In the event that bar does not operate propperly, then, if you are willing, the author is interested in hearing from you. The first thing the author will want from you, apart from a description of the problem you are experiencing, is information about bar as it is configured now, and when it is configured with I/O optimizations turned off. To make this process easier for you the user, first try running the shell script ./troubleshooter. It will assemble a file with all the output that the author will want regarding how bar configures, compiles, and runs on your system. However, if, by some chance, the ./troubleshooter script fails for you, then you can open this file in your favorite editor and follow the instructions below. *** NOTE: If ./troubleshooter worked for you, then you can skip the rest of this file. Simply email a description of your problem to michaelpeek@users.sourceforge.net and attach the log file that ./troubleshooter generated. The questions below are only for people wishing to report a problem with bar for whom the ./troubleshooter script failed to run. STEP 1: When you run ./configure, if the configuration process finishes successfully you should see text at the end that lists bar's configuration options. This text begins with the line "configure: Current configuration:", and should look something like this: configure: Current Configuration: configure: ---------------------- configure: Screen width -1 modifier: no configure: Display twiddle by default: no configure: Use aligned memory allocation: yes (default page size: 4096) configure: Use vectored I/O: yes configure: Default I/O buffer size: 52488 If you do not see lines like those listed above when you run ./configure, then the configuration process is ending prematurely with an error. Q1) Does the configuration process complete propperly on your system? (I.e. do you see the "Current Configuration" line?) If the configuration process is ending in error, back up your config.log file with the following command: $ mv config.log config.log.broken Then skip to step 4 below. STEP 2: After configuring bar, the next thing a user does is type "make" to build the program. In the event that make fails, an error message should be printed to the screen. Q2) Does bar compile on your system? Q3) If it does not, what is the error that make prints to the screen? (Try to cut-and-paste the exact text if possible.) If the compilation process is ending in error, back up your config.log file with the following command: $ mv config.log config.log.broken Then skip to step 4 below. STEP 3: After building bar, the next thing to do is test it by typing "make check". This will run tests on bar to see if it is at least capable of copying data correctly. If all tests pass, you should see text similar to the following: ================== All ? tests passed ================== Q4) Does bar pass all of it's tests? Q5) If not, which tests fail? STEP 4: Bar contains some optimizations that take advantage of features available in most modern unix-like operating systems, specifically aligned memory allocation and vectored I/O. Most of the time the configuration process is able to correctly determine whether or not these features are available and how to use them, but differences in one O/S to another, or even from one distribution to another of the same O/S, will cause changes in the way that these features are implemented. While the author has tried as many tricks as he can think of to propperly test these features before using them in bar, sometimes something new comes along that was unforseen. Therefore the next thing to do is to try building and testing bar without these optimizations. Try re-configuring bar, except this time specify --disable-use-memalign and --disable-use-iovec. Your command line should look similar to the following: $ ./configure --disable-use-memalign --disable-use-iovec Q6) Does the configuration process complete propperly? If the configuration process is ending in error, skip to step 5 below. If bar does configure propperly, try to compile bar. $ make Q7) Does the compilation process complete propperly? Q8) If it does not, what is the error that make prints to the screen? If the compilation process is ending in error, skip to step 5 below. If bar compiles propperly, try testing bar. $ make check Q9) Does bar pass it's tests? Q10) If not, which tests fail? STEP 5: Although the author has access to several flavors of unix-like operating systems, your system may be different. Q11) Are you willing, and do you have the time to assist the author by testing improvements to bar? Q12) If so, do you have access to the internet via: a) email? b) web browser? STEP 6: Email this file to michaelpeek@users.sourceforge.net. Attach your config.log file and, if you have a config.log.broken file, attach that as well. Even if bar works for you without aligned memory and vectored I/O, this information can be useful to the author to improve future versions of bar.
