PlaneShift

Support => Complaint Department => Topic started by: thob on June 16, 2010, 11:03:12 pm

Title: Automated crash reports
Post by: thob on June 16, 2010, 11:03:12 pm
Heya,

just started this game after some time. I had a crash (well I don't complain about that) and at the end I got this:
"""A report containing only information strictly necessary to identify this problem will be sent to the PlaneShift developers.
Please consult the PlaneShift forums for more details.
Attempting to upload crash report.""" followed by a libcurl exception.

I dont know how you think about this,  but I think this is totally WRONG. We have discussions about net neutralism, data protection (google and their street view cars) all over the world. I thought open source was open source, cause it uses other methods than big companies, cause it does not harvest data about their users (I know, this is not the point about open source, but a point in the ideology).

I know, this is about "user friendliness" for you, but why not ask the users to be so kind to open a ticket at the bugtracker?

Because nobody does? Well, thats not true. And I dont think that automated bug reports help much.

Unfortunately, for me, another detail why PlaneShift becomes unplayable. I hope you got the point.

cheers, thob

PS: "Please consult the PlaneShift forums for more details." Uhm.. where?
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: neko kyouran on June 16, 2010, 11:26:19 pm
it generates nothing more than system specs, what was going on with the game when the crash happens, etc.

no different, than say a report you submit to Blizzard when WoW crashes, or when you send stats to NVidia/ATi when you are troubleshooting video card/driver issues, or heck, even when communicating with Microsoft when you are troubleshooting code running on their OS, if you're a programmer that if part of a company that is a Microsoft partner like I am.

Without basic knowledge of the system setup the software is running on at the time of the issue, it becomes near impossible to determine what exactly the issue could be that caused the crash.

For years and years PS has reported this information into a crash dump file, that the user then had to go find on their hard drive and manually email it to a dev's email address.  The automated uploader was put in place, as it streamlines the process for all parties involved.

Do remember that this is a game that is in alpha/beta testing.  It is not a completed game, crashes will happen, and getting crash logs helps the team fix them.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: thob on June 17, 2010, 12:06:29 am
Let the user decide if he/she wants to upload the dump file!
I dont use Microsoft, WoW, ATi... this is no argument for me. We do it, cause others do it aswell.

Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: verden on June 17, 2010, 12:33:05 am
Better to open a feature request in the bug tracker asking to allow the user to choose to upload, view or save the crash report. Nobody's trying to take advantage of any user data here, believe me, its all they can do to try and keep the project somewhat under control. Besides, the ramifications of a program like the game client running on your machine are much larger than simply what can be emailed off of it. And the code for the client is open, so this function should be available for scrutiny in the CVS. Also, I was under the impression that this crash report was a function of the operating system, but I'll take Neko's word for it.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: neko kyouran on June 17, 2010, 12:46:06 am
Quote from: verden on June 17, 2010, 12:33:05 am
Also, I was under the impression that this crash report was a function of the operating system, but I'll take Neko's word for it.

You're thinking of the windows "this program has failed and would you like to send a report to Microsoft about it" pop ups you occasionally get most likely.   PS has it's own built in crash information collecting part to it.

When the game crashes, ti makes an output file which is essentially a memory dump of what the program was doing when it stopped doing what it was supposed to be doing.  Heck, it's been so long since I looked at that, that that may be all it writes down to file, and your basic system specs and what not aren't even saved with the report at all. 

Feel free to browse the tech help forums, you'll see old threads all about the program making dump files and asking the user to upload the file to the team.  And people making threads about that with questions about how to go about doing that and what not. 

most the time, the users thought all they had to do was push ok to make the file and then make a post about it, without ever giving the team the report file.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: kaerli2 on June 17, 2010, 02:33:49 am
I dealt with the manual crash report system. :P IT SUCKED.  First, Lanarel was never around when you needed him (so that you could submit your dump).  Second, the client debug symbols went AWOL for a large part of 0.4.x, which disabled dump-debugging altogether... :P  I actually kind of pushed for the automatic system (we use Google Breakpad, which is an open-source crash-reporting library used by Firefox and others in addition to PS).
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: Sen on June 17, 2010, 02:40:51 am
Quote from: neko kyouran on June 17, 2010, 12:46:06 am
most the time, the users thought all they had to do was push ok to make the file [...]

Why not make an ok / not ok button?
There are people who feel bad if some of their data (I really intend to say 'their' data) gets sent somewhere else, and thus worse if it is done without their permission. I believe one workaround for what thob basically asks for is e.g. a popup where it asks for that permission.

Sen

#edit# Changed last sentence
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: steuben on June 17, 2010, 02:46:43 am
everytime a crash report doesn't get submitted the blackflame consumes a kitten. please think of the kittens.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: novacadian on June 17, 2010, 02:53:45 am
Quote from: Sen on June 17, 2010, 02:40:51 am
Why not make an ok / not ok button?

It certainly warrants an entry in someone's TODO list; if only to make new users sleep more soundly. 
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: verden on June 17, 2010, 03:25:34 am
Actually, I was thinking about the crash reporter dialog on the Macintosh.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: Idoru on June 17, 2010, 03:36:30 am
I also raised this issue on IRC a few days ago. There are serious legal ramifications for distributing customer data from within the EU to people outside the EU without -explicit- consent. WoW has a confirmation box before sending such data.

AB is leaving itself open to some  quite serious legal charges if anyone ever refers this situation to the authorities. I would suggest that the crash reporter is disabled very quickly until confirmation is implemented.

