annotate DOCS/xml/en/bugreports.xml @ 11278:ff78d7ceecaa

Dead links updated or removed, Joe Barr section rewritten taking into account his latest article.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!-- $Revision$ -->
<appendix id="bugreports">
<title>How to report bugs</title>
<para>
Good bug reports are a very valuable contribution to the development of any
software project. But just like writing good software, good problem reports
involve some work. Please realize that most developers are extremely busy and
receive obscene amounts of email. So while your feedback is crucial in improving
MPlayer and very much appreciated, please understand that you have to provide
<emphasis role="bold">all</emphasis> of the information we request and follow
the instructions in this document closely.
</para>
<sect1 id="bugreports_fix">
<title>How to fix bugs</title>
<para>
If you feel have the necessary skills you are invited to have a go at fixing the
bug yourself. Or maybe you already did that? Please read
<ulink url="../../tech/patches.txt">this short document</ulink> to find out how to
get your code included in MPlayer. The people on the
<ulink url="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng">mplayer-dev-eng</ulink>
mailing list will assist you if you have questions.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="bugreports_report">
<title>How to report bugs</title>
<para>
First of all please try the latest CVS version of MPlayer as your bug might
already be fixed there. Development moves extremely fast, most problems in
official releases are reported within days or even hours, so please use
<emphasis role="bold">only CVS</emphasis> to report bugs. This includes
binary packages of MPlayer. CVS instructions can be found at the bottom of
<ulink url="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html">this page</ulink> or in
the README. If this did not help please refer to the list of
<link linkend="bugs">known bugs</link> and the rest of the documentation. If your
problem is not known or not solvable by our instructions, then please report the bug.
</para>

<para>
Please do not send bug reports privately to individual developers. This is
community work and thus there might be several people interested in it. Sometimes
other users already experienced your troubles and know how to circumvent a problem
even if it is a bug in MPlayer code.
</para>

<para>
Please describe your problem in as much detail as possible. Do a little detective
work to narrow down the circumstances under which the problem occurs. Does the bug
only show up in certain situations? Is it specific to certain files or file types?
Does it occur with only one codec or is it codec independent? Can you reproduce it
with all output drivers? The more information you provide the better are our
chances at fixing your problem. Please do not forget to also include the valuable
information requested below, we will be unable to properly diagnose your problem
otherwise.
</para>

<para>
An excellent and well written guide to asking questions in public forums is
<ulink url="http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html">How To Ask
Questions The Smart Way</ulink> by <ulink url="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</ulink>.
There is another called
<ulink url="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">How to Report
Bugs Effectively</ulink> by <ulink url="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/">Simon Tatham</ulink>.
If you follow these guidelines you should be able to get help. But please
understand that we all follow the mailing lists voluntarily in our free time. We
are very busy and cannot guarantee that you will get a solution for your problem
or even an answer.
</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="bugreports_where">
<title>Where to report bugs</title>
<para>
Subscribe to the mplayer-users mailing list:
<ulink url="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users"/>
and send your bug report to:
<ulink url="mailto:[e-mail]"/>
</para>
<para>
The language of this list is <emphasis role="bold">English</emphasis>. Please follow the standard
<ulink url="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt">Netiquette Guidelines</ulink> and
<emphasis role="bold">do not send HTML mail</emphasis> to any of our mailing lists. You will only get ignored or
banned. If you do not know what HTML mail is or why it is evil, read this
<ulink url="http://expita.com/nomime.html">fine document</ulink>. It explains all
the details and has instructions for turning HTML off. Also note that we will not
individually CC (carbon-copy) people so it is a good idea to subscribe to actually
receive your answer.
</para>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="bugreports_what">
<title>What to report</title>
<para>
You may need to include log, configuration or sample files in your bug report.
If some of them are quite big then it is better to upload them to our
<ulink url="ftp://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/">FTP server</ulink> in a
compressed format (gzip and bzip2 preferred) and include only the path and file
name in your bug report. Our mailing lists have a message size limit of 80k, if
you have something bigger you have to compress or upload it.
</para>

