Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:11:24 -0400 From: Ken Smith <kensmith@buffalo.edu> To: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: bruce@cran.org.uk, src-committers@FreeBSD.org, jhb@FreeBSD.org, svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org, avg@FreeBSD.org, gavin@FreeBSD.org, svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: svn commit: r212964 - head/sys/kern Message-ID: <1285297884.17619.17.camel@neo.cse.buffalo.edu> In-Reply-To: <20100923.203143.19192035494300157.imp@bsdimp.com> References: <20100922222441.00002f27@unknown> <1285253887.95760.33.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu> <alpine.LNX.2.00.1009231841500.23791@ury.york.ac.uk> <20100923.203143.19192035494300157.imp@bsdimp.com>
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--=-CwXNp4MEp8Z5xqbc5zLq Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 20:31 -0600, M. Warner Losh wrote: > In message: <alpine.LNX.2.00.1009231841500.23791@ury.york.ac.uk> > Gavin Atkinson <gavin@FreeBSD.org> writes: > : On Thu, 23 Sep 2010, Ken Smith wrote: > : > The issues talked about so far all contribute to the reason for that. > : > But one of the more basic gut reactions to it all is that the users > : > want to be interested in helping with the debugging (even if just > : > providing the requested info) for any sort of crash information > : > to be useful. And at the point we shift something from -current > : > to -stable the percentage of people actively interested in participat= ing > : > in that sort of stuff flip. The bulk of people using -current > : > know it's risky and they do it out of some interest in debugging > : > stuff. The *bulk* of people using -stable are less interested or > : > flat out not interested. And have no clue what crash dumps are, > : > may be challenged to notice partition-getting-full issues, etc. > :=20 > : I'm not sure I buy this argument, I'm afraid. Part of the advantage of= =20 > : having all this done automatically on the as-shipped release media is t= hat=20 > : end users don't have to be interested in debugging - crashinfo(8) does= =20 > : most of the work for them. There's no easy way to actually determine= =20 > : figures, but even if say only 10-15% of crashes can be diagnosed and= =20 > : corrected just from the output of crashinfo(8) then that's a huge win f= or=20 > : the project as a whole. I'm guessing 10-15% is not unrealistic. > :=20 > : I appreciate the issue about filling partitions is a valid one. Would = a=20 > : possible compromise be that on release media, crashinfo(8) or similar w= ill=20 > : default to only keeping the most recent coredump or similar? Given /va= r=20 > : now defaults to 4GB, Defaulting to keeping a single core is probably= =20 > : acceptable. >=20 > Furthermore, if we aren't interested in crash dumps by default, why do > we install the huge .symbols files? >=20 > Warner >=20 Because disks are big and (again, just trying to explain my understanding of what I inherited) we want all the support to be in place, just not turned on. There is a difference between "You can give us much better information by doing <these extra installation steps, including installing the .symbols goo> and then making a one-line change to rc.conf" versus "You can give us much better information by making a one-line change to rc.conf". This is definitely one I don't have a strong enough opinion on to fight over, I sympathize with both sides. If the general consensus is mostly towards changing so be it. I've got no way to tell what percentage of users would have any clue what to do with the crash info versus users who would be negatively impacted simply by the fact their systems are generating stuff they're completely ignorant of and will never touch. --=20 Ken Smith - From there to here, from here to | kensmith@buffalo.edu there, funny things are everywhere. | - Theodore Geisel | --=-CwXNp4MEp8Z5xqbc5zLq Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (FreeBSD) iEYEABECAAYFAkycFtQACgkQ/G14VSmup/ZvagCePkYQEJEZ8YtKVyJk4cWzXcfu agsAnjrcZYs5KPcrI371BiAL/rTxKnJA =UmHi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-CwXNp4MEp8Z5xqbc5zLq--
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