Commit Graph

16 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Thorsten Leemhuis 247097e2bb docs: reporting-issues.rst: link new document about regressions
Make Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst point to the newly
created document about regressions
(Documentation/admin-guide/regressions-regressions.rst). This allows to
shorten a few explanations the new document describes better and in more
detail.

While at it move the copyright hint to the end of the file and remove
quotes around links to other places in the documentation. Both issues
came up during the review of the new documents about regressions.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/f20114eaddc356a8c79dd62812a6c7f4ca5d87b9.1644994117.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2022-02-24 12:57:25 -07:00
Mauro Carvalho Chehab 349660e944 docs: admin-guide: reporting-issues.rst: replace some characters
The conversion tools used during DocBook/LaTeX/html/Markdown->ReST
conversion and some cut-and-pasted text contain some characters that
aren't easily reachable on standard keyboards and/or could cause
troubles when parsed by the documentation build system.

Replace the occurences of the following characters:

	- U+00a0 (' '): NO-BREAK SPACE
	  as it can cause lines being truncated on PDF output

Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/551a2af0e654226067e5c376d3e2d959cc738f39.1623826294.git.mchehab+huawei@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-06-17 13:22:33 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 0043f0b27a docs: reporting-issues.rst: CC subsystem and maintainers on regressions
When reporting a regression, users ideally should CC the subsystem and
its maintainers, as that will ensure they get aware of the regression
quickly. And if the culprit is known, they should also CC everyone who
signed if off; the text mentioned the latter in once place already, but
forgot to do so in two other areas where it's relevant.

While fixing this also remind readers to check the mailing list archives
for issues that need to be reported to a bug tracker, as someone might
have reported it by mail only.

All of this got triggered by a recent report where these changes would
have made a difference.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/dff6badf-58f5-98c8-871c-94d901ac6919@leemhuis.info/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAJZ5v0hX2StQVttAciHYH-urUH+Hi92z9z2ZbcNgQPt0E2Jpwg@mail.gmail.com/
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/dd13f10c30e79e550215e53a8103406daec4e593.1618482489.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-05-03 17:23:06 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 6161a4b18a docs: reporting-issues: make people CC the regressions list
Make people CC the recently created mailing list dedicated to Linux
kernel regressions when reporting one. Some paragraphs had to be
reshuffled and slightly rewritten during the process, as the text
otherwise would have gotten unnecessarily hard to follow.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/ac28089d710d5d41f295221bc726555ba32f4984.1617967127.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-04-13 15:13:27 -06:00
Ismael Luceno 0e5e0a5553 docs: reporting-issues: Remove reference to oldnoconfig
Replace it with olddefconfig. oldnoconfig didn't do what the document
suggests (it aliased to olddefconfig), and isn't available since 4.19.

Ref: 04c459d204 ("kconfig: remove oldnoconfig target")
Ref: 312ee68752 ("kconfig: announce removal of oldnoconfig if used")
Signed-off-by: Ismael Luceno <ismael@iodev.co.uk>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210331163541.28356-1-ismael@iodev.co.uk
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-31 14:33:45 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 58c539453b docs: reporting-issues: reduce quoting and assorted fixes
A pile of small fixes:

- don't quote terms like vanilla, mainline, and stable, unless in they
  occur in places where readers new to the kernel might see them for the
  first time

- make people rule out that vendor patches are interfering if they face
  a regression in a stable or longterm kernel they saw in a vendor
  kernel for the first time

- s/bugs/issues/ in a selected spots

- exchange two headlines that got mixed up somehow

- add a few links to some of the steps in the guide

- Greg mentioned sending reports to the stable mailing list is
  sufficient, so remove the "CC stable maintainers" bits

- fix a few typos and mistakes in the text, with a few very small
  improvements along the way

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/07bca15d8465b8e234537feb8841dd2ff20243bc.1617113469.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-31 13:47:07 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 4d2f46a8cd docs: reporting-issues.rst: reshuffle and improve TLDR
Make the TLDR a bit shorter while improving it at the same time by going
straight to the aspects readers are more interested it. The change makes
the process especially more straight-forward for people that hit a
regression in a stable or longterm kernel. Due to the changes the TLDR
now also matches the step by step guide better.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/762ccd7735315d2fdaa79612fccc1f474881118b.1617113469.git.linux@leemhuis.info
[ jc: fixed transposed _` as noted by Thorsten ]
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-31 13:46:33 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis d2ce285378 docs: make reporting-issues.rst official and delete reporting-bugs.rst
Remove the WIP and two FIXME notes in the text to make it official, as
it's now considered fully ready for consumption. To make sure this
step is okay for people the intent of this change and the latest version
of the text were posted to ksummit-discuss; nobody complained, thus
lets move ahead.

Add a footer to point out people can contact Thorsten directly in case
they find something to improve in the text.

Dear reporting-bugs.rst, I'm sorry to tell you, but that makes you fully
obsolete and we thus have to let you go now. Thank you very much for
your service, you in one form or another have been around for a long
time. I'm sure over the years you got read a lot and helped quite a few
people. But it's time to retire now. Rest in peace.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
CC: Harry Wei <harryxiyou@gmail.com>
CC: Alex Shi <alex.shi@linux.alibaba.com>
CC: Federico Vaga <federico.vaga@vaga.pv.it>
CC: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/49c674c2d304d87e6259063580fda05267e8c348.1617113469.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-31 13:33:17 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 4b9d49d1ec docs: reporting-issues.rst: improved process esp. for stable regressions
Provide a shorter and easier process for users that deal with
regressions in stable and longterm kernels, as those should be reported
quickly.

