Editorial: The value of a good error message.

By Brian Boyko
Until recently, I underestimated the value of a good error message.
Recently, I wrote two articles for HardOCP detailing my experiences with Ubuntu Linux and with Windows Vista. Both have flaws and high points, and I’m not going to get into playing the “which OS is better” game.
But there is one area, however, which I do want to compare, because it caused me professional consternation and it is one that is usually overlooked.
Error messages.
(Continued…)

In particular, I had problems with Vista spontaneously rebooting. I didn’t know what caused the problem and really had no way to diagnose it – because these reboots didn’t come with an error message. Someone pointed out to me that in Vista, the “blue screen of death” which is used for Windows XP has been removed and the system just goes into a reboot without prompting. This is good for the novice user who doesn’t know and likely wouldn’t know what the information in a BSOD actually is – but considering that I was trying to find out about this OS, this seemingly random behavior had me baffled. I didn’t think that it was a “blue screen” error until someone told me about this default behavior.
So when people who are using Vista on their own machines call the OS “incredibly stable” and even my former supervising editor Chris Morley – who now works at Velocity Micro as the guy who makes sure their OEM offerings work well and are stable – emails me and says that the problem was not with Vista per se, but somehow a problem on my end, my ears perk up.
It’s true, I spent more time diagnosing problems on the Linux machine than on the Vista machine. But that’s because Linux gave me detailed error messages. Sure, these messages would scare many computer novices, (“printer on fire,” anyone?) – but they gave me the information I needed to diagnose and fix the problems I had – quickly. Furthermore, it is the data in these error messages that prompted Matt Zimmerman, chairman of the Ubuntu Technical Board to state: “[you] described them [problems] in sufficient technical detail that I (and thus the Ubuntu development team) can identify the causes.”
On the other hand, the actual cause of my Vista errors were mysterious because I didn’t have any data. The most likely culprit is a “bad driver” but some are saying it was caused by a bad audio driver, others by saying it was a bad video driver. There are also other theories out there, including that it was caused by Firefox or OpenOffice.
The point I’m trying to make is that you need specific, detailed information to really get to the root cause of problems – otherwise you’re just guessing.
That’s what NetQoS does – we provide the tools to give network engineers the detailed information they need to make informed choices about their network. Otherwise you’re guessing where the problem is – is it the network, the server, the application, or even the user?
Truth be told, if my printer ever did actually catch on fire, I’m pretty sure I could diagnose it by smelling the smoke – but for everything else, detailed error messages are an under-appreciated tool of the tech.