Difference between revisions of "SME Server:Documentation:Technical Manual:Chapter2"

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m (New page: ==Chapter 2. How you can help== ===Documentation=== Documentation for SME Server was inherited from the prior distribution maintainers, e-smith and mitel. Their work gave SME a great base...)
 
 
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==Chapter 2. How you can help==
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{{ :SME_Server:Volunteering }}
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===Documentation===
 
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Documentation for SME Server was inherited from the prior distribution maintainers, e-smith and mitel.
 
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Their work gave SME a great base to work from.
 
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The current developers have continued to improve the SME Server software and to reflect these improvements the Documentation has to develop too. These wiki-based manuals have been put in place to allow anyone to update or add new sections where they see fit.
 
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===Bug and New Feature Verification===
 
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Please help us to make our software as reliable as possible. Your role in that is to report possible bugs only via the bug tracker, and to encourage others to do the same. Thanks.
 
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[[http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/tip/html/bugreports.html#fillingbugs Reporting a New Bug]]
 
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If you have searched the Manual and Bug Tracker and not found an answer or someone else's report that matches yours, you should register on the Bug Tracker and enter a new bug. The debugging process of any issue requires active participation on the part of the reporter, providing further information and clarification of the problem.
 
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* So how do I know it is a bug?
 
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You don't need to. If there's any chance that it is a bug, please report to the bug tracker. It doesn't matter whether anyone else has seen it. It doesn't matter whether anyone else has a theory as to what is happening. You have noticed something that doesn't seem to work right, so just report it. Please.
 
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To enter a bug choose a category, component, fill in the details of the bug, and commit.
 
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Please use a descriptive Summary, as most of the header searches just show the Summary
 
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* 'panel errors' is not helpful, what panel, what errors ?
 
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* 'Add option to limit mailman web access ' explains the topic very well
 
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Anyone reporting problems, ask yourself these important questions, so that you
 
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know what to tell the developers in the bug report:
 
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# What version am I using and are there any contribs installed or other customisations?
 
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# What did I do?
 
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# What did I expect to happen?
 
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# What happened?
 
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# What do the logs say?
 
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[[http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/tip/html/lifecycle.html Lifecycle of a Bug]]
 
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If you find a bug you can work on, eg updating information on the wiki, do so.
 
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There are likely to be a lot of these as they were generated before the wiki was in place.
 
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In this example of adding documentation, after you have updated the wiki, return to the bug
 
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post brief details of the fix, and how to verify it, eg 'updated wiki re: passwords' and give the URL
 
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then change the Status to 'Resolved - Fixed'.
 
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Someone else can then review your changes and change the Status from 'Resolved - Fixed' to Verified and the bug is finished.
 
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Bug Tracker Administrators Close bugs in SME Current or SME Future, but the reporter or maintainer can close in other sections.
 
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===Programming===
 
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FIXME
 
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See the Developers manual
 
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===Maintaining existing Languages===
 
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Changes to Existing Language sets are posted to the Translations section of the Bug Tracker.
 
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Making a patch to keep your language updated isn't difficult, follow these steps
 
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Obtain an original file that you are going to modify, it will usually be a translation of a panel, eg.
 
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/etc/e-smith/locale/en-us/etc/e-smith/web/functions/hostentries or
 
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/etc/e-smith/locale/fr/etc/e-smith/web/functions/hostentries
 
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if a patch from the Bug Tracker is available it will guide you on what has changed
 
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[[http://bugs.contribs.org/attachment.cgi?id=751]]
 
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make a directory and copy your file there as name.old
 
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make a copy name.new and edit it to suit
 
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from the command line create a patch
 
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diff -u name.old name.new > name.patch
 
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add this to the existing bug or create a new one in Translations
 
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===Donations & Funding Work===
 
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Help smeserver.org pay it's bills
 
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http://www.smeserver.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=34
 
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Pay a developer to add a feature you would like
 
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Email a developer directly with your request or open a bug with your proposal
 

Latest revision as of 00:04, 9 March 2009

Geographylogo.png Languages: 

English  • Deutsch


The Koozali SME Server project

The Koozali Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit corporation that governs the open source Koozali SME Server project. Koozali SME Server is a stable, secure and easy to use/manage linux server that provides common server functionalities out of the box. Many open source contributions are available that can extend the default server functionality making Koozali SME Server an even more powerful and flexible business server solution. Thousands of Koozali SME Severs have been deployed as real or virtual servers and in the cloud to serve many small to medium enterprises, and this number is growing day by day. The Koozali SME Server is free to use but it takes a lot of effort and money to develop, make, and maintain. We therefore ask you for your considerations.

Volunteering

Koozali Foundation Inc. together with its community hosted at https://contribs.org is a collaborative effort of volunteers. You too can contribute to the development and continuity of the Koozali SME Server project as described on our volunteering page. Everybody is welcome to join the already 4000+ member contribs.org community and can contribute with any skill set.

