Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:08:43 -0400
From:      Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
To:        Oleg Derevenetz <oleg@vsi.ru>
Cc:        LI Xin <delphij@delphij.net>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Subject:   Re: How to report bugs (Re: 6.2-STABLE deadlock?)
Message-ID:  <20070425180843.GA72881@xor.obsecurity.org>
In-Reply-To: <1177488860.462f0ddc6ce8c@webmail.vsi.ru>
References:  <20070313140848.GA89182@steerpike.hanley.stade.co.uk> <20070423025631.GA33256@steerpike.hanley.stade.co.uk> <20070423113912.GE2052@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua> <462DDB4D.8080507@delphij.net> <1177442585.462e5919c71f0@webmail.vsi.ru> <462EC294.3040001@delphij.net> <20070425035316.GB44054@xor.obsecurity.org> <1177488860.462f0ddc6ce8c@webmail.vsi.ru>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

--LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 12:14:20PM +0400, Oleg Derevenetz wrote:

> > Until you (or a developer) have analyzed the resulting information,
> > you cannot definitively determine whether or not your problem is the
> > same as a given random other problem, and you may just confuse the
> > issue by making claims of similarity when you are really reporting a
> > completely separate problem.
>=20
> Not all people can do deadlock debugging, though. In my case turning on=
=20
> INVARIANTS and WITNESS leads to unacceptable performance penalty due to h=
eavily=20
> loaded server. So I can only describe my case, actions and result without=
=20
> providing any debug information.

But you can still do *some* things, e.g. backtraces and/or a coredump:
every little bit helps.

Ultimately, though, you have to understand and accept that the less
information you provide, the less chance there is that a developer
will be able to track down your problem.  In fact a developer may have
to effectively ignore your problem report altogether, because of what
I explained about "symptoms" usually not being enough to tell one bug
from another.

In general, when you encounter a bug in FreeBSD, you have a little bit
of work to do on your side before we can start doing the rest.  I
understand that you may not be in a position to do that work, but that
means you also need to understand that we can't do it either.

Kris

--LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)

iD8DBQFGL5kqWry0BWjoQKURArGdAJ45neq21TZTvC6EQi+J08D8eyKrqQCgwEuv
dlfA7y6e7MOum9A0twRH+3U=
=LA/P
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--LZvS9be/3tNcYl/X--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20070425180843.GA72881>