star, rmt, and librmt [PSARC/2008/176 FastTrack timeout 03/12/2008]

[Alan Coopersmith]

Gary Winiger wrote:
>> Gary Winiger wrote:
>>>> The problem with the trusted Solaris extensions is that they are undocumented.
>>> 	Add a service request to
>>> 	6575215 archives.3head: tar/ustar extended headers information for
>>> 	TX not documented
>>> 	and escalate it.
>> For an OpenSolaris community member, telling them that is basically saying
>> "screw you, you'll never get it from us."    They can't add a service request,
>> and can't escalate it - that's the process for customers, not the community.
> 
> 	Sorry, that wasn't my intent.  Community members should be able
> 	to say they are affected by an existing bug just the same as any
> 	other Solaris user.  If they can, there's something broken in
> 	the OS.O processes. 

There is much broken in the opensolaris.org bug processes, and a large project
in place to fix them, by replacing use of bugster with the external bugzilla,
but there's a lot of work to get from here to there.   Until then, assume that
bugs are file-once-and-read-only-afterwards (and read only of the description,
not the comments, suggested fix, or evaluation) to community members.

Even then, escalating a bug is part of a support contract process, not something
even internal engineers can do on their own.

>       Community members are permitted to fix existing
> 	bugs or bugs they file.  If there's a bug in a gate (docs in this
> 	case) supplying a suggested fix and asking for someone in docs to
> 	integrate seems appropriate.  There is a responsible engineer (RE)
> 	on this bug.  I suspect the RE would be more than happy to accept
> 	suggested fixes from where ever they come.

How would an external person get the information to create the docs - reverse
engineer the source code?   Is there no internal specification other than the
source code for them?   I believe that's the docs Joerg is asking for - not a
man page suitable for end users.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering