How to get the best results from FreeBSD questions.
===================================================
Last update $Date: 2005/08/10 02:21:44 $
This is a regular posting to the FreeBSD questions mailing
list. If
you got it in answer to a message you sent, it means that
the sender
thinks that at least one of the following things was wrong
with your
message:
- You left out a subject line, or the subject line was not
appropriate.
- You formatted it in such a way that it was difficult to
read.
- You asked more than one unrelated question in one message.
- You sent out a message with an incorrect date, time or
time zone.
- You sent out the same message more than once.
- You sent an 'unsubscribe' message to FreeBSD-questions.
If you have done any of these things, there is a good chance
that you
will get more than one copy of this message from different
people.
Read on, and your next message will be more successful.
This document is also available on the web at
http://www.lemis
.com/questions.html.
============================================================
=========
Contents:
I: Introduction
II: How to unsubscribe from FreeBSD-questions
III: Should I ask -questions or -hackers?
IV: How to submit a question to FreeBSD-questions
V: How to answer a question to FreeBSD-questions
I: Introduction
===============
This is a regular posting aimed to help both those seeking
advice from
FreeBSD-questions (the "newcomers"), and also
those who answer the
questions (the "hackers").
Note that the term "hacker" has nothing
to do with breaking
into other people's computers. The correct term for
the latter
activity is "cracker", but the popular
press hasn't found out
yet. The FreeBSD hackers disapprove strongly of
cracking
security, and have nothing to do with it.
In the past, there has been some friction which stems from
the
different viewpoints of the two groups. The newcomers
accused the
hackers of being arrogant, stuck-up, and unhelpful, while
the hackers
accused the newcomers of being stupid, unable to read plain
English,
and expecting everything to be handed to them on a silver
platter. Of
course, there's an element of truth in both these claims,
but for the
most part these viewpoints come from a sense of frustration.
In this document, I'd like to do something to relieve this
frustration
and help everybody get better results from
FreeBSD-questions. In the
following section, I recommend how to submit a question;
after that,
we'll look at how to answer one.
II: How to unsubscribe from FreeBSD-questions
==============================================
When you subscribed to FreeBSD-questions, you got a welcome
message
from freebsd-questions-request FreeBSD.ORG. In this
message, amongst
other things, it told you how to unsubscribe. Here's a
typical
message:
Welcome to the freebsd-questionsfreebsd.org mailing list!
If you ever want to unsubscribe or change your options (eg,
switch to
or from digest mode, change your password, etc.), visit your
subscription page at:
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/options/freebsd-qu
estions/meme.org
(obviously, substitute your mail address for "meme.org"). You can
also make such adjustments via email by sending a message
to:
freebsd-questions-requestfreebsd.org
with the word 'help' in the subject or body (don't
include the
quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions.
You must know your password to change your options
(including
changing the password, itself) or to unsubscribe.
Normally, Mailman will remind you of your freebsd.org
mailing list
passwords once every month, although you can disable this if
you
prefer. This reminder will also include instructions on how
to
unsubscribe or change your account options. There is also a
button on
your options page that will email your current password to
you.
Here's the general information for the list you've
subscribed to, in case you don't already have it:
FREEBSD-QUESTIONS User questions
This is the mailing list for questions about FreeBSD. You
should not
send "how to" questions to the technical lists
unless you consider the
question to be pretty technical.
Normally, unsubscribing is even simpler than the message
suggests: you
don't need to specify your mail ID unless it is different
from the one
which you specified when you subscribed.
If Majordomo replies and tells you (incorrectly) that
you're not on
the list, this may mean one of two things:
1. You have changed your mail ID since you subscribed.
That's where
keeping the original message from majordomo comes in
handy. For
example, the sample message above shows my mail ID as
groglemis.de. Since then, I have changed it to
groglemis.com. If I were to try to remove groglemis.com
from
the list, it would fail: I would have to specify the
name with
which I joined.
2. You're subscribed to a mailing list which is
subscribed to
FreeBSD-questions. If that's the case, you'll have
to figure out
which one it is and get your name taken off that one.
If you're
not sure which one it might be, check the headers of
the
messages you receive from freebsd-questions: maybe
there's a
clue there.
If you've done all this, and you still can't figure out
what's going
on, send a message to PostmasterFreeBSD.org, and he will
sort things
out for you. Don't send a message to FreeBSD-questions:
they can't
help you.
III: Should I ask -questions or -hackers?
=========================================
Two mailing lists handle general questions about FreeBSD,
FreeBSD-questions and FreeBSD-hackers. In some cases, it's
not really
clear which group you should ask. The following criteria
should help
for 99% of all questions, however:
If the question is of a general nature, first check
whether this
isn't a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ). There's a
list of these
questions at
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/
faq/index.html,
and also on your own system (once you've installed it)
at
/usr/share/doc/en/books/faq/index.html. Check there,
and if you
don't find an answer, ask FreeBSD-questions. Examples
might be
questions about installing FreeBSD or the use of a
particular
UNIX utility.