<sect2 id="bugreports_system">
<title>System Information</title>
<para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>
Your Linux distribution or operating system and version e.g.:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>Red Hat 7.1</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>Slackware 7.0 + devel packs from 7.1 ...</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
kernel version:
<screen>uname -a</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
libc version:
<screen>ls -l /lib/libc[.-]*</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
gcc and ld versions:
<screen>
gcc -v
ld -v
</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
binutils version:
<screen>
as --version
</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
If you have problems with fullscreen mode:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>Window manager type and version</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
If you have problems with XVIDIX:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>X colour depth:
<screen>xdpyinfo | grep &quot;depth of root&quot;</screen>
    </para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
If only the GUI is buggy:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>GTK version</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>GLIB version</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>libpng version</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>GUI situation in which the bug occurs</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="bugreports_hardware">
<title>Hardware and drivers</title>
<para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>
CPU info (this works on Linux only):
<screen>cat /proc/cpuinfo</screen>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Video card manufacturer and model, e.g.:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>ASUS V3800U chip: nVidia TNT2 Ultra pro 32MB SDRAM</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>Matrox G400 DH 32MB SGRAM</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Video driver type &amp; version, e.g.:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>X built-in driver</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>nVidia 0.9.623</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>Utah-GLX CVS 2001-02-17</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>DRI from X 4.0.3</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Sound card type &amp; driver, e.g.:
  <itemizedlist>
    <listitem><para>Creative SBLive! Gold with OSS driver from oss.creative.com</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>Creative SB16 with kernel OSS drivers</para></listitem>
    <listitem><para>GUS PnP with ALSA OSS emulation</para></listitem>
  </itemizedlist>
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
If in doubt include <command>lspci -vv</command> output on Linux systems.
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="bugreports_configure">
<title>Configure problems</title>
<para>
If you get errors while running <command>./configure</command>, or autodetection
of something fails, read <filename>configure.log</filename>. You may find the
answer there, for example multiple versions of the same library mixed on your
system, or you forgot to install the development package (those with the -dev
suffix). If you think there is a bug, include <filename>configure.log</filename>
in your bug report.
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="bugreports_conpilation">
<title>Compilation problems</title>
<para>
Please include these files:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>config.h</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>config.mak</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
Only if compilation fails below one of these directories, include these files:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>Gui/config.mak</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>libvo/config.mak</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>libao2/config.mak</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="bugreports_playback">
<title>Playback problems</title>
<para>
Please include the output of <application>MPlayer</application> at verbosity level
1, but remember to <emphasis role="bold">not truncate the output</emphasis> when
you paste it into your mail. The developers need all of the messages to properly
diagnose a problem. You can direct the output into a file like this:
<screen>mplayer -v <replaceable>options</replaceable> <replaceable>filename</replaceable> &gt; mplayer.log 2&gt;&amp;1</screen>
</para>

<para>
If your problem is specific to one or more files, then please upload the offender(s) to:
<ulink url="ftp://mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/"/>
</para>

<para>
Also upload a small text file having the same base name as your file with a .txt
extension. Describe the problem you are having with the particular file there and
include your email address as well as the output of MPlayer at verbosity level 1.
Usually the first 1-5 MB of a file are enough to reproduce the problem, but to be
sure we ask you to:
<screen>dd if=<replaceable>yourfile</replaceable> of=<replaceable>smallfile</replaceable> bs=1024k count=5</screen>
It will take the first five megabytes of '<emphasis role="bold">your-file</emphasis>'
and write it to '<emphasis role="bold">small-file</emphasis>'. Then try again on
this small file and if the bug still shows up your sample is sufficient for us.
Please <emphasis role="bold">do not ever</emphasis> send such files via mail!
Upload it, and send only the path/filename of the file on the FTP-server. If the
file is accessible on the net, then sending the <emphasis role="bold">exact</emphasis>
URL is sufficient.
</para>
</sect2>

<sect2 id="bugreports_crash">
<title>Crashes</title>
<para>
You have to run <application>MPlayer</application> inside <command>gdb</command>
and send us the complete output or if you have a <filename>core</filename> dump of
the crash you can extract useful information from the Core file. Here's how:
</para>

<sect3 id="bugreports_debug">
<title>How to conserve information about a reproducible crash</title>
<para>
Recompile MPlayer with debugging code enabled:
<screen>
./configure --enable-debug=3
make
</screen>
and then run MPlayer within gdb using:
<screen>gdb ./mplayer</screen>
You are now within gdb. Type:
<screen>run -v <replaceable>options-to-mplayer</replaceable> <replaceable>filename</replaceable></screen>
and reproduce your crash. As soon as you did it, gdb will return you to the command
line prompt where you have to enter
<screen>
bt
disass $pc-32 $pc+32
info all-registers
</screen>
</para>
</sect3>

<sect3 id="bugreports_core">
<title>How to extract meaningful information from a core dump</title>
<para>
Create the following command file:
<screen>
bt
disass $pc-32 $pc+32
info all-registers
</screen>
Then simply execute this command:
<screen>gdb mplayer --core=core -batch --command=<replaceable>command_file</replaceable> &gt; mplayer.bug</screen>
</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
</sect1>

<sect1 id="bugreports_advusers">
<title>I know what I am doing...</title>
<para>
If you created a proper bug report following the steps above and you are confident
it is a bug in MPlayer, not a compiler problem or broken file, you have already
read the documentation and you could not find a solution, your sound drivers are
OK, then you might want to subscribe to the mplayer-advusers list and send your
bug report there to get a better and faster answer.
</para>

<para>
Please be advised that if you post newbie questions or questions answered in the
manual there, you will be ignored or flamed instead of getting an appropriate answer.
So do not flame us and subscribe to -advusers only if you really know what you are
doing and feel like being an advanced MPlayer user or developer. If you meet these
criteria it should not be difficult to find out how to subscribe...
</para>

</sect1>

</appendix>