put the user at ease. And why should a password be needed?
I’m not sure when you were prompted for a password. If it was while generating the details, it would be because it needed to access files that your user didn’t have access to read, such as log files with root-only access.
thanks for your help ! This problem is puzzled me a long time.
Thanks, man. Greatly appreciated, as I force kill applications every now and then and forget to clean /var/crash. This service should be disabled by default.
Thanks a ton. I got those errors after I changed my Linux Virtual Box’s processor to ICH9, but clearing /var/crash fixed them right away. Without your post I would have probably lost hours trying to find the cause of those messages.
You rock!
That was great, It fixed. Thanks much.