From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-11.7 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,MENTIONS_GIT_HOSTING, SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,URIBL_BLOCKED,USER_AGENT_GIT autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC191C55ABD for ; Thu, 12 Nov 2020 18:01:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D98C21D91 for ; Thu, 12 Nov 2020 18:01:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1727013AbgKLSBk (ORCPT ); Thu, 12 Nov 2020 13:01:40 -0500 Received: from lindbergh.monkeyblade.net ([23.128.96.19]:35098 "EHLO lindbergh.monkeyblade.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1726363AbgKLR7H (ORCPT ); Thu, 12 Nov 2020 12:59:07 -0500 Received: from wp530.webpack.hosteurope.de (wp530.webpack.hosteurope.de [IPv6:2a01:488:42:1000:50ed:8234::]) by lindbergh.monkeyblade.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AE5DFC0613D6; Thu, 12 Nov 2020 09:59:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip4d145e30.dynamic.kabel-deutschland.de ([77.20.94.48] helo=truhe.fritz.box); authenticated by wp530.webpack.hosteurope.de running ExIM with esmtpsa (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) id 1kdGsB-0006ue-SO; Thu, 12 Nov 2020 18:59:03 +0100 From: Thorsten Leemhuis To: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Randy Dunlap , linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: [RFC PATCH v2 00/26] Make reporting-bugs easier to grasp and yet more detailed & helpful Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 18:58:37 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: git-send-email 2.28.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-bounce-key: webpack.hosteurope.de;linux@leemhuis.info;1605203947;764f585d; X-HE-SMSGID: 1kdGsB-0006ue-SO Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org This series rewrites the "how to report bugs to the Linux kernel maintainers" document to make it more straight forward and its essence easier to grasp. At the same time make the text provide a lot more details about the process in form of a reference section, so users that want or need to know them have them at hand. The goal of this rewrite: improve the quality of the bug reports and reduce the number of reports that get ignored. This was motivated by many reports of poor quality the submitter noticed while looking after Linux kernel regression tracking many moons ago. This is v2, but still RFC, as there are still quite a number of things to discuss (see below). For the curious, this is how the text currently looks in the end: https://gitlab.com/knurd42/linux/-/raw/reporting-bugs-v2/Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.rst The main author of this rewrite is fully aware the new text is quite long and thus might look a bit intimidating. But the text's structure with a TDLR, a step-by-step guide and a reference section was carefully crafted to make sure the text can serve different needs depending on what readers know about bug reporting and the linux kernel; that's why the text among others can work for kernel developers that just need to look something up, developers & experienced FLOSS contributors that are new to the kernel and need a rough instructions, as well as Linux users that just want to report a problem upstream. The text is thus a bit like the kernel itself, which works well for small embedded machines, a typical desktop PC, cloud servers, as well as HPC. There are a few points that will need discussions which comments in the individual patches will point out. That for example includes things like "is dual licensing under CC-BY 4.0 a good idea", "are we asking too much from users when telling them to test mainline?", and "create a mailing list that should be CCed on all reports?". But a few points are best raised here: * The old and the new reporting-bugs text take a totally different approach to bugzilla.kernel.org. The old mentions it as the place to file your issue if you don't know where to go. The new one mentions it rarely and most of the time warn users that it's often the wrong place to go. This approach was chosen as the main author noticed quite a few users (or even a lot?) get no reply to the bugs they file in bugzilla. That's kind of expected, as quite a few (many? most?) of the maintainers don't even get notified when reports for their subsystem get filed there. Anyway: not getting a reply is something that is just annoying for users and might make them angry. Improving bugzilla would be an option, but on the kernel and maintainers summit 2017 (sorry it took so long) it was agreed on to first go this route, as it's easier to achieve and less controversial, as putting additional burden on already overworked maintainers is unlikely to get well received. * The text states "see above" or "see below" in a few places. Should those be proper links? But then anchors will need to be placed in some places, which slightly hurt readability of the plain text version. Could RST or autosectionlabel help here somewhat (without changing the line "autosectionlabel_maxdepth = 2" in Documentation/conf.py, which I assume is unwanted)? * The new text avoids the word "bug" and uses "issues" instead, as users face issues which might or might not be caused by bugs. Due to this approach it might make sense to rename the document to "reporting-issues". But for now everything is left as it is, as changing the name of a well known file has downsides; but maybe at least the documents headline should get a s/bugs/issues/ treatment. * How to make sure everybody that cares get a chance to review this? As this still is an early RFC, the author chose to sent it only to the docs maintainer, linux-docs and LKML, to see how well this approach is received in general. Once it is agreed that this is the route forward, a lot of other people need to be CCed to review parts of it; the stable maintainers for example should check if the section on handling issues with stable and longterm kernels is acceptable for them. In the end it's something a lot of maintainers might want to take at least a quick look at, as they will be dealing with the reports. But there is no easy way to contact all of them (apart from CCing many people), as most of them likely don't read LKML anymore. Should the author maybe abuse ksummit-discuss, as this likely will reach all the major stakeholders? Side note: maybe it would be good to have a list for things like this on vger... Note: The main autor is not a developer, so he will have gotten a few things in the procedure wrong. Let him know if you spot something where things are off. And strictly speaking this series is not bisectable, as the old text it left in place and removed slowly by the patches in the series when they add new text that covers the same aspect. Thus, both old and new text are incomplete or inconsistent (and thus would not build, if we'd talked about code). But that is only relevant for those that read the text before the series is fully applied. That seemed like an acceptable downside here IMHO, as this makes it easier to compare the old and new approach. The patch series is against docs-next and can also be found on gitlab: git://git@gitlab.com:knurd42/linux.git reporting-bugs-v2 = Big outstanding issues = * is the general approach a good idea? * dedicated mailing lists for issues (see patch !!!) * input needed how to properly prepare and handle stack dumps these days (see patch !!!) * should we accept reports for issues with kernel images that are pretty close to vanilla? (see patch !!!) * linking back and forth within the text? = Changes = v1 -> v2 * all over: a whole lot of spelling fixes and small improvements. Many thx to suggestions from Randy Dunlap (many thx!). * use "ref:" to reference MAINTAINERs file * the licensing advice is now a rst comment near the top * reshuffle and rewrite some parts to make them more straight forward: * The short guide (aka TL;DR)" (patch 2) * Locate kernel area that causes the issue (patch 9) * Install a fresh kernel for testing (patch 15) * to see all changes since v1 compare these two files with tool like meld or kdiff3: https://gitlab.com/knurd42/linux/-/raw/reporting-bugs/Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs-v1.rst https://gitlab.com/knurd42/linux/-/raw/reporting-bugs/Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs-v2.rst = Links = v1: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/cover.1601541165.git.linux@leemhuis.info/ Current version of reporting-bugs.rst https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.html https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.rst Commits to it and its predecessor: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.rst https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/REPORTING-BUGS Thorsten Leemhuis (26): docs: reporting-bugs: temporary markers for licensing and diff reasons docs: reporting-bugs: Create a TLDR how to report issues docs: reporting-bugs: step-by-step guide on how to report issues docs: reporting-bugs: step-by-step guide for issues in stable & longterm docs: reporting-bugs: begin reference section providing details docs: reporting-bugs: point out we only care about fresh vanilla kernels docs: reporting-bugs: let users classify their issue docs: reporting-bugs: make readers check the taint flag docs: reporting-bugs: help users find the proper place for their report docs: reporting-bugs: remind people to look for existing reports docs: reporting-bugs: remind people to back up their data docs: reporting-bugs: tell users to disable DKMS et al. docs: reporting-bugs: point out the environment might be causing issue docs: reporting-bugs: make users write notes, one for each issue docs: reporting-bugs: make readers test a fresh kernel docs: reporting-bugs: let users check taint status again docs: reporting-bugs: explain options if reproducing on mainline fails docs: reporting-bugs: let users optimize their notes docs: reporting-bugs: decode failure messages [need help!] docs: reporting-bugs: instructions for handling regressions docs: reporting-bugs: details on writing and sending the report docs: reporting-bugs: explain what users should do once the report is out docs: reporting-bugs: details for issues specific to stable and longterm docs: reporting-bugs: explain why users might get neither reply nor fix docs: reporting-bugs: explain things could be easier docs: reporting-bugs: add SPDX tag and license hint, remove markers Documentation/admin-guide/bug-bisect.rst | 2 + Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.rst | 1652 +++++++++++++++-- Documentation/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.rst | 2 + scripts/ver_linux | 81 - 4 files changed, 1507 insertions(+), 230 deletions(-) delete mode 100755 scripts/ver_linux base-commit: f8394f232b1eab649ce2df5c5f15b0e528c92091 -- 2.28.0