Straw dog for IPFire Issue Template

jon · 16 September 2020 18:23

There is a suggestion for an issue template from the Sep 7, 2020 Monthly Telephone Conference. Below is a straw dog proposal for a template. This would be used to gather more/better information when a user is requesting help from the Community.

Are there items to be added, removed, changed?

IPFire version

^{Add the version line from the bottom of the IPFire WebGUI. Just cut and paste the version line directly below}

Fireinfo

^{Add your IPFire Fireinfo image or URL here}

Expected behavior

^{A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen}

Actual behavior / issue

^{clear and concise description of the issue}

Steps to reproduce

^{Clearly document the steps to reproduce the behavior:}

Go to ‘…’
Click on ‘…’
Scroll down to ‘…’
See error

Debug logs

^{Include logs with three leading backticks and three trailing backticks.}

```

copy the text from the log here...

```

Screenshots

^{If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem}

A picture is worth 1000 words!

Additional context

^{Add any other context about the problem here}

jon · 16 September 2020 18:25

Filled out it might look like this…

IPFire version

^{Add the version line from the bottom of the IPFire WebGUI. Just cut and paste the version line directly below}

IPFire 2.25 (x86_64) - Core Update 148

Fireinfo

^{Add your IPFire Fireinfo image or URL here}

https://fireinfo.ipfire.org/profile/1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345678
-or-
the Fireinfo image.

Expected behavior

^{A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen}

Expect network to continue working. Right now all is stopped.

Actual behavior / issue / bug

^{clear and concise description of the issue}

Last night I experienced a SERVFAIL storm. Between 1:30 AM and 7:18 AM the message log filled with 32000+ SERVFAIL messages.

At 7:17 AM the IPFire box stopped working.

Steps to reproduce

^{Clearly document the steps to reproduce the behavior:}

Could not reproduce. After an IPFire reboot everything worked as expected.

Debug logs

^{Include debug logs with three leading backticks and three trailing backticks.}

From messages log:

May 27 01:30:06 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <api.darksky.net. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 01:30:06 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <api.weather.gov. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
. . .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. SRV IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire collectd[3088]: rrdtool plugin: Shutting down the queue thread.
May 27 07:17:28 ipfire unbound: [1514:0] error: SERVFAIL <HIDDEN_URL. A IN>: all the configured stub or forward servers failed, at zone .

Screenshots

^{If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem}

No images to share.

Additional context

^{Add any other context about the problem here}

Other users expiring similar issues but they are not seeing as many errors.

pmueller · 16 September 2020 19:34

Hi Jon,

thanks for your efforts. Personally, I like this template / straw dog (did not know that there is even a word for this ) and cannot think of anything major missing here.

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller

anon33261557 · 17 September 2020 23:39

Let me join the discussion on the suggestion.

Lets start with the good part The idea about a template and your draft @jon i really like. Its in any way much better than someone post only “i tried all, nothing works”

But in the telco there was also the bad side mentioned, what i see also here. My greatest fear about this is, if all now use such a template, there are only “5 peoples” left who read the messages anymore. Because? because people seems not love much reading. So iam not sure about if the situation becomes worse than before. Anyway i love this template thing. Only my 2 cents…

The important part is missing to begin. There must be a checkbox “I have read the wiki yes/no”

jon · 18 September 2020 00:34

We can start the template with:

Most of your questions can easily be answered by searching the IPFire Wiki or the IPFire Community. Please give those a try first!

Then maybe add a small section:

What did you try

^{tell us some of your troubleshooting steps to correct the issue}

anon33261557 · 18 September 2020 10:59

You made from my idea a much better draft. I like it.

roberto · 18 September 2020 14:02

Very good idea.

The interesting thing would also be to be able to send the Logs: tar -cvf /tmp/logs.tar /var/log.

The downside is that they take up a lot of size.

Regards.

jon · 18 September 2020 17:55

I like this idea! But if it is posted on the Community then it would need to be cleansed first. Remove old data (older then the past few hours) and remove some “confidential” IP/MAC address, etc. That might be hard to do…

anon33261557 · 19 September 2020 08:46

IMHO it is not only the size, it is simply too much.

