Information Sources and Problem Solving

Chapter Information Sources and Problem Solving Introduction As a Systems Administrator you will be expected to fix any and all problems that occur with the computer systems under your control There is no way that this book or this course can prepare you for every situation and problem you will come across Additionally, for most of us mere mortals it is simply not possible for us to know everything that is required Instead as a Systems Administrator you must know the important facts and be able to quickly discover any new information that you don't yet know You must be able to diagnose and solve the problem even though you have never seen it before This chapter examines the sources of information that a Systems Administrator might find useful including professional associations, books, magazines, and the Internet It also provides some guidelines about how you might go about solving problems you have never seen before While some of this information is Linux specific most of it is applicable to any operating system As the semester progresses you should become familiar with and use most of the information sources and the problem solving process presented here Other resources This chapter mentions a large number of Internet resources and includes the URLs You can find an up-to-date listing of these links and other related links on the Links database on the course website Other resources that are related to this chapter include: · · Online lecture on the course website HOWTO’s Online Troubleshooting Resources HOW-TO, Reading List HOW-TO and the Staying Updated mini-HOW-TO Information sources The following sections first examine the range of information sources you have available as a Systems Administrator Each of the following sections deals with a different type of resource As a trainee Systems Administrator you should find yourself starting to use these resources during your study Learning how to answer your own questions is perhaps the most important thing you can take from this text The information sources discussed in the following includes: · Professional associations There are quite a diverse list of professional associations available which may be useful to a Systems Administrator Page 54 · · Books and magazines There are now a wide range of relevant books and magazines to chose from Internet sources The Internet is perhaps the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource for Systems Administrators, if used correctly Professional organisations Belonging to a professional organisation can offer a number of benefits including recognition of your abilities, opportunities to talk with other people in jobs similar to yours and a variety of other benefits Most professional organisations distribute newsletters; hold conferences and many today have mailing lists and web sites All of these can help you perform your job Professional organisations a Systems Administrator might find interesting include: · · · · · · Systems Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU, http://www.sageau.org.au/) Systems Administrators Guild (SAGE) (the American version of SAGE-AU, http://www.usenix.org/sage/) Australian UNIX Users Group (AUUG, http://www.auug.org.au/) Australian Computer Society (ACS, http://www.acs.org.au/) Usenix (http://www.usenix.org.au/) Internet Society of Australia (http://www.isoc-au.org.au/) This list has a distinct Australian, UNIX, Internet flavour with just a touch of the USA thrown in If anyone from overseas or from other factions in the computer industry (i.e Novell, Microsoft) has a professional organisation that should be added to this list please let your course lecturer know The UNIX Guru Universe (UGU http://www.ugu.com/) is a website which provides a huge range of pointers to UNIX related material It will be used throughout this chapter and in some of the other chapters in the text Professional Associations The Resource Materials section on the course website for week has a page which contains links to professional associations and user organisations The SAGE groups SAGE stands for Systems Administrators Guild and is the name taken on by a number of professional societies for Systems Administrators that developed during the early 90s There are national SAGE groups in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom Sage-au The Australian SAGE group was started in 1993 SAGE-AU holds an annual conference and distributes a bi-monthly newsletter SAGE-AU is not restricted to UNIX Systems Administrators Both SAGE and SAGE-AU have a presence on the web The Professional Associations page on the course website contains pointers to both Page 55 UNIX User groups There are various UNIX user groups spread throughout the world AUUG is the Australian UNIX Users Group and provides information of all types on both UNIX and Open Systems Usenix was one of the first UNIX user groups anywhere and is based in the United States The American SAGE group grew out of the Usenix Association Both Usenix (http://www.usenix.org/) and AUUG (http://www.auug.org.au/) have web sites Both sites have copies of material from the associations’ newsletters It should be noted that both user groups have gone beyond their original UNIX emphasis This is especially true for Usenix, which runs two important symposiums/conferences on the various versions of Windows NT based operating systems The ACS, ACM and IEEE The ACS is the main professional computing society in Australia servicing people from all computing disciplines The flavour of the ACS is much more business oriented than SAGE-AU The ACS is also moving towards some form of certification of computing professionals and some jobs may require ACS membership For more information refer to the web page (http://www.acs.org.au/) The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM, http://www.acm.org/) is one of the largest American professional computing societies Its publications are considerably more technical and wide ranging than the ACS The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, http://www.ieee.org/) also has a Computing Society (http://www.computer.org/) Books and magazines When a new computing person asks a technical question, a common response will be “RTFM” RTFM stands for Read The Fine (and other words starting with f) Manual and implies that the person asking the question should go away and look at documentation for the answer Around five years ago RTFM for a Systems Administrator meant reading the on-line man pages, some badly written manual from the vendor or maybe, if lucky, a Usenet newsgroup or two Trying to find a book that explained how to use cron or how to set up NFS was a difficult task Since then there has been an explosion in the number of books and magazines that cover