Ubuntu Server FAQ? forum input

[Michael Behrens]

On Feb 13, 2008 7:25 PM, Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us> wrote:

>
> I'd suggest collecting the forum input on the wiki and pointing folks
> at the wiki for faqs.  Often forum input ends up in a world of its own
> and gets out of date faster than the wikis, so links back to where the
> server documenters and developers are most active is very helpful.
>

I agree, keeping content fresh is difficult given how rapidly things change,

especially on the forums.

Generally when a solution to a problem is found on the forums, courteous
posters mark it as [SOLVED] in the title.  That eases searching within a
forum.  It also gives us a way to point users to searching a list of known
solutions, rather than a general "oh, just gogle for it" or something - this
can be specific to the server forum.


> I brought up the idea of having an Ubuntu Server FAQ for users and
> sysadmins at the IRC meeting today, and thought I'd throw out some
> more ideas here while they're fresh.
>
>  Frequent Questions about Ubuntu Server, for system administrators and
> users.
>
> First, I think the notion of a FAQ is familiar which is why I thought
> it might be useful.  It also tends to get folks thinking in the terms
> that users and sysadmins are likely to use in google searches, which
> helps get google hits.
>
> At the same time, of course, we already have two wikis with related
> material, plus the server guide, so it may be too much to maintain.
>

Maintenance will always be an issue, especially as releases come and go.  A
general FAQ which points to specific release based documentation (Server
Guide)
as well as the community sources (help.ubuntu.com, wiki.ubuntu.com)
I think would be the best way to go forward.  That being said, the FAQ
should also
contain generalized useful information (like using apt-get to install server
software
and other admin level actions), the information contained in it should be
unlikely to
change regardless of release (or significantly change).


>  Ahh - this looks very relevant :-O It was buried in the google search
>  I did.  Perhaps if more other pages pointed to it and it were brought
>  up-to-date that would help.
>
>  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ServerFaq
>

This would be a good starting point, there is no need to recreate the
wheel,  just upgrade it to steel belted.


> Server Topics
>
>  Differences between Ubuntu server and Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu
>  Kernel
>  Documentation
>  tasksel
>  GUI-based server admin
>  not webmin
>  ebox (soon)
>  LTSP(?)
>

I think all of those are good topics to have, I would add

CLI based server admin
 - manually starting / stopping services
 - using apt-get to install/remove XYZ server package
 - etc.
Discovering Hardware Information
 - using lspci
 - using lshw
Networking solutions
 - basic routing
 - advanced routing
 - QoS

Possibly vendor specific information (Dell Poweredge, HP DL series, etc)


 List of relevant HowTo's
>

..snip..

Most of these are created/maintained on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Servers

I think a pointer there and a description of the types of information would
suffice.

 ....
>
> Another form of ubuntu documentation that often is generated as a
> result of user questions is ubotu factoids:
>
>  http://bots.ubuntulinux.nl/factoids.cgi
>
> They might be minded for topics, wording etc.
>

..snip..

Agreed, I will speak to you privately about how I can help you
with the factoid stuff, as an output of forum support.


Thanks,

Michael
/ faulkes-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-server/attachments/20080213/6c9eb546/attachment.html>