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- Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!emory!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!nntp-server.caltech.edu!SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU!CARL
- From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
- Subject: Guidelines for posting questions to comp.os.vms/info-vax
- Date: 22 Nov 1992 18:57:02 GMT
- Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
- Lines: 112
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1eol5uINNsrs@gap.caltech.edu>
- Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
- NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu
-
- I'm proposing the following guidelines for posting questions to this group.
- One would hope that everything I mention below would be obvious to anybody
- about to post a question, but that's far to seldom the case (especially in the
- period from September through November). I welcome comments and suggestions
- for improving the guidelines. Responses from Jerry, Jamie, and (shudder) Ehud
- (please, Ehud: Don't turn the temperature up TOO high) would be especially
- welcome.
-
- The following guidelines for posting questions to COMP.OS.VMS/INFO-VAX are
- intended to help querants post their questions in such fashion as to maximize
- the probability that they'll receive quick, useful responses, and to minimize
- he probability that the questions will annoy the people most likely to be able
- to give useful responses.
-
- Chances are, before you'll actually get a useful response to your question,
- you'll have to conform to these guidelines anyway, so you might as well try to
- do so in your original question instead of wasting several days and some
- network bandwidth clarifying your question.
-
- Perhaps the most important thing to remember is: You've run into a problem,
- and haven't been able to figure out how to solve it. One possible explanation
- for this is that you're going about it the wrong way. Therefore, asking for
- help solving a minor problem in what you think is a "solution" to your major
- problem may do you no good whatever. So in general, there are two things you
- ABSOLUTELY need to tell us if you want help:
-
- 1) How we can get in touch with you to answer your question;
- 2) What you are trying to accomplish;
-
- Now, for the specific guidelines I propose:
-
- 1) First and foremost, if you want us to e-mail responses to you (and in
- general, I'd recommend that you actually read this group; there really IS
- a lot of useful stuff you can pick up that way), please include your
- e-mail address (including a fully-qualified domain name) in the body of
- your message. The news/mail gateway mangles addresses. In both
- directions (well, actually, I think it's UUNET.UU.NET that tends to mangle
- addresses coming in via mail). If you really need to have a response
- mailed to you, the only way you can guarantee that we'll be able to figure
- out how to do that is if you give us your e-mail address.
- 2) If your question is about a VMS utility that doesn't do what you expect,
- include in your question:
- A) The command you used that generated the "improper" response;
- B) A description of what you thought the system's response should've
- been. A question of the form "X doesn't work properly. How do I fix
- that?" is unanswerable. We have to know HOW X doesn't work properly.
- Sometimes the answer will be "X isn't supposed to do that. You've
- misunderstood the documentation. To get the response you want, use Y
- instead." But we can't help you unless we know what it was you were
- trying to accomplish."
- C) The FULL error message (if any) given to you by VMS. VMS is *NOT*
- unix. VMS error messages usually contain LOTS of information for
- those who understand them. But we need the FULL text of the error
- message, exactly as VMS gave it to you. Vague mention of the message,
- like "it said I didn't have enough memory" is useless. The actual VMS
- error message, for example, in a case like this example, would usually
- have told us WHAT KIND of memory you ran out of. So please, VMS is
- trying to help you find the problem; do us the same favor and give us
- all the information VMS gave you.
- D) The version number of all relevent software. Oddly enough, the
- version numbers aren't just time stamps. Things actually change
- between versions of software. Bugs in one version might not show up
- in other versions. So if you have actually stumbled across a bug,
- please let us know what version of the software you're running, so we
- can decide whether we might be able to help you.
- E) Complete descriptions (output of ANALYZE/RMS/FDL would ususally
- suffice) of any of your files involved in the problem;
- F) If it appears to be a problem with SYSGEN parameters, let us know what
- your SYSGEN parameters currently are. Some SYSGEN parameters are
- interrelated. Since you haven't been able to diagnose the problem
- yourself, don't be too sure that you're even looking in the right
- place. Again: Give us all the information that might be necessary to
- solving the problem. Don't just give us the SYSGEN parameters you
- THINK are causing the problem. Give us ALL the SYSGEN parameters that
- MIGHT POSSIBLY have an effect on the problem.
- 3) If your problem is that some user-written code doesn't do what you expect,
- then don't try translating from C (or PASCAL, or FORTRAN, or BASIC...)
- into English. Believe it or not, most of us who participate in
- COMP.OS.VMS actually understand one or more programming languages, and
- some of us even have compilers that we can use. Furthermore, 99% of the
- "compiler bugs" people find aren't compiler bugs at all: they're poorly
- written application code. By the time you've converted your code into an
- English description, you've almost certainly glossed over whatever it was
- that was REALLY causing the problem (once again: If you knew enough about
- the real problem that you'd think it important to mention it in your
- English-language description, you'd probably also know how to solve the
- problem). So don't do us the favor of "summarizing" your problem. When
- you do that, the problem itself usually gets summarized out of existence.
- Instead, find the code that's causing the problem. If it's something
- huge, try to find a simpler version of the same sort of code that creates
- the same problem. Keep working at it until you've got a program of less
- than 100 lines of code that produces the problem, or until you can't find
- a simpler example that demonstrates the problem. Strangely enough, by the
- time you've done this, you'll have found the problem yourself more than
- half the time. And if you HAVEN'T done this, chances are that nobody else
- will be able to figure out what you're talking about enough to help with
- your problem.
-
- If, once you've reduced the problem to the simplest example you can, you
- still can't figure out what's going wrong, then post the code, the version
- number of the compiler, complete descriptions of any of your own files
- that seem to be related to the problem, and, as always, a description of
- what you think your code SHOULD do, to us, and you'll likely receive a
- prompt and useful answer.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
-
- Disclaimer: Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS. That's what I get paid for. My
- understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below). So
- unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
- organization responsible for it. If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
- hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
-