[Reportbug-maint] Bug#867269: reportbug: Report appears lost when MTA can't be contacted

[sam penny]

Package: reportbug
Version: 7.1.7
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

I tried submitting a bug report but reportbug couldn't contact my smtp server
(mail.yahoo.com)

   * What was the outcome of this action?

The gtk interface showed a yes/no dialog with the message "[error message] Do
you want to retry (or else save the report and exit)? The wording of this
dialog is confusing and doesn't give any indication of where the report might
be saved or what to do with it.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

The option to reconfigure the MTA setting, or fall back to the debian provided
SMTP service (at bugs.debian.org?) would be better.

Failing that, there should at least be a more helpful message: one that doesn't
imply a non yes/no answer to a yes/no dialog, one that indicates where the
saved bug report can be found and some hint toward what to do with it. I note
that there are several bug reports indicating there's no option to get reportbug
to continue a saved bug report (#328531, #702107, #712066) which should
probably be merged and/or fixed...
Ironically, I actually hit this bug again trying to submit *this* bug report, so I'vefound the bug report saved in /tmp/ and am sending it via my MUA, so pleaseforgive me if I've broken the formatting in some way.

Cheers & God bless
    Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny


-- Package-specific info:
** Environment settings:
INTERFACE="gtk2"

** /home/sammy/.reportbugrc:
reportbug_version "7.1.7"
mode advanced
ui text
realname "Sam \"SammyTheSnake\" Penny"
email "xanthraxoid at yahoo.co.uk"
no-cc
header "X-Debbugs-CC: xanthraxoid at yahoo.co.uk"
smtphost reportbug.debian.org

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers oldstable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'oldstable-updates'), (500, 'oldoldstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages reportbug depends on:
ii  apt                1.4.6
ii  python3            3.5.3-3
ii  python3-reportbug  7.1.7

reportbug recommends no packages.

Versions of packages reportbug suggests:
pn  claws-mail                                 <none>
pn  debconf-utils                              <none>
pn  debsums                                    <none>
pn  dlocate                                    <none>
pn  emacs24-bin-common | emacs25-bin-common    <none>
ii  exim4                                      4.89-3
ii  exim4-daemon-light [mail-transport-agent]  4.89-3
ii  file                                       1:5.30-1
ii  gir1.2-gtk-3.0                             3.22.16-1
ii  gir1.2-vte-2.91                            0.46.1-1
ii  gnupg                                      2.1.18-8
ii  python3-gi                                 3.22.0-2+b1
ii  python3-gi-cairo                           3.22.0-2+b1
pn  python3-gtkspellcheck                      <none>
pn  python3-urwid                              <none>
ii  xdg-utils                                  1.1.1-1

Versions of packages python3-reportbug depends on:
ii  apt                1.4.6
ii  file               1:5.30-1
ii  python3            3.5.3-3
ii  python3-debian     0.1.30
ii  python3-debianbts  2.6.1
ii  python3-requests   2.12.4-1

python3-reportbug suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

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