If you think the question relates to a bug, but you're
not sure,
or you don't know how to look for it, send the message
to
FreeBSD-questions.
If the question relates to a bug, and you're almost
sure that
it's a bug (for example, you can pinpoint the place in
the code
where it happens, and you maybe have a fix), then send
the
message to FreeBSD-hackers. You should also enter a
problem
report with the send-pr utility.
If the question relates to enhancements to FreeBSD, and
you can
make suggestions about how to implement them, then send
the
message to FreeBSD-hackers.
If the question is of particularly technical nature,
such as
implementation details or suggestions for improvements,
then send
the message to FreeBSD-hackers.
There are also a number of other specialized mailing lists,
for
example FreeBSD-isp, which caters to the interests of ISPs
(Internet
Service Providers) who run FreeBSD. If you happen to be an
ISP, this
doesn't mean you should automatically send your questions
to
FreeBSD-isp. The criteria above still apply, and it's in
your
interest to stick to them, since you're more likely to get
good
results that way.
IV: How to submit a question
=============================
When submitting a question to FreeBSD-questions, consider
the
following points:
1. Remember that nobody gets paid for answering a FreeBSD
question.
They do it of their own free will. You can influence
this free
will positively by submitting a well-formulated
question
supplying as much relevant information as possible.
You can
influence this free will negatively by submitting an
incomplete,
illegible, or rude question. It's perfectly possible
to send a
message to FreeBSD-questions and not get an answer
even if you
follow these rules. It's much more possible to not
get an
answer if you don't. In the rest of this document,
we'll look
at how to get the most out of your question to
FreeBSD-questions.
2. Not everybody who answers FreeBSD questions reads
every message:
they look at the subject line and decide whether it
interests
them. Clearly, it's in your interest to specify a
subject.
``FreeBSD problem'' or ``Help'' aren't enough.
If you provide
no subject at all, many people won't bother reading
it. If your
subject isn't specific enough, the people who can
answer it may
not read it.
3. When sending a new message, well, send a new message.
Don't
reply to some other message, erase the old content and
change
the subject line. That leaves an In-reply-to: header
which many
mail readers use to thread messages, so your message
shows up as
a reply to some other message. People often delete
messages a
whole thread at a time, so apart from irritating
people, you
also run a chance of having the message deleted
unread.
4. Format your message so that it is legible, and PLEASE
DON'T
SHOUT!!!!!. We appreciate that a lot of people don't
speak
English as their first language, and we try to make
allowances
for that, but it's really painful to try to read a
message
written full of typos or without any line breaks. A
lot of
badly formatted messages come from bad mailers or
badly
configured mailers. The following mailers are known
to send out
badly formatted messages without you finding out about
them:
Eudora
exmh
Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Internet Mail
Microsoft Outlook
Netscape
As you can see, the mailers in the Microsoft world are
frequent
offenders. If at all possible, use a UNIX mailer. If
you must
use a mailer under Microsoft environments, make sure
it is set
up correctly. Try not to use MIME: a lot of people
use mailers
which don't get on very well with MIME.
For further information on this subject, check out
http://www.lemis.com
/email.html.
5. Make sure your time and time zone are set correctly.
This may
seem a little silly, since your message still gets
there, but
many of the people you are trying to reach get several
hundred
messages a day. They frequently sort the incoming
messages by
subject and by date, and if your message doesn't come
before the
first answer, they may assume they missed it and not
bother to
look.
6. Don't include unrelated questions in the same
message. Firstly,
a long message tends to scare people off, and
secondly, it's
more difficult to get all the people who can answer
all the
questions to read the message.
7. Specify as much information as possible. This is a
difficult
area, and we need to expand on what information you
need to
submit, but here's a start:
If you get error messages, don't say ``I get error
messages'', say (for example) ``I get the error
message 'No
route to host'''.
If your system panics, don't say ``My system
panicked'', say
(for example) ``my system panicked with the message
'free
vnode isn't'''.
If you have difficulty installing FreeBSD, please
tell us
what hardware you have. In particular, it's
important to
know the IRQs and I/O addresses of the boards
installed in
your machine.
If you have difficulty getting PPP to run, describe
the
configuration. Which version of PPP do you use?
What kind of
authentication do you have? Do you have a static or
dynamic
IP address? What kind of messages do you get in the
log file?
8. If you don't get an answer immediately, or if you
don't even see
your own message appear on the list immediately,
don't resend
the message. Wait at least 24 hours. The FreeBSD
mailer
offloads messages to a number of subordinate mailers
around the
world, and sometimes it can take several hours for the
mail to
get through. And once it gets through, the one person
who might
know the answer will probably just have gone to bed in
his part
of the world.
