TRENTER(1M) UNIX System V TRENTER(1M)
NAME
trenter - enter a trouble report
SYNOPSIS
trenter [-s]
DESCRIPTION
Trenter resides on any machine that must submit machine-
readable trouble reports to Customer Support. It prompts
the user for the data needed to enter the report, and allows
for correction of previously entered data, either in-line,
or by invoking a text editor. Trenter also allows users to
specify (in a file), default values for fields that will
likely remain constant across reports, such as name,
address, company name, etc. In addition, facilities are
provided to assist local administrators in handling trouble
report flow on their systems.
Fields and Values
Trouble reports consist simply of fields and associated
values. Each field has a field name, by which it may be
referenced. When invoked, trenter prompts for values for
the trouble report's fields. The following table lists the
prompts that are issued, along with their corresponding
field names. All fields accept one line of input, except
for the problem description, which is a multi-line field,
terminated with a line consisting of only ``.''. The items
marked with a star (*) are explained below.
These first nine fields identify the originator of the
report.
⊕ Name (NAME) (*)
⊕ Company (CO) (*)
⊕ Phone (PHONE) (*)
⊕ Room Number (ROOM) (*)
⊕ Address (ADDR) (*)
⊕ City (CITY) (*)
⊕ State (STATE) (*)
⊕ Zip Code (ZIP) (*)
⊕ Country (COUNTRY) (*)
These two fields are AT&T-assigned numbers to identify the
customer and the specific site.
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⊕ Customer ID (CID) (*)
⊕ Site ID (SID) (*)
The next two fields identify the processor on which the
problem occurred.
⊕ CPU serial number (CPUNO) (*)
⊕ Machine type (MACH)
The following fields identify the area in which the problem
occurred.
⊕ Trouble Report Type (TYPE)
Valid responses: doc (documentation), enh
(enhancement), cs (customer support), fw (firmware),
hdw (hardware), sw (software), or unk (unknown).
⊕ WECo Product Name (PROD)
Examples: UNIX, BASIC, etc.
⊕ Operating system release (OS_REL) (*)
The release of UNIX on which the problem occurred.
⊕ Product release (PROD_REL)
The release of the product given in response to the
WECo product prompt. If product is unix, this prompt
is not issued.
The remaining fields define the body of the trouble report.
⊕ Severity (SEV)
The severity of the problem (1-4).
⊕ Required date (RDATE)
If the severity of the report is 2, the required date
for the fix is prompted. The date given must be at
least one week from the date of the trouble report.
⊕ Abstract (ABS)
One-line description of the problem.
⊕ Description (DESC)
Full description of the problem. Note that description
input will not be passed through nroff; however,
trenter will recognize the macros .ES and .EE (example
start, example end) indicating an indented example
(these may be nested).
⊕ Attachments (yes or no) (ATT)
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If ? is given in response to a prompt, a message explaining
the field will be printed.
If trenter receives an interrupt during prompting, the
trouble report will be aborted.
After a trouble report has been completed, the user is given
an opportunity to edit any data that has been supplied.
Next, a reprint of the trouble report just entered may be
requested. Finally, the user is asked whether another
report is to be entered. If so, the values for the starred
items in the field table above will be carried over from the
first report.
Editing Field Values
In order to provide editing while responding to prompts, the
following escapes are recognized on input:
⊕ -field
Return to a field for which data has previously been
supplied. If the field name is not specified, return
to the previous field. The value already assigned to
the field is printed, and the user may enter either new
data, or another editing command.
⊕ !e
Invoke the editor ed(1) with any text already supplied
for the current prompt in the edit buffer (an alternate
editor can be specified: see "Specifying Default
Values" below).
⊕ >
Move down to the first unfilled field. This is useful,
for example, when the - command has been used to fix a
single field near the top of the report, and the user
wishes to quickly return to the point where they left
off.
⊕ =field
Print the value currently assigned to the given field.
⊕ ??
Print a summary of editing functions.
Editing commands are only recognized when they appear at the
beginning of the input line; they may be escaped using a
backslash (\).
Specifying Default Values
Users may provide default values for any fields marked with
(*) above. These values are specified in a file .trdef in
the user's home directory. Entries in this file are of
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form:
field=value
where field is a field name from the table above.
The editor to be used for field editing can be overridden
with a .trdef entry by assigning the name of the desired
program to the field EDITOR.
During prompting, trenter will print any values supplied for
fields from a .trdef file. By default, it will stop at each
such field and wait for either a carriage return (indicating
confirmation), an edit command, or new data. If invoked
with a -s option, trenter will print the supplied values,
but will not stop for confirmation.
Default values specified in .trdef files may be changed, on
a per-report basis, using the editing functions described
above.
FILES
.trdef - default value file
/usr/spool/trenter - spool directory
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