Merge pull request #634 from anaqreon/dev

I'm going to go ahead and merge this. It should be easy to revert undesired changes.

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/admin/administrator_guide.md b/doc/admin/administrator_guide.md
index b7056e7e3..f21c55327 100644
--- a/doc/admin/administrator_guide.md
+++ b/doc/admin/administrator_guide.md
@@ -308,8 +308,16 @@ empty:
 1. On the $Projectname server visit new.hub/locs and upgrade to your channel to a primary one. And when the old Redmatrix server is still listed delete them here as well. Press "Sync" to inform all other server in the grid.
 
 ### Troubleshooting
+
 #### Log files
 
+The system logfile is an extremely useful resource for tracking down things that go wrong. This can be enabled in the admin/log configuration page. A loglevel setting of LOGGER_DEBUG is preferred for stable production sites. Most things that go wrong with communications or storage are listed here. A setting of LOGGER_DATA provides [b]much[/b] more detail, but may fill your disk. In either case we recommend the use of logrotate on your operating system to cycle logs and discard older entries. 
+
+At the bottom of your .htconfig.php file are several lines (commented out) which enable PHP error logging. This reports issues with code syntax and executing the code and is the first place you should look for issues which result in a "white screen" or blank page. This is typically the result of code/syntax problems. 
+Database errors are reported to the system logfile, but we've found it useful to have a file in your top-level directory called dbfail.out which [b]only[/b] collects database related issues. If the file exists and is writable, database errors will be logged to it as well as to the system logfile.
+
+In the case of "500" errors, the issues may often be logged in your webserver logs, often /var/log/apache2/error.log or something similar. Consult your operating system documentation. 
+
 There are three different log facilities.
 
 **The first is the database failure log**. This is only used if you create a file called specifically 'dbfail.out' in the root folder of your website and make it write-able by the web server. If we have any database failed queries, they are all reported here. They generally indicate typos in our queries, but also occur if the database server disconnects or tables get corrupted. On rare occasions we'll see race conditions in here where two processes tried to create an xchan or cache entry with the same ID. Any other errors (especially persistent errors) should be investigated.
@@ -343,3 +351,14 @@ To immediately clear out all the extra logging stuff you added.  Use the informa
 1. Enable the **logrot** addon in the official [hubzilla-addons](https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla-addons) repo
 1. Create a directory in your web root called `log` with webserver write permissions
 1. Go to the **logrot** admin settings and enter this folder name as well as the max size and number of retained log files.
+
+
+#### Reporting issues
+
+When reporting issues, please try to provide as much detail as may be necessary for developers to reproduce the issue and provide the complete text of all error messages.
+
+We encourage you to try to the best of your abilities to use these logs combined with the source code in your possession to troubleshoot issues and find their cause. The community is often able to help, but only you have access to your site logfiles and it is considered a security risk to share them.   
+
+If a code issue has been uncovered, please report it on the project bugtracker (https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla/issues). Again provide as much detail as possible to avoid us going back and forth asking questions about your configuration or how to duplicate the problem, so that we can get right to the problem and figure out what to do about it. You are also welcome to offer your own solutions and submit patches. In fact we encourage this as we are all volunteers and have little spare time available. The more people that help, the easier the workload for everybody. It's OK if your solution isn't perfect. Every little bit helps and perhaps we can improve on it. 
+
+