How do I enable or disable Apport?

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.

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.service

If that does not work, you would then need to mask the service

systemctl mask apport.service

To reenable

systemctl unmask apport.service # if you masked it
sudo systemctl enable apport.service

Previous 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/apport

and then push ENTER. You password is being typed, but will not display as dots.

or

Command line:

sudo nano /etc/default/apport

A 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=0

Now 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:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#A4._Collect_information_about_the_bug

On Unity: 17.04 and below:

1. Click on Ubuntu icon, search for "System settings"

2. Select Privacy > Diagnostics tab

3. Unlock

4. 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.

On newer versions of ubuntu (15.04+)

To stop the service:

systemctl stop apport.service

To disable the service at startup:

sudo systemctl disable apport.service

To check the status of the service:

systemctl status apport.service

Finally, 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.service

This should create symlink from /etc/systemd/system/apport.service to /dev/null. fedoraproject.org

Don'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/crash and 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.