Find out what users request…
One of the coolest features of grml IMO is grml-tips. grml-tips is a collection of tips you can request via a keyword. For example if you want to know how to use grml-x just run ‘grml-tips grml-x’:
mika@meilenschwein ~ % grml-tips grml-x Start X window system (XFree86 / Xorg / X.org): % grml-x $WINDOWMANAGER Usage examples: % grml-x fluxbox % grml-x -mode '1024x768' wmii % grml-x -nosync wm-ng -- mika@meilenschwein ~ %
So as soon as you invoke ‘grml-x $keyword’ and if the grml-tips collection includes something with $keyword inside you’ll get it. I use that on daily base because all the hard-to-remember command sequences or dangerous commands like mdadm, sfdisk,… are easy to use this way. :-)
But how about keywords not being availble in grml-tips collection yet? What about keywords other users request but don’t get a match? Thanks to formorer we have a submit feature within grml-tips since version 0.4.1:
% grml-tips nfs Sorry, could not find a tip for 'nfs'. :-( Do you want to submit the keyword 'nfs' to grml's keyword database? The grml team will write tips for the most requested and useful keywords. To use and contribute to this feature you'll need a working networking connection. No personal data will be transmitted to the database. Send "nfs" to grml's keyword database? [y|N] Keyword 'nfs' has been submitted to grml's keyword database. Thanks. %
Now being the maintainer of grml-tips I can check what users want to get through querying the sqlite database which stores the submitted keywords. Dear paranoid users: by default the keyword is not transfered to the database of course, you have to manually press ‘y’ to submit it. It’s not the default behaviour but an option. And there’s really no personal information stored inside the database, all I can query looks like the following:
$ID|nfs|grml 1.0-1 Release Codename Sonnenbrand [2007-07-13]|1184261151
Oh and thanks to Nico we also have our 24/7 support slave within the #grml channel:
19:37 < mika > grml-tips: grml-x 19:37 < grml-tips> matches: http://www.grml.org/tips/index.html#23
And if our support guy does not work as expected:
19:38 < mika > grml-tips: does-not-match 19:38 < grml-tips> Sorry, could not find a tip for 'does-not-match'. If you want to submit a tip please mail it to tips (at) grml.org - thank you!
… and once a week I get a cronjob-triggered mail sending me all the keywords without a match. Cool, ey? ;-) All what’s missing now is a bot that writes all the missing tips on its own. 8-)
Conclusion: make it easy for your users to submit information you might be interested in – to help your users.