Bug Reporting: What is required

[Ben]

Here is the status on Bug Reporting;

When a problem arises in a piece of software and no immediate solution is forthcoming, the user is told to "submit a bug report". Sometimes they are told where to go, but nothing else.

Essentially, the user is told to stand by the edge of a cliff... and is then pushed over... hearing a fading "goood luuccckk..." diminishing with the distance.

The user has no idea what the developers require, have no place to look, and no idea where to start. Neither do they have any idea how to obtain the information or of the existence of sniffer programs, (nor their names), or where to find them, what they are for, or if they are needed.

The developers and programmers have all of this knowledge. They covet it. They keep it to themselves. To them it is precious and not to be given away! You must bow and scrape. Afterall, the user should simply just "know it!"

Well, I have surprising bad news for developers/programmers; they don't!

Every person that has ever been told to "submit a bug report", knows this to be true. (And I don't care about irrelevant exceptions.) Conclusion? "A complete waste of effort for both sides." No useful report is made, (if one is made at all). Programmers and developers are intimate with this situation and they know it exactly as well as "intimate" would imply.

I do not care about other irrelevancies like the "programmers are doing all of their work voluntarily and are unpaid". And "why don't I care?" Because while all that is true about most programmers and their good deeds are both welcome and needed, it matters not one whit! For the user still does not know... and thus, stagnation perpetuates while ignorance and superiority live separate lives as broken communications thrive.

Since developers et al, will never do it, I will try as best as I can for...

This is a thread about solutions!

Those who have something useful to add, are welcomed to do so.

This is what I hope to get:

• Places to submit a bug report; URLs.
• Obstacles that may occur, (like having to log in), and how to deal with it. This should be obvious, but often isn't for it is seldom clear how or where, for the jargon creator is devious and the location often non-obvious.
• Jargon conversion to layman's terms that the user can understand.
• Software that can report hardware identification and settings
• Location of same software
• Configuration parameters of sniffer software where relevant.
• Configuration file locations

I will add to this list as needed. I will modify it as necessary, so that the users can look to one message to find what they need... rather than having to waste more time going down through long, separate lists in the different replies to this thread.

I would recommend to an administrator, or moderator of this forum, that he make this message sticky - always appearing at the top of this thread - to help facilitate that end.

Here is a starter:

SNIFFER PROGRAMS

• PCI.EXE - C:\ecs\install\DETECTEI\PCI.EXE - Sniffs out and reports all PCI-connected devices both onboard and user-added.
• HCIMONIT.EXE - C:\OS2\HCIMONIT.EXE - Detects all USB ports on your computer and reports them.

When you, the user, submits a bug report, provide the following as applies to your particular situation:

• The software that you are using, be it drivers and/or program(s), including the dates and versions. If more than one is used, then include all those tried.
• Brandname of your motherboard
• the Model #
• CPU: Brand, Speed and number of cores, (if relevant)
• ACPI version and parameters, (if any)
• and all additional hardware of relevance, including Brandname & Model #

Include all necessary log files like:

POPUPLOG.OS2 - root directory on the boot drive. Include when a program is crashing.
PDINST.L*       - root directory on the boot drive. Created by the "Printer driver import utility".

[Neil Waldhauer]

There was a paper presented at Warpstock 2013 on how to report a bug.

http://www.warpstock.org/filemgmt_data/files/bug%20report.pdf

[Martin Iturbide]

Good to see something from WarpStock 2013.

Does anybody wrote a review or uploaded some pictures?

[Ben]

There was a paper presented at Warpstock 2013 on how to report a bug.

Warpstock 2013 Bug Report PDF

Thank-you for that, Neil.

I'll peruse that PDF and see if I can add something useful from it, to this.

I'll contact G. Young first and see if he does not mind.

[Ben]

I sent a PM to Greg, (a while back now), but I am still waiting for a reply. It appears he does not frequent this site, but only make infrequent stops; I do not have an E-mail address for him.

In the meantime, I have updated the original post... and will continue to do so as I find things worthy of addition.