Be precise and informative about your problem | Troubleshooting your Issue with sucess

Ask Fedora Start Here
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:zap: Disclaimer :zap:

from the Author of the Book | How To Ask Smart Questions mentioned below:

Many project websites link to this document in their sections on how to get help. That’s fine, it’s the use we intended — but if you are a webmaster creating such a link for your project page, please display prominently near the link notice that we are not a help desk for your project!

Be precise and informative about your problem

  1. Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly.

  2. Describe the environment in which it occurs (machine, OS, application, whatever). Provide your vendor’s distribution and release level (e.g.: “Fedora 40”, “CentOS Stream 9”, etc.).

  3. Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you asked the question.

  4. Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem yourself before you asked the question.

  5. Describe any possibly relevant recent changes in your computer or software configuration.

  6. If at all possible, provide a way to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment.

Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask, and answer them in advance in your request for help.

Giving hackers the ability to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment is especially important if you are reporting something you think is a bug in code. When you do this, your odds of getting a useful answer and the speed with which you are likely to get that answer both improve tremendously.

Simon Tatham has written an excellent essay entitled How to Report Bugs Effectively. I strongly recommend that you read it.

:point_left: Back to the Start Here section

:link: Read the whole book

Table of Contents

Translations
Disclaimer
Introduction
Before You Ask
When You Ask

Choose your forum carefully
Stack Overflow
Web and IRC forums
As a second step, use project mailing lists
Use meaningful, specific subject headers
Make it easy to reply
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
Send questions in accessible, standard formats
> Be precise and informative about your problem
Volume is not precision
Don’t rush to claim that you have found a bug
Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework
Describe the problem’s symptoms, not your guesses
Describe your problem’s symptoms in chronological order
Describe the goal, not the step
Don’t ask people to reply by private e-mail
Be explicit about your question
When asking about code
Don’t post homework questions
Prune pointless queries
Don’t flag your question as “Urgent”, even if it is for you
Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Follow up with a brief note on the solution

How To Interpret Answers
RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You’ve Seriously Screwed Up
If you don’t understand…
Dealing with rudeness

On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Questions Not To Ask
Good and Bad Questions
If You Can’t Get An Answer
How To Answer Questions in a Helpful Way
Related Resources
Acknowledgements

Some more useful links:

Updates: Changed example versions to current ones.

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The age of the referenced OSes is not important. The need to provide appropriate information about the system being used is what should be taken from those examples.

And yes the guide is old, but still very relevant even now.

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And it testifies that the issue is as old as the Internet, and a brand new guide/howto will not solve it. :smiley:

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That is entirely up to you. Note that you have copied directly from the linked post so you probably should be sure to credit the source from which the information was taken then note that it was updated for current times.

AFAICT absolutely nothing in it needs updated except possibly the rather old examples given in # 2

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Added problem