Bug report: the other side

[John Summerfield]

Arne Chr. Jorgensen wrote:
> While I worked with supply of info requested from me,  I included a question
> of the opinion from the person working on the case.  Haven't received 
> anything
> yet,  but pass the question here, as I got the impression that some of you
> have spent some time on the other side of the desk.
> 
> Perhaps some would be willing to write a few words about how that is.
> It probably difficult, as - like in my own case - the better info I 
> supply, the
> easier it will be for the person handling the case. 


The first thing to do when trying to solve a problem is to get good 
information about it. Most people here are not good at providing the 
information, and an awful lot of helpers try to help without 
understanding the problem.

Let's take an example. Don't be offended that I'm using your name, there 
have been better candidates around, and in all fairness I don't have 
much recollection of problems you've had.

Arne:
"My computer won't boot."

If that's the sum of the information, _I_ will ignore you.

Remember you have the only eyes on the problem. It's really important 
you try to solve the problem yourself. If I can't see that you have 
tried, I will still ignore you. Unless your subject line looks like 
something interesting to me, and over time the number of fresh new 
problems has diminished somewhat.

Try again.
Arne:
"9alpha AMD-64 HP DC7700 SFF switch_root: no filesystems"
(this is actually one of mine).
Someone perusing the list knows what you're trying to boot, what the 
system is you're running (especially if they have one), and there's a 
fair chance that someone with the skills to help recognise the 
switch_root bit.

There's a rough chance someone can help with just that information. 
However, a would-be helper might need more information, preferably 
enough to recreate the problem.

Here's information likely to be helpful.
0. What is wrong and (maybe) why it's wrong. In the case of "won't boot" 
there won't be much argument about that, but sometimes things are not so 
clear.

1. How you got into this predicament. It might be as simple as "Install 
Fedora 9 ALpha for X86_64. The 64-bit might be relevant.

2. Your hardware description. The output of lspci usually covers this, 
but if graphics is involved it might be helpful to include monitor 
details. And so on, depending on the nature of the problem.

3. What you have done to try to solve the problem yourself. At least, 
you should read the documentation and use google. I got some hits for 
that problem, none fully relevant but some shed some light.

4. You need to provide any relevant messages. In this case, this is a 
bit tricky so I tried them without first. Eventually I put up a photo 
(not a good one) and then, when I found my cable, the actual messages I 
obtained by connecting two computers' serial ports with the cable and 
running minicom on one while redirecting console messages on the other.


now with this information, a good helpdesk person would see that the 
computer does boot (it boots grub and then Linux) but that Linux 
initialisation hangs.

I would expect that in almost any organisation, if this problem surfaced 
it would be known and recognised and a fix would be available (or not). 
Why? Because organisations like to have braces of computers all the same 
- same hardware, same software. In this example, I'd expect this to 
happen to everyone with the same hardware and software.

They might recognise it with less information, and if some is harder to 
get it's worth trying, but more relevant information is generally better.

On this list, things are a bit different. Almost any hardware able to 
run f9 is in use by people here, and those providing the support 
probably don't have the requisite hardware to produce your problem.

It can be difficult to decide what information to provide

For an example where things haven't gone well read the thead "Re: Help 
to revert from KDE 4" on -list. OP got to KDE4 accidentally and isn't 
happy with it.

Think how it might have gone better.