Archive/Reporting Bugs against XCP

How to Report a Bug Against XCP

The primary location for reporting bugs against XCP and XCP-XAPI packages in Linux distros and associated bundled tools is by posting to the xen-api mailing list (list info). However please read the following before posting.

If you are having a problem with XCP you should consider initially posting your issue to the xen-api mailing list (list info), in order to rule out common configuration issues and user errors.

Before posting a bug report you are strongly encouraged to read Simon Tatham's excellent "How to Report Bugs Effectively". Please do not report XCP bugs to Simon Tatham!

Before posting you should check your favourite search engine, xen markmail or the list archives for xen-api and xen-users to see if your issue has been reported (and perhaps solved) already.

List Etiquette

xen-xapi, like many open-source mailing lists, keeps to a set of conventions established in the '80s and '90s. They may seem a bit archaic these days, but breaking them is considered bad form and may cause people to skip over your bug report. There are a number of guides on the web, but some particular points that seem to show up on xen-devel are:

• Please post in plain text (i.e. not HTML), word-wrapped to somewhere around 72 characters.
• Please don't top-post.
• Please start a new thread for a new bug (don't just reply to a random email from the list).
• Please don't email bugs directly to xen developers. Keep the conversation on the list where other people (and search engines) can see it.

Bug Report Contents

The following contains suggestions of the sort of information, log files and command output you should consider providing as part of your bug report. If you are unsure then it is normally better to err on the side of providing too much information.

General

First and foremost please provide a clear description of the issue you are seeing. What exactly happened and what did you expect. Try to be as clear as you can, properly explaining your issue is key to us being able to help. See "How to Report Bugs Effectively" (which you have already read, right?) for examples of the sorts of bug reports which are not likely to garner a response from developers, as well as advice on how to produce a good bug report.

Also please always include the precise version of XCP you are running, i.e. a reference to the particular mercurial tree and a changeset number or the name of the distribution which provided the packages you are using along with the version of those packages.

Where possible, please include precise steps to reproduce the issue. An issue which can be reproduced by a developer is an order of magnitude more likely to get fixed quickly.

Be sure to also include any relevant configuration files.