As a side effect, you teach the people, you dont need a brain to post something… just post your “one million” Log entries, “some other idiot do the job for you” and search what he need. I think there is a little bit more work to be done. Not only send all Logs

Also a very important part had Jon already mentioned (confidential)

bbitsch · 19 September 2020 09:21

Why post that in the community?
If the problem can be well described and is a real problem, this information should be posted in Bugzilla. That is the place, where developers become aware of it.
Bugzilla tickets are even better to handle. Who makes a ticket from a community post? When?
Said this, I think an Issue Template blows up the community conversation without real surplus value.

pmueller · 19 September 2020 09:32

Hi,

IMHO it is not only the size, it is simply too much.

this is important to mention. Ideally, one wants exactly the right amount of information to find and fix a problem - more logs increase the haystack to search, less logs might make it harder to understand what is going wrong.

Also a very important part had Jon already mentioned (confidential)

I wholeheartedly agree to this: We should not animate people to make such information public without thinking about the consequences first.

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller

pmueller · 19 September 2020 09:37

Hi Bernhard,

in case a bug is found during a conversation, it should be definitely filed as such in Bugzilla.

However, my understanding of Jon’s intention is to provide a helpful template for users who are not sure if they are dealing with a bug (or do not know about Bugzilla). In some cases such as the The .work TLD ironically, doesn't work topic, things look like a bug in the first place, but turn out to be misconfigurations later.

Perhaps adding a short notice such as “In case you are sure about your problem being a bug in IPFire (!), please open a bug at https://bugzilla.ipfire.org/ rather than starting a new topic.” might be helpful to catch the obvious ones. @jon: What do you think about that?

Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller

bbitsch · 19 September 2020 10:48

Hi Peter,

you are right. There are “bugs”, which are no bugs in IPFire. But the presence of a ‘issue template’ can bloat the community threads.
The way of discussion as it is at the moment, is IMHO enough to find real bugs and to advise for config changes.

jon · 19 September 2020 17:50

My personal 1st draft was a “bug template” but after thinking about it I knew that wasn’t for the Community.

I like the bug redirect to bugzilla. We can add the above sentence to the beginning of the issue template!

jon · 20 September 2020 18:58

Update version of Issue Template…

IPFire Issue Template

This template is used to gather more/better information from the user when requesting help from the Community.

Most of your questions can easily be answered by searching the IPFire Wiki or the IPFire Community. Please give those a try first!

If you are sure your issue is a bug within IPFire, please open a bug report at IPFire Bugzilla rather than starting a new topic.

IPFire version

^{Add the version line from the bottom of the IPFire WebGUI. Just cut and paste the version line directly below}

Fireinfo

^{Add your IPFire Fireinfo image or URL here}

Expected behavior

^{A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen}

Actual behavior / issue

^{clear and concise description of the issue}

Steps to reproduce

^{Clearly document the steps to reproduce the behavior:}

Go to ‘…’
Click on ‘…’
Scroll down to ‘…’
See error

Debug logs

^{Include logs with three leading backticks and three trailing backticks.}

```

copy the text from the log here...

```

Screenshots

^{If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem}

A picture is worth 1000 words!

Additional context

^{Add any other context about the problem here}

What did you try

^{tell us some of your troubleshooting steps to correct the issue}

anon33261557 · 20 September 2020 19:19

There is a typo.

Sorry for the noise

jon · 21 September 2020 17:57

Thoughts about adding one or two more lines?

Please keep in mind:

All of the people responding to Community posts are volunteers. Currently there are five to ten people responding and more are needed. Until more volunteers come forward a quick response may not be available.
Support for IPFire running on a virtual environment is very limited.

@anon33261557 - Thanks for the corrections!

anon33261557 · 21 September 2020 18:36

Suggestion for further improvement

copy should fit better…

But whats much more related is this text

Because if you have theme ipfire-legacy there is no info at the bottom. I suggest, change the whole text to

Just copy and paste the IPFire version from the IPFire WebGUI System → System Information

You have to go there anyway to enter the Fireinfo information below.

Like
Support for IPFire running on a virtual environment is very limited.

I know exactly what you mean with it, iam anyway not sure if there is not worth to think about a “changing description”. What i mean is, IPFire runs also on many virtual machines (25%). So iam not sure at the moment if the description is ok so. Iam also not sure at the moment what i like more/what should changed

Maybe something like this:

We are aware of that many IPFire installations runs on a virtual environment. Nevertheless we dont recommend it. Thats why the Support in the Forum is very limited.