9. If you do all this, and you still don't get an
answer, there
could be other reasons. For example, the problem is
so
complicated that nobody knows the answer, or the
person who does
know the answer was offline. If you don't get an
answer after,
say, a week, it might help to re-send the message. If
you don't
get an answer to your second message, though, you're
probably
not going to get one from this forum. Resending the
same
message again and again will only make you unpopular.
To summarize, let's assume you know the answer to the
following
question (yes, it's the same one in each case  . You
choose which of
these two questions you would be more prepared to answer:
Message 1:
Subject: (none)
I just can't get hits damn silly FereBSD system to workd,
and Im really good at this tsuff, but I have never seen
anythign sho difficult to install, it jst wont work whatever
I try so why don't y9ou guys tell me what I doing wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------
----------
Message 2:
Subject: Problems installing FreeBSD
I've just got the FreeBSD 2.1.5 CD-ROM from Walnut Creek,
and I'm
having a lot of difficulty installing it. I have a 66 MHz
486 with 16
MB of memory and an Adaptec 1540A SCSI board, a 1.2GB
Quantum Fireball
disk and a Toshiba 3501XA CD-ROM drive. The installation
works just
fine, but when I try to reboot the system, I get the message
"Missing
Operating System".
------------------------------------------------------------
----------
V: How to follow up to a question
=================================
Often you will want to send in additional information to a
question
you have already sent. The best way to do this is to reply
to your
original message. This has three advantages:
1. You include the original message text, so people will
know what
you're talking about. Don't forget to trim
unnecessary text out,
though.
2. The text in the subject line stays the same (you did
remember to
put one in, didn't you?). Many mailers will sort
messages by
subject. This helps group messages together.
3. The message reference numbers in the header will refer
to the
previous message. Some mailers, such as mutt, can
thread messages,
showing the exact relationships between the messages.
VI: How to answer a question
============================
Before you answer a question to FreeBSD-questions, consider:
1. A lot of the points on submitting questions also apply
to
answering questions. Read them.
2. Has somebody already answered the question? The easiest
way to
check this is to sort your incoming mail by subject:
then
(hopefully) you'll see the question followed by any
answers, all
together.
If somebody has already answered it, it doesn't
automatically mean
that you shouldn't send another answer. But it makes
sense to
read all the other answers first.
3. Do you have something to contribute beyond what has
already been
said? In general, "Yeah, me too" answers
don't help much,
although there are exceptions, like when somebody is
describing a
problem he's having, and he doesn't know whether it's
his fault or
whether there's something wrong with the hardware or
software. If
you do send a "me too" answer, you should
also include any further
relevant information.
4. Are you sure you understand the question? Very
frequently, the
person who asks the question is confused or doesn't
express
himself very well. Even with the best understanding of
the system,
it's easy to send a reply which doesn't answer the
question. This
doesn't help: you'll leave the person who submitted
the question
more frustrated or confused than ever. If nobody else
answers, and
you're not too sure either, you can always ask for more
information.
5. Are you sure your answer is correct? If not, wait a day
or so.
If nobody else comes up with a better answer, you can
still reply
and say, for example, "I don't know if this is
correct, but since
nobody else has replied, why don't you try replacing
your ATAPI
CD-ROM with a frog?".
6. Unless there's a good reason to do otherwise, reply to
the sender
and to FreeBSD-questions. Many people on the
FreeBSD-questions
are "lurkers": they learn by reading
messages sent and replied to
by others. If you take a message which is of general
interest off
the list, you're depriving these people of their
information. Be
careful with group replies; lots of people send messages
with
hundreds of CCs. If this is the case, be sure to trim
the Cc:
lines appropriately.
7. Include relevant text from the original message. Trim it
to the
minimum, but don't overdo it. It should still be
possible for
somebody who didn't read the original message to
understand what
you're talking about.
8. Use some technique to identify which text came from the
original
message, and which text you add. I personally find that
prepending
``> '' to the original message works best. Leaving
white space
after the ``> '' and leave empty lines between your
text and the
original text both make the result more readable.
9. Put your response in the correct place (after the text
to which it
replies). It's very difficult to read a thread of
responses where
each reply comes before the text to which it replies.
10. Most mailers change the subject line on a reply by
prepending a
text such as ``Re: ''. If your mailer doesn't do it
automatically, you should do it manually.
11. If the submitter didn't abide by format conventions
(lines too
long, inappropriate subject line), please fix it. In
the case of
an incorrect subject line (such as ``HELP!!??''),
change the
subject line to (say) ``Re: Difficulties with sync PPP
(was:
HELP!!??)''. That way other people trying to follow
the thread
will have less difficulty following it.
In such cases, it's appropriate to say what you did
and why you
did it, but try not to be rude. If you find you can't
answer
without being rude, don't answer.
If you just want to reply to a message because of its
bad format,
just reply to the submitter, not to the list. You can
just send
him this message in reply, if you like.
$Id: Howto-ask-questions,v 1.6 2005/08/10 02:21:44 grog Exp
$
_______________________________________________
Thanks to Josh Paetzel for updating this document to
describe mailman.
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