reportbug GTK frontend appears not to work with
reportbug.debian.org. I've just tried it on a machine that has not had
reportbug installed before (because it has no MTA) and the GTK frontend
refuses to send using reportbug.debian.org.

SMTP send failure: (550, 'No valid sender found in the From:, Sender:
and Reply-to: headers'). Do you want to retry (or else save the report
and exit)??

Had to change back to text to be able to send this report.

The message quoted in the bug report came from trying to use reportbug
in the GTK:ui interface to actually file this very bug report (because I
wanted to demonstrate to myself that it was indeed not a fluke but that
the command line can post and the gtk cannot) and I then switched to the
command line interface and filed the bug.

i.e. I set up reportbug as novice, using the GTK frontend and on a
system without any MTA installed and where I had not previously
installed reportbug. I tried to then post a comment on an existing bug
report (for buildd.emdebian.org) using the GTK frontend and got the
message. Changed to text, re-entered the comment and filed the extra
info using reportbug.debian.org SMTP via the command line without
problems.

Hmmm. OK, maybe something else changed, so try again with a different
bug report. Same result. OK, finally try submitting a new bug via GTK -
no go. Change to command line and here we are.

Each time I tried the GTK frontend, I started reportbug from the menu,
not from the command line.

I too expected the command line and gtk interfaces to be equivalent
when sending email via reportbug.debian.org but that isn't how it
happened.

just a test

Hi Neil,

as said, this is a test :) to verify your bugs. as you can see I was
able to use the GTK+ interface, to comment this bug.

The command line I used was:

$ reportbug  --mode=novice --ui=gtk2
--smtphost=reportbug.debian.org:587 --no-cc reportbug

filtered for this bug, reply, etc etc. and it was sent correctly.

I wanted to also replicate your other use-case, bug reporting, lucky I
was one to report :) With this command-line:

$ reportbug  --mode=novice --ui=gtk2
--smtphost=reportbug.debian.org:587 --no-cc boinc-manager

I managed to successfully open #591285

I suspect there's something "weird" on your setup. The only thing I
managed to spot at first sight is that in the "** Environment
settings:" there's no DEBFULLNAME.

you can try any of the above command-lines adding --paranoid: this
option will print the message on stdout right before sending it to the
MTA (so you'll be able to see teh complete email, including headers),
and you can paste it here so we can see what's going on and/or if
there's something to fix.

Regards,
Sandro

Using the command line given in your last comment to set the GTK2 frontend but
letting reportbug use the already configured smtphost of reportbug.debian.org
.....

I tried to send this comment using the desktop file:

Testing again from the desktop file this time, after configuring reportbug to
use reportbug.debian.org.

Interesting that reportbug configure gets the right name and email address and
comments those out of the /home/user/.reportbugrc as the values are "default".

As much as possible, I'm trying to test this with reportbug configured only
using reportbug itself, rather than editing ~/.reportbugrc - the original
discussion was about users who probably wouldn't think about editing the file.

I got this error:

SMTP send failure: (550, 'No valid sender found in the From:, Sender: and
Reply-to: headers'). Do you want to retry (or else save the report and exit)??

This is sent from the command line, explicitly setting
--email=codehelp@debian.org

Maybe reportbug should write out ~/.reportbugrc to specify the default name and
email even if it is the default, or maybe something in the desktop file call is
causing the environment to be dropped and the commented out default is then not
read in?

Reconfigured from a terminal started afresh after commenting out the setting of
the EMAIL environment variable and then reconfiguring reportbug to simulate
where the user hadn't set such a variable at all.

This time, configuring reportbug didn't find the email address to use, so it
invented a local one which I replaced and which then appeared in the
reportbugrc.

So this bug is actually that reportbugrc fails to get the environment variable
using the desktop file (because that was set in ~/.bashrc) which it would use
when loaded from the command line. Not really a fault in reportbug (as long as
this one sends OK).

I don't know whether reportbug would be able to source the ~/.bashrc even when
using the GTK2 frontend which would avoid this potential problem, particularly
as other command line programs will re-use the same variable.

retitle 590242 should always write realname/email on --configure
thanks

Hi Neil,

Thanks to your patience we have come to a conclusion here: thanks a lot!

The problem is that --configure propose values for realname and email,
but don't write to ~/.reportbugrc (well, it writes them, but
commented) if it finds them in the env (so like DEBFULLNAME and
DEBEMAIL env variables).

Then again, when executed the GTK+ UI from the menu, those variables
are not set (there's no env) and so reportbug doesn't know how to fill
those info when sending the email, hence the error receive in the
original post.

I think that only executing reportbug from the menu (right from the
beginning) would lead to a working setup, since the first time
reportbug will run configuration, find no env vars, write the config
file correctly, and next times will find the info needed. But in case
there are mixed situations, it might lead to not working setup.

The solution I see is to "force" reportbug to write realname and email
even if found in the environment. Given it might lead to unexpected
behavior, I won't fix this for squeeze (aren't we supposed to freeze
in a month? ;) ), but I'll target experimental with other potential
disruptive changes sometime soon.

Regards,