FWIW, here's a draft I hacked up over the last hour or so, just to give you an idea of what I'm considering. I'm still trying to decide whether it's better to stick to prose or something more formal, and this draft is somewhere in between. Also trying to decide whether it's better to be concise or verbose. It's pretty terse in places right now just because that's how I seem to write, but that might put off some people.
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Introduction
Welcome to the Linux/Unix Support Forum HOWTO. The purpose of this document is provide you information that will help you help us help you. [No, that's not how it's going to read in the final version. Unless we want to scare people away.]
[Expand rationale. Note that it doesn't matter if they can't provide information, more important to solve the problem than explain it clearly.]
Preliminaries
[Short explanation of how to get to a terminal, use command-line utilities, how to read CODE blocks, etc.]
Essentials
Above all else, we need you to provide information. As much information as possible in the greatest detail possible. Use whatever space you need. If you can't describe the problem in technical terms, describe it in non-technical terms. Be vague if you have to. Use analogies. Describe what you see, copy and paste, post screenshots or links. Tell us what you were doing before the problem appeared and what you've done since. Guess at solutions.
Anything may be important, so post everything you know.
General Support
It is usually important for us to know what operating system you are using. Even if your problem isn't related to the operating system, it will often be easier for us to provide solutions in terms of specific systems.
At the very least we need to know what type of operating system you are using. Linux, BSD, Unix, etc. The more specific you can be, the better.
If possible, tell us what distribution of the system you are using. Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. If the distribution has multiple branches, tell us which one you use. Debian testing, FreeBSD-STABLE, etc.
If possible, tell us what version of the system you are using. Red Hat 9, SuSE 8.1, FreeBSD 5.2, etc. If you've updated your system, note that and try to approximate the version. If the distribution is constantly updated, tell us when you last updated your system. If you have to, just tell us when you installed the system and how new you think it was then.
One easy way to provide us with information about the system is to use the
uname command. This command will tell you at least what system you're using, the kernel version, when it was created, and the platform on which it is running.
$ uname -a
Linux localhost 2.6.8.1 #1 Mon Oct 11 01:30:50 PDT 2004 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
In this case, the system is "GNU/Linux" or simply "Linux", the kernel version is "2.6.8.1", the system was created on "Mon Oct 11 01:30:50 PDT", and the platform is "i686".
Alternatively, you post the contents of the file /proc/version. This file is mostly the same to the output of
uname, but can sometimes provide useful additional information.
$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.8.1 (root@localhost) (gcc version 3.3.4 20040623 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.4-r1, ssp-3.3.2-2, pie-8.7.6)) #1 Mon Oct 11 01:30:50 PDT 2004
We can now see that the distribution is Gentoo.
Software Support
[Software name, version, dependencies, etc. Maybe extra subsection for the kernel.]
Hardware Support
[Device type, make, module, interface, chipset. Maybe additional information for network devices since they're so variable (PCI vs. USB, etc) and depend on the state of the network. Separate section may be in order.]
This post has been edited by jcl: 24 October 2004 - 06:34 AM
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. Not a general FAQ like we had in the TTV forums, but something that would smooth out the support process and make everyone's lives a bit easier.
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