NAME

mailbug − submit a bug report or enhancement request

SYNOPSIS

mailbug

DESCRIPTION

The mailbug utility allows you to submit machine-readable bug reports to a Sequent customer service representative.  Check with your system administrator to ensure that the mailbug service is supported before submitting a bug report. 

Mailbug prompts for the information needed to fill out the bug report.  After you have entered everything, mailbug allows you to edit the bug report before mailing it or to cancel the report completely.  Unless the report is canceled, mailbug sends a copy to the customer service representative and one to the user submitting the report, and saves a copy in the /usr/service/mailbug directory.  Refer to the DYNIX System Administration Guide for information on how to install the mailbug service. 

Mailbug asks for the following information:

- Your real login name if you are currently logged in as root

- Your full name, phone number, and return e-mail path.  This information can also be provided from the .mailbug text file, which you can create in your home directory.  .Mailbug should look like this:

Full name: Anne Harris
Phone number: 123-4567
Return email path: anneh@system_name

- Your company or organization name.  This information may be provided by a line in the /usr/service/site-information file, which looks like this:

site_name: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.

- Whether the problem occurs on this system.  If the answer is yes, mailbug retrieves as much system-specific data as it can from the system and from the following files: /usr/service/site-information and /usr/service/serial-number .  If the answer is no, mailbug prompts for some system-specific data such as this:

System Serial Number

Operating System Type

Operating System Version

The type of system on which the problem occurred

- A one-line summary of the bug

- An assessment of the severity of the bug.  The choices are as follows:

Critical — an essential component of the hardware or operating system cannot be used

Serious — a nonessential module or utility cannot be used

Normal — some feature of a nonessential module or utility doesn’t work correctly and there is no convenient workaround

Low — some feature of a non-essential module or utility doesn’t work correctly, but you can work around the problem without serious inconvenience

Enhancement — suggestions on how the product can be improved

For Your Information — for information only; no action is required

- A guess as to the source of the problem: documentation, hardware, mechanical, software, diagnostics, or other

- For documentation problems, mailbug prompts for the name of the manual involved, the page number, and the revision number at the bottom of the manual’s page. 

- For hardware and mechanical bugs, mailbug prompts for the type of hardware component ("Xylogics 472 tape controller", for example), its part number, revision number, and serial number. 

- For software bugs, mailbug prompts for the name of the software module that is suspected to be incorrect — for example, csh. 

- For diagnostics bugs, mailbug prompts for product type.  If the bug does not occur on this system, console processor type, system processor type, diagnostic version, and firmware version are requested. 

- A full description of the bug, which may be as long as necessary

While the problem description is being entered, certain operations may be executed:

If a line in the description begins with ~v , your $EDITOR (vi by default) is started so you can edit the description text entered up to that point. 

If a line in the description begins with ~r filename , the contents of filename are included in the text of the description. 

Type a CTRL-D at the beginning of a line to end the problem description entry procedure. 

If the requested information is unknown or not applicable, you can skip most fields by simply pressing RETURN in response to the prompt. 

To use default values, which appear in square brackets, simply press RETURN in response to the prompt. 

It is the responsibility of the system administrator to maintain the data in the /usr/service directory. This should be done at setup time or can be done at any time by editing these files. The /usr/service/site-information file follows the format:

site_name: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
address: 15450 SW Koll Parkway
city: Beaverton
state_province_code: OR
postal_code: 97006-6063
country: USA
phone_number: (503) 626-5700
site_type: end user
system_type: S81

You may include mulitple address lines. Valid site types are OEM, VAR, Distributor, and end user. Valid system types are B8, B21, S81, S27, and S3. 

The /usr/service/serial-number file follows the following format:

serial_number: 89162

Both of these files are created when the file setup-pts.sh is executed.  If your mailbug UUCP connection is already established, which would make it redundant to run setup-pts.sh, you can create these files with information in the format shown above.

FILES

/usr/service/mailbug/site-information
/usr/service/mailbug/serial-number

SEE ALSO

uucp(1)
 

DYNIX