Christopher Gregory wrote:
Hello,
Now that we have the systemd version as a stable option we need to
over-haul the asking for help section.
I am seeing that people are not actually correctly stating what version
of the book that they are using.
There is also an increasing number of people answering peoples support
questions assuming that they are not using systemd and in a number of
cases making incorrect assumptions.
I do not know what the exact changes should be made but from a support
perspective and from my own work background in the field the following
really should be asked:
There is section 1.5 in LFS, but many people either don't read it or
ignore it. The first item says:
Apart from a brief explanation of the problem being experienced, the
essential things to include in any request for help are:
o The version of the book being used (in this case SVN-20141008)
That is also mentioned in BLFS, Chapter 1 - Asking for Help and the FAQ.
We could update one of both of these, but I am pessimistic whether it
will make a significant difference.
Perhaps a sample form would help.
1) The person asking for support needs to provide the full configure
line that they have used, and not just state that they followed the
book. Reason for this is there are optional switches that they may have
added to the base configure options.
2) That they are either using systemd or (If memory serves me correctly)
System V.
cat /etc/lfs-release
should be enough to start (if they have gotten that far).
3) That they attach the full log-file of the error that they are getting
and not just the un-helpful error that they receive on the screen.
In the case of systemd they need to provide the output of journalctl.
We already say essentially that, however I don't want 200K log files
littering the mailing list.
4) Suggest that they turn on de-bugging, even if we do not actually
provide exact instructions on how to do that, but refer them to the
packages ./configure --help for instructions on how to do this.
If we have the output of debug included in the log file we can then more
easily assist. It may even be that they can solve the issue themselves
with a little help from a search engine.
That is beyond a lot of our users.
We need to come to a joint conclusion on this as it really does need to
be the same for both versions of the book, ie trunk and systemd.
It's been an ongoing problem from well before systemd. I'm coming to
the conclusion that often reading and not understanding is human nature
in complex technical projects like this.
-- Bruce
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