Issue closed as "Support" - Why?

I submitted a bug report yesterday and it was Closed with a Resolution of “Support”. But, I cannot understand why.

According to Ticket Reporting Guidelines:

Things that should generally be reported as bugs:

  • Unhandled exceptions such as “Whoops Errors” including what you did to make it happen.

Since the action (hitting Submit) produced an Exception, I thought that would classify as a bug, even though it didn’t contain the word “Whoops”.

Further, on the resulting Exception page that was displayed, it has a clickable link worded:

Click Here Report this to the PBX bug tracker

The only idea for a “Support” Resolution was that Calendar is a Commercial module, which I understand will be rejected as such. But, I checked Module Admin and Calendar is not listed as a Commercial module. Is it a Commercial module and I misassessed it?

I’m always looking to improve my understanding and not waste people’s time, so, I’d love to know what I missed in improperly submitting this situation as an issue when it is a Support item.

Perhaps the clickable link should be removed from the Exception page to prevent Support issues from being so easily submitted.

I am thrilled with the response time, though. Same day! That was awesome! Thanks so much for that.

Miles

Because what you reported was not a bug but an error with your MySQL.

PDOException thrown with message “SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away”

That’s not a bug that’s an error that MySQL throws when the server/connection has timed out or closed when talking to MySQL. So this is more a support issue because the question is why is MySQL timing out on you.

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Ahh, ok, I get that.

But, then, isn’t the “Click Here Report this to the PBX bug tracker” message inappropriately displayed if it is NOT a bug?

It at least causes confusion…

  • Do something
  • A something went wrong page appears with a suggestion to report a bug
  • Report said bug
  • Be told it is not a bug

Hi @many_miles

You are losing sight of the forest by just focusing on the trees. Your system has an issue with the mysql/maria service, and you are preoccupied with what it should be named.

As has been discussed here many times before, the issue tracker is intended to receive reports of issues so they can be fixed. In some cases, the issue reporter can’t describe the issue in sufficient detail for the devs to identify the problem, so the reporter is expected to follow up with one of the other resources in the reply. History has proven repeatedly that the issue tracker is a highly inefficient forum to attempt to debug issues.

As for why the error message offers the ‘click here to report’ button, this is merely a convenience for the reporter. In some cases when the Whoops! error screen comes up, there is sufficient information displayed to immediately diagnose the problem, in which case that’s all that is necessary to form the report. In other cases the Whoops error output forms a good start, so the reporter will be asked for followup info. In some cases there is so little to go on, the issue is closed as support and the reporter is advised to seek assistance elsewhere. Each is taken on a case by case basis.

What you don’t do is to take the support reply as some sort of judgement or personal criticism. The reply only tells you that the devs reviewing the ticket do not see anything in the report that is immediately actionable, and advises of alternatives to proceed.

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I wouldn’t say I’m missing the forest for the trees. I know that forest is the DB server. I am asking about the trees themselves. I wouldn’t characterize it as a preoccupation, though. Merely a quest for knowledge for more efficiently navigating this and future forests in general. From my perception, the trees had confusing signs nailed to them. I am wanting to improve my perception.

Which your response has graciously accomplished.

So, it sounds like the guidelines given to report whoopses are appropriate because many but not all whoopses are reportable bugs. In some cases, the whoopses are not actually bugs that are actionable by the developers. Rather, they are just appropriate responses to other unusual conditions. Such reports are then closed as Support.

Again, many thanks to the Lewis’ and Clarks’ out there for helping us effectively hike through the forest.

2 Likes

Fair enough. I missed the tone of your original post and assumed it was more in the way of complaint than a quest for knowledge. That’s on me, mea culpa.