On Monday 20 November 2006 09:18, Kerry Mayes wrote:
> Bringing this back on topic: A defined "acceptable use" policy for the list
> is not a bad idea - what I'd really like to see is a short "linux problem
> solving" procedure. For windoze this is "1. reboot the machine and see if
> the problem goes away" etc. For linux it might be "1. check out the clug
> wiki" "2. google it.". And it would also include "How to respond to the
> newbie / idiot asking dumb questions."
For Linux, a distribution neutral procedure might be:
1) Check that everything is plugged in and turned on.
( You'd be surprised how many times that's the problem. )
2) Attempt to boot the machine.
If it does, but 'something strange' happens, examine the o/p from the
dmesg command and what is in the last few lines of the /var/log/messages
file. There is a 99% chance that one of these will have some record of the
error.
2a) If it doesn't make a note of the last line on the screen.
3) Filesystems do fail. Booting with a LiveCD or bootable floppy and doing a
filesystem check with the fsck utility is always a good idea.
4) If the graphical display fails, there will usually be some record of what's
gone wrong in the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log
5) Now is the time to bleat here. :-)
--
CS