Financial donations

You can also show your support by making financial donations. The preferred way to make financial donations is using the donate option in the forums. You are free to choose any amount and frequency, being monthly, yearly or only once. The benefit of donating through your forums account is that your forum user name will receive a badge, showing your donation status. If you do not have a forum account, you can create one, or select the below PayPal option to make your donations.

Commercial usage

Organizations that use Koozali SME Server for their business, provide professional services related to SME Server or in any other way benefit commercially from the Koozali SME Server project, are kindly requested to consider regular financial donations that reflect their business benefits.

Koozali Foundation Inc. is happy to supply an invoice for any donations received. For more information on invoicing please send a mail to treasurer@koozali.org.

Thank you for your considerations and support!

Skills

Any skills are useful for the SME Server project.

If you are a developer of any kind, we will find something for you to do. Even if you think that you have no Linux skills you can still help. You can tell us if and how you understand the wiki pages, or more precisely, we would like to know what pages you don't understand. Thanks to the insights of new users we can continuously enhance readability of the wiki. Please add remarks to the discussion tabs of the page you are concerned with.

If, on top of that, you can write, you are invaluable. We need a lot of articles. There are thousands of Linux programs around, and more are released every day. In addition, new versions of existing applications are released. There is a need for a lot of hands to write about them and to keep reviews current.

Documentation

Documentation for SME Server was inherited from the prior distribution maintainers, e-smith and mitel. Their work gave SME a great base to work from.

The current developers have continued to improve the SME Server software and to reflect these improvements the Documentation has to develop too. These wiki-based manuals have been put in place to allow anyone to update or add new sections where they see fit.

The core manuals have been protected for stability, but anyone can request access to add and update howto and contrib pages to the wiki. If you've got instructions, solutions to common problems, neat tips and tricks, or just a good way to explain something, we'd love to hear from you. You may want to join our Document mailing lists to discuss your plans and coordinate with other Docteam members.

Wiki Team

This page is built with MediaWiki. The concept of a Wiki is that anybody may add and modify content. On Help:Contents, find a quick tutorial if you're unfamiliar with wikis.

As long as you edit anything on the wiki you are de facto member of the Wiki Team.

To make edits, you need to log in to the wiki. In order to do this, you will need to open an account. The information that SME Server requires for opening an account is very limited and easy to do and can be found here.

After you log in, you will see a toolbar at the top of the page that is always available. There is a link in the toolbar that is labeled with your username. This takes you to your "personal page". Use this page to introduce yourself and don't be shy. Write a word or two about your interests, especially those related to SME Server and Linux. If nothing else, tell us how you learned about SME Server.

Bug and New Feature Verification

You can help improve SME Server by finding and reporting bugs. This helps us to make our software as reliable as possible.

Our bug tracking system, Bugzilla, is used for all SME Server Linux products. If you have never written a bug report, please refer to Bugzilla Help to learn what kinds of information make the report most useful. Your role in that is to report possible bugs only via the bug tracker, and to encourage others to do the same. Refer again to SME_Server:Documentation:QA:Verification for helping with bug fixing and verification, the best way to learn is to fix other peoples' problems.

Information.png Tip:
For an easier way to see new bug or new activity you can look at Bugzilla_Reports

Troubleshooter : There's a lot that non-coders can do to help in the bug tracker to improve bug report quality. We need help in making sure that bug reports are clear, that observations are fully collected, are separated from speculation and attempted workarounds, relevant log files are checked....


Programming

The most obvious way, for programmers, to participate in the development of SME Server is to post a patch as a suggested solution to an existing bug in Bugzilla. Each package has a maintainer, who will contact you to discuss your proposed solution. You may want to join our development mailing lists before you start coding in order to discuss your plans and coordinate with other developers. WIP: Coming on-board


For more information about getting source code and building your own packages, read the SME Server:Documentation:Developers Manual.

Information.png Tip:
If you would like to help or to learn about SME Server 9 you should look at SME_Server_9.0_Development or the Category:SME9-Development

An overview of available roles is visible on SME_Server_Development_Framework


Mailing Lists

The communication among different teams go through a software called Mailman for which you choose the relevant list that interest you. All messages will be received in your email box, you will only respond to the email address of the mailling (ie devinfo@contribs.org for example) that your mail is sent to all registered users on the list . you can choose your Mailing Lists

Languages

A new system translation interface has been installed to facilitate translations of SME Server core packages as well as SME Server contribs, for more information have a look at the Translations page. The translation framework is located at http://translate.contribs.org. You may want to join our Translation mailing lists before you start your work and coordinate with other people.

Contribute

There is an active community in the forum that help all levels of SME Server users. Please have a look at the forum for an overview at http://forums.contribs.org

Suggestions

Visit the New Feature Request (NFR) page in the bug tracker and add your suggestion.

Only software with an OSI-compliant open-source license will be added to the SME Server project.

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