Software problems that are reported to
Micro Focus generally fall into two types:
- Reproducible problems
The standard process is to detail the reproduction scenario, and to provide whatever is necessary to allow
Micro Focus to reproduce the problem quickly and easily.
- Complex problems
These are infrequent problems in production systems, or problems based on random timing and factors. Resolution often requires low level analysis, review of logs and traces, and possible multiple iterations.
The following information is good practice, and specifically relates to reporting complex problems, and what you can do to help
Micro Focus to give you a quick response.
- Please report only one problem for each incident.
- If a solution or workaround has been provided, and you encounter a further problem, then open a new incident with new details.
This allows us to assign the appropriate engineer to each unique issue, and allows for several engineers to progress the issues simultaneously.
All high quality incidents will have:
- An accurate short description, including details as specific as possible. For example, error message numbers.
- A long description, with complete details, to provide context, such as chronology, symptoms, configuration, workload levels, what else was happening in the environment at the time, and any third-party software involved.
- All relevant first point-of-failure diagnostics attached to the initial incident report. Failure diagnostics are critical to help understanding; please always provide them when available.
We recommend your set of diagnostics:
- Include complete diagnostics – including traces, dumps, console log and other relevant logs.
- Be chronologically synchronous – all the logs must be from the same failure time, to give the full picture, and to allow us to match the process numbers and relevant details.
- Be specific – to allow us to identify the exact failure, the date/time of the failure, the symptoms demonstrated, if recovery was achieved, or if manual intervention was required.
- Attach the diagnostics to the Support incident; for large files then contact your
Micro Focus Support engineer for details of how to upload to the
Micro Focus ftp site.
The
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Guide provides detailed information on diagnostics, and highlights a script available from
Micro Focus Support,
MFESDIAGS, that will pull together the various diagnostics that we need. In addition, you should always add your own observations and knowledge. These additional observations help us to analyze the large volume of data more quickly.
If you believe you have a recurring problem on your system:
- Always capture a new set of diagnostics – multiple sets may help us to see ‘patterns’.
- Update the existing incident on which the problem was originally reported.
- Add comments to the incident detailing the date/time of the new failure, why you think it is a recurrence, and as much other context on this new failure as possible, including the similarity with previous failures.
- Supply the diagnostics to
Micro Focus using the naming convention for the diagnostics collections and other files. Note that this naming convention is particularly important when multiple failure collections are taken for the same incident and problem; please refer to the
Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Guide on the
Micro Focus Support site.
