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Have you at any point told us you've done something when you could instead have shown us?

SF is replete with questions where the author asserted eg "I have configured syslog to write to /var/log/foo" when it turned out they'd actually configured it to write to /var/lgo/foo, and since that didn't exist, it wasn't being created and no logs were appearing. Or the author asserted "I have set the NS records for example.com to ns1.example.org and ns2.example.org in the zonefile" but after they'd agreed to post the zonefile it turned out they'd forgotten to canonicalise them, and they were actually being set to ns1.example.org.example.com and ns2.example.org.example.com.

Obviously, huge screenshots can become excessive really quickly, but if you can cut-and-paste (not re-type) a couple of lines from a terminal session that show us what you're doing, and what results, we can often shed light more quickly. Imagine that you're trying to prove your case to an audience of sceptics, and your question will often be better, and answered more quickly.

Corollary 1: command lines are better than GUIs for constructing evidence-based questions: posting samples from GUIs can be hard; from shells, it's easy. Do it from the command line, if you can.

Corollary 2: don't redact unless you really have to. It should now be obvious why; everything you post that isn't exactly what you did increases the chance of the real error being concealed. OK, it may be (slightly) embarrassing that you screwed up your corporate DNS; but would you prefer embarrassment and a quick fix, or deniability but no answer?

Have you at any point told us you've done something when you could instead have shown us?

SF is replete with questions where the author asserted eg "I have configured syslog to write to /var/log/foo" when it turned out they'd actually configured it to write to /var/lgo/foo, and since that didn't exist, it wasn't being created and no logs were appearing. Or the author asserted "I have set the NS records for example.com to ns1.example.org and ns2.example.org in the zonefile" but after they'd agreed to post the zonefile it turned out they'd forgotten to canonicalise them, and they were actually being set to ns1.example.org.example.com and ns2.example.org.example.com.

Obviously, huge screenshots can become excessive really quickly, but if you can cut-and-paste (not re-type) a couple of lines from a terminal session that show us what you're doing, and what results, we can often shed light more quickly. Imagine that you're trying to prove your case to an audience of sceptics, and your question will often be better, and answered more quickly.

Corollary 1: command lines are better than GUIs for constructing evidence-based questions: posting samples from GUIs can be hard; from shells, it's easy. Do it from the command line, if you can.

Corollary 2: don't redact unless you really have to. It should now be obvious why; everything you post that isn't exactly what you did increases the chance of the real error being concealed. OK, it may be (slightly) embarrassing that you screwed up your corporate DNS; but would you prefer embarrassment and a quick fix, or deniability but no answer?

Have you at any point told us you've done something when you could instead have shown us?

SF is replete with questions where the author asserted eg "I have configured syslog to write to /var/log/foo" when it turned out they'd actually configured it to write to /var/lgo/foo, and since that didn't exist, it wasn't being created and no logs were appearing. Or the author asserted "I have set the NS records for example.com to ns1.example.org and ns2.example.org in the zonefile" but after they'd agreed to post the zonefile it turned out they'd forgotten to canonicalise them, and they were actually being set to ns1.example.org.example.com and ns2.example.org.example.com.

Obviously, huge screenshots can become excessive really quickly, but if you can cut-and-paste (not re-type) a couple of lines from a terminal session that show us what you're doing, and what results, we can often shed light more quickly. Imagine that you're trying to prove your case to an audience of sceptics, and your question will often be better, and answered more quickly.

Corollary 1: command lines are better than GUIs for constructing evidence-based questions: posting samples from GUIs can be hard; from shells, it's easy. Do it from the command line, if you can.

Corollary 2: don't redact unless you really have to. It should now be obvious why; everything you post that isn't exactly what you did increases the chance of the real error being concealed. OK, it may be (slightly) embarrassing that you screwed up your corporate DNS; but would you prefer embarrassment and a quick fix, or deniability but no answer?

Have you at any point told us you've done something when you could instead have shown us?

SF is replete with questions where the author asserted eg "I have configured syslog to write to /var/log/foo" when it turned out they'd actually configured it to write to /var/lgo/foo, and since that didn't exist, it wasn't being created and no logs were appearing. Or the author asserted "I have set the NS records for example.com to ns1.example.org and ns2.example.org in the zonefile" but after they'd agreed to post the zonefile it turned out they'd forgotten to canonicalise them, and they were actually being set to ns1.example.org.example.com and ns2.example.org.example.com.

Obviously, huge screenshots can become excessive really quickly, but if you can cut-and-paste (not re-type) a couple of lines from a terminal session that show us what you're doing, and what results, we can often shed light more quickly. Imagine that you're trying to prove your case to an audience of sceptics, and your question will often be better, and answered more quickly.

Corollary 1: command lines are better than GUIs for constructing evidence-based questions: posting samples from GUIs can be hard; from shells, it's easy. Do it from the command line, if you can.

Corollary 2: don't redact unless you really have to. It should now be obvious why; everything you post that isn't exactly what you did increases the chance of the real error being concealed. OK, it may be (slightly) embarrassing that you screwed up your corporate DNS; but would you prefer embarrassment and a quick fix, or deniability but no answer?