Summary

To begin Linux troubleshooting, you should be familiar with a few basic tools. Mastering the shell and various shell tools is a must for a serious Linux troubleshooter. Choosing and tuning the shell of your choice will make your work more efficient.

Knowing basic commands for finding and sorting files, checking the state of your system, and monitoring users will make it easier to watch over your computer's resources. Learning ways to obtain and use root privilege is necessary to get to critical configuration tasks.

While there are many tools for monitoring your Linux system to prevent or react to trouble, some tools are particularly valuable. The top command lets you display and manage running processes. Features like kudzu, modprobe, modinfo, and Ismod help you configure your computer's hardware. The strace command can let you watch every system call a command makes to track down problems it might be having.

There are some commands that almost every Linux administrator uses to troubleshoot network connections. The ssh command is now the most common way to do remote login among Linux systems. Ethereal and tcpdump can let you watch and analyze network traffic. With screen, you can keep sessions active, even if you have to disconnect from them for a while. Commands like ping, telnet and traceroute can tell you if a remote machine is alive and track down failed network connections.