Context

Besu is an open source execution client for Ethereum. As such, it has been integrated into many products and tools. Some aim to make staking easier, others act more like SaaS offerings. They all help increase usage of Besu and Ethereum. This document outlines how those communities can engage their members in Besu community support. This can be for issues and bug reports, better highlighting or understanding content in the docs, configuration challenges, and reaching the Besu dev team. 

Besu Community Support

• The Besu Documentation can answer many questions
• Relevant sections for stakers and Besu infrastructure:
• System Requirements
• Troubleshoot peering
• Troubleshoot performance
• Configure ports
• Understand metrics
• Configure Java Virtual Machine

• Besu Discord at discord.gg/hyperledger. #besu where users can interact with the dev team and get support
• #besu-contributors is where devs can go if they are interested in contributing to the client 
• Consensys Software Discord - Especially useful if they are also running Teku (found at Mainnet Clients → #teku)
• Besu Wiki - General information about the project and its governance 
• Version announcements in the announcements channel
• Occasionally, the team will put out emergency alerts and support information on the Besu Twitter and Discord

Besu GitHub

The Besu Github repository has info on recent releases with patch notes and general codebase info. Our GitHub often has reports of similar issues users may be facing with up-to-date status on a fix or mitigation strategies. If users cannot get the support they need from Discord, they can open a new issue and provide relevant logs and context. 

Users should be directed to us (Besu devs) when the issues they are facing appear to be client bugs instead of configuration or HW challenges. Slow performance may not always be a bug, so user hardware should be understood as part of the triage. Java errors can also sometimes be tied to the environment.