[OpenSIPS-Users] How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

[Brett Nemeroff]

There is no question that OpenSIPs is a complicated project and that the
beginner level docs are mediocre. However, that's mainly because the
documentation is written such that it *assumes* that the reader has a decent
knowledge of RFC3261.
I think if you really know your SIP.. and you download the source, compile
and review the default configs (installed by default), it should make a good
amount of sense. Beginner questions at that point should start at "How do I
do string manipulation", "What do I use to rewrite private IPs in my SDP"
and such, which can *easily* be answered by the module docs.

Point is. If you don't know SIP, you're diving into the deep end and you'll
end up learning SIP the hard way. By learning OpenSIPs first and you'll
probably make a lot of mistakes along the way.

For me, the confusion is usually something like, "I want to rewrite private
IPs so nat traversal works properly" and then I have to figure out, which
route blocks I need to perform fixup operations in and on which message
types. But once again, much of that relates more  to RFC compliance. Once
you understand how it's supposed to work, then you simply look in the module
docs (which, btw, are for the most part fantastic) and you just do what you
need.

The rest of the complication comes from "Architecture" related questions.
And these are the kinds of things where I don't think anyone in here wants
to build it for you, but the community would probably give you opinions on
specific questions. Things like "how do I use one LCR table for user X and a
different one for user Y". Well, look at the tools, there's lots of ways to
do that!

What isn't documented well, and I think a lot of beginners pick up on is
"how to make a RFC compliant SIP Proxy". Which frankly is totally outside of
the scope of the project; but admittedly so, would help a lot of people get
started using OpenSIPs.

-Brett


On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Bradley, Todd <todd.bradley at polycom.com>wrote:

> Who let in the troll?  Anonymous coward!
>
> One thing I will say, though, as someone who has tried to learn enough
> OpenSIPS to use it and then posted to the email list for help: It is more
> difficult to ask intelligent questions about OpenSIPS than many open source
> tools out there, just because it's so difficult to get started.  The
> introductory-level documentation is weaker than average.  Even the
> "cookbooks" are written such that they only make sense if you're already an
> experienced administrator of the software.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Todd.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: users-bounces at lists.opensips.org [mailto:
> users-bounces at lists.opensips.org] On Behalf Of lists at grounded.net
> Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 5:34 AM
> To: users
> Subject: Re: [OpenSIPS-Users] How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
>
> Bunch of self important blowhards, this is the only mailing list that acts
> this way!
>
> On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:48:05 -0400 (EDT), Alex Balashov wrote:
> >
> >
> > Thank you for posting this.  It is something that very, very often needs
> > to be said and bears repeating.
> >
> >> This a good read for those who show up on mailing lists without any
> >> guidance about how to ask the right questions and then complain that
> >> nobody answers their questions as they want.
> >>
> >> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
> >>
> >> It was also a good read for me.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Adrian
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Users mailing list
> >> Users at lists.opensips.org
> >> http://lists.opensips.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>
>
>
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