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4 <td class="contentTopic"> Support for Bacula </td>
9 Please keep in mind that we are not getting paid for this.
10 Nevertheless, our desire is to see as many people using
11 <b>Bacula</b> as possible. So we are very willing to
12 provide a reasonable level of email support.
14 <p>Before asking for help, it could be useful to check against the
15 email archive as often solution to your problem has been discussed
16 or a patch has been released. Please see:
17 <a href="http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=bacula">
18 http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=bacula</a>.
20 <p>For support, send an email to
21 <b>bacula-users at lists.sourceforge.net</b>, and if you are
22 specific enough, some kind Bacula user will help you. The
23 previous address was modified to prevent easy use by spammers.
24 To use it, you must replace the <b>at</b> with an @ symbol. Due
25 to the increasing volumes of spam on the list, you must
26 be subscribed to it to be able to send and email to it. The
27 link to your left entitled <b>Email Lists</b> provides links
28 to where you can subscribe to each of the Bacula email lists.
30 The users constantly monitor this list and will generally provide
31 support. Please see <b>Information Needed</b> below for what to
32 include in your support request. If you don't supply the necessary
33 information, it will take longer to respond to your request, and
34 users may be afraid to try to respond,
35 if your request is too complicated or not well formulated.
38 <p>I (Kern) get a number of "off-list" emails sent
39 directly to me. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to provide
40 direct user support. However, I do read all the email sent and
41 occasionally provide a tip or two. If you do send email to me,
42 please always copy the appropriate list, if you
43 do not copy the list, I may not answer you, or I will answer by copying
44 the list. If you <em>really</em> have something confidential,
45 please clearly indicate it.</p>
47 <p>If you send a bug report or minor enhancement request because of a
48 problem to the bacula-devel list, and you do not provide the information
49 requested below, particularly the Bacula version, it is <b>very</b>
50 frustrating for us, because it is quite often the case that your problem is
51 version dependent, and likely already fixed. In such case, we will note
52 the problem, but you will be unlikely to get a response, especially if we
53 are busy, because it forces us to first ask you what version you are using
54 (or other information), then deal with your response, thus doubling the
55 time for us. If we do ask you for information, please include <b>all</b>
56 the previous correspondence in each email, otherwise you force us to search
57 the archives to find what you previously wrote. In short, if you want a
58 response, please see "Information Needed" below.
60 <p>If you are looking for live-support you might check out our irc-channel
61 in the <a href="http://www.freenode.net">Freenode</a> net, called #bacula.
63 <h3>Information Needed</h3>
64 For us to respond to a bug report, we normally need the following
65 as the minimum information, which you can enter into the appropriate
66 fields of the bug reporting system:
68 <li>Your operating system</li>
69 <li>The version of Bacula you are using</li>
70 <li>A <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">clear and concise</a> description of the problem</li>
71 <li>If you say "it crashes", "it doesn't work" or something
72 similar, you should include some output from Bacula that shows this.</li>
73 <li>If we respond to your email, and you answer, possibly supplying more
74 information, please be sure to include the <b>full</b> text of previous
75 emails so that we have all the information in one place.</li>
77 If you are having tape problems, please include:
79 <li>The kind of tape drive you have </li>
80 <li>Have you run the <b>btape</b> "test" command?</li>
83 If you are having database problems, please include:
85 <li>The database you are using: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQLite3 </li>
86 <li>The version of the database you are using</li>
89 The first two of these items can be fulfilled by sending
90 us a copy of your <b>config.out</b> file, which is in the
91 main <b>Bacula</b> source directory after you have done
92 your <b>./configure</b>.
93 <p>In addition, we will sometimes need a copy of your Bacula
94 configuration files (especially bacula-dir.conf). If you
95 think it is a configuration problem, please don't hesitate
96 to send them if necessary.</td>
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100 Please read that little Bug-Report-<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html">HowTo</a> as well.
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