[NOT Solved but Better] Zentyal have Vary Bad Public support!

[JPB]

I have used a lot of Open-Source Applications and have had many Comunity driven Support from them one good sample is ISPConfig Control Pannel.

Zentyl Absolutel stand last in the line, I see daily pleny people asking for support as Zentyal is still full of BUGS and We get no support absolutely nothing!

DONT tell me you have Open Source and then Only support people Paying for Professional support, then you will probably miss the boat totally!

Ubuntu themself at least answer some questions fairly quick, but appart from that the only inter-action I seen so far from Zentyal is little entries to try and get people to define their problems better.

Well my problem is that We need a little more support - especially because the Comunity Documentation is non-existing!

Please supply us with at least one forum guy that can go bug the internal team for some answers and the comunity will help you grow more popular!

[Laurent Dinclaux]

Hello,

I must admit this is true. Searching the forums I find a lot of the problems I encounter but this threads do not provide real solutions from Zentyal team.

I also find that Zentyal is full of bugs. It is not stable and should have stayed in beta much longer. Saying it is stable is like lying to us and is source of trouble.  I prefer to use a stable quality beta than a beta quality stable product.

So my final note is that I will continue using it for my own office, only because it is the only product of its type based on Ubuntu. But I am truly scared to install it for my customers, whereas I planned it along with buying yearly support for them. How could I do it when some blocking bugs do not get true answers like, status update, fix schedule and so.

You have done great work, guys, thanks. But there is definitely something to do with technical support and blocking bugs fixing.

Best regards

[andres]

I Agree, I've made about 5 questions in the last montt, all ofh them has been never replied.
The basic suscription doesn't work either, the subscription is forever in "pending" state...

[Sam Graf]

At the same time, in the case of community support some time has to be granted to those of us who are migrating from earlier versions, learning the new system, etc. It seems a bit unfair to expect an immediate response to deployment of a new release from a relatively small community still learning.

In my case, I have had time to migrate only one 2.0 server into production for real-world testing. I'm still running 1.4 everywhere else. I'm simply not confident enough in my knowledge of 2.0 to help people much.

And please keep in mind especially that at least some percentage of Zentyal users are not command-line admins. We may use Zentyal because we aren't skilled Ubuntu Server admins. Some of the questions asked/criticisms given are beyond our skills.

For what it's worth ...

[jysse]

Well, I think that this community and especially developers are doing fine. Answers are mostly polite and informative. Of course, before any good answer, you need to know details about the system installed.
Atmosphere is open and if somebody finds a bug it is admitted and corrected in a reasonable time.

I've been using Sme Server for years. Good product but take a look questions/answers in forums and you know what I'm talking about. It is a tedious place for a part time Linux administrator.


Jysse

[JPB]

My Point is that If Zentyal Only support paying customers their distribution will be limited to only a small protion of the community, it is the non paying trail testers that eventually generate the sales! Keep them happy.

Also If they then try and get marketing byreleasing an Open version with no support it only damage their products with incredible impact.  It is the responsibility of the Maintainer of Opensource to support its users - or it will go down the drain in long term.

[JPB]

Well, I think that this community and especially developers are doing fine. Answers are mostly polite and informative. Of course, before any good answer, you need to know details about the system installed.
Atmosphere is open and if somebody finds a bug it is admitted and corrected in a reasonable time.

I've been using Sme Server for years. Good product but take a look questions/answers in forums and you know what I'm talking about. It is a tedious place for a part time Linux administrator.


Jysse

All of the products have individual support sites like slapd, postgress, samba etc. and yes answers does exist - What I speak about is not "External Fixes", but rather BUGS found inside Zentyal, I have jotted down 3 confirmed bugs I found in 2 Hours in another posting, and I have about 5 more to post, the point is there is Absolutely NO zentyal activity in support.

For instance samba smb.conf file seems to get generated by data in postgres tables, but even if we ask we cant get the password for the postgress table to fix the broken data. (remember if i mess in there and break things i can't complain) however i now have deleted shares and zentyal did not cler the sql data properly as a result that I have some funny "shares" that I cant get rid off

[/data/company] << this is wrong It was supposed to be
[company]
 path = /data/company

there is NO way that the Dashboard can show that info so I can use Zentyal to delete it.  It has to be done using an SQL statement and the bug must then be reported.

For this and plain common decency Zentyal should have at least one go-between person to support us even if he initially need to speek to developers to get the answers.

[javi]

I have jotted down 3 confirmed bugs I found in 2 Hours in another posting, and I have about 5 more to post, the point is there is Absolutely NO zentyal activity in support.

Report bugs in http://trac.zentyal.org

And please, document in an accurate way the  steps that developers have to take to reproduce the issue. If it's easily reproducible and is actually a bug chances are that it will be fixed soon.

I'm certain that the development team is working hard to fix all the bugs that you guys report. I would kindly ask you to be patient and most of  all, to provide them with accurate bug reports.

