Hi!
We've had a few program crashes reported to the BB and by email
recently, and working out what is going on can be quite difficult and
time consuming.
It is useful to consider when writing such a report how interested you
are in receiving a helpful answer. If you just want us to know that our
software isn't perfect, then a message saying 'program X crashes' is
fine (although some of us know that already). If you want to know how to
get the software to work with your data, then you will probably have to
provide a little more information.
Here's a rough table of how likely you are to get a solution based on
how much information you provide:
Message:--------------------------Chance of solution:
It crashes!-----------------------Zero
It crashes with message X---------Slim
Last 20 lines of the logfile------Poor
Whole logfile---------------------Moderate to good
Of course you might not want to send the whole log file to the bulletin
board. In this case, you can always send a censored or shortened version
to the bulletin board and send more information to any developer who
asks. In the hardest cases, the developer may need access to your data,
which you may or may not be able to provide of course.
Hope that helps!
Kevin
--
In 5 weeks I went to 4 synchrotrons in 3 timezones on 2 continents
and all I got was this 1 lousy signature.
