Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 22 Sep 1998 01:06:06 +0200
From:      Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>
To:        ben@rosengart.com, "Dag-Erling C. Smrgrav" <dag-erli@ifi.uio.no>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: shouting in a void?
Message-ID:  <19980922010606.17300@follo.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.02.9809211507010.24094-100000@echonyc.com>; from Snob Art Genre on Mon, Sep 21, 1998 at 03:14:57PM -0400
References:  <xzpsohlqoc5.fsf@hrotti.ifi.uio.no> <Pine.GSO.4.02.9809211507010.24094-100000@echonyc.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, Sep 21, 1998 at 03:14:57PM -0400, Snob Art Genre wrote:
> On 21 Sep 1998, Dag-Erling C. [iso-8859-1] Smørgrav wrote:
> 
> > It's still "all or nothing" AFAIK, but unless you have a slow link, I
> > don't see the big problem with subscribing to cvs-all. You can set up
> > a simple procmail script to filter out everything that matches e.g.
> > ^Subject:.*cvs commit: (ports|www|doc).*$
> 
> I'm tired of jumping through hoops.  I'm going pretty far out of my way
> to be helpful to the FreeBSD project and to myself by spotting problems
> in 3.0-alpha^H^H^H^H^Hbeta, and all I hear is that I'm not doing enough.
> Is core interested in a stable 3.0-RELEASE or is the idea just to
> alienate enough users that the complaint volume is low anyway?

(I'm not on the core team, but I think I what I'm going to write now match
most of the FreeBSD developers - still only speaking for myself, of course).

We're interested in a stable -RELEASE.  However, doing anything based on a
panic() without detailed info on the surroundings (preferably a stack
traceback, but a symbol or exact information on what was going on at the
time may be enough) is pretty close to impossible.  When I see one of these
on the mailing lists, I may send a mail telling which info is strictly
required (for a panic these days, it would at least include whether you're
running SCSI and which controller, and if you're running soft updates).

With somebody who's been around as long as you have, I tend to assume that
they know what the procedures are, and only need a little reminder.

Apart from that: The only way to get anything done "around here" is to catch
the attention of somebody who is competent to fix the problem.  With the
amount of mail and work flying around now, that can be difficult - and I
think we're all frustrated with it.  However, there is no easy solution, and
shouting for "the core team" will not help - they're only humans, just like
the rest of us.

The things you can do about this is (a) shouting more effectively (by
including as much information as possible; everything you can in any way
conceive as possibly relevant), and (b) making other people shout more
effectively (thus dropping the relative amount of noise).  One way of doing
(b) is to write up suitable documentation patches and submit them through
send-pr.

I'm sorry to not be able to give any more cheerful advice; as Jordan keep
repeating, it's a volunteer project, and the only way to be sure "something"
is done is by doing it yourself :-(

Eivind.

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980922010606.17300>