Systems Administration and related fields This is especially noticeable over the last couple of years with the huge hype surrounding Linux and Open Source software The following pages contain pointers to a number of different bibliographies that list books that may be useful A Linux specific "magazine" which anyone with access to the 85321 course CDROM/website (or to the Linux Documentation Project: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/index.html) can read is the Linux Gazette Page 56 Bibliographies UNIX, Systems Administration and related books The Resource Materials section for week 1, on the course website or CD-ROM, has a collection of pointers to books useful for this course and System Administration in general O'Reilly books Over the last few years there has been an increase in the number of publishers producing UNIX, Systems Administration and network related texts However one publisher has been in this game for quite some time and has earned a deserved reputation for producing quality books A standard component of the personal library for many Systems Administrators is a collection of O'Reilly books For more information have a look at the O’Reilly web site (http://www.oreilly.com/) Magazines There is now a wide range of magazines dealing with all sorts of Systems Administration related issues, including many covering Windows operating systems Magazines The course website contains pointers to related magazines under the Resource Materials section for week Internet resources The Internet is by far the largest repository of information for computing people today This is especially true when it comes to UNIX and Linux related material UNIX was an essential part of the development of the Internet, while Linux could not have been developed without the ease of communication made possible by the Internet If you have a question, a problem, need an update for some software, want a complete operating system or just want to have a laugh, the Internet should be one of the first places you look as a Systems Administrator So what is out there that could be of use to you? You can find: · · · software discussion forums information Each of these is introduced in more detail in the following sections The course website The course website contains mirrors, pointers and other resources related to some of the Internet related material discussed below These resources include: · a link database Chances are the links listed here will become out of date The website maintains a database of Linux and Systems Administration related links which include ratings You can add links to this database Page 57 · · a FAQ database The LDP and most newsgroups maintain lists of common questions (with answers) This database allows you to quickly search and view these questions The Google search engine (http://www.google.com) can be searched directly from the website How to use the Internet By this stage it is assumed that you should be a fairly competent user of the Internet, the web, email, Usenet news and other net-based resources If you are a little rusty or haven’t been introduced to many of these tools there are a large number of tutorials on the Internet that provide a good introduction A good list of these tutorials is held on the Google site (http://www.google.com/) Software on the Internet There is a large amount of "free" UNIX software available on the Internet It should be kept in mind that no software is free You may not pay anything to get the software but you still have to take the time to install it, learn how to use it and maintain it Time is money Many variants of “public-domain” software are available on the Internet These projects are usually open source, meaning that the source code is supplied with the program Inspection, alteration and general fiddling with the workings of a program can be achieved and are encouraged with the idea that a better product will emerge GNU software (GNU is a “recursive acronym” that stands for “GNU's Not UNIX”) is probably the best-known public domain software on the Internet Much of the software, for example ls, cd and the other basic commands that come with Linux, is GNU software In fact there is a trend amongst some people to call Linux, GNU/Linux, to reflect the amount of GNU software a Linux distribution uses The Gnu Manifesto A copy of the GNU manifesto is available on the course website and CD-ROM under the Resource Materials section for this week The GNU website (http://www.gnu.org/) contains a lot more information about GNU's projects and licensing details A good place to go to get the latest Open Source software (if you are based in Australia) is the AARNet mirror (http://www.mirror.aarnet.edu.au/ or ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/) It contains mirrors of a lot of popular Open Source software including GIMP, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Linux, Apache and KDE Discussion forums Probably the biggest advantage the Internet provides is the ability for you to communicate with other people who are doing the same task Systems Administration is often a lonely job where you are one of the few people, or the only one, doing the task The ability to share the experience and knowledge of other people is a great benefit Major discussion forums on the web include: · · · Usenet news mailing lists web based forums Page 58 · other discussion tools Usenet news Once one of the most popular features of the Internet, Usenet news, has lost some of its popularity as the number of people on the Internet increases Usenet news is a collection of discussion forums, which are distributed and read with specialised software (i.e You read Usenet news with a news reader) There are discussion forums on a wide range of topics from purely social through to very technical Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) also allows you to search, view and participate in Usenet discussions A Systems Administrator is usually attracted to the large number of Linux/Systems Administration/Network related newsgroups Newsgroups are a good place to ask technical questions, listen to other people and learn about topics Some of the more useful newsgroups for this course include: · comp.os.linux.* · comp.unix.