To realize this in the least-confusing way and without having steps
multiple times in different places, split the 'search for existing
reports' into two. That has the additinal benefit that users will search
for them quickly when going through the step by step guide and thus will
save them trouble if the find reports.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
CC: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/d934c15e536bceeff5c40a126930ddf803548e08.1616181657.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-25 12:16:46 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 9bc4430db5 docs: reporting-issues.rst: duplicate sections for reviewing purposes
This duplicates two section to make the diff in the next patch a bit
easier to gasp for humans.

Straight copy, no content changes.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/ef85edc8466f035eb243dd6629429ad4fd0565d8.1616181657.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-25 12:16:46 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 4f08d7ab90 docs: reporting-issues.rst: reorder some steps
Reorder some steps where the order in which the readers perform them is
not crucial. This is a preparation for a later change that would make
the text much more complex otherwise.

Content just moved, not changed at all in the process.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/8dfc58efde25a05ccf9bf85929826c4b1b9e09c5.1616181657.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-25 12:16:46 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 2dfa9eb0ff docs: reporting-issues.rst: tone down 'test vanilla mainline' a little
Tell users that reporting bugs with vendor kernels which are only
slightly patched can be okay in some situations, but point out there's a
risk in doing so.

Adjust some related sections to make them compatible and a bit clearer.
At the same time make them less daunting: we want users to report bugs,
even if they can't test vanilla mainline kernel.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
CC: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/652ee20eb36228f5d7ca842299faa4cb472feedb.1616181657.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-25 12:16:46 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 613f969117 docs: reporting-issues.rst: fix small typos and style issues
Fix a typo and change "head over" to "scroll down", as suggested by Jon
when reviewing another patch that used the phrase the same way.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/fb845d2f1db6138337203bbfac419c04b5f28053.1616181657.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-25 12:16:46 -06:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 315c4e45f1 docs: reporting-issues.rst: explain how to decode stack traces
Replace placeholder text about decoding stack traces with a section that
properly describes what a typical user should do these days. To make
it works for them, add a paragraph in an earlier section to ensure
people build their kernels with everything that's needed to decode stack
traces later.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Reviewed-by: Qais Yousef <qais.yousef@arm.com>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210215172857.382285-1-linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2021-03-06 17:36:52 -07:00
Thorsten Leemhuis e223a707ad docs: reporting-issues: move 'outdated, need help' note to proper place
Move the 'this section is a placeholder for now and needs help by
someone with domain knowledge' note one section upwards to the place
where it belongs: the 'Decode failure messages' section.

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/d3894ba4a302beed661304cbcdc062c6dcfe3e58.1607489877.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2020-12-09 17:25:05 -07:00
Thorsten Leemhuis 3e544d72df docs: Add a new text describing how to report bugs
Add a mostly finished document describing how to report issues with the
Linux kernel to its developers. It is designed to be a lot more straight
forward and easier to follow than the current text about this
(Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-bugs.rst); at the same time the new
text should be more helpful for people unfamiliar with the topic, as it
provides a lot more details, too.

The main work on the text is done, but some polishing is still needed.
The text also needs to be reviewed by more people and a few issues still
might need some discussion. To make these tasks easier, it was decided
([1]) to add this document to the kernel sources in parallel to the
existing text; the latter will be removed once this text is considered
good enough(tm).

This document is quite long and provides a lot of details, but was
carefully crafted to make sure it's can also serve people that are in a
hurry. That's mainly achieved by having a TDLR and a step-by-step guide,
which should be good enough for quite a lot of people. Everybody that
wants or need more explanations can find them in a reference section,
which describes all the needed steps in detail.

Thanks to this structure the text can work for kernel developers that
just need to look something up, experienced FLOSS contributors that are
unfamiliar with the kernel's bug reporting workflow, and users reporting
something upstream for the first time. The text is thus a bit like the
kernel itself, which works well for embedded machines, a typical desktop
PC, cloud servers, and HPC.

The document was written in the hope it will improve the quality of the
bug reports, especially those that come from people unfamiliar with how
Linux kernel development works. Sadly quite a few reports from this
group are currently of poor quality and/or get submitted to the wrong
place. Part of the problem is the old reporting-bugs document, as it
makes its essence hard to grasp; it's and also inaccurate and slightly
outdated in a few spots. Due to this quite a few valid reports are
ignored in the end, which is annoying for those that compiled them and
bad for the kernel's quality.

The document near the top points out that it's still unfinished, but
nevertheless ready for consumption. Those few areas in the text that
might need some further discussion contain a note pointing this out.
Besides lack of review from core developers there is only one major
issue left: the section 'Decode failure message' is known to be
outdated: it's waiting for someone familiar with the topic to write
something up or give at least provide some hints and pointers what to
write there.

The new document is dual-licensed under GPL-2.0+ or CC-BY-4.0. The
latter is way more liberal and makes it attractive to use this text as a
base when writing about this topic on websites or in books. This
hopefully increases the chances that such texts are accurate and stick
to official way of doing things.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20201118172958.5b014a44@lwn.net

Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>
CC: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
CC: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
CC: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/e2db808f954744b79f10937a923d9c99bdca1fca.1607063223.git.linux@leemhuis.info
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2020-12-08 10:33:27 -07:00