Linux and its software is constantly under development and the community seems to really be making an effort to ensure that programs work exactly as expected. I often notice little things like glitches or program crashes and I am able to replicate them and I think I should probably submit a bug report or something. Since I am not a dev I have no idea how to do this or where to start. How do I know if its my issue or the programs issue?
For example, Thunderbird 115.1.0 is crashing when I open a specific email. I will put the steps I took to debug it in the comments.
Generally each software will have its own avenue of bug reporting. Mozilla probably has their own bug tracker for Thunderbird, you should post there. Smaller projects might have a GitHub issues tab.
Reproducibility is much more valuable than logs, but logs are good too. You should include the software version, your OS version, and other details about your system that are relevant to the specific problem. For yours, you might want to include a sanitized copy of the email.
Steps I took to debug was to open it from the terminal with --safe-mode
thunderbird --safe-mode ✔ Gtk-Message: 21:45:33.720: Failed to load module “appmenu-gtk-module” [ImapModuleLoader] Using nsImapService.cpp [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:33.903: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:33.903: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:33.903: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:33.903: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:34.032: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:34.032: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:34.033: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:34.033: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed console.warn: services.settings: Failed to load last_modified.json: TypeError: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource. [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:41.115: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:41.115: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 21:45:41.115: gdk_cairo_surface_create_from_pixbuf: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed [Parent 92350, Main Thread] WARNING: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed: ‘glib warning’, file /usr/src/debug/thunderbird/thunderbird-115.1.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:167
(thunderbird:92350): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 21:45:41.115: g_object_unref: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed console.debug: “Found 0 public keys and 0 secret keys (0 protected, 0 unprotected)” console.debug: “Trying to load /usr/lib/thunderbird/libotr.so” console.debug: “Trying to load libotr.so from system’s standard library locations” console.debug: “Trying to load libotr.so.5 from system’s standard library locations” console.debug: “Trying to load libotr.so from system’s standard library locations” console.log: (new Error(“Cannot load required OTR library”, “resource:///modules/OTRLib.sys.mjs”, 110)) Exiting due to channel error. zsh: segmentation fault (core dumped) thunderbird --safe-mode
I know it looks like a lot is going wrong but the gdk-critical errors show up and the program doesnt crash. I can open emails normally.
As soon as I open this account verification email from Mega upload thunderbird crashes.
Below screenshot is from gmail because I obviously cant open it in thunderbird. It seems like a normal email to me. I was able to open the next “welcome to mega” email that Megaupload sent me with no issue.
I would start by pasting important parts of the error (“Cannot load required OTR library”) into a search engine and seeing if someone else has the same issue
Since the error contains a few file paths, I would then use utilities specific to my distribution to find what packages they belong to. I would remove the files (if they exist), re-install those packages and see if files are begin installed to those locations
I would then see if there’s a crashlog in dmesg and repeat the above steps for any libraries mentioned in the log
I would then attempt running Thunderbird with a debugger like GDB to try to find the function that causes the crash
I would then try forwarding the email to myself, removing half of the HTML content and seeing if it crashes. If it does, the issue could be in the other half, so I remove that half instead and see if it crashes again. If it doesn’t, I know it’s an issue with the HTML, so I do a rough binary search to narrow the email down to the offending part
If it’s not an issue with the HTML, I would check the email header and compare it with headers from other emails to see if something stands out. I would first have to do some research on what’s inside an email header, though
