[The following is a form letter.]
Hello,
You recently sent an off-charter message to the debian-x mailing list.
First, I will offer an explanation of what this mailing list's purpose is;
I will then suggest some alternative forums for your message or concern.
The full charter of the mailing list follows.
This list is for the discussion and support of the X Window System within
Debian. Issues of maintenance and porting of Debian's XFree86 packages are
germane here, as are discussions of possible Debian policy mechanisms for
ensuring the smooth interoperation of packages that use the X Window
System, particularly widget sets, desktop environments, window managers,
display managers, and packages that provide fonts for the X Window System.
In particular, individuals involved with building official Debian XFree86
packages for any architecture are invited to join, as are those with
various graphics hardware who seek to reproduce and/or fix bugs in the X
server. This is not a user support list; this list is intended for those
who deal with the source code of any of the X Window System components
mentioned above.
If you are experiencing a problem, the first thing to check is the Debian X
FAQ. This FAQ is available on the World Wide Web:
http://people.debian.org/~branden/xsf/FAQ
The FAQ is also available on any Debian system that has the
xfree86-common package installed.
You can use the command dpkg --status xfree86-common at a shell prompt to
determine whether you have the xfree86-common package installed (this
technique works with any other package name as well). For instance, when I
run this command I see the following:
$ dpkg --status xfree86-common
Package: xfree86-common
Status: install ok installed
(followed by additional information about the package)
If xfree86-common is installed, you can view the Debian X FAQ in a variety of
ways, since it is a gzipped (compressed) text file. The path to the FAQ is
/usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/FAQ.gz. Here's one method for viewing it:
$ zmore /usr/share/doc/xfree86-common/FAQ.gz
Debian X Window System Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List
Copyright 1998-2002 Branden Robinson. This document is licensed under the
GNU General Public License, version 2 (see /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL).
By its nature, this document is not complete. If your question is not
answered here, try /usr/share/doc/packagename/README.Debian (and other files
in the package's doc directory), manual pages, and the debian-user mailing
list. See http://www.debian.org/ for more information about the Debian
mailing lists.
(followed by the rest of the FAQ)
If the FAQ does not satisfactorily answer your question, the primary Debian
users' support forum is the debian-user mailing list. You can learn more about
this list at:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/
If you have already tried that mailing list, and/or your machine does *NOT*
use an Intel-x86 compatible CPU (such as a Pentium or AMD Athlon chip), you
may also want to peruse one of Debian's architecture-specific mailing
lists:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-hppa/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-ia64/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-m68k/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/
http://lists.debian.org/debian-superh/
Before sending a message to one of the mailing lists, it's wise to try
using the search interface; in many cases, your problem has been
experienced before by other people, and a solution, workaround, or
explanation may already be available!
http://lists.debian.org/search.html
If the search engine turns up nothing, you should know whether or not
you're subscribed to a mailing list before sending a message to it. If you
are not subscribed, make *certain* that you ask for private copies of
replies to your message. Debian's standard practice is to reply only to
mailing lists (this cuts down on Internet traffic and annoying bounce
messages). If you want people to deviate from this standard practice you
should ask them to do so. (Advanced mail users should set a
Mail-Followup-To header that includes both the list address and their own
address.)
Finally, if you have found a problem in Debian's XFree86 packages (and
especially if Debian experts on one or more of the above mailing lists
agree), you should file a bug report with the Debian Bug Tracking System.
One of the best ways to do this is with the reportbug package and command
of the same name. One way to install reportbug is with apt-get; for
example:
# apt-get install reportbug
The reportbug command has a few different modes that cater to different
levels of user expertise. If this message has contained a lot of jargon
that is unfamiliar to you, you likely want to use reportbug's novice
mode; here's one way to do that.
$
