If you ever find yourself in a situation where you cannot solve the problem yourself and need to access any of the various resources on the Internet, there are a few ground rules that you need to adhere to. These are called “Netiquette” (net-etiquette). For a detailed discussion on netiquette, I would suggest the Netiquette Home Page. This is essentially the online version of the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea.

There are, however, a few important points that I would like to make. First, do your own research. In the sections on Linux documentation and Other linux resources we discussed many different places you can look for answers to your questions. You should always try these first before you go to a newsgroup or mailing list. Most of the time you will find the answer yourself. This is much more beneficial to your understanding of Linux than simply having someone spoon feed you your answer. Also, if you do not find your answer, or the answer is hard to understand, telling others where you look and what you found, keeps others from giving you the exact same answer, thereby saving time for everyone.

Second, list not only what you are trying to do, but how you expect it to behave. Don’t simply say “it doesn’t work right.” While working in tech support, I have numerous calls from customers who assumed that something was not working correctly, when it was. They had incorrect ssumptions about the way things were supposed to work. Since their assumptions were wrong, the expected behaviour was not what was “correct”.