-------------------------------------
Michael A. Ballbach: N0ZTQ, yeh-zehn.
ballbach@lorien.ml.org
mikeb@vr1.com
http://lorien.ml.org/~ballbach/index.html
"I don't know how world war three will be fought, but world war four will
be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein.
On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Harald Koenig wrote:
> On Jul 16, Michael Ballbach wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Harald Koenig wrote:
> >
> > > On Jul 16, Alan Cox wrote:
> > >
> > > > 10 people. Some of the bugs that show up in 2.0.x show up in configurations
> > > > that maybe 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10,000 users have and perhaps only after a
> > > > week of continual load. On a 10 user sample 2.0.30 is probably rock solid
> > > >
> > > > A lot of people don't seem to realise just how tricky it is building a
> > > > stable across all platforms/configurations system.
> > >
> > > well spoken. and I'd like to add: ... how tricky it might be
> > > to fix bugs which one can't reproduce himself!
> >
> > Hi. Reading this flame, I couldn't resist throwing in my 2 cents. I hate
> > to do this, because it is offtopic, but here goes.
>
> this was not a flame at all (usually I mark them in public mail, just to be sure!).
> reading my 2 lines over and over again I still don't know if you think I flamed Alan,
> all developers, or all non-developers on this list ?!
> can you please give me a hint why *you* think this is or should be a flame ?
>
> > First, I run a server, running 2.0.30, with a usual load of maybe 5-6
> > people.
> ...
>
> fine for you. but what does this say in this thread's context or what does it proof ?
> I know several severe bugs in 2.0.30 but I'm only able to reproduce just one of them,
> and that not with "normal" operations. for me, and for our institute at university
> 2.0.30 is stable (for non-SMP only!). that's not the point here...
>
> > The point of this, is to mix some praise in this flame of anger if you
> > will.
>
> again: no flame and no anger! just my statement that it's *very* hard to
> fix *known* bugs which can't be reproduced be the developers themself,
> even if for some users the machine crashes every minute...
>
> and I think I know what I'm talking about: I've been writing XFree86 Xservers
> for S3 cards/chips for ~5+ years now, and there have are *many* real problems
> which I never had been able to reproduce myself (e.g. lockups which only
> happen for very specific cpu+mainboard+chip+vendor/card combinations)
> but which have to be tracked down and fixed anymore.
>
> while I can understand some users saying "hey, this bug is so obvious [for me]"
> everyone should keep in mind that developers might have different setups.z
> and same is true for kernel things, and even for such easy tasks as compiling
> your own kernel (just remember how often you can read questions about
> problems linking the kernel just because they use too old binutils --
> and there may be more sublte problems like different gcc versions/bugs around)
>
>
> Harald
> --
> All SCSI disks will from now on ___ _____
> be required to send an email notice 0--,| /OOOOOOO\
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> \ OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO|//
> Harald Koenig, \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
> Inst.f.Theoret.Astrophysik // / \\ \
> koenig@tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de ^^^^^ ^^^^^
>