ConfigBytes

Just revived an interesting email from Global Knowledge on troubleshooting.
This is subject where I find that new upcoming engineers are lacking in the fine art of effective troubleshooting.  It is real easy to become a “parts-engineer” in today’s throw -it-away and replace society.    However with the economy on stand still, most companies are reluctant to take that approach, they would rather “configure-it-out”.

Troubleshooting is not something you can easily read from a book, it must be physical learned. you can find that guides like the one blow may give you a foundation.

Troubleshooting 101
Gather the facts: This process is the corner stone of all the other processes rely on. First of all, refer to previous trouble tickets to see if this particular problem has occurred in the past and what methods were used to correct it. If this is the very first time, determine if changes were made to the system (i.e., IOS or other application upgrades). Interview user(s) who are affected by the problem and see if this just recently occurred or has been occurring over a period of time. Then review any protocols that may be involved with the problem to understand how they normally function. Pull any necessary trace files or dumps and analyze the traces for abnormal behaviors and you may have to execute debug commands when needed. Also topology diagrams are critical in helping to isolate the problem.

Read the complete article here here…

Here’s a nice snippet I found when looking for help guest to host file sharing.

VirtualBox: access Windows-host shared folders from Ubuntu-guest
This is the scenario that you run Windows as your host operating system and Ubuntu in a VirtualBox, and that you want to access a specific Windows folder from Ubuntu.

First you have to make sure that have install Guest Additions. From the VirtualBox’s menu go to Devices → Install Guest Additions… This will mount a virtual CD on your /media/cdrom. Normally this folder’s window will show up. As root run the program VBoxLinuxAdditions.run. When the program completes reboot your VirtualBox.

Read more here!