"Waiting for network configuration" is a woefully inadequate message

[Ben Gamari]

I have a rather long /etc/network/interfaces configuration and since 12.04 have been seeing the message "Waiting for network configuration" on every boot. This bug is not about me, however. It is about the message itself and its infuriatingly complete lack of any debuggable content. It does not provide the user with the interface being waiting for, the daemon doing the waiting, nor even a rough idea of how one might begin investigating the issue. This is the definition of poor user experience.

[Clint Byrum (clint-fewbar)]

Hi Ben, first, sorry that you're having an infuriating user experience. I wrote that message and it was most certainly not my intention to infuriate anyone.

The file where that message lives is /etc/init/failsafe.conf, which belongs to the upstart package, so I'm reassigning the bug as such.

There is definite room for improvement, and I think you've suggested a few excellent pieces of information that could be added. We could, indeed, take a look at the interfaces that are not yet up and add those to the status message. Please understand, before this message existed, the boot would have raced with all of that network configuration, so interfaces would have been appearing at any point during the boot, which led to even more infuriating non-deterministic behavior.

I will ask that you separate your emotions from the facts in future communication on the issue. There is a lot of frustration in the bug description, and I understand that. However, we aren't going to be productive if we can't communicate effectively.

[Ben Gamari (bgamari)]

Hi Clint, thank you for the quite civil response to what was an emotionally charged description. I should have waited to read over the text in a less stressful environment. I apologize; the description was out of line.

Thanks for pointing out the source of message. In addition to the suggestions I made in the bug description, it seems reasonable that any error message should identify its source. I don't mind having to sift through code to debug an issue but as things are it's not even clear where to begin looking.

It seems this issue and many like it are as much documentation issues as they are user interface issues. The integration (and, in this case, behavioral improvements) that comes with a modern init system is great but often makes debugging issues quite difficult due to the large number of components involved and the lack of a comprehensive description of how the pieces interact. When error messages pops up from a piece of code which doesn't identify itself, one has litttle recourse but to grep the entire filesystem and hope that the message turns up.

The Upstart Cookbook is a great resource, but it doesn't explain how Upstart is used in Ubuntu in particular. I'm not sure where such documentation would belong, but it seems that the world would be a better place if there were a document describing the various Upstart tasks critical to Ubuntu's boot process.