System program problem detected (16.04 LTS)

Support & Help Requests
1

I was several minutes into a phonecall with my ISP about the internet connection not working (turn off/on, check cables, etc).

With the ‘Server not found’ page showing on Firefox they asked me to try again but before I could up popped:

System program problem detected

Unable to use Firefox and with the soothing sounds of a call-centre in me ear I clicked on ‘Report problem’

Up next was:

Please enter your password to
access problem reports of system
programs

I clicked on ‘Details’ which mentioned:

polkit.subject-pid
polkit.caller-pid
Action: com.ubuntu.apport.apport-gtk-root
Vendor: Apport

I entered my password and clicked ‘Authenticate’ which lead to this:

Sorry, Ubuntu 16.04 has experienced an internal error

Here’s some of the details:

ExecutablePath
/usr/sbin/ntpd

Package
ntp 1:4.2.8p4+dfsg-3ubuntu5

ProblemType
Crash

Title
ntpd crashed with SIGABRT in raise()

Further down it said:

NtpStatus
ntpq: read: Connection refused

I ticked ‘Send an error report to help fix this problem’ and clicked ‘continue’

Because I didn’t have access to the web and feeling rushed by the ISP on the phone I didn’t have a clue what has happened or what I’ve done. Can someone enlighten me?

2

It appears the system service that handles time synchronization ( NTP stands for Network Time Protocol ) crashed (that was likely triggered because it couldn’t reach ntp servers on the Internet because of your connection issues).

Apport is the system bug-reporting tool.
Apport sends useful information to Canonical when a crash occurs. It doesn’t do it without permission from the sysadmin (you).

Here the NTP service crashed and Apport went on to report it, and that’s why you were prompted for your password.

Cheers

1 Like
3

To add to that…

Crash logs and apport logs are located in your FileSystem /var/crash and /var/log/apport. If its a lenthy log then scroll to the bottom for the latest reports.

4

Try running a full system update per the guide: