Re: Reporting Bug
On 22.10.2015 17:03, Brian wrote:
On Thu 22 Oct 2015 at 16:15:27 +0300, Piyavkin wrote:
On 22.10.2015 10:18, Ondřej Grover wrote:
Hello Adrian,
could you please be more specific about a few points?
- what installer ISO did you use
- did you use the text or graphical installer
- what was the error message or what failed or happened exactly that
stopped the installation
I wasn't able to reproduce your problem in VirtualBox using the network
installation ISO http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/8.2.0/i386/iso-cd/debian-8.2.0-i386-netinst.iso
and with almost all the default choices with the excpetion of these
prompts
- Full name of new user: "Adrian O'Dell"
- user name: "adrian"
I understand that you may not feel like reading a large page of text if
you are in a hurry or feel you may not understand it. However, the Debian
and other open-source projects keep living thanks to individuals like you
that go the extra mile, devote some time to the cause and are willing to
learn new things. Please consider supporting Debian (and through it all
other projects based on it, including Linux Mint) through your extra
effort in filing bug reports when needed.
Kind regards,
Ondřej Grover
On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 8:15 AM, Adrian O'Dell <crimsonmane@gmail.com
<mailto:crimsonmane@gmail.com>> wrote:
There appears to be a bug which has Plagued me for years. Oddly I
don't have the bug in Linux Mint. Did they edit this part of the
installer?
My name contains an apostrophe, which causes the Debian installer
to not create my user account. Long time ago when I tried to seek
help via IRC was told I must have done something wrong. Two days
ago I confirmed through multiple installs that the apostrophe is
the culprit.
This is the only attempt I will make at filing a bug report.
Anyone more familiar with filing a bug report, it would be greatly
appreciated if you would make sure it gets filed properly so it
may be resolved. https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting is an ugly
wall of text which immediately discouraged me from wanting to file
a bug report anymore.
Thanks.
I agree with the topic starter: the Debian's bug reporting process is
horrible and not userfriendly from user's viewpoint. If an organization
cares about usability and effectiveness of bug reporting process, it
shouldn't be like that.
If a user cares about the usability and effectiveness of the bug
reporting process, more detail to back up the complaint would be
welcome.
.
«more details» — that's exactly a good point for a good bug reporting
system (or similar one).
But before that, in the first place, there should be: «less details».
*Problem*
The purpose of a bug reporting system is to gather from end users and
nodes all relevant information on issues with the real product behaviour
to be aware of current situation (what will you do with the information
then — is another question).
It's better if the process is completely automated (invisible for
users). If it is not, it should be as simple for user as possible, so as
many involved users as possible could complete it.
The problem with the Debian bug reporting process is that it is not so
simple for ordinary user. And if you do it first time or rarely you
should first investigate how to do it, manually (and unnecessarily)
gather bits of information from different sources to finish the quest
and just to send report. It involves a good deal of searching, reading,
studying and tweaking settings, even if it is simplest case. For
ordinary user it seems very annoying and frustrating. And even if the
user's willing to report to help developers, he/she probably gives up
and remains silent. And in result the information in the bug reporting
system reflects only the part of the real picture: only the reports from
users who were skilled or stubborn enough to break through the reporting
process (and it is skewed bit of picture too, because the machines of
the skilled users maintained better and differently than machines of
ordinary/average users).
*Example (case)*
I've got some critical issue with kernel updates which prevented me from
starting my system.
So the only options I had to work through other PC or to start from LiveCD.
First of all, what should I do to report the issue? I've searched and
found the mentioned above page https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
with instructions.
I was even not sure if I should address my report to the list. And I
first asked here at debian-user. The participants here suggested that I
probably should report bug.
I've returned to the web-page. And had to plough through the wall of
text on the page and its links, to understand what's significant here
and what's not, and what exactly should I do. I couldn't use the
«strongly recommended» reportbug program in the situation.
And even if I could, there was no difference. Using hints from
net-search I've played with boot-up parameters and somehow managed to
start system (with some constraints). I've started the recommended
reportbug and it informed me that:
/«Please install the python-vte package to use the GTK+ (known as 'gtk2'
in reportbug) interface.
Falling back to 'text' interface.
*** Unable to initialize gtk2 interface. Falling back to text interface.»/
It is how the app works out of the box on Debian 7.9.
OK, I'm fine with text interface too. It asked me a row of common
questions, showed me some mail template in some unfamiliar editor
(without any hint what to do with the result: to save it somehow or just
to quit) and failed because (I guess) I have no properly configured mail
agent on my localhost and my provider is blocking standard SMTP ports
for some evil reasons (though it was successfully connected to the
server to provide some similarity choices from the recent bug reports).
So I had to read 'man reportbug' to start it again and to get the mail
template (with pretty common information — Debian version, kernel
version, locales, …), to place it in usual mail agent, to fill it
according instructions from the web-page mentioned before and to send it
manually via email.
It cost me a lot of time, and I just wanted to leave info about issue.
And I even don't know yet if it's worth it, if somebody has seen the
report. Because there is no request for additional information, no
«Hmm…» response, nothing.
*How it should be (in a perfect beautiful world)*
For user there should be just task of reporting issue. The task is and
should be simple.
User shouldn't do other tasks — like install and configure software
(sendmail or something), investigate about SMTP servers and ports, study
manuals for some apps and unnecessary and poorly structured
instructions, etc. — just to send a message.
User shouldn't do anything what can do robot.
As it could look in my view. Bug tracking system is a web-service with
such reporting interfaces as application (~thick client), web-page, mail.
/Web-page/
Web-page is most convenient and most reliable way to report for user. On
the mentioned above web page instead of wall of text there is placed a
huge red button «report a bug» and few links below to pages with short
descriptions of alternative ways (app, mail) and «more details» in those.
There is a standard form to fill. User is asked to fill just needed
fields, and fills only those ones that he can, bug reporting system
provides hints and examples straight in the form (or through «more
details»). Selections from drop-down list are presented whenever possible.
The process of reporting can be partitioned in steps: a) common
information (what reportbug collects from user now, plus contact
information); b) description according to template; c) system specific
technical information («run such command, copy results here»). When
every step is finished, provided data is recorded in database. Even if
the process is not fully completed and there is no sufficient
information to solve the problem, there is still information for
analysis on types of bugs, their intensity, etc. In some cases user can
be contacted through provided contact information and asked to give more
details.
/Mail/
Web-page with instructions for mail reporting also, instead of wall of
text, contains just few lines of instructions («fill the form, copy
resulted template, finish the blanks when ready, and send report on
stated address») and form (as described above).
/Application/
Bug report application in the system should be fully functional from the
box, with all necessary components installed, with all proper settings
done by default. User should know where to find it without searching in
the Internet and asking in mailing lists (in «Applications > System» or
«Applications > Standard» menues for example). And CLI version, of course.
The program fills the report which user can later elaborate and change
through the web-interface (link provided).
-
That is a large stroke vision of what most users can call user-friendly,
in my view. I'm aware that there are many technical tasks to solve and
some pretty serious work should be done to design and realize it (if any
existing solution doesn't satisfy the needs, which I doubt). But the
current Debian bug reporting system's usability looks like 20 years old.
Sorry for too bloated message.
Piyavkin
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