Comment 20 for bug 823588

On 08/10/2011 01:59 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> 1. Attach log files. Without log files developers cannot diagnose the
> problem. Generally, running 'apport-collect 823588' should attach the
> required files.

Done. Sorry for neglecting to do that yesterday. I'm in the lab and
have a whole list of systems in test, and in the last two days alone
I've filed 30 bugs or so :( things slip through the cracks... but I've
remedied that now.

> 2. When writing a bug report description, try to think of it more like
> a high school lab or a police report - state the facts clearly and
> describe the situation completely. Don't describe things as "random" or
> "unusable" or "broken" - those terms are so broad they actually tell us
> very little, instead try to characterize the behavior as if you were
> studying the problem scientifically.

Unfortunately, I do not have anything more descriptive for you. Thus, I
attached a video showing EXACTLY what was happening. I was assuming
that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video should be "War and
Peace Unabridged"... It's just that simple. Install driver. Boot.
System is unusable because it's a black screen, then not a black screen,
then a black screen, then not a black screen... :)

> 3. Avoid assuming that a bug you see on your system is seen by everyone
> on all systems; while some X bugs are widespread, the majority tend to
> be somewhat hardware-specific or even specific to some configuration
> that you've done. Indeed, there are relatively few bug reports about
> -fglrx open right now. Instead, try to think about what might make
> *your* system different than other people's - it can give strong clues
> as to what went wrong.

I assume nothing, which is why I stated specifically in the bug that I
was operating on an Inspiron 1122 with an ATI video card. That's pretty
narrow, I think. But hopefully, the logs attached from #1 above will
help further narrow it down.

> 4. You've mentioned Alpha 3 specifically, which makes me wonder if you
> had successfully used fglrx on oneiric previously. If you have, and
> know a bug is a regression from an earlier point in time, it is very
> valuable to mention this; often in those situations we can look at what
> got upgraded when as a clue to finding the bug.

Negative... I flew up to Lexington specifically to do a help do a
certification test run on the systems stored there in the Cert Lab.
I've not touched this system since I came up here to do the 11.04 cert
run back in April. In fact, as far as I can tell by the system entry on
the cert site, that was the last time anyone tested on this machine.

> Hope this all helps, and good luck improving your bug report.

It does, and I do apologize for the lack of logs and such, as I said, I
have a whole list of systems to get through and the first two systems
lone generated 30 bugs and took two full days of my time to get through.

--
Jeff Lane - Hardware Certification Engineer and Test Tools Developer
Ubuntu Ham: W4KDH
Freenode IRC: bladernr or bladernr_
gpg: 1024D/3A14B2DD 8C88 B076 0DD7 B404 1417 C466 4ABD 3635 3A14 B2DD