OpenBSD Journal

Request for dmesg

Contributed by marco on from the dept.

Theo wrote this email to misc.
We're getting about halfway between releases, and around now it is
nice for us to see what kind of hardware people are seeing out there,
and how well it is supported.

If people have 3.8 dmesg's that they can mail in to

	dmesg@cvs.openbsd.org

that would be much appreciated.

If they are able to test -current, that is even better.

In the mail Subject, please detail the release (or -current) and
roughly state what the machine is.  In the body, you can perhaps
perhaps provide some other details about what does or does not work.
For our parsers, it is better if the mail is not MIME encoded, but
just plain boring ascii.

As well as telling us what works, and what doesn't work, it also
gives us hints as to what new hardware people are starting to see
in their machines...

Thanks a lot.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens (193.22.160.2) on

    Again, my nx8220 does not even boot. I can't provide dmesg, though. Sorry for my inconvinience.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (67.64.89.177) on

      You are not going to get any answers on this forum. Give it up man! Write a note to misc@ with the required data and maybe someone *might* try to help you. Besides don't blame OpenBSD because you purchased a crappy system.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (85.72.73.54) on

        I wrote a detailed bug report to bugs@

        Comments
        1. By Ray (12.18.141.172) on

          There is *one* mail from you in the archives. And to be honest if that is your idea of a "detailed bug report" it's no wonder you aren't getting any help... Come on this is admin 101 stuff...

      2. By Anonymous Coward (213.222.164.114) on

        > You are not going to get any answers on this forum. Give it up man! Write a note to misc@ with the required data and maybe someone *might* try to help you. Besides don't blame OpenBSD because you purchased a crappy system.

        Hi!

        If you think that nx8220 is a "crappy system" then you are an idiot. sorry about that...

    2. By jasper (80.60.145.215) on

      If you can attach a serial console, you can give at least some more information (in an e-mail to misc@), I guess.

      Comments
      1. By sthen (81.168.66.229) on

        Searching on things like "nx8220 hang", it looks like this is indeed a touchy laptop, some versions of the Linux kernel won't boot either. It has no serial port (though even when machines do have them, they don't always work properly - I have one that doesn't work until after boot, for example). Stefan provided some information, but there are a few problems that prevent people finding it:

        1. It was sent as an email to bugs@, and a few references with no useful information made here. Neither are really appropriate places to be seen by anyone that might be interested (and the references here might seem a bit whiny to some)... misc@ would be a better place.

        2. It wasn't in a single coherent thread: there's one with the initial question and fgsch@ asks for some lines of dmesg, and there's another where they're provided here.

        From Marc Espie's message mentioned in another article here: "If we have to play ping-pong over 10 emails to get you to tell us what you're actually doing, then forget it. It's a lottery. You might get noticed eventually, but don't count on it..."

        Stefan - some tips...

          - try collating all the information you have into one message to misc@, including the lines you re-typed for your bugs@ post, and explain that it has no serial port so you can't get more (though, if you have access to a digital camera, maybe you could catch some more and place images on a website - this would at least be better than not having any information - or maybe there's some way that you could try it with a docking station to see if the serial port there works).

          - say exactly what you did: you say that the boot hangs, but you don't say which kernel you're booting: is this the installer kernel or is it after installation? (if it's the installer, which one? bsd.rd? cd38.iso? floppy?)...

          - if you haven't been able to boot the installer, have you tried running a GENERIC kernel directly? (you could put it on a CD, or move the HD to a different machine to install then move it back, or you could ghost/dd a disk image after loading another OS, or PXE-boot - if you're lucky it will get as far as panicking when it tries to mount root, in which case maybe it's worth setting up nfs-root or moving the HD to a different machine to get it installed). If this seems like a lot of work, well, imagine yourself as a developer who has no physical access to the machine...

          - if NetBSD boots (and it looks like at least some versions do, since somebody has sent a diff for the NIC), then maybe include a dmesg from there, it's likely to be easier for developers to parse so they can identify at least what hardware you have and see if there are any obvious problems.

        "Repeatable problems specific to your hardware layout" is quite far down the list of "order of desirability" on the bug report page. If you are able and willing to provide copious useful information, that you have a better chance than if you just say "It doesn't work", but if nobody that might be able to fix it is interested, don't take it personally. You always have other options (like: use another OS, or sell the laptop and replace it with one from the 'working laptops' page or one that you can test with OpenBSD before buying it)...

    3. By phessler (209.204.157.105) on

      If you want any assistance, you *MUST* email misc@, and provide useful information. At the bare minimum, a dmesg.

      http://openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg will tell you how to obtain a dmesg.
      http://openbsd.org/report.html tells you how to intelligently report a problem.

      Its also useful to try a -current snapshot. Many times support for hardware will be in -current, when its not in a release.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (164.107.255.85) on

        As noted, a NetBSD or FreeBSD or Linux dmesg would be helpful too. Details about exactly what hangs where would be good too. Do you get to the kernel debugger prompt?

    4. By Anonymous Coward (193.167.6.139) on

      my d530s doesn't work either. no USB, no X, like living in the north pole. compaq users are an abandoned crowd.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (82.43.92.127) on

    Perhaps I am not the most adventurous sort but one of the reasons I use OpenBSD is because it "just works". Before I install OpenBSD I check whether what I have is supported. This generates a vicious circle, no install until support, no support until someone installs to try it.

    Maybe Theo is appealing to the -current crowd rather than the staid -stable types (silent majority?) like me. I guess I'll keep buying CD's and T-shirts to contribute instead...

    Keep up the great work :)

    Comments
    1. By thomasw.xhrl (142.22.16.55) on

      "Maybe Theo is appealing to the -current crowd rather than the staid -stable types (silent majority?) like me. I guess I'll keep buying CD's and T-shirts to contribute instead... Keep up the great work :)" Yes, it is great work, and I do think Theo and the developers probably do get their best feedback from the more maverick -current users; but I think in a small way 'the staid -stable types' do help out by getting the top half of their wardrobes from OpenBSD :)

  3. By Jason Houx (209.143.21.104) jason@houx.org on

    Well I will be sure to submit a dmesg of my ciss(4). The RAID works but is surely not optimized (slow performance and load jumps very high when doing anything I/O related). I have done a sendbug for it and have a box that I run current and stable on but still little progress has been made. I had a guy email me and I provided feedback but haven't heard from him in awhile.


    > Thank you very much for your problem report.
    > It has the internal identification `system/4595'.
    > The individual assigned to look at your
    > report is: bugs.
    >
    >>Category: system
    >>Responsible: bugs
    >>Synopsis: slow performance and high cpu load
    >>Arrival-Date: Thu Nov 03 02:20:01 GMT 2005

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (143.166.226.19) on

      come on huys, wrong forum.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (220.253.116.131) on

    Why not collate all the dmesges into one big report and post them up on the web? You could have a flag when people send them in that indicates permission to publish it or not.

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (220.253.116.131) on

      because it would be really interesting to see what hardware people are running

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.236.6) on

        it's so hard to strip a line from a text file? if someone really wants to know what a box is running on they will find out.

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