HOWTO report a bug in ntop
==========================

Burton M. Strauss III <burton@ntopsupport.com>, June 2002

1. Use a meaningful subject along with a meaningful title 

"ntop problem" won't do. "ntop seg faults in xxxx.c at line xxxx" is great 


2. Make explicit WHICH version of ntop you are reporting this against. 
Where you got it, source or package, etc. 

"RC1, downloaded from ntop.org on 18May2002, built from source according to
BUILD-NTOP.txt." 

Also indicate if you have followed the procedure in BUILD-NTOP.txt to make 
a static linked version OR are using shared libraries installed with the OS. 


3. Give a detailed explanation of the problem 


4. Background information 

The EXACT command line you use to invoke ntop. If it's in a script, cut & paste 
it and resolve all the variables! 

Web interface problems: The exact URL you used from the browser. (If you are in 
the normal frameset, you may need to right click - open in a new window - to see 
the url). Otherwise, give the FULL navigation, e.g. Data Sent | Throughput, 
clicked on "Host" to sort) 

Error Messages: Cut & paste the exact text. If it's in the log, give us 15 or 
20 lines before. 

If the problem is a segmentation fault, include the backtrace (available with the 
gcc compiler if you specify the -K parameter). This is only a minimal trace and 
may not give us the information we need, but it's better than nothing. 

For repeatable seg faults, please see instructions on using gdb at 
http://snapshot.ntop.org and post the "info stack" and relevant variable "print" 
command outputs. 


4. Environment - please give the following information: 

OS & Version (e.g. Solaris 8/i386 or RedHat Linux 7.3 or whatever) 

CPU (type & quantity), Memory (e.g. 1 P3-800, 128MB) 

# network interfaces and types (vendor, bus, etc.), plus where they are on the 
network (e.g. two NetGear RT311s (PCI), one on the internal network, one connected 
to the cable modem). We're trying to see roughly where are the interface(s) you're 
monitoring and what their bandwidth is. 

How many machines (traffic sources/destinations) and users are being monitored. 
(e.g. 10 hosts - 2 are very busy ftp servers, the rest user workstations).

What else (other daemons) is/are running on the machine, load, etc. Again, we're 
interested if this is a very busy, memory constrained machine, or ntop has a dual 
Pentium 1000, with 1GB of ram to monitor a 56k dialup... 


Remember, more information is always better than too little. 
 