* · aus.computer.linux There are a large number of newsgroups under this heading discussing most Linux related topics, for example comp.os.linux.setup is used for discussion about installing and setting up a Linux box Another large collection of newsgroups talking about UNIX in particular Useful groups include comp.unix.questions for general UNIX questions and comp.unix.admin for Systems Administration type questions An Australian Linux newsgroup http://www.linuxresources.com/online.html maintains a more detailed description and list of Linux newsgroups Just the FAQs As you might imagine there are some questions which are asked again and again and again on newsgroups Rather than repeat the answers to these questions again and again, most newsgroups maintain a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) It is considered good practice when joining a newsgroup for the first time to read the FAQs It is a compulsory task before you ask a question on a newsgroup You can access the FAQs for most newsgroups at http://www.faqs.org/ This site contains over 4000 separate FAQs written by over 1500 authors covering 1700 newsgroups The course website also maintains a collection of many of the FAQs relevant to Systems Administration Exercises 3.1 There is a newsgroup called comp.os.unix Like many newsgroups this group maintains an FAQ Obtain the comp.unix.questions FAQ and answer the following questions: - find out what the rc stands for when used in filenames such as cshrc /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 - find out about the origins of the GCOS field in the /etc/passwd file Page 59 Google Google (http://www.google.com/) is one of the most useful websites when it comes to finding technical information, or information on just about any topic for that matter Its search engine uses a page ranking system to order results with the most popular and generally more relevant results first You will often find that simply searching for an error message on Google will lead to a site or discussion which solves the issue Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/) provides a searchable archive of all Usenet discussion forums It is recommended that you try the Advanced Search option to cut down on extraneous results Learning to use Google’s growing array of resources is a valuable skill which yields a lot of helpful information on just about every topic in times of need Mailing lists For many people, the quality of Usenet News has been declining as more and more people start using it One of the common complaints is the high level of beginners and the high level of noise Many experienced people are moving towards mailing lists as their primary source of information since they often are more focused and have a “better” collection of subscribers and contributors Mailing lists are also used by a number of different folk to distribute information For example, vendors such as Sun and Hewlett Packard maintain mailing lists specific to their operating systems (Solaris and HP-UX) Professional associations such as SAGE-AU and SAGE also maintain mailing lists for specific purposes In fact, many people believe the SAGE-AU mailing list to be the one of the best reasons for joining SAGE-AU, as requests for assistance on this list are often answered within a few hours (or less) Mailing lists One good guide to all the mailing lists that are available is Liszt, mailing list directory (http://www.liszt.com/) The UNIX Guru’s Universe also maintains a directory of mailing lists related to Systems Administration Other discussion forums There are also other forums that may be useful for Systems Administrators, that make use of technology other than Usenet news or mailing lists These forums often use IRC or web-based chat and bulletin board facilities Over the last year or so, web-based bulletin board like systems have come to the fore Examples include: · · · Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org/) A bunch of people contribute links and information about what is happening in the nerd world Includes a lot of interesting Linux, open source and networking related material Linux Today (http://www.linuxtoday.com/) A slightly more business-oriented version of Slashdot A bit more serious but still a great information source Freshmeat (http://www.freshmeat.net/) A place where people announce the latest releases of Open Source software Page 60 · SourceForge.net (http://www.sourceforge.net/) A very large repository for open source code and applications SourceForge.net provides free and commercial services to Open Source developers to manage development projects Page 61 Internet based Linux resources Linux would not have been possible without the Internet The net provided the communications medium by which programmers from around the world could collaborate and work together to produce Linux Consequently there is a huge collection of Internet based resources for Linux The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) The best place to start is the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) The aim of this project is to produce quality documentation to support the Linux community The original LDP page is located at http://www.linuxdoc.org/ A mirror of the LDP pages is maintained on the course website and a copy of these pages can be found on the course CD-ROM A major source of information the LDP provides are the HOWTOs HOWTOs are documents that explain how to perform specific tasks, as diverse as how to use OpenOffice.org (a commercial office suite that is available free with most Linux distributions) through to detailed information about how the Linux boot-prompt works The HOWTOs should be the first place you look for specific Linux information Copies are available from the LDP Web pages RedHat This version of the text is written as a companion for RedHat Linux As a result it will be a common requirement for you find out information specific to RedHat Linux The best source on the Internet for this information is the RedHat site, http://www.redhat.com/ Possibly the most important information source on the RedHat site are the updates/errata pages for the distribution of RedHat Linux you have installed There will be errors and new software for RedHat Linux, and RedHat is the best source to find out about these If you installed RedHat from a CD, you may also find some of the updates and errata on that CD RedHat provide several manuals with RedHat Linux All are available for download from http://www.redhat.com in a variety of formats: · Red Hat Installation Guide A copy of this will be included in the package received by distance education students of CQU It is also available on the installation CDs This guide is designed to help you install RedHat Linux onto your computer · Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide Provides information you will likely need to configure your Linux box including an overview of Gnome Gnome is the default desktop environment with RedHat Linux 6.1 · RedHat Linux Reference Guide Contains references to a wide range of information you may need while using your computer · RedHat Customisation Guide Contains step-by-step, task-oriented guides for configuring, customising and managing your system · RedHat Systems Administration Primer Contains introductory information and provides background