[sf-lug] timestamps, testing, ... Re: I believe the mailing list is fine, nei? ; ->

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: [sf-lug] I believe the mailing list is fine, nei?  ;->
> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2020 23:34:34 -0800

> But please, please, please, if you do that, provide accurate timestamps,
> e.g., 'sent at 9:02:29 AM today', not something vague like 'this
> morning'.  Give me something specific to search for.  (And, goes without
> saying, make sure your darned system time is accurate, for gosh sakes.)

And when providing time/timestamp data, good to also do so in
unambiguous form.
E.g. state or include the timezone information.  Note also, and especially
when dealing with security related logs/events across different
organizations/entities, many won't look at, or even accept logs, if
they're not in UTC/GMT0/Z (notably as they don't want to have to guess
and/or convert when potentially looking at logs and event information
across potentially many entities and timezones).
Good to use an unambiguous format, e.g. like one of the common
ISO formats:
2020-01-29T03:15:34+00:00
but most anything "standard"(/common) enough will often suffice for
many circumstances.
And, have your system time correct! ... or at least as reasonably
close as feasible.  If the time is significantly off, that can
cause issues too (in addition to trying to correlate logged events).
Typically NTP would be used for that.

> 2.  You want to test whether mail to MLs on linuxmafia.com works?
> Great!  The operative word is 'test', which ought to remind you that
> there's a 'test at linuxmafia.com' mailing list for exactly that purpose --
> as a place where anyone may send test mails to make sure they can reach
> linuxmafia.com and that Mailman on linuxmafia.com is working.  (Don't
> forget to _join_ test at linuxmafia.com before trying to post to it.
> Find it by starting at the front page of the linuxmafia.com Web site and
> looking for the mailing lists link.  It's right there.)

Yes, typically mailing list services will have (and generally recommend)
having a "test" list for such purposes - things should generally be
tested there, rather than the "main"/"production" list(s).
The BALUG Virtual Machine (VM), which hosts, among other things*,
BALUG's lists, also has a test list.  Fairly easy to see/find the
lists, and the test list ... BALUG list stuff uses domain
lists.balug.org
And if one points one's browser at, e.g.:
https://lists.balug.org/
One will find listing of the BALUG lists and their descriptions,
including among them:
List         Description
BALUG-Test   test on this list, not other BALUG lists
Also fairly easy to find via the bottom of each list's description page,
as there's a link there titled:
Overview of all lists.balug.org mailing lists

And, "of course", on reports of issues, generally best to include exact
diagnostics/information, e.g. what exactly was the error message or
diagnostic received.  Some vague approximation of what one thinks happened
and what one things it approximately said isn't nearly as useful.
And too, don't jump to conclusions or presume too much - stick with
evidence and facts.  If you want to offer an opinion too, fine, but
be sure to clearly state what is opinion/guess/hypothesis vs. facts
and evidence.  Much time and resource can be wasted when non-facts
are presented as if they're facts.

*and most all things SF-LUG except SF-LUG's list