As a recent joiner to this list, I missed the 'heated debate' over correctly proposing new educational documentation(or adding to existing) vs. writing a HowTo..
...though, after perusing the openbsd.org website and trying to summize if there is a paradigm in the 'writing structure' of documentation, or any mention of propper ettiquete when contributing new or updated material I didn't stumble across anything relative (not saying it doesn't exist). I personally find documentation writing tetious and even at times agravating. In the journalism world we praise the likes of good editors. In no way am I saying that writing concise documentation is and should only be an afterthought. In regards to design, implementation and documentation; I feel that it is without parallel, and extremely appreciated that we communicate our efforts as best as we can, even when the mastery of articulation is in doubt. Please try to keep in mind that all we don't all share the same brain power. To talk more about my own 'practical experience' as of late that inspired me to write ( for lack of a better word ) a "howto". I personally learn the most from any device or product with frequency of use; quite often I have to break it a few times first ( which is the fun part, for me ). Note: It's been sometime that I have run OpenBSD being that I had changed careers temporarily. In the last few weeks I decided I wanted to host most of my web services in my home. What better oppurtunity to use OpenBSD. I downloaded the install ISO and was well on may way.... being that one of the main purposes of this box is to serve up web pages, I investigated the openbsd FAQ, and trawled through the mailing list. I have to admit that I suffer slightly from ADD, so reading large amounts of documentation to me can be very challenging. I remembered my previous expereince with chroot and jail environments from 6 years ago, when I adminstered a few OpenBSD and FreeBSD boxes. I do not claim to have a PHD in C.S. In fact, I see myself more as a user with some fundamental knowledge and basic programming expereince. I do thoroughly enjoy, anything unix or unix-like as a hobby. I, like many others, get to enjoy the results of others hardwork and wish I was equally as talented, and hope that I am on my way to one day being so, so that I can give back to what has so freely been given to me (plug: Or purchased at a really low price as a great stocking stuffer selfishly for myself ). My entire aproach may have been wrong in regards to installing Apache 2.2, PHP 5.1.1, and MySQL. Then again it may have served it's purpose based on my intentions and goals, which were to educate myself on How it can be done, and if my skill level was capable of achieving it. Keep in mind that I am using my OpenBSD box, in a non-production environment. Personally, if I was using my OpenBSD box in production environment, I would use the httpd 1.3 version that the OpenBSD developers ( who are much more talented than I am ) have spent a lot of time enhancing, auditing, debugging and securing for the latest release. In any case, I am not as talented. So I continued my apache 2.2, php 5.1.1, mysql 5 chroot'ed project. Which for me was exhausting and frustrating. None the less, as a result I had spent countless hours skimming documentation which immensely increased my understand of this wonderful operating environment. It took me 6 hours of straight trial and error to successfully achieve this. Mainly due to apache2's APR annoyance's and having to create a small lovely read only partition for my new /dev/null ... not to mention the fun I had using ktrace, kdump, gdb, chroot, and other various tools I have not used in quite a long time ( which of course, I had to read about in the man pages ). Thanks, --Mike Steinfeld [EMAIL PROTECTED] "please note that the 'isgreat' part of my email address is humor from my lovely fiance, not a reflection of my ego, but does not negate the fact that sometimes my ego is ridiculously inflated for no just cause, purpose or understanding of why..... It just is"
