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Troubleshooting
Characterizing a Problem
Chapter 11 291
Characterizing a Problem
You need to consider many questions while trying to characterize a
problem. Start with global questions and gradually get more specific.
Depending on the response, ask another series of questions until you
have enough information to understand exactly what has happened. The
key questions to ask are as follows:
• Does the problem seem isolated to one user or program? Can the
problem be reproduced? Did the problem occur under any of the
following circumstances:
— While running a program
— While issuing a command
— While transmitting data
• Does the problem affect all users? The entire realm? Has anything
changed recently? The possibilities are as follows:
— New software and hardware installation.
— Same hardware but changes to the software. Has the
configuration file been modified? Has the HP-UX configuration
been changed?
— Same software but changes to the hardware. Do you the suspect
hardware or software?
It is often difficult to determine whether the problem is hardware-related
or software-related. Symptoms that indicate a hardware problem are as
follows:
• Intermittent errors.
• Networkwide problems after no change in software.
• Link-level errors, from logging subsystem, logged to the console.
• Data corruption—link-level trace that shows that data is sent
without error but is corrupt or lost at the receiver.
Symptoms that indicate a software problem are as follows:
• Network services errors returned to users or programs.