Archive-name: sunmanagers-before-posting Last Updated: $Id: before.posting,v 1.21 2005/12/28 21:05:10 jdd Exp $ NOTE: This message is posted periodically to sunmanagers on behalf of all members of the Sunmanager's mailing list. Please read it carefully before posting. This document can be retrieved from: ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/sunmanagers/before.posting Dear prospective sunmanagers poster, Before posting, please stop for a minute and consider whether or not your posting is suitable for Sunmanagers. The list is not intended for just any possible question related to managing Sun equipment or software. The only appropriate questions for Sun Managers are time-critical questions about Sun system management problems that are not answered in the manuals or system documentation, or in the Sunmanager's FAQ. In particular, the following kinds of postings are not appropriate: - Subscribe and unsubscribe messages. Point your web browser to http://www.sunmanagers.org instead. - Test messages of any sort. - Discussions about anything, including discussions about the list itself, or followups to any posting, with the exception of a single summary to one's own question summarizing the email responses. Use instead one of the Sun newsgroups, eg. comp.sys.sun.admin, comp.sys.sun.hardware or comp.unix.solaris. - Replies to any SunManagers posting, even if the reply is a separate question. Please send a separate message instead. - Postings not related to Sun equipment or software. Use the appropriate newsgroup or mailing list instead. For example, if your question concerns "sendmail", please consult the comp.mail.sendmail newsgroup or the www.sendmail.org website. - General UNIX or network questions. Use the appropriate newsgroup, eg. comp.unix.questions instead. - Postings that are not time-critical. Use one of the Sun newsgroups, eg. comp.sys.sun.admin, comp.sys.sun.hardware or comp.unix.solaris. - Questions answered in the FAQ. Read the FAQ instead. If you're not sure if the question is in the FAQ, please check before asking. You can find the FAQ at: ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/sunmanagers/faq.html ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/sunmanagers/faq - Questions that are answered in the manuals, http://docs.sun.com or system documentation. Read the manuals instead. If you're not sure if the question is answered in the manuals, please check first! - Job postings, requests for jobs, sales pitches, etc. Use the appropriate newsgroup instead. - Please, no postings in HTML, rich-text-format, Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or any format that some people on the list would not easily be able to read. Also, please post in English only; most of our readers are not able to read other languages. - Please do not BCC (blind carbon copy) the list. Many of our list members depend on the list address appearing on incoming mail messages, so that they can automatically distinguish list traffic from other traffic. Please note that we are not saying these postings are necessarily "bad" or "stupid". They are not. They are merely inappropriate for this list. There are many other lists and newsgroups for which the question may be completely appropriate, and we encourage you to submit the posting there. Note also that your question may have been already answered in the past. Please spend a minute or two checking one of the Sunmanager's archives, for example, at http://www.sunmanagers.org, or one of the archive sites mentioned in the FAQ. Here's an example of an appropriate question: I have a SPARCserver 99 running Solaris 9.8.7 with the fizbozz patch and the jumbo kernel patch version 158. After I installed Futzbarworks version 3.2, the machine locks up every couple of hours. When it locks up, the following message appears on the console: zz0: out of futzbufs. Barworks table is full. I need to get this machine working as soon as possible. Please help! Send email and I will summarize to the list. To submit a question, email it to sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org. When you do this, please indicate all relevant information, including machine type, OS version and patches. Collect email replies, and then summarize them to the list. If your question was posted with a subject of "foobar", for example, then please post your summary with a subject of "SUMMARY: foobar". Why are we asking that only certain types of postings be submitted to the list? Very simply, the reason is this: we want the list to have a very short turnaround time, and the only reasonable way to do this is to keep it unmoderated. But this means that every message sent to the list ends up in the mailboxes of all the list members. To keep all the members of the list from being deluged by inappropriate messages, we need everyone's co-operation in ensuring that only appropriate messages are sent to the list. Please remember, Sunmanagers is a public forum: we have thousands of subscribers, all posts are archived on numerous archive sites, and these are searchable via various web engines. A great number of people will read your message. Keep in mind that the person reading your message may be your boss, your future boss, your customer, your seminar instructor, your colleague, or someone else that you work with today or may find yourself working with tomorrow. We do not want you to embarrass yourself by sending an inappropriate or poorly thought-out posting. Regards, John -- John DiMarco Sunmanagers Information Files Maintainer http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~jdd