How to reduce the number of open kernel bugs

Adrian Bunk
2008-05-02T12:43:19Z

Just seen in the kernel Bugzilla (driver anonymized to foobar):

Submitter [opens bug]:

Hardware Environment: See my other reports

This just happens while I were on surfing in the internet:
[ WARN_ON() traces involving driver foobar ]

Adrian [adds driver maintainer to Cc]

Maintainer [closes bug]:

Your hardware is seriously broken.

Submitter [reopens bug]:

Thanks for your answer, but I think that my hardware isn't broken,
because all my reported issues don't occur on Windows and also not with
foobaz.

Maintainer [closes bug]:

Then something in the chipset of PCI bus driver is broken. Also note the
APIC errors. This certainly is not a foobar bug. The driver is just
unable to access the card through the PCI bus, so it throws errors.

Submitter:

Interesting.

The APIC CPU errors are there since I've got the laptop, with and
without foobar ;)

Maintainer:

Yeah, in any case. I cannot fix it, since it's not a bug in the fobar
code. Please reopen a new bug and CC the architecture or PCI maintainer
or whatever person related to the bus, chipset or CPU, if you think the
foobar device still works. If the foobar hardware got corrupted, you
already know what to do...

I am well aware that loud flames are often the only working way of
communication in Linux kernel development, but we mustn't communicate
this way with bug submitters.

cu
Adrian

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed