Hi everybody,

As an opening remark, let me say that I have been dealing with systems for 
sometime and have been monitoring OpenSolaris since its inception.

Although there are many nice things, I have been both puzzled and "awed" by one 
particular thing I have observed - the problem resolution process.

I have observed again and again[1], that whenever somebody posts a "problem", 
it is invariably replied with one or more of the following-

1. Bug number, explanation and possible course of action
2. Not a bug, link to document/explanation and correct way to accomplish what 
the user wants.
3. Explanation of ways to further nail down the root cause of bug (crash 
dump/kmdb etc), leading to either a bug filing or a straight one line bug 
number!!

Now, OpenSolaris/Solaris/SunOS is a consolidation of pretty big chunks of code. 
There are numerous interactions within and outside the system. This is aside 
from the fact that Solaris is pretty old and still evolving by the day! There 
are bound to be rough edges and cruft lying around.

I am mystified as how it is possible that so *many* people are working on this, 
and almost everybody has a firm grasp of the whole system!!! It is as if the 
*complete* system is a glassbox and everybody can see it through and through 
and identify where and how the system is acting up.

Now if it were just the work of one person, I could understand, but it is as if 
the whole work is hand-sculpted by whole team and even then everybody knows the 
whole picture! I have never seen anything like this, and frankly find it hard 
to believe.

So, thanks folks, you rock! But - goddamit - how do you do it ???

Is is a bug database with magical search capabilities ? Is it some piece of 
magical "process" ? Or is it that Sun somehow found the receipe to problem of 
scaling the competence ?

Regards
- Akhilesh

[1] Links to some of the examples:
(a) http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=48456&tstart=0
(b) http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=48026&tstart=0
(c) http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=47402&tstart=0
(d) http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=55192
and many more!!
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]

Reply via email to