Could anybody leed me to a noob-proof tuto for reporting bugs?

[Mr. Jingles]

:(

( ;D )

1. Be the eternal noob: create an alias, URL table, point to a .tgz (Iblocklist).
2. The table doesn't get populated, isn't even created at all.
3. 'Never mind, WIFE shouts 'dinner is ready, come now, ugly old man!' (WIFE  :- ;D ).
4. Return 2 hours later: dual WAN down.
5. Forgot about that alias all together. At the same time have setup a FreeNAS test box in my network. Read about FreeNAS conflicting with pfSense yesterday (fellow-noob's thing, IP-conflict), so was looking in that direction for something else than an IP-conflict (I have none in my networks, that part of being noob I have passed  :P ).
6. WIFE ( :-* ;D ) notices, gets angry, mobilizes the Rottweilers, threatens to stop feeding me if I don't fix internets things (WIFE  :P ).
7. Bright moment: recalled the Iblocklist-alias. Deleted it: second later: internet again.

This smells like a bug to me. I don't know how and where to report this in a structured way, and what information/logs/stuff to provide for the developers to make their life more comfortable.

Could anybody perhaps give me a hint as to how to proceed reporting the bug in a way that the developers won't hate me for trolling?

Thank you  ;D

[cmb]

General guidance here:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Bug_reporting

The main thing is understanding the diff between a support request and a bug report. A bug has specific, replicable steps where you can show the incorrect end result. "I added an alias and my Internet broke" is a support request - maybe the root cause is a bug (almost always not), but that's not an acceptable bug report. Something along the lines of "Adding a URL table alias to an invalid URL breaks ruleset reloading with log <…insert log here...>" is a bug.

Sounds like what you did there is point it to an invalid list (no tgz in URL tables) which probably blew up ruleset reloading. Pretty sure there's a bug report out there for that already if it's what I think it is. What'd you end up with in your system log?

[Mr. Jingles]

@cmb:

General guidance here:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Bug_reporting

The main thing is understanding the diff between a support request and a bug report. A bug has specific, replicable steps where you can show the incorrect end result. "I added an alias and my Internet broke" is a support request - maybe the root cause is a bug (almost always not), but that's not an acceptable bug report. Something along the lines of "Adding a URL table alias to an invalid URL breaks ruleset reloading with log <…insert log here...>" is a bug.

Sounds like what you did there is point it to an invalid list (no tgz in URL tables) which probably blew up ruleset reloading. Pretty sure there's a bug report out there for that already if it's what I think it is. What'd you end up with in your system log?

Thank you sir CMB  ;D

Green: I think you are are right thinking what you think it is ( ;D )

Orange: which log should I try to scramble together? I take it not a GUI-log but a CLI-log? Could I persuade you to tell me which grep on what log I need to do? Thank you  :P

Red: Nothing noticeable at all –- in the GUI log, I don't know where else to look for informative information :-[

However, I did notice: all the descriptions for the firewall-log blocks were gone too (click on the red cross in the log, normally it will show you some sort of rule description - now it showed a blank box).

[BBcan177]

@Hollander:

1. Be the eternal noob: create an alias, URL table, point to a *.tgz (Iblocklist).

IBlock lists are in a GZ - IP Range Format. This is not compatible in Alias/URL Tables by itself.

It has to be converted to CIDR and into a txt file format to be able to be used in the Alias/URL Table setting. That is where pfBlocker or my upcoming pfBlockerNG package can facilitate.

A Bad or empty Alias Table can crash pf …