Ubuntu needs a data gathering tool for user support and bug reporting. Currently when filing bug reports users have to manually run lots of commands (dmesg, lspci, lsusb, lsmod, alsa-something...) for troubleshooting their issues.
Ubuntu should have a tool to gather all necessary system logs for reporting bugs and asking for support on answers.launchpad.net. I work for Sun and I find their Explorer tool very handy. It collects many system logs and outputs of system commands to show the system configuration and issues to the support team. It also has some options to skip some logs when the customer feels if it will violate his privacy. Red Hat has something similar, though not as developed as Explorer. Their sos (son of sysreport) tool is GPLed and could be tweaked to run on Debian/Ubuntu. Suse used to have Siga, now they have supportconfig, but I'm not familiar with it. There is also an independent distro-agnostic tool called Linux Explorer but it may be a bit outdated now. Having an explorer-like tool in Ubuntu would benefit both desktop and server users. Bugreporting would be much easier. You would only have to run one command, maybe with some options, to provide all the data needed for the bug troubleshooters. Example options could be: toolname -audio toolname -usb toolname -kernel toolname -all toolname -xorg toolname -network Appropriate options would be used for relevant problem types (ie. -audio for sound problems). Links: Red Hat: sosreport, earlier: sysreport https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/sos/ Suse: supportconfig, earlier: Siga http://en.opensuse.org/Supportutils Sun/Solaris: Explorer http://sunsolve.sun.com/explorer Independently developed Explorer-clone for Linux: http://www.unix-consultants.co.uk/examples/scripts/linux/linux-explorer/ Check out the Explorer page and its documentation to see how it's useful. http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-82329-1 -- ## Przemysław Kulczycki <<>> Azrael Nightwalker ## # jabber: azrael[na]jabster.pl | tlen: azrael29a # ### www: http://reksio.ftj.agh.edu.pl/~azrael/ ### -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
