If you enable Apport so it launches automatically to collect and submit
crash data, install debug symbols for possibly relevant packages, and
then make the crash happen again, then you can submit a new bug report
that contains valuable information missing in this bug report. This
should either determine what previously reported bug this is a duplicate
of (and then you can provide any missing information there, and possibly
get information about known workarounds) or, if this turns out to be a
new bug not previously reported, provide the necessary information for
the Ubuntu developers to investigate and fix the bug. After submitting
the new bug report, you can mark this older bug a duplicate of the newer
bug (which is *not* the same thing as marking the new bug a duplicate of
this one, which you should not do).
First, read this carefully, if you haven't already:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
Then, to enable Apport:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport#How%20to%20enable%20apport
Some of the debug symbols for yelp and the libraries it uses are
available through -dbg packages, but for others, you'll need -dbgsym
packages. -dbg packages are available for installation via the same
software sources as the programs/libraries whose debug symbols they
provide, but -dbgsym packages are provided in separate software sources.
In this case, you'll need some of each type of debug symbol package. So,
to enable -dbgsym packages, follow steps 1-4 at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash.
Then install the debug symbols for yelp and the libraries it uses by
running this command in the Terminal (or, if you prefer, by selecting
each of these packages manually in Synaptic or the Software Center...but
the Terminal way, in this case, is much easier, because you can just
copy and paste the command into the Terminal). This is also a good time
to make sure all the software in your Ubuntu system is up to date (there
have been some updates to Maverick since you reported this bug, and some
of those updates have been quite recent--it's important to see if
perhaps this has been fixed already, even though it probably has not):
sudo apt-get upgrade; sudo apt-get install yelp-dbgsym gconf2-dbgsym
libatk1.0-dbg libc6-dbg libdbus-glib-1-2-dbg libgcc1-dbg
libgconf2-4-dbgsym libglib2.0-0-dbg libgtk2.0-0-dbg libice6-dbg
liblaunchpad-integration1-dbgsym libpango1.0-0-dbg librarian0-dbgsym
libsm6-dbg libstartup-notification0-dbgsym libstdc++6-4.4-dbg
libx11-6-dbg libxml2-dbg libxslt1.1-dbgsym man-db-dbgsym
xulrunner-1.9.2-dbg
To run that command, select the whole thing at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+bug/716968 (it will
probably have line breaks inserted in your email, which will prevent it
from running properly), copy it to the clipboard, paste it into the
Terminal, and press enter to run it.
In this case, the most important debug symbol packages to install appear
to be yelp-dbgsym, libc6-dbg, libglib2.0-0-dbg, and librarian0-dbgsym.
But there's no reason not to install the rest, and they may help
significantly in producing a good bug report.
If you have any trouble performing any of the above steps, please post a
comment here describing the problem.
Then produce the bug, but this time, run yelp in a different way--open a
Terminal window and run the command:
yelp ghelp:about-ubuntu
That command performs the same action that happens when you do System
About Ubuntu. This way, you get to see (and include in your bug report)
all messages written by yelp to standard output or standard error. Then
create a new Terminal window (or, if you prefer, a new tab in the same
Terminal window) and run:
yelp
That command performs the same action that happens when you do System
Help and Support.
In your new bug report, please make sure to include all the information
included here (and also you may want to link to it, saying something
like I originally reported this as bug 716968 ...), and also all the
text from the Terminal when you ran each of those commands (but *not*
the text from when you ran the commands that enabled apport, updated
your system, and installed the debug symbols). Please note that, when
you run the second command, it may cause more text to be written by the
*first* command, in the first window/tab. So before running the second
command, you should check in the window/tab associated with the first
command, to see what text has been written so far, and then report what
text (if any) was newly written by the first command when the second
command was run.
After submitting the new bug report, you can use the green Mark as
duplicate link near the upper-right corner of *this* bug page to mark
this bug a duplicate of the new bug. Since the new bug will be reported
as a crash by Apport (rather than as a non-crash bug, as was the case
here), it will start out with private visibility. This is because the
data submitted by Apport in a crash occasionally contains confidential
or sensitive information,
