Re: last_ipl problem and proposal for poll

[<cah...@po...>]

Hi !
 
> Hmm, I don't want to be subversive, it is all nice and ok to set up a poll,
> but I wonder how much it would actually report about the current situtation.
> First, I don't know how much folks is lurking around at apus at sourceforge,
> or are just waiting (like me) for the nice automatically generated mail by
> sourceforge which says "Project "Linux/APUS Kernel" ('linux-apus') has released
> the new version of package '2.4 Kernel'. You can download it.."

Yes, I understand you. There're two ways for users, the first one : let
linux-apus die from lack of programmers/users developing it, or somehow
help apus community. I'm from the first group, I hope there are also other
people that would do something for apus. I also realize that my words
sound hmm... as if I were an idealist, but what would have been linux
without people willing to develop it...
 
> Second, the poll options have to be chosen very carefully. Because, does it
> have any use if we know, well 40 users have problems with booting and are
> frozen after the ipl's, and 45 users have problems using the glint driver (to
> also tackle this problems [yes, I am also hit by this bug]) . It
> may be more useful if we would know about their hardware config, and what
> exactly they are doing. So it should be something like: "Please do this poll,
> but, IF you are experience problems DO ALSO report them including your exact
> systems configuration to linuxapus-dev.."
> 
> Or maybe a poll with some options like:
> 
> - "ide freezes on A1200"
> - "ide freezes on A4000"
> 
> And at best something where you could chose multiple options, so you could
> supplement the information given above with, e.g.:
> 
> - "freezes on bootup"
> - "freezes by chance"
> - "just spits out messages accidentally but doesn't freeze"

Frankly, I'm quite disorientated, we have been talking about a poll for
two days. I think it's enough time to make a poll and start gathering
information about the problem.

> And, at last, we also need people capable of solving the problems.
> The current situation seems to be that people who experience the very
> hard problems have no idea about fixing them, and the people who could fix
> them don't experience them and can't do anything with only the information
> from mails.

Uhh. It's the worst thing. I hope somebody will fix those problems till
apus dies. Users have been suffering from ide-driver problem since release
of 2.4.14 kernel.
 
> To shortly summarize: glint troubles only seem to happen on A4000 machines,
> the ide probs mostly on A1200 (altough this may be because there are a lot
> more A1200's out there).

How many subscribed users do our mailing-lists have ? Maybe more general
poll should be done ? What information do we really need ???

Regards
Krystian