knowledge that more experienced system administrators have learned over time Page 62 Problem solving I will guarantee that you will have problems with Linux while you are attempting the tasks and reading about the concepts introduced in this text Most of the time these problems will be unlike anything you have ever seen before You probably won't have any idea what the actually problem is You may have difficulty even starting to describe it Don't PANIC!!!! Every Systems Administrator, every computer user has faced this same problem The difference between a bad Systems Administrator and a good one is the ability to problem solve If you can learn to solve problems you have never faced before then you can anything Guidelines for solving problems The "Linux Installation and Getting Started Guide" (part of the Linux Documentation Project) provides the following guidelines for solving problems They are a good start Remain calm Never ever attempt to solve anything computer related while you are upset, angry, sad, tired or emotional in any way Any of these feelings will adversely affect your ability to solve the problem In other words they are likely to make things worse Learn to appreciate self-reliance The key to problem solving is that you have to it If you are continually relying on other people to solve your problems you will never learn anything Try and solve your problems first If you can't solve your problems talk to someone about what you are doing and why you are doing it Try and figure out why you can't solve problems The idea is that you have to this before you can start problem solving on your own Consult all available sources of information Most people, especially in the Linux world, are more than happy to help out with a problem However, they can get very upset if the question you are asking has already been answered in some documentation or on the web Know the best places to look There are a huge number of different places from which you can get information about Linux and Systems Administration The same applies to Windows NT, 2000 and NET If you know which sites are best for which sort of information you can significantly cut down your search time Refrain from asking spurious questions Linux has the best support mechanism of any operating system and the best thing about it is that it is free However, there are accepted codes of behaviour and one of them is "Don't ask stupid questions" When asking for help, be polite, concise and informative "I can't boot my Linux computer" is not informative If you don't provide sufficient information no one will be able to offer help At the other extreme, if you provide too much information people won't be bothered to read it Lastly, noone likes a rude person If you are rude, people are likely to be rude back again and not help Page 63 Contribute to the community The number of people contributing to Linux newsgroups, the LDP and other areas is the main reason why Linux support is so good If you know the answer to a problem, share it with other people and help make the support even better These guidelines are a good start The following are some additional ones I've developed over the last few years: · · · · · · Understand what the problem is This may seem to be a bit obvious However, a number of years of teaching this course has shown that the most common reason students can't solve their problems is that they don't understand what the problem is If you don't know what the problem is, find out or following the next suggestion Take note of any error messages You’d be surprised at the amount information that is simply ignored by a frustrated user If there are any applicable error logs check them out as well Often error messages will suggest a solution; otherwise you can often make a good start at solving the problem quickly by searching Google for the error message A final reiteration of the age-old saying is necessary here: “When all else fails read the manual” Most software programs come with a plethora of documentation and accompanying support web pages Any applicable man or info pages are also well worth looking at Break the problem down into smaller steps If the problem is too complex, too large or you don't understand it, try breaking it down into smaller steps so you can solve (or understand) those Don't get too close, walk away There will be times when the best thing you can is walk away and something else for a while Any person with experience in the computing field should be able to tell a story about how a solution to a frustrating problem popped into their head while mowing the lawn, watching television or having a shower Some distance from the problem can provide the bit of perspective you needed to figure out the problem Talk to people A group of people will always be able to solve more problems than a single person More people means more experience and different perspectives If you don't know the solution, chances are someone else does Record the solution This could be considered as contributing to the community but it also serves a much more selfish reason If you have faced the problem once then chances are that you, or another Systems Administrator, will face it again If you have documented the solution to the problem, then solving it the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time will be much quicker Examples of solving problems The 2nd course online lecture includes three examples of how to use the resources and approaches introduced above to solve problems Page 64 Conclusions A lot of a Systems Administrator’s valuable time is consumed attempting to solve new problems A Systems Administrator must be able to solve new problems Being aware of the available information sources and their relative merits is an important step towards being able to solve these problems While the information presented in this chapter may be useful, it is actual experience that is the most useful tool in solving problems Take the time to gain this experience Review questions 3.1 Use the information sources here to solve some of the problems you are currently having If you aren’t having problems, find a question from one of the Linux or UNIX newsgroups Page 65 ... solve your problems you will never learn anything Try and solve your problems first If you can''t solve your problems talk to someone about what you are doing and why you are doing it Try and figure... anything Guidelines for solving problems The "Linux Installation and Getting Started Guide" (part of the Linux Documentation Project) provides the following guidelines for solving problems They are... introductory information and provides background knowledge that more experienced system administrators have learned over time Page 62 Problem solving I will guarantee that you will have problems