Linux Troubleshooting 101 , 2016 Edition

Kris Buytaert — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 07:00:55 +0000

Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post about linux troubleshoooting. Bert Van Vreckem pointed out that it might be time for an update ..

There's not that much that has changed .. however :)

Everything is a DNS Problem

Everything is a Fscking DNS Problem
No really, Everything is a Fscking DNS Problem
If it's not a fucking DNS Problem ..
It's a Full Filesystem Problem
If your filesystem isn't full
It is a SELinux problem
If you have SELinux disabled
It might be an ntp problem
If it's not an ntp problem
It's an arp problem
If it's not an arp problem...
It is a Java Garbage Collection problem
If you ain't running Java
It's a natting problem
If you are already on IPv6
It's a Spanning Tree problem
If it's not a spanning Tree problem...
It's a USB problem
If it's not a USB Problem
It's a sharing IRQ Problem
If it's not a sharing IRQ Problem
But most often .. its a Freaking Dns Problem !

Poor man's unix management

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:57:59 +0000

Bart, this is not a poor man's ntp. This is a stupid man's Unix management :)

Do you plan on running that script from cron each day ? Or do you plan on eventually configuring ntp for the boxen ?

Your poor man's configuration management solution would be to use a tool such as dssh or Cluster SSH

However what you really want to do is look into a tool like Puppet and instruct puppet to "Configure NTP on host X-Y-Z"

There's a great article from chromatic about Puppet and Luke over at O'Reilly, you might want to check it out .

Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - ntp

Linux Troubleshooting 101 , 2016 Edition

Poor man's unix management