Is a question about getting Drush to work in a Bash environment off-topic?

Question

I recently had a question about Drush closed as off-topic. The question dealt with Drush failing to work on a Linux server, while connecting to another Linux server over SSH.

Obviously, besides dealing with Drush, it deals with Bash, SSH, and to some extent Linux in general. However, it is still fundamentally about Drush, and Drupal developers are more likely to have an answer to a Drush-related problem than anyone on (e.g.) unix.stackexchange.com. So I'm not sure how this could be considered off-topic. It's about Drush, and getting Drush to work in a Linux environment, which is the normal environment, and the de facto standard. Since "Server administration/deployment" is listed as an acceptable topic in the FAQ, there's an understanding that some questions will touch on dealing with the underlying operating system, and other software that Drupal (and Drush) depend(s) on. That's what this question does.

So: to those who know about these things: is this off-topic? And if so, how does one ask a question that might end up having more to do with (e.g.) server administration than any part of Drupal itself? (And remember: before you have the answer, you don't normally know where the problem lies.)

(Incidentally, I don't care that much if the question is reopened. I mostly want to clarify this publicly, so either I know that such questions are unwelcome here (even though I think they should be) or the people who close questions would understand that such questions like are welcome, and should not be closed. The main value that reopening the question would have is to set a precedence that topics can bridge the gap between Drupal and closely-related technologies.)

Answer 1

Questions about Drush are on-topic on Drupal Answers, but that question is more about how to set up a remote shell to make it find a particular executable. In fact, the proposed solution is valid anytime a non interactive shell is used, and an executable put in a custom path needs to be used.

It is true that the FAQ says that server administration/deployment questions are on-topic, but it is also true that such questions should still require Drupal expertise to be answered, to be on-topic on Drupal Answers. In other words, there must be a solution specific for Drupal, and not just a generic solution that is also valid for who is not using Drupal.

To make some examples:

• A question about whatever it is better to use .htaccess, or DNS settings to redirect the users from a non existing sub-domain to www.example.com is off-topic, as the answer is not specific for Drupal, but it is generically valid for any web site, independently if they run Drupal, WordPress, Joomla. It doesn't actually change if the server is not even running PHP.^*
• A question about how to detect a Flash player in a browser is off-topic because the answer doesn't change if the server is running Drupal, or not.^*
• A question about how to redirect users from example.com to www.example.com has a generic answer, but the answer specific for Drupal is to uncomment some lines present in the .htaccess file Drupal uses.^*
• A question asking why (after installing Drupal) the users see the PHP code is off-topic because the answer is not specific for Drupal.
• A question asking why render(node_show($user_gallery)); is causing a string warning saying that only variables can be passed by reference can be answered from everybody knowing plain PHP, but only who knows Drupal will be able to point you to the Drupal documentation for node_show() showing the function doesn't return any reference. If, eventually, there is another function that should be called, it is just a Drupal expert who is able to tell you which function to call.^*

As side notes:

• The question and the answer have been written in the same moment (the timestamp says "Oct 8 at 2:45:19" for both). It is not the OP answered the question "because no one else gave any answer." Nobody had the time to answer it. The comment from greg_1_anderson is for the answer, and it has been written 3 hours later the answer was written. Still, what reported in that comment is generically valid for a shell, not a shell running Drush.

• The question itself just says:

  When I use a drush command to do something on a remote machine, I get the message

  bash: drush: command not found

  What's the problem?

  Such questions are difficult to answer because they don't give any necessary information to answer it, nor do they give any information about what the OP tried. If the users were allowed to answer it, they would have started to guess, and this is not what we want. Eventually, somebody could have given an answer about the remote shell not being interactive.
  Questions need to be answerable, which means the question should give any necessary information, which includes also the necessary code, when the question is about code.

^* Those examples are based on really asked questions.

Answer 2

Kiamlaluno alludes to this as well, but I think the particular problem here is that the question in absolutely no way ties the problem to Drupal.

When a question with so little information is posted, for all we know, the author hasn't even tried to install drush on the target machine, and just expects it to be present.

There is nothing explaning why the author actually expects it to work. Had that information been present, it would have been much easier to determine if the question belonged here or not.

As the question was posted, I think it was entirely off-topic, as all that could be seen was "Bash doesn't find [command]", which is clearly not a Drupal related problem.