{"id":339,"date":"2020-08-18T19:23:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T20:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2020-08-22T19:26:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-22T20:26:01","slug":"this-is-the-page-title-toplevel-172","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=339","title":{"rendered":"Getting Help"},"content":{"rendered":"\nGetting Help<\/title>\n<p>\nIf you’re like me, you think the manual is for cowards. Any good computer\nhacker should not be afraid to open up the box and start feeding in disks\nwithout any regard for the consequences. You tear open the box, yank out the\nfloppies, pop the first one in the drive, and start up the Software Manger\nand happily go through the thankless task of installing the software.\nAfter everything has been installed and your desktop icons have been created,\nyou double-click the icon and start your new multimedia Web viewer. But wait! It\ndoesn’t work right. No matter how much you point and click and click again,\nnothing happens. In frustration, you get on the phone and frantically dial the\n800-number from the back of the manual (making this the first time you opened\nit).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWhen you finally get through to support after waiting for two hours (it was\nactually only five minutes), you lash out at the poor tech support\nrepresentative who was unlucky enough to get your call. You spend more time\nranting about poorly written software than you spent on hold. When you finally\nfinish insulting this persons ancestry, he or she calmly points out that on page\n2 in the manual, where it describes the installation procedure, it says that to\nget the Web to work correctly, you have to have a <glossary>network<\/glossary>\ninstalled. Because you decided not to install TCP\/IP when you first loaded the\nsystem, there is no way for the Web browser to work. You’re embarrassed and the\nwhole situation is not a happy thing.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSome people might want to say that things are not the same with Linux support\nas you don’t have the same kind of support as with “commercial” products. Well, many\nLinux vendors offer 30 day installation support, as well as have fee-based support\nafterwards. So the issues are the same. Furthermore, just because you are posting\nto a “free” mailing list instead of calling support. There are a a number of things\nto do before you go looking for help.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOne important aspect of solving problems yourself is actually trying to solve\nthe problem yourself. This might seem too obvious to mention, but what really is\nnot obvious is the extent to which you really should go to before turning to others for\nhelp. This is not because others are annoyed with “stupid questions”, but rather the\ntime is better spent working on the hard problems and not the ones that people\n<b>should<\/b> be able to solve on their own.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nA way to do that is to read the HOWTOs and other\ndocumentation before, during, and after the installation. Doing so tends to\nlimit the embarrassing calls to tech support or posts to newsgroups, but the\nworld is not perfect and\neventually something will go wrong. Programs are (still) written by human beings\nwho can make mistakes, which we users call bugs. Perhaps the QA technician who\nwas checking your <glossary>SCSI<\/glossary>\n<glossary>host adapter<\/glossary> sneezed at the very moment the monitor program\nreported an incorrect voltage. Maybe the manufacturer never tested that one,\nrare set of circumstances that causes the program to freeze the way it did on\nyour machine. The end result is that you’ve read the manual, checked and\nrechecked the hardware, and it still does not behave the way it is supposed to.\nYou can’t solve the problem yourself, so you need help.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf you ever find yourself in a situation where you cannot solve the problem\nyourself and need to access any of the various resources on the Internet, there are\na few ground rules that you need to\nadhere to. These are called “Netiquette” (net-etiquette). For a detailed\ndiscussion on netiquette, I would\nsuggest the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.albion.com\/netiquette\/index.html\">Netiquette\nHome Page<\/a>. This is essentially the online version of the book <book\nisbn=\"0963702513\">Netiquette<\/book> by Virginia Shea.\n<p>\nThere are, however, a few important points that I would like to make. First, do\nyour own research. In\nthe sections on <tutorial id=13>Linux documentation<\/tutorial> and\n<tutorial id=14>Other linux resources<\/tutorial> we discussed many different\nplaces you can look\nfor answers to your questions. You should always try these first before you go\nto a newsgroup or\nmailing list. Most of the time you will find the answer yourself. This is much\nmore beneficial to your\nunderstanding of Linux than simply having someone spoon feed you your answer.\nAlso, if you do not\nfind your answer, or the answer is hard to understand, telling others where you\nlook and what you\nfound, keeps others from giving you the exact same answer, thereby saving time\nfor everyone.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWhat problems a person should be able to solve on their own is not as easy to\ndefine as you might think. For example, I have read posts to mailing lists describing\nproblems and quote the error message they are getting. The user has never used the program\nbefore and so the error is pretty meaningless (other than saying “something” is misconfigured\nor not found).It might be reasonable to post such a question to news group. However, I\nremember one case where the person posted the problem for the third time and no one had\nanswered. He was indignant that no one had a solution for him. Well, I took the exact error\nmessage he was\ngetting and did a search on Google for it. The very first post was someone else\nwho posted months before and the reply was very specific steps to solve the problem. Had\nthis person searched google before the first post, they would have had a\nsolution already.