JDPFu.com 2025

#1 Before Asking for Help

Google a little before you search out the Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE or some other Linux forum, please spend 20 minutes searching for the solution with google. Knowing how to search is an art form. Use uncommon words that are still related to the issue.

1. Start as specific as you can – e.g. use ubuntu instead of linux. Then use less and less specific terms if few results are returned. If you see unrelated results, exclude the most common word from those in your searches.
2. Avoid capitalization unless the terms will be exactly capitalized in that way. e.g. ethernet instead of Ethernet.
3. Always use the error message, but remove any localized parts – ERROR 43567 – bigjoes.com – You cannot enter bogus data that why. … remove bigjoes.com, but search with the other errors. If the error message fails, remove more and more parts of it until you start getting related hits.
4. Always use the specific chipset or vendor + card related to your issue if it is hardware/driver related.
5. If specific words are not working, try different, relaxed words. If using fedora isn’t working, try linux.
6. Try different tenses for action words. broke, broken, fix, fixing, fixed, solve, solved are all good terms. Search engines are getting better at this, but to get the most relevant results at the top of the first page, you need to be flexible.
7. Check the Linux Supported Hardware List to see if your problem is due to completely unsupported hardware or some other issue. Often that website will include tips to use related drivers instead of the exact driver for your hardware. Often, the vendor name on the box for the purchased item is not the real manufacturer or another vendor has released the driver that you need.

#2 – Be Brief

So now, you haven’t found the solution online and you still need a solution. Above all else, value the time of others by being as brief as possible, while including related facts. This advice applies to emails, forums, listservers, and groups. Be brief, but thorough. I’m being more thorough in this post to be clear. Ambiguous data can be worse than no data.

#3 – Gather Data

Before you head off to find the forum to post your issue, you need to gather some data. Often, gathering data will help you solve the issue yourself. The people reading the post do not know your system, your hardware, your network, or your programs. You need to tell them, as briefly and accurately as possible. When you gather data, you may discover that a driver is missing or old or unsupported.

Some useful commands are lsusb, lspci, and lshw. When you include the data, be selective. An entire lshw output isn’t useful when you’re troubleshooting a sound card issue. Find just the sound card section of 10 lines to be included. If the sound card select does not exist, then you have just discovered the issue – no driver for that specific model.

#4 – Choose an Informative Title

The title of your forum post needs to get to the point, but also provide data. For example, if you are in an Ubuntu forum, you probably don’t need to mention ubuntu in the title, but if it is a non-specific virtualization formum, saying the virtualization tool being used is critical. E.g. Vmware Server, VirtualBox, Xen, KVM, UML, QEMU, or some other method is very important. If sound works in the host, but not any clients, a good title is: VMware Player Sound broken for WinXP client. VMware has 5 different virtualization tools and each has different capabilities and solution methods. Saying VMware alone is not as helpful as saying VirtualBox. What product from VMware is it? Server, Player, Workstation, ESX, ESXi, or some other product are all possible choices today?

#5 – Ask a Good Question, but Include Details

When you ask for help, there are a few things that others will need to understand.

Let’s suppose your having an issue with sound in a virtual machine running inside another operating system. The data you need to include in your post is:

1. Exactly which Virtualization technology is being used. If it can be used in different ways (HMV or Parallel Virtualization, please say that).
2. Exactly what you think the problem is. Sometimes, unrelated problems should be split into different threads, but mentioning the other thread issue can be helpful since both could be related. Use your judgment.
3. Exactly which version of the virtualization tool you are running – x.×.x plus whether is it the OSE or non-open source version if it is VirtualBox.
4. Exactly which OS you are running as the host. Include the info from `uname -r` and `uname -m` please. If MS-Windows, please include both the OS and SP info.
5. Exactly which OS you are running as the guest. there can be multiple guests; For each, include the uname and/or OS/SP data mentioned above.
6. Any related drivers for the hostOS – think video, sound, USB, Firewire, network, IDE, SATA, or for specialized hardware. If the hostOS doesn’t understand the device, then the client OS probably will not either.
7. Any related drivers for the clientOS(es). In most cases, the drivers for the hostOS have nothing to do with the drivers needed for the clientOS, since the hostOS provides virtual hardware to the clients unless you have enabled hardware pass-thru, specifically.
8. Sometimes it works data. If sound (or whatever your issue is) does work sometimes, say that too and describe the conditions when that happens.
9. Use any forum specific formating tools like bold, italics, images, attached files, to make quickly reading your message easier. For example, if the problem is ethernet performance, at some point the specific ethernet chip used will need to be included. Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller or Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit is important when asking for help.
10. Split different parts of your data into different paragraphs for readability.
11. Be as brief as possible. Long posts with extra data can be daunting to read, many times a really long post will be ignored. It could be useful to post 1-5 above in the initial post, then follow up with the remaining data in the next post.

All of us forget to include some of this data, so don’t worry about it if you forget.

#6 – Know Where to Ask – Forums, IRC, Email Lists?

You are trying to use the most active place for your question. Many different communities concentrate on different types of help. Forums, email-lists, or IRC can all be used for support, but picking the one with the largest knowledgeable viewers for the subject will get you the best results. If you aren’t certain where to ask, start by asking in the …

Forums

After you’ve done everything above, it is time to find a place to ask for help. You can ask for it here, but if I haven’t had an issue that is very similar to yours, you probably won’t be helped. Find the forum with the greatest number of readers, that is as specific as possible for your problem. Don’t post in any forum other than the general forum if you aren’t certain which forum to post into. I use Ubuntu and Virtualization, so I watch the Ubuntu Virtualization forums. There are usually 10 active questions daily there.

Emergency posts tend to be ignored. If you call it an emergency, Forums are unpaid support and when you say emergency, I immediately think you should be paying for support and that my answer must be perfect, not just a lead in the right direction.

The same applies to critical help requests. If you need support now, perhaps IRC, Internet Relay Chat, would be a better place to ask?

#7 – Mark the Post – SOLVED

At some point, an answer will hopefully be provided. When that happens, change the title of the main thread to SOLVED – whatever the title was so that other searchers can easily find it. Also, it helps if you recap the necessary steps in your last post to the forum for that thread if none of the instructions jump out as step-by-step instructions. Helping the next person is good.

#8 – Display Good Manners

Always remember that the other people are helping you out of kindness. Saying please and thank you goes a long way. If others forget to use those terms, don’t worry about it. Often it is because they are not native speakers in the forum language or they are simply frustrated. We all get frustrated and type less than flattering text into our computers sometimes.

Mom was correct. Please and thank you DO go a long way in this world.