Subtitles of the Movie

Fault analysis is essentially a way of thinking, a how-to in approaching troubleshooting. While I've also described this in the RHCT course the methods are so important I redo the video here. When troubleshooting any problem experience counts. It can help you recognize problems and symptoms that can speed your way to a solution. But if you don't recognize a problem right away, it's useful to return to the scientific method. As described in Wikipedia, there are seven basic steps to the scientific method. Step One. Define the question. Use any error messages that you see. Check your log files for more information. Make sure you have the right service or application. Step Two. Gather information and resources. Check relevant configuration files. Make sure they're in order. Run basic diagnostics, for example, the PNG [00:01:11 command. Get help. Gather information on network con activity. The test parm command is a useful syntax checker for the samba reconfiguration file. Form a hypothesis from a basic review of the situation, from what you know now, can you make a guess on the cause? Perform experiments and collect data. Based on what you know and your hypothesis, what would you change? But before changing any files, back them up first. If the situation gets worse, you can at least restore those files. When you do your experiments, analyze the data. See what happens after you've made those changes to configuration files. If it's a change to a service, make sure to reload the configuration file, or alternatively, restart the service. Then you can analyze related log files, and any errors in the output. Step Six. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis. In other words, if the problem isn't already solved, see what else you could do. You did remember to make a back up in case you needed to start over, and, most importantly, Step Seven. Publish your results. Whenever you've solved a problem it's important to at least document what you've done. You may not be the only administrator on your network, now or in the future. And if you share the results on-line, in appropriate locations, you may get good karmic credit in the Linux community.