[edit]

If someone were to post a completely unedited crash log here it may put people's minds at rest.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: kaerli2 on June 17, 2010, 04:07:27 am
Lock thread please and move further discussion to PS#4554 (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=4554)
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: bilbous on June 17, 2010, 08:12:51 am
for what it is worth: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?&task_id=4185
there doesn't seem to be anyone working to make sure the crash reports actually get sent anyway.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: thob on June 17, 2010, 10:06:41 am
heya,

Quote from: verden
And the code for the client is open, so this function should be available for scrutiny in the CVS.

Right, same with Googles browser. Wich used to sent a lot of data until the users protestet. The problem is _that_ it sends automated crash report. Not what this report contains (for me).

Quote from: Sen
I believe one workaround for what thob basically asks for is e.g. a popup where it asks for that permission.

Right.

Quote from: kaerli2
Lock thread please and move further discussion to PS#4554

Uhm.. why? This is a much better place for discussion. And often there are parallel discussion threads here :).

\o thob

PS: Still looking for "Please consult the PlaneShift forums for more details."...
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: RlyDontKnow on June 17, 2010, 02:02:51 pm
Quote from: bilbous on June 17, 2010, 08:12:51 am
for what it is worth: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?&task_id=4185
there doesn't seem to be anyone working to make sure the crash reports actually get sent anyway.

that's not true, however it's hard to get libcurl working across all distributions. I hope it works this time, however I cannot guarantee it.

Quote from: Sen
I believe one workaround for what thob basically asks for is e.g. a popup where it asks for that permission.

sure it'd be nice to have such a popup, however there's currently no dev around who's familiar enough with the crashreport code to change it to show a popup, etc.

if someone would like to write a patch to change the popups/add them (depending on the platform) so it allows the user to deny the upload, that'd surerly be appreciated. the whole code is available at the svn repo (I think src/tools/breakpad has it somewhere) ;)
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: bilbous on June 17, 2010, 04:29:39 pm
a-ha, what "seems" is not always what "is." 
I meant no disrespect to the team.
If you'll notice my bug is still marked unconfirmed but since I haven't yet got around to installing the latest version yet I'm not even positive if the report is still valid, though it sounds like it is.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: Lanarel on June 17, 2010, 05:44:43 pm
In random order:
- there is a bug report (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?project=2&sort=asc&order=field4&do=details&task_id=3977) about this issue. It was marked critical until very recently, but demoted to high because of a combination of not hearing complaints, the EULA stating that info may be used, and there were other critical bugs that needed to be more visible. The reason it is not quickly fixed by a using a confirmation window is that: 1) on some OSes it already lets you enter information about what you were doing. Killing this box means nothing is sent. 2) there are no devs around who can quickly fix this. 3) the reports are VERY useful, even though they have not yet enough information.
- before, people were asked to send the dmp files to me. Several did. I could only use them if I had up-to-date program database files, which I often did not. Of the files that were send me 90% were crashes in ati drivers, solved by pointing to an old forum thread. All in all, this way of getting info was not very useful
- Many os/hardware related crashes happen shortly after starting the game. We lost many new players this way. They would try a few times, then give up on the game. They would not go to any place to know where to send info.
- The bug tracker is a good place to provide bug reports, but many crashes cannot be reported there properly either. Luckily many players do report bugs, but crashes that occur very often are not recognised this way. I can tell you that with the new crash reporting, some major problems surfaced, that were then fixed by devs spending much time on them. From a situation where ATI crashes were below 20th place, we were quickly back at ATI crashes (when added up) being the number one problem again. If you own a MAC, be very glad for the automatic crash reports, or most of you would have been left out of playing the game for a while now. When at this point sending the reports would have been optional, we might have missed some important information about how often problems occurred on certain systems.

Only a small number of people have access to the reports, which include a char name, which enables us to ask people for more information, some OS and hardware info, and a comment if the player specified it. A stack trace shows where the crash happened. Example of the info:
Date    Product  Version Build  OS  CPU  Reason Address  Uptime Comments
Jun 07, 2010 18:09 PlaneShift 0.5.3 Mar 11 2010 19:27:59  Windows NT 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2  x86      EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION  0x34 51 PlayerName:Lanarel Arewar Compiler: VisualC RendererVersion: 3.2.0 Renderer: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2

ALthough the EULA does mention information may be used for debugging, I personally do not read those things either, and think it would be better to make it optional, or have people put a setting somewhere. There are more important things to fix though. I would prefer no crash reports need to be send in the first place :)


Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: steuben on June 17, 2010, 05:59:40 pm
alas the snipit won't satisfy the personal data paranoids,and arm chair lawyers out there. you may as well copy and paste in a full report... well, less the char name (despite the fact it was asked to be unedited).

and now i head off to empty the saucer and get a new napkin for my teacup.
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: Sen on June 17, 2010, 06:13:10 pm
A setting in pslaunch sounds like a good idea, too.

As a site note: About the personal data paranoids.. Since this is a game for people over all the world do you have to accept that there are regions where it is normal to use data of other people without explicit permission and other regions where it is considered inacceptable (actually against the law). Without naming good examples of both  :P


Sen
Title: Re: Automated crash reports
Post by: Idoru on June 18, 2010, 08:39:56 am
Lanarel: No one is disputing the real usefulness of such reports. I do not doubt for a second that they are extremely valuable. The issue is that PS is transmitting identifiable user data without explicit permission from the user. This is illegal when the data is generated within, and transferred outside the EU.

Steuben: Personally I couldn't care about what personal info PS stores about me. I know perfectly well that they have my name, D.O.B and several other pieces of personal information. My concern is that some retard like lin***nius could report the situation and seriously screw things up.