[CentOS] CentOS Bug Reporting Policy
Phil Schaffner
Philip.R.Schaffner at NASA.gov
Mon Dec 15 14:23:19 UTC 2008
Hywel Richards wrote:
> It looks like maybe I was right to be confused as to where to report
> bugs as now there are two different answers.
>
> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>> Hywel Richards wrote:
>>
>>> Is there some policy as to what to do and where to report the bug?
>>>
>> report it on bugs.centos.org unless you have a RHEL subscription and are
>> able to also reproduce the exact same issue under the exact same
>> conditions, in which case you should report it at bugzilla.redhat.com
>>
>
> Unfortunately I'm not in a position to do that - no RHEL subscription or
> installation.
> This is why previously I've been hesitant to report any problems there.
I'm in the same boat, but have frequently jumped in on already-reported
upstream bugs to confirm on CentOS, or asked other to see if the problem
is in the upstream product for CentOS bugs.
>>> It doesn't seem appropriate to report it to http://bugs.centos.org
>>> because CentOS is kept in-sync with the upstream, so bugs will never get
>>> fixed in CentOS, only in the upstream distribution.
>>>
>> Thats not really 100% black/white situation - if there is a major issue
>> that has implications, and we are able to fix it locally we will always
>> do that and users are quite welcome to jump over and move into the
>> contributors side of things for such issues.
>>
>
> The ones I've encountered so far are typically not major - not
> showshoppers for most people (otherwise they would get fixed a lot
> faster without any intervention from me anyway).
>
> An example is this sprof problem that I reported in July:
> http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=3021
Looks a lot like
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=458861
that is marked "Status: RELEASE_PENDING", so one might expect a fix in 5.3.
Added a note to the CentOS BZ and a link to CentOS to the upstream BZ.
> Another example is that the driver for my samsung printer prints garbage
> in high quality mode (the default), but works fine in standard mode (a
> useful thing to know).
>
>> However, the reason I said you should really report issues at
>> bugs.centos.org is that someone needs to first make sure it is indeed
>> not an issue introduced by the CentOS process ( We had had a few of
>> those as well ), and the issue needs to go upstream.
>>
>>
>
> This seems like a sensible policy to me.
> However, is there any process whereby bugs eventually get referred
> upstream, if not by the original bug reporter?
> It seems to me that the examples I gave above are unlikely to be
> introduced by CentOS, and should be appreciated by the upstream provider.
>
> Whatever the system, I think it would be pretty useful to have something
> written down somewhere, so that CentOS users like me know what to do
> when they encounter bugs. E.g. for that sprof problem, I'm not sure if I
> should wait on CentOS developers to process it (in which case there
> isn't much to say), or whether I should be also reporting it to redhat,
> as suggested in the other response, in which case I think further
> instructions are necessary).
Often CentOS developers will either report upstream or ask others to do
so in the CentOS BZ notes. A clearly-stated stated policy would
certainly help avoid confusion.
Phil
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