Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:25:39 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Cc: Shimon@i-Connect.Net (Simon Shapiro), freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: A Desparate Plea for Help... Message-ID: <9222.862201539@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 28 Apr 1997 11:51:19 %2B0930." <199704280221.LAA13874@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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> > I need to solve this problem, not to be told 9indirectly) that it must be > > my fault, as it soes not happen on someone else's machine. > > That's not what that response means. "I can't make it happen here" > means "I can't work out what is wrong because I can't reproduce the > problem, and I need to reproduce the problem to have all the > information I need to hand". Just to chime in here (and everything that Michael says is spot-on), it also means: "I can't make it happen here, please reduce the components in this system to the _bare minimum_ of what is needed to still provide services." You wouldn't believe how often this oh-so-basic rule is violated by someone who's got everyting up to and including the kitchen sink in their kernel, leaving the unfortunate developer to ask "Uhhhhh. You seem to have _everything_ in here, from a sound card to multicast routing to a /tmp mounted over MFS - have you never heard of SIMPLIFYING a situation you're trying to debug? I don't want to have to chase down 7 different alleys at the same time so please - nuke the MFS "speed hacks" and get that stupid sound card out of your NFS fileserver!" I'm not saying that this is true in Simon's case, but it's still a damn good general rule which gets forgotten more often than I care to think about. Jordan
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