The system crash dialog is annoying me, how can I turn it off? I'd also like to know how to turn it back on just in case I need it to report a problem.
38 Answers
As of Ubuntu 16.04 systemd apport does not seem to honor its config file
The systemd commands to enable / disable apport are:
Disable
sudo systemctl disable apport.serviceIf that does not work, you would then need to mask the service
systemctl mask apport.serviceTo reenable
systemctl unmask apport.service # if you masked it
sudo systemctl enable apport.servicePrevious versions of Ubuntu:
You need to edit /etc/default/apport. The following changes will prevent Apport from starting at boot:
Graphical: Open a terminal with (CTRL+ALT+T) and type this:
sudo -i gedit /etc/default/apportand then push ENTER. You password is being typed, but will not display as dots.
or
Command line:
sudo nano /etc/default/apportA file editor is now open. Change enabled from "0" to a "1" so it looks like this:
enabled=1 To turn it off make it:
enabled=0Now save your changes and close the file editor. Apport will now no longer start at boot. If you want to turn it off immediately without rebooting, run sudo service apport stop.
You can also use sudo service apport stop without modifying /etc/default/apport to turn it off temporarily.
See also:
3On Unity: 17.04 and below:
Click on Ubuntu icon, search for "System settings"
Select Privacy > Diagnostics tab
Unlock
Tick "Send error reports to Canonical"
On GNOME: 17.10+
sudo service apport stop ; sudo sed -ibak -e s/^enabled\=1$/enabled\=0/ /etc/default/apport ; sudo mv /etc/default/apportbak ~The above script should stop apport, then take a backup of its configuration file, disable apport on boot, and lastly moves the backup to your home directory.
1On newer versions of ubuntu (15.04+)
To stop the service:
systemctl stop apport.serviceTo disable the service at startup:
sudo systemctl disable apport.serviceTo check the status of the service:
systemctl status apport.serviceFinally, you can also prevent the startup of a systemd service by masking it. The service will not be able to start (even manually) unless unmasked.
systemctl mask apport.serviceThis should create symlink from /etc/systemd/system/apport.service to /dev/null.fedoraproject.org
2Don't disable apport. One of these days, you might have a sequence of crashes and never know it except for system bad behavior or some application-specific symptom.
The /var/crash directory is there to record any mishap. You might need it some day.
Suggested procedure:
- Create a new folder E.g.
$HOME/crashand copy all of the existing crash reports to it. sudo rm /var/crash/*sudo reboot
The repetitive crash pop-up behavior should now be gone. Also, the crash reports that you saved might be valuable in reporting a bug to launchpad.
Since there's a bug in apport that breaks standard unix command line debugging, and this bug has been known since 2007 (I'm going to buy it a cake when it turns 10) (see ) turning it off is far and away the best thing to do if you are trying to fix your own code.
Why not just remove it entirely?
Version 16.04 LTS
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove apport
sudo rm /etc/Also, might want to check this out:
Removing popularity-contest without trashing the system?
New to 18.04:
How to Opt Out of System Information Reports
I found that I still wanted to disable Apport's crash handling in Python3. I had both tried disabling apport via cmdline (sudo systemctl disable apport.service), GUI (see this hopefully-original blog post), and via removal (sudo apt purge); however, Python backtraces showed apport still being present.
It seems like python3-apport is a prereq of ubuntu-desktop (relates launchpad bug 1773087), so may be hard to remove it.
I then looked at the Apport#Crash_interception, and seems like we can hack /etc/python*/sitecustomize.py.
As an example, the following worked (disabled apport) on my system for python3.6:
# N.B. Authenticate sudo first!
cat | sudo tee /etc/python3.6/sitecustomize.py <<EOF
## install the apport exception handler if available
#try:
# import apport_python_hook
#except ImportError:
# pass
#else:
# apport_python_hook.install()
EOFEDIT: Didn't try doing stuff like isolated mode in python3 - dunno if that'd work with Ubuntu-baked site customizations.