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI cannot tell you enough that <a href=\"www.google.com\">Google<\/a> is your friend. It might take a little practice on\nphrasing your search text properly to get the answer you are looking for. However, it is\nworth it. First, you may not always get the specific answer you want, but you find a lot of\ncool and useful sites. I cannot begin to count the sites I have stored in my booksmarks that\nI stumbled across when looking for something else. Second, there is a <b>great<\/b> chance\nyou <b>will<\/b> find something that will help, particularly if you have a specific error\nmessage. Third, it’s a great way of finding information, whether you have a problem or just\nwant to find more information.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf you don’t find an answer on Google or any other search engine, try searching an online\nforum for the answer. On linuxnewbie.org is a great forum with tens of thousands of posts.\nThey have a search mechanism to dig through old posts. Maybe there is something there that\nwill help. If if is a common problem, you will probably find an answer. If it is uncommon,\nthen at least you have tried all the common solutions.\n<p>\nWhen you finally do post, list not only what you are trying to do, but how you <i>expect<\/i> it\nto behave. Don’t simply say “it doesn’t work right.” While working in tech\nsupport, I have numerous calls from customers who assumed that something was\nnot working correctly, when it actually was. They had incorrect assumptions about the way\nthings were “supposed” to work. Since their assumptions were wrong, the expected\nbehaviour was not what was “correct”.\n<p>\nAlso, make sure you tell people what you have already tried and what the\nresults were, <i>even if<\/i> what you tried couldn’t be correct. For example, I\nhad trouble connecting my DSL card because the instructions from\nmy ISP talked about an DSL modem and not an expansion card. Plus, I already had an\nexisting ISDN connection and\na switch-box to which all of my phones connected. When I posted to a mailing\nlist, I listed the various combinations\nand locations of the cables and various boxes, indicating why I though each one\nwas incorrect. This got me more\ndetailed answers than in I simply asked “How do I connect my card?”. Less than\n20 minutes later I was on-line.\n<p>\nWhether you post to a newsgroup, mailing list, forum or to the owner of sites\nlike mine, remember that no one <i><b>owes<\/b><\/i> you an answer. We will do our\nbest to help, but sometimes we cannot. Maybe we don’t have any experience\nwith a particular issue or maybe we just don’t have the time at the moment.\nAlso, people will often\nsimply ignore messages when the answer is listed in a HOWTO, the man-page or\nsome other obvious place.\n<p>\nYou may end up with someone who simply replies “man whatever”, where “whatever”\nis some command. Don’t be annoyed at terse answers like that. If you already looked at\nthat man-page, then you should have already said so in your post. If not, then there is\nprobably something in that man-page which will help. Don’t expect people to hand you\nthe answer on a silver platter, especially if you don’t do any work yourself.\n<p>\nIf the reponse does not answer your question, then be polite when telling them,\n<i>even if<\/i> you feel that the\nresponse would “obviously” not answer your question. Sometimes people respond\nbased on pre-conceptions that\nyou do not have. I find this to especially be the case when someone does not\nprovide details of the problem, like\nerror messages, things that were changed recently, and so on.\n<p>\nAnother very polite (and useful) thing is to thank people for their efforts,\neven if they did not solve your problem.\nIf you get a reputation for someone who simply asks the questions and never\nresponds to the solutions, you may\nfind that people stop answering you. Also, if the reponse solves your problem,\nreply back to the newsgroup or mailing\nlist and add (SOLVED) (or something similar) to the end of the subject. That\nway other people will know that the issue has been solved.\n<p>\nAlso, when you reply, you should reply to the group and not to the individual\nand certainly not to both the\ngroup <b>and<\/b> individual. Since the person replied to your post, there is no\nneed to reply to both as he\nor she will certainly see your message. If you reply just to the person, then\nothers in the group do not have the\nbenefit of knowing if the solution worked or any other information that was\nexchanged.\n<p>\nDepending on what program you use when replying to a mailing list or\nnews group, you need to pay attention to the default behaviour when you simply\nclick “Reply”. Some reply to\nthe group and some reply to the sender. I have been convinced that the proper\nbehaviour is to reply just to the\nindividual. This is because it is less dangerous to make a mistake and reply to\na single person when you wanted\nto reply to the group, as compared to replying to the group when you ment to\nonly reply to the individual. Either\nway, you need to be aware of the behaviour of your mail or news reader.\n<p>\nWhen starting a <i>new<\/i> subject (also called a “thread”), do <b>not<\/b> simply\nreply to an existing message. The\nadvanced mail and news readers that come with Linux keep track of the messages\nand can display them\nhierarchically, based on who replied to whom. These are called “threaded”\nreaders as they properly manage\nthe various threads. They typically allow you to collapse or expand individual\nthreads, giving you a much better\noverview than if each message was listed individually. If you start a new topic\nby replying to an existing message,\nyou defeat the whole purpose of threaded readers and may end up having your\nquestion go unaswered because\npeople simply do not see it.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Getting Help If you’re like me, you think the manual is for cowards. Any good computer hacker should not be afraid to open up the box and start feeding in disks without any regard for the consequences. You tear open … <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/?page_id=339\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-339","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/339\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.linux-tutorial.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}