6.17 How to ask DJGPP gurus for help

Q: I've read this monstrously-large FAQ, searched the news group archives, but didn't find anything helpful. I am totally lost. Help!!!

Q: I don't have time to download all these messages, not to mention looking through them. Can't you DJGPP gurus help me? Please??

A: DJGPP News group is famous for its outstanding user support. To get a fast and effective solution to your problem, you will have to supply the relevant info about your system, and describe exactly how things went wrong for you. To gather this info, do the following:

• At the DOS command prompt, type set > environ.txt, then press <Enter>.
• Invoke the go32-v2 program (it's in your bin/ subdirectory) and save its output.
• Post to the comp.os.msdos.djgpp news group or send electronic mail to the DJGPP mailing list and put into your message the description of your calamity, the contents of the file ENVIRON.TXT, the output of go32-v2, the contents of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, and what GCC printed during compilation with the -v switch (if your problem is that GCC won't work).
• If your problem involves a program that crashes and prints a stack dump, please post that stack dump in its entirety; do not omit any details from the crash dump. It's best to run symify on the stack dump, and post the output of symify:

    symify -o dumpfile yourprog
  

  (See detailed description of symify, for more details.

• Allow for 2-3 days (more on weekends) for all the reply messages to come in, then act according to what they recommend.

Be warned that you might get several dozen messages in reply to your request; this is not meant to overflow your mailbox or sabotage your relationship with your system manager, it's just the usual friendly response of fellow DJGPP'ers to your lonely cry for help. Some of the replies might suggest what you already checked and reported in your original message, or even miss the point altogether. Be ready for this and don't flame us for trying to help you as much as we can.