[Dxspider-support] Support Issues

Dirk Koopman djk at tobit.co.uk
Thu Sep 26 02:00:46 BST 2002


Can I please remind people that this is an experimental piece of
software which is provided in source form both because I think it is the
right thing to do and also (probably more importantly) so that people
can study it when things go wrong. There is no GUI, no "paid for"
support and everything that you get is done on a "best endeavours"
basis (and believe me: I and others on the list *will* help if I/we
can).

Quite a lot of the software requires one to get external stuff, edit and
generally mess about with nasty text files. It also requires you to gain
at least a rudimentary knowledge of how the overall environment works
and is kept up to date. 

I mention this because I am noticing one or two people suggesting that
when they do something radical like upgrade it should all just magically
work. Maybe that is something I will look at in the future, but right
now this *isn't* that type of system. 

In fact, I think I may as well lay it on the line. I expect every sysop
to be able to a) upgrade from a tarball, patch or cvs and b) be able to
install perl (if it isn't already installed) or selected CPAN modules
for their architecture. If a sysop can't do this then I expect them to
learn. Sorry it is so blunt, but there you are. 

If you are uncomfortable with this, then perhaps this really isn't the
sort of system you should be running and you may feel safer with
something like AR-Cluster.

Please don't take this as a some kind of dig at particular individuals -
it really isn't. I simply want to make sure that everyone understands
what sort of a system this is and the basis on which support is offered.

I have gotten the impression that not everyone has understood the
issues. This is meant to be read as a general policy (re-)statement.

Thank you for your attention.

Dirk G1TLH




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