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Date:      Wed, 26 May 1999 15:10:46 +1000
From:      Gregory Bond <gnb@itga.com.au>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: [Q] How stable is FreeBSD 3.X ? 
Message-ID:  <199905260510.PAA24266@lightning.itga.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 25 May 1999 21:17:33 -0700.

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> Well, this is what I already have there:
> 
> --
> For general questions, please send email to :
> 
>         freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org
> 
> Please also have patience if your questions are not answered right
> away - this mailing list is staffed purely by volunteers and they also
> have real life schedules to contend with.  Questions which are asked
> intelligently (e.g. not "My system doesn't work!  What's wrong!?")
> also stand a far greater chance of being answered. If your question
> does not contain enough information to allow the responder to generate
> a meaningful answer, they generally won't.
> --
> 
> How would you suggest it be strengthened?

I was afraid you'd say that!

OK, something like this (bearing in mind that I'm not a committer and I don't
deal with PRs so this is just a stab at what I think is required):

---

What is enough information?  In general, any information that seems relevent - 
you can't include too much!

What hardware are you using?
	- Make and model of motherboard
	- CPU make/model/speed
	     - Are you overclocking?  If so, try it without overclocking first.
	- Video Card
	- Disk controllers - SCSI or IDE?  Disk Sizes?  How many Drives?
	- Network cards

What version of FreeBSD are you using?
	- Installed from FTP? CD-ROM?
	- If possible, include the output of "uname -a" command

If it is a problem booting, list _exactly_ where in the boot sequence you have 
problems, and all messages on the screen until that point.

If it is an unexpected system reboot, list any messages on the console from 
when it reboots, or run the command "dmesg" and check for any error messages 
which would occur just before the latest line that looks like
	 Copyright (c) 1992-1999 FreeBSD Inc
Or just include the whole dmesg output.  The most interesting lines will look 
something like:
	panic: freeing free inode

If it is a problem with FreeBSD not finding some of your hardware, double (and
triple!) check that the IRQ, I/O port and DMA channel assignments are correct.
Then, boot with the verbose flag on:
	<canna remember how this works with new boot blocks!> 
and include the output of the "dmesg" command.

If it is a problem building the system via "make world" or "make buildworld",
wait an hour or two, run CVSup again and try the build again (These failures
are often only transitory and get fixed very rapidly).   If it still fails,
include the last page or so of output from the make command and a precice
timestamp (including TIMEZONE!) when you ran CVSup.

If it is a problem compiling a new kernel, include the kernel config file you 
are attempting to use and the last page or so from the kernel make command.

If it is a problem of some system program dumping core, include the _exact_ 
command and environment to make it repeatable.

If it is some system program not behaving as you expect, include the _exact_ 
commandline you ran, the exact output or result you got, and a precise 
description of what you feel should have been produced.
--------




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