Chapter 27. Reporting issues

The Symbiosis project, and its documentation both have issue trackers. Before these are explained, however, we have a few tips on how to help us help you.

Firstly, make sure that no-one else has reported the same problem. The issue trackers are public, and there is a search box to help you through them. The issue tracker is located at https://projects.bytemark.co.uk/projects/symbiosis/issues .

Bugs can also now be reported with Debian’s "reportbug" utility.

Secondly, please use the following guidelines to make sure we have as much information as we need to diagnose, and hopefully fix the problem. We’d like to know the following:

Tracker

There are two broad types of issue, each with its own tracker.

  • Feature: a request for new functionality
  • Bug: a problem with existing functionality
Subject

It is very important to make this as descriptive, yet concise as possible. The following are examples of bad subjects

  • help
  • cannot login
  • bug
  • new feature Good subjects include
  • Expected firewall update didn’t occur
  • Backups are failing to take place
  • Add functionality to automatically white-list IPs in the firewall
Description
A description of your problem; this should include copy and pasted log snippets, an explanation of what you were trying to do and what you expected to happen, and anything else you can think of that would be helpful. Always err towards lots of information rather than none: remember, there’s a chance we’ll only know as much about your problem as you tell us.