debugging problems

Often when clients/newbies/pro's have a question regarding soft or hardware there's a lot of effort lost in getting the required information from that person to help solve the problem. E.g.:

• What software and version are you running?


• What are your sysctl settings?


• What does the software config look like?


• Which hardware are you running?


• Etc. etc.

I wonder if there is a way or tool to just "dump" a wad of information and let people figure out themselves, if not for forums, irc or mailling lists maybe for helpdesks. This to make the time to solution smaller or even just to compare 2 simmilar problems to see where they are the same.