Public bug reported: I used Deja Dup for the first time today.
I like that Deja Dup is usable by neophytes and newbies. Unfortunately, when it fails, which it did for me, it leaves a rather sour impression. In particular, I'm referring to Deja Dup's infamous "FAILED WITH AN UNKNOWN ERROR" followed by a wall of debugging information. Please consider that a backtrace (see attached screenshot) can look intimidating to many people and make them think, "Oh, this program is broken in such a serious way it would take a programmer to fix. I'll have to use something else." I understand that sometimes things happen that we haven't coded for and we need to throw a vague exception to help with debugging. But, given how many "Unknown error" messages show up when I Google, it seems Deja Dup doesn't cover some of the basic, common problems that everyday users can fix on their own. For example, the screenshot I attached is of an error that doesn't warrant a backtrace: the user had chosen to backup to a directory which was unwritable. I concede that ideally Deja Dup would hold the user's hand to walk them through figuring out *why* the directory is unwritable, but that's not what I'm asking for. I am requesting that Deja Dup have a policy of never dying with an "Unknown error", unless absolutely unavoidable. I do not expect this to take a lot of extra work or coding. In my example screenshot, Deja Dup could have solved the problem by instead asking the user to choose a different directory. Thank you. ** Affects: deja-dup (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Attachment added: "Screenshot from 2017-01-03 03-53-43.png" https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1653691/+attachment/4799413/+files/Screenshot%20from%202017-01-03%2003-53-43.png -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1653691 Title: "Failed with an unknown error" could be more helpful To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/1653691/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs