fpaste – A Tool for Sharing Errors and Commandline Output to Pastebin

Software developers or users always encounter different problems during the process of software development or usage. Some of these problems may include errors, therefore one way to solve them is to share error messages, command output or the contents of given files with other developers or users on the Internet.

There are many online platforms for sharing such problems which can be referred to as online content-sharing tool. An online content-sharing tool is often called a pastebin.

The Fedora ecosystem has one such tool called fpaste, is a web-based pastebin and a command line tool used for debugging errors or simply looking for feedback on some text.

Therefore in this article we are going to look at ways of how you can use fpaste as a programmer or normal user to report errors from commandline to fpaste.org site..

In order to use fpaste, you need to access it using one of the two ways; via the website or the command line. In this guide we shall focus more on the command line but let us see how you can use it via the web-based interface.

To use it from the website, you can go to fpaste website, copy your error, paste it into the input box provided, and then submit it. A response page will be provided and it has the URL link that you can send to fellow debuggers.

The web user interface allows a user to:

  1. set the syntax of the paste.
  2. tag the paste with his or her alias.
  3. use a password.
  4. set a time for the pasted error to expire.

How to Install fpaste Tool in Linux

To install it on Fedora/CentOS/RHEL distributions, you can run the following command as a privileged user.

# yum install fpaste
# dnf install fpaste         [On Fedora 22+ versions]
Sample Output
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:21:15 ago on Fri Jan 22 15:25:34 2016.
Dependencies resolved.
=================================================================================
 Package         Arch            Version                   Repository       Size
=================================================================================
Installing:
 fpaste          noarch          0.3.8.1-1.fc23            fedora           38 k

Transaction Summary
=================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 38 k
Installed size: 72 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
fpaste-0.3.8.1-1.fc23.noarch.rpm                       9.3 kB/s |  38 kB     00:04    
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                                  5.8 kB/s |  38 kB     00:06     
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Installing  : fpaste-0.3.8.1-1.fc23.noarch                                       1/1 
  Verifying   : fpaste-0.3.8.1-1.fc23.noarch                                       1/1 

Installed:
  fpaste.noarch 0.3.8.1-1.fc23                                                         

Complete!

Now we will see some ways on how to use fpaste from terminal.

You can paste a test.txt, as follows:

# fpaste test.txt

Uploading (1.9KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofuic -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313642/34569731

To use a nickname and password while pasting test.txt, run this command.

# fpaste test.txt -n “labmaster” --password “labmaster123” test.txt

Uploading (4.7KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofuih -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313644/57093145

To send a script file named test_script.sh, specify the language as bash, copy the returned URL link to the X clipboard and make the paste private as follows.

# fpaste -l bash --private --clipout test_script.sh 

Uploading (1.9KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofuit -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313646

To send the output of the w command, run this command.

# w | fpaste 

Uploading (0.4KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofuiv -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313647/53457312

To send your system information with a description and a confirmation, run this command below.

# fpaste --sysinfo -d "my laptop" --confirm -x "1800" 

Gathering system info .............................OK to send? [y/N]: y
Uploading (19.1KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofuj6 -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313648/53457500

You can also paste the output of more than one command. In the next example I am going to send the output of the following commands; uname -a, date and who.

# (uname -a ; date ; who ) | fpaste --confirm -x "1800" 

Linux tecmint.com 4.2.6-301.fc23.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Nov 20 22:22:41 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Fri Jan 22 15:43:24 IST 2016
root     tty1         2016-01-22 15:24
root     pts/0        2016-01-22 15:32 (192.168.0.6)

OK to send? [y/N]: y
Uploading (0.4KiB)...
http://ur1.ca/ofujb -> http://paste.fedoraproject.org/313649/14534576

You can use many other options of fpaste in man pages.

# man fpaste

Summary

fpaste is a good content-sharing tool with easy to use methods. We have looked at some few examples of using it in this guide but you can explore more by trying out many other options.

If you encounter any errors while using it, you can post a comment or for those of who use fpaste, please add some information about how you use it and share your experience.

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Aaron Kili
Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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