Author Ian! D. Allen
Updated: 2013-03-20 17:08 EDT
If you have been sent to read this file, it is likely because your questions are too vague for me to answer. If you follow this advice I’ll be able to help you more quickly.
When you ask me a question, the quality of the answer you get depends largely on how detailed and specific you are in your questions.
I can’t help with or answer a vague question such as “I can’t log in - do you know why?”, or “I can’t do question 3” any more than a mechanic can answer a question “My car won’t start - do you know why?”. You must be precise in your question, giving me as much information as you can about your situation.
Things you might consider telling me when you ask a question:
Which assignment question are you trying to answer?
What have you tried already? What, exactly, did you enter into the program? That includes exact keystrokes, addresses, names, etc. Tell me what exactly you used. Saying “I entered the information from the notes” is not helpful, since perhaps the notes are wrong, or perhaps you typed it wrong. What exactly did you type?
What have you read to help solve your problem? Before you contact me, I expect you to read the lecture notes you took in class, the assignment (all the words!), and any posted class notes related to the problem.
If it’s a network issue, then where are you, physically? At a coffee shop? At home? At school (in which room or which lab at school)? Where are you on the network? On wireless? Direct connect? Using a VPN? Using an ISP (NCF, TekSavvy, Rogers, Sympatico)? Cable, ADSL, or dial-up? Behind a firewall/router? Behind Network Address Translation (NAT)? Is the network working?
If you use multiple machines, what machine and operating system are you using? Ubuntu Linux 12.04 on a Dell laptop? Windows XP on a home- built desktop machine?
What program(s) are you using? Command-line FTP? PuTTY version 0,60? Firefox 9.0? DOS window FTP? What version?
What messages did the program(s) already give you? That includes the exact text of the messages, not what you “think” it said. Copy the exact text of what the program said into your question to me.
For most questions, my job as instructor is to help you find the answer, not to give you the answer. Specific answers will change and become irrelevant over time, but knowing how to find an answer is always useful. You’ve already paid me, as a College instructor, to help you find answers.
If you want me to actually give you the answers, that’s called “private consulting” and the rates are much higher - contact me after you graduate.
You will get better at finding your own answers as you know more and become more familiar with search tools and asking the right questions. The first step is to realize that learning to find answers is a skill you can, and must, learn.
Many questions are not new; other people have already asked them, and I’ve already incorporated the answers into the labs and the course notes. Before you ask a question, make sure I haven’t already answered it.
Learn to search the assignments and course notes for your answers. You can use the page-search features of web browsers to look for keywords in web pages, you can search for keywords in word-processor documents, and you can use “grep” at the Unix/Linux command line to search many text or HTML files at once. (The “-i” and “-r” options to grep are useful.)
Searching the assignment or the course notes is very efficient. You might be able to use Google to find your own answer on the Internet, but often Google hasn’t indexed my course notes yet so the specific information you need won’t be on the Internet yet. You will also find it harder to see the specific information that I give you among the billions of web pages that Google will suggest to you for answers.
I usually ask questions based on material in the labs and course notes. Check the labs and course notes for answers, first.
For a slightly abusive but very thorough explanation of how to ask “smart” questions and get good answers from busy people on the Internet, read the classic document “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way” by Eric S. Raymond and Rick Moen: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Here are some actual vague questions that have been sent to me that I would like to answer but cannot because the poser didn’t supply me with enough specific information (e.g. what exactly they did) to help:
“I get an error when I execute”sudo -s " from the newly created system account. what might be the mistake I did?" [You don’t tell me what the error was, or whether you followed any of the steps you were given to check your work.]
“I go into Putty and click the linux server as I usually do, and when the window pops up I don’t even get a prompt to login, and an error box will pop up that says Network error: Connection timed out. I’m at McDonalds using the free wi-fi.” [You don’t say exactly what you typed into PuTTY or what address you are trying to connect to. Did it used to work at McDonalds?]
“I’ve rewritten this command a few times and won’t stop getting the”file not found" message. I looked in a few places and can’t seem to find /vmlinuz. Pls help." [You didn’t tell me exactly what command line you used, or where you actually looked.]
“I am not sure on what to do, and I am looking for help. I know you say to read the full manual, I have and I am lost.” [You don’t say what question you are trying to answer, or what exactly you have read to help you.]
“I’m getting a ‘Forbidden’ error. Why?” [You don’t say what question you are trying to answer, or what you typed, or what the exact error message was.]
“When I try to use the ISO the VM crashes. Why?” [You don’t say what question you are trying to answer, or what you typed, or what the exact error message was.]
“I would like to ask you that in assignment 10 I have 2 warnings, so what should I do?” [You don’t say what question you are trying to answer, or what you typed, or what the exact error message was.]
“So in an attempt to do my assignments, I attempted to log to the server via PuTTy and the information posted in the weekly notes. I have previously connected to do an assignment. However, this time around it keeps giving me a time out error and won’t connect me to the server. I’m not sure what more to do, is this my error or is the server down?” [You don’t say what question you are trying to answer, or what you typed, or what the exact error message was.]
“I have been trying to log into the Linux Server but am unable to do so. I am using Putty and have set it up as outlined Putty Configuration Section but my password doesn’t seem to be working. Is there a login ID? I have been using what you told us as my password but it hasn’t been working. Any advice?” [You don’t say exactly what you typed into PuTTY, what login ID you actually used, exactly what password you used, or from where you are trying to connect (home or school).]
“i am unable to do”creating a Linux File System on a virtual Floppy disk and mounting/unmounting/ejecting it" part of the lab as my fedora doesn’t detect any floppy disk image i created. Just so you know i guarantee you that I did read all the words and did follow all the steps correctly." [You don’t say exactly what words you read or steps you followed. You’ve obviously left something out, but I can’t guess what it is.]
Author:
| Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
| Home Page: http://idallen.com/ Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/
| College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/
| Defend digital freedom: http://eff.org/ and have fun: http://fools.ca/Plain Text - plain text version of this page in Pandoc Markdown format
Author Ian! D. Allen