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When an application crashes, OS X usually presents a little dialog with the opportunity to report the bug to Apple.

However, in my current situation there seems to be a problem with the window server so although I get the aforementioned dialog, I cannot interact with it, and hence cannot submit the crash report. A reboot is required to make the system once again responsive.

But I’d really like to get this report to Apple because it’s symptomatic of a problem with Lion which regularly crashes my machine, and I’d like to get this fixed as soon as possible.

There seem to be two alternatives here:

  1. Use the feedback form on Apple’s website
  2. Use bugreport.apple.com

Neither is ideal: the first is aimed at non-technical customers and doesn’t really offer the possibility to provide technical details, let alone crash reports. The second presents a website that seems to date from the 90’s and apparently hasn’t been touched since. That, and I’ve already submitted a bug report there once, which has subsequently been deleted without comment. Neither fact instils much confidence in me that Apple actually cares about this platform.

Ideally, I’d like to trigger the “report a crash” dialog manually. Is this somehow possible? I haven’t found any way to do so in Console.app.

Community
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Konrad Rudolph
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    Apple’s bug reporting application sucks so much that there’s finally a campaign demanding that it be fixed: http://fixradarorgtfo.com/ – Konrad Rudolph Mar 06 '12 at 22:27

2 Answers2

1

Since the opt in status is no Longer present in the Lion Console app, you can't see whether you are opted in or out.

My system does resume sending non-received reports when the next crash or force quit happens. I would poke and force quit the problem and watch that all the reports get submitted.

It is extra hassle to file it formally at http://bugreport.apple.com - but that way you are assured a human or two touches the report rather than it going into the summary reports.

bmike
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1

The xattr command can display user comments that were within a crash dialogue.

Displaying a comment: example

sh-3.2$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.8.2
BuildVersion:   12C60
sh-3.2$ xattr -p comments ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SIMBL\ Agent_2012-10-20-193649_macbookpro08-centrim.crash
These crashes of SIMBL Agent are negligible. 
sh-3.2$

Adding a comment without the crash dialogue

As xattr can display comments, so you might use xattr to add to a .crash file that is without comments.

Example

sh-3.2$ xattr -p comments ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SIMBL\ Agent_2012-10-20-092340_macbookpro08-centrim.crash
xattr: /Volumes/gjp22/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SIMBL Agent_2012-10-20-092340_macbookpro08-centrim.crash: No such xattr: comments
sh-3.2$ xattr -w comments "test in relation to <http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/69026/8546>" ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SIMBL\ Agent_2012-10-20-092340_macbookpro08-centrim.crash
sh-3.2$ xattr -p comments ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/SIMBL\ Agent_2012-10-20-092340_macbookpro08-centrim.crash
test in relation to <http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/69026/8546>
sh-3.2$

Submission of reports

From the man page for SubmitDiagInfo:

SubmitDiagInfo is a system process which runs periodically. If the user has opted-in for automatic reporting of diagnostic and usage information, then SubmitDiagInfo collects and sends to Apple any recent diagnostic information which has not yet been sent to Apple. SubmitDiagInfo also cleans up any diagnostic and usage information which was created more than one month ago and is no longer needed.

Previous submission date

defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.SubmitDiagInfo PreviousSubmissionDate

Example

sh-3.2$ defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.SubmitDiagInfo PreviousSubmissionDate
2012-10-15 19:29:15 +0000
sh-3.2$
Graham Perrin
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