Tips for troubleshooting

In well-determined environments and with specific problem-solving instructions, troubleshooting can be an easy task. But outside such well-known and controlled situations, the following universal troubleshooting strategy can become very handy.

Check if your problem or a similar case has already been described in one of this chapter's troubleshooting articles first!

Don't start with fighting the symptoms!

0. Get to the bottom of the problem:
1. Go through the current situation. How should it work in theory? Sometimes it can be helpful to make a sketch of the situation.
2. Make sure you fully understand the theory of what and why.

0. If another person reports and describes the problem:
1. Listen carefully, make notes. Find the who, what and when.
2. Afterward, proceed with questions that either have a yes/no answer or can be quantified (how many times did something happen?).
3. Once you got a grasp on the issue, try to repeat your understanding of the problem towards the other person. Make sure both of you have the same understanding of the problem.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what the issue is all about, you can look into technical details that could point you towards a solution.

1. What has been changed or modified? Problems rarely come out of the blue.
2. Check error messages and event logs. Do they tell you about the core problem, or merely about symptoms?
3. Can you run diagnostic tests? Sometimes a simple ping, cat-command or other simple diagnostic tools can be helpful.

At that point, you have a fact-based idea or hypothesis, what the problem might be.

0. Proof of concept:
1. Try to reproduce the original problem.
2. Recheck error messages and event logs. Do they match with the initial data, as expected?

The gathered evidence should now have narrowed down the possible root cause.

Contact our Airlock Support, if you are facing a very complex situative problem or you suspect that a software bug is probably the root cause.

0. Fix the problem:
1. When the problem has more than one cause, start fixing the ones which do not interfere with others! Do it one by one and
2. In between and after every fixing action:
• -Run individual tests to see the effect of your actions.
• -Check if the initial problem is still there and check for error message and event logs again.

Congratulations, you solved the problem! Now it's time for some cleaning up and note downs.

1. Describe the initial problem and how you solved it – step by step.
2. Also, note down any glitches and aberrations you encountered. Those things can be very useful and speed up the next troubleshooting for you and others.

If you think your findings and notes could be helpful for others and if you are willing to contribute, please send us an email. Thank you very much!