Problem resolution techniques

[John Murphy]

"Chris Martin" <outsidefactor at iinet.net.au> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I was just looking for some general advice on tracking down issues with
>compiled software. I am trying to put together a set guidelines for people
>in my organisation and our partners over escalation and to help establish
>when issues are not going to be resolved in house in an efficient amount of
>time.
>
>For example, application 'A' is built from ports. It compiles and installs
>properly, but core dumps on start. Basic resolution steps could be:
>
>1) uninstall, re-download the distfiles and compile again
>2) repeat step 1 after checking/removing any make.conf settings that very
>from those included in generic
>3) check an dependant libraries or applications by testing them with other
>applications

You should probably re-cvsup the ports at some point to ensure that the
problem wasn't a temporary glitch which has since been fixed.

>What is a good next step, and at which point do we bug the questions mailing
>list or the code maintainers? Is there a way for non-developers to get
>useful information about the dump themselves, saving them bothering the
>developers with yet another "it don't work, here are my system settings and
>installed apps, please help" e-mails?

There is a FAQ entry which you may find useful:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/advanced.html#KERNEL-PANIC-TROUBLESHOOTING

-- 
HTH, John.