TIP IRC troubleshooting

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This article is part of the Tips & Tricks series.

Terminals / Shells • Network • X Window System • Portage • System • Filesystems • Kernel • Other

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Yes, ladies, Gentoo has its own IRC channel(s)! All of them reside on irc.freenode.net. The main support channel is #gentoo.

[edit] Getting proper troubleshooting

A lot of people find that the guys in #gentoo aren't nice. They argue they scream "rtfm" continuously. This could be, but I personally think that this is because people with a negative attitude towards #gentoo were one out of many asking the wrong questions. The guys sitting in #gentoo are trying to help people with unique questions, not questions which either are caused fully by an obvious earlier mistake or can be solved by a quick search on the internet. So, especially when you have a negative opinion, please check the following checklist and write down the answers in #gentoo:

Since when (specifically, since what action) am I experiencing my problem?
Is this the only issue I'm experiencing? Did something else go wrong before my current issue?
Did I completely, until the tiniest details, follow the guides I've been solving? If not, please at least report the differences directly.
What have I tried in order to solve my issues? What have I searched for? What do I think is the cause?

Just four questions! Keeping an eye on them makes the life of troubleshooters in #gentoo a whole lot easier, plus, it'll help you get troubleshooted quicker.

[edit] Stuff to keep ready

Often, just explaining your problem isn't enough. You'll often need to upload logs and such.

Warning: When you are pasting these logs, do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT paste them to the IRC channel. You'll get kicked otherwise.

Rather, upload them to a paste site like this one. Keep the following material ready:

Output of the program causing errors
Logs of relevant other software (for example, if glxgears doesn't run, then prepare to upload /var/log/Xorg.0.log)
If your problem is related to build problems, the output of emerge --info
If you know the package causing trouble, its exact version number
If your problem is related to hardware support (ie, drivers), the output of lspci, uname -a and dmesg
If your problem is related to X.org, /etc/X11/xorg.conf
If your problem is related to alsa, ~/.asoundrc and /etc/asound.conf
If your problem is related to apache, /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and /var/log/apache2/error_log
If your problem is related to booting problems, /boot/grub/grub.conf and the output of /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/sda (or whatever your long-term storage device is)
If your problem is a kernel panic, the exact text of the kernel panic, and /usr/src/linux/.config
If your problem is related to a building problem, /var/log/portage/elog/SOMEFILEHERE, where SOMEFILEHERE is a filename probably given at the end of emerge's output
If your problem is related to any other big package, you might be able to find its logs in /var/logs