[tuxmania]

Zentyal needs more community people hacking away at it, thats all. If you want to only be a user demanding quick support its better to pay someone for their time and effort. You dont have people fixing your house, tuning your car or taking your dog for a walk for free right?

If you on the other hand want to give and take alike, write good replicatable bug reports. There is nothing in this world thats more depressing than not being able to replicate a bug. If you got the time, try finding the bugs in the code and post the fixes.

That way, if enough people do this the work is spread out on many people that its enough if you do this once and again instead of the Zentyal developers spending half their time triaging bugs instead of implementing new functions.

Mind you this is just me, not Zentyal talking. What their position is i dont know at all.

[JPB]

Zentyal needs more community people hacking away at it, thats all. If you want to only be a user demanding quick support its better to pay someone for their time and effort. You dont have people fixing your house, tuning your car or taking your dog for a walk for free right?

If you on the other hand want to give and take alike, write good replicatable bug reports. There is nothing in this world thats more depressing than not being able to replicate a bug. If you got the time, try finding the bugs in the code and post the fixes.

That way, if enough people do this the work is spread out on many people that its enough if you do this once and again instead of the Zentyal developers spending half their time triaging bugs instead of implementing new functions.

Mind you this is just me, not Zentyal talking. What their position is i dont know at all.

You miss the point, I do both of what you suggest at least 20 postings about Zentyal 2.0 some solved and solution posted, some no support whatsoever.  The problom is in crucial cases where I cannot continue to help myself and others cant help either is for example the posgress datatables password to fix "At own risk" some malformed data caused by zentyal BUG. like debris left over from an File Share that was deleted messing up the /etc/samba/smb.conf file - it is crucial to solve and fix my data else i need to re-install

Also if I now install any other application that need postgress - I'd need that password!

The issue in this posting is that Zentyal need to respond when its obvious that community can't like this issue with the passwords.

[javi]

The issue in this posting is that Zentyal need to respond when its obvious that community can't like this issue with the passwords.

The actual issues are:

 

• eBox doesn't connect to postgres using a user/password. The auth is based on the user connecting through a Unix socket. Or at least, that's how it worked in 1.4
• The configuration is not stored in postgres. It is stored in redis. So a postgres password would be usless

[JPB]

The issue in this posting is that Zentyal need to respond when its obvious that community can't like this issue with the passwords.

The actual issues are:

 

• eBox doesn't connect to postgres using a user/password. The auth is based on the user connecting through a Unix socket. Or at least, that's how it worked in 1.4
• The configuration is not stored in postgres. It is stored in redis. So a postgres password would be usless

I think it's safe to say that Zentyal Stepped up to the plate and so far this morning I have had several issues addressed by Zentyal personel - Good job please keep an eye out for them issues !
javi and J. A. Calvo responded, Thank you very Much 

[mburillo]

I Agree, I've made about 5 questions in the last montt, all ofh them has been never replied.
The basic suscription doesn't work either, the subscription is forever in "pending" state...

We receive an automatic notification each time a person registers a basic subscriptions. If the data doesn't seem plausible to us, we may not approve the account. Apologies if your data was correct and we didn't approve it, anyway we always send an email with a contact email to complain if there is any problem with your subscription. Resubmit your data or mail me at mburillo at zentyal dot com, and I will solve your issue.

[Svein Wisnaes]

I Agree, I've made about 5 questions in the last montt, all ofh them has been never replied.
The basic suscription doesn't work either, the subscription is forever in "pending" state...

Andrés,

Yes, you have made some requests since you signed on here. Only two of them are in English, and one of them is a question about something totally different than Zentyal. I am Norwegian, I speak English and a bit of Portuguese, but unfortunately no Spanish.

The other question is about different name for domain and workgroup in the same samba setup. In the Zentyal interface, there is only one field for it. If it can be done hacking config files, it will most likely be overwritten on an update. But as I do not know if it is even technically possible, I could not say for sure.

And this is most likely the reason why nobody has answered you. Simply because they do not have time or they do not know. This is a community forum where the community helps each other. The fact that several developers spend time here in the forum is a big plus, but they are not obligated to do so. We are using a product they have spent time and money making, and we can get it for free. If you or anyone else do not have time to wait for the community to solve the problem, then it must be a critical installation. And then there is money to pay for priority support.

Regarding your Windows 2003 Server: Is it possible on that server to have both a domain and a workgroup on the same server with different names?

Another reason why you might not see too much developer activity right now is that they might be on holidy. They have worked day and night the last months to get v. 2.0 out and I really think they deserve a break now :-)

To all others that have bugs to report:

Please add all you bugs here: http://trac.zentyal.org/newticket

BUT REMEMBER TO SEARCH FIRST!

Also - be sure to add all information. Take a look at the link in my signature - the same info goes for bugreports. And some more if you are able!

The forum is not for reporting bugs. As soon as you think it really is a bug, and not just a configuration problem or a user problem, it is time to add it to the bug tracker or, if it already exists, add your experience to the right ticket.