Tech support exchanges

This is a page in progress.

When a tech decides that a box is unrepairable, or would take too much time to repair, there are separate processes for dealing with it, depending on whether the box is adopted, granted, or from the store.

Adoption

When a box was adopted and it is within the warranty period of one year, he or she should get a comparable or slightly better box off the FreekBox shelf by the classroom. If the adopter does not have any files that need saved (or the hard drive has died), the best procedure is to just swap the whole box. If files need to be saved, you can either swap the whole hard drive or put the drive in a usb drive caddy and rsync the files into the home directory. If the system is similar swapping the drive can be the quickest, easiest thing to do, but keep in mind that the OS on the swapped system may have been customized and some things may not work without tweaking.

Grants

Grants are handled similarly to adopted boxes, but if they have had the operating system replaced, or are more than a year old, they can still get a replacement box by going through the grant process but are not swapped by tech support.

Store

Purchased computers (including laptops) must be replaced through the store. Tech support will let the purchaser, and the store, know that the system is unrepairable, and then send the purchaser to the store to get a replacement or store credit.

Database

Adoption and Grants

At this point, there is no gui way of doing a simple swap in the database for an adopted box, or of doing any kind of return for it, so for the time being, make a new disbursement, make the disbursement type "Replacement" and note in the comments the system id of the old box if it can be determined

Details

• If possible get a printme from the old machine or hard drive (printme info is located in /var/lib/freegeek-extras/printme/), Write down or remember the system ID of the old machine
• Go to "data" in firefox or iceweasel
• Click on "Entry" under "Disbursements"
  • "Search will allow you to look for the adopter's (or grantee's) previous disbursement and hopefully allow you to tell if it is in the warranty period.
• Find the contact
• on the right side enter the type (System), the number (1) and the new system's ID.
• put "today" in "When did this get given away"
• Choose "Replacement" for "Type of disbursement"
• Note the old system's ID and the RT ticket number in the comments
• Note that the system was replaced (and any other relevant information) in the RT ticket for the issue.

Note: "Add new return" at the top of the screen is for store use.

Store

Store boxes should be exchanged through the store. If tech support determines that the box is defective, the store may issue store credit which will go towards a replacement box. They will deal with the database end of it.

Keep in mind that the store has different warranty periods from any other part of Free Geek.