Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:42:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: A Desparate Plea for Help... Message-ID: <XFMail.970428184023.Shimon@i-Connect.Net> In-Reply-To: <9222.862201539@time.cdrom.com>
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Hi Jordan K. Hubbard; On 28-Apr-97 you wrote: > > > 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. Amen! And it does apply in Simon's case :-) The kitchen sink is still in the kitchen, but most everything else is there. I will build a simple kernel and try to crash that. It will probably work... (would not crash :-) Simon
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