Here goes whoopsie!

Mucking around in my system, I noticed a file  /var/lock/whoopsie. Since I had no idea what this was and where this came from, I was naturally suspicious. A couple of web searches answered the question for me. Apparently, this is Ubuntu's take on Dr. Watson, or crash-reporting.

I wanted it turned off, and here's how I did it:

pushd /etc/default/
sudo cp whoopsie whoopsie.backup
sudo vi whoopsie

change report backups to false. I.e.

diff whoopsie.backup whoopsie
3c3
< report_crashes=true
---
> report_crashes=false

sudo stop whoopsie

references:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/135540/what-is-the-whoopsie-process-and-how-can-i-remove-it