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ESO-MIDAS User Support

The MIDAS Users Support provides help for users that have problems or questions during installation or usage of the MIDAS system. It answers to questions cannot be obtained locally (e.g. through a manual) or after consulting our FAQ, please feel free to contact us for support. The most convinient and best way to contact us is using the

ESO-MIDAS Problem Report Form

that enable us to deal the reporting quickly using a set of processing tools. In addition this way of reporting offers us the possibility of maintaining a database of the questions and the update the FAQ listing.

The ESO-MIDAS Problem is available via the WWW and via the XHELP Graphical User Interface when running MIDAS. To start this interface enter: CREATE/GUI HELP.

In case the ESO-MIDAS Problem Report System cannot be used the MIDAS User Support can be contacted via:

internet: midas@eso.org

telefax: +49 89 32006480 (attn.: MIDAS Support)

uucp: midas@eso.uucp

Requests and questions are acknowledged when received and processed as soon as possible, normally within a few days. Also, users are strongly encouraged to send suggestions and comments via the MIDAS Problem Report Form that enables quick processing of your request.

In urgent cases, users can use a special MIDAS Support telephone service at ESO on the number +49-89-32006-456. This line is connected to the MIDAS Users Support which is able directly to answer questions concerning MIDAS or investigate the problem in more complicated cases. Although this telephone service is available we prefer that questions or requests are submitted in writting via the ESO-MIDAS Problem Report Form.

Other Information Services

Besides the above mentioned support a few other services are offered to the community.

ESO-MIDAS Courier
The ESO-MIDAS Courier is the offical MIDAS newsletter, which provided information about new developments of applications packages, new system features, and new releases. The newsletter appears at least once a year at a MIDAS release. Copiesin compressed postscript format can be retrieved from the ESO-MIDAS anonymous ftp account.

Newsgroup: eso.midas
The ESO-MIDAS Newsgroup is an unmoderated newsgroup that allows discussions concerning MIDAS related topics. We encourage communications between the MIDAS users using this newsgroup. Annoucements concerning new releases, patches will be also posted in this newsgroup.

ESO-MIDAS mailing lists
The midas-users and the midas-announce mailing lists are created to facilitate discussion about ESO-MIDAS and to inform its users.

The midas-users is a copy of the content of the eso.midas newsgroup. Articles will be sent to the e-mail addresses of the subscribers as they are posted. All messages to the list are archived and are available via Majordomo using the command "get midas-users <filename>" (send index midas-users in the body of a message to majordomo@eso.org for the index of all file), or via the anonymous FTP account in the directory midas-users. The archives are broken down by year and month, and are stored in files named midas-users.YYMM. The copy of the archive is updated every night at 2am local time.

The midas-announce list is moderated by ESO and meant for announcements of releases and patches of ESO-MIDAS. Messages are archived in the same way as for the midas-users mailing list and can also be retrieved by anonymous ftp.

To subscribe to these mailing lists, send a mail to majordomo@eso.org with the following command in the body of your email message: "subscribe midas-announce [email]", or "subscribe midas-users [email]", where [email]] should